Talk:Byte (magazine)

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Contents 1 Wayne Green controversy 2 Wayne Green's own words 3 Wayne Green vs Virginia Londner Green 4 Image placement 5 BIX 6 Move to BYTE magazine 7 Article doesn't make sense to the uninitiated 8 Unprotection 9 TfD nomination of Template:Computer Magazines

[edit] Wayne Green controversy

I have in my possession two issues of 73 Magazine from 1975. One has my name in the masthead and the other has an article by me. This is the time when Byte was started. If the first issue was labelled "September" I would attribute that to Wayne's quirkiness. He once pushed up the issue numbers of 73 by leaps and bounds over a period of several monts for no apparent reason. It was not that late in the year. It all happened in the Spring.

In both of these 73's the Business Manasger is Virginia Londner Green. Any other way to report her name at that time is erroneous except for "Virginia Green (nee Londner); that would work, though the former is historically accurate. Get an original copy of Byte and prove me wrong.

73 and Byte came out of a huge house on Pine Street in Peterborough. It was actually on the wrong side of the street to be number 73, but the Post Office didn't mind. I not only worked there for a short while in 1975 (with two bosses, Wayne and Virginia -- that drove me nuts, though some might call it a putt -- I lived there too.

I was present at the first meeting. Carl came with his two housemates, and Wayne and Virginia -- I was not part of the meeting itself, but rather acting in a supporting role -- I made lunch. Stuffed artichokes.

During the meeting Wayne took a picture of an S-100 board flanked by a knife and fork intended for the first cover, but it didn't turn out well enough to be used.

Monday morning Wayne told the ad guy, Bill, to see if he could scare up enough ads to support 56 pages for the first issue. Before noon he stuck his head in and said "How about 128?" Byte was off and running.

Though obviously some would discount my testimony, it is not hearsay.

Wayne fired people from time to time, including me a few weeks after this all happened. The following is actually hearsay, from Wayne himself in 1975 to me. Some time before, Wayne had fired somebody who had friends in high places, They got the IRS down on him. The IRS people found nothing wrong and left. They were sent back again with orders to get nasty, and they did. They disallowed, for instance, photographic equipment as a business expense, even though Wayne was not a photographic hobbyist, and had the equpment for the magazine.

So I guess he copped a plea or something. That's how the thing came to be in Virginia's name. Anyway, lots of people seem to delight in raking him over the coals, and even though I got pushed out the revolving door myself, I respect him enough to want to set the record straight.

;Bear 15:33, 2004 Apr 8 (UTC)

[edit] Wayne Green's own words

In the first issues of Byte Magazine, Wayne Green's From the Publisher column tells how Byte started. Here is a link to the article.

BYTE Issue #1 September 1975

The September 1976 issue says (page 4) that the work started on May 25 1975 and the first issue took 7 week to produce.

Wayne also wrote about starting Byte in 73 Magazine .

SWTPC6800 17:56, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wayne Green vs Virginia Londner Green

The June 1975 issue of 73 magazine published "Inside Ma Bell" by "Spenser Whipple Jr." and it had details on how to build a "Black Box", "Red Box", and the infamous "Blue Box", all devices intended to defraud the phone company. This was a series published in 3 issues. The Pacific Bell phone company sued 73 to stop publication.

The phone company settled with 73 Inc in January 1976. (California case C 126265; PacBell vs. Spenser Whipple Jr., Wayne Green, Virginia Londner Green and 200 John/Jane Does.) All issues of the offending 73 Magazines had to be destroyed including those at public libraries. They also had to notify each subscriber and tell them to destroy the June issue. (Most subscribers ignored that and made Xerox copies to give to their friends. The settlement only covered areas served by PacBell.)

The IRS was also unhappy with Wayne Green and did a full audit of him and 73 magazine. This is probably why the new magazine was started in the new Green Publishing, Inc. Wayne Green was the publisher for the first 4 issues then Virginia Green was listed in January 1976. The February 1976 issue is published by BYTE Publications, Inc.

Wayne Green was not happy about losing BYTE magazine so he was going to start a new one called Kilobyte. BYTE quickly trademarked KILOBYTE as a cartoon series in BYTE magazine. Wayne's magazine was called Kilobaud. The author Spenser Whipple Jr. was really Peter Stark and he wrote many articles for Kilobaud magazine.

(Michael Holley 19 February 2006)

[edit] Image placement

The reason for my moving the BYTE cover image below the intro text was an aesthetic one as well as the common practice of having the intro text going over the full width of the article above any images/tables etc. Also, how come the image as such is no longer present (not loading, as of the time of writing)? --Wernher 16:22, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Sure, seems reasonable - Seemed wrong to me so I experimented by moving it while tweaking caption. On the other issue, I think the Wiki servers have been a bit stressed out 'cos I had a similar experience with some other images about the same time - all seems working at the moment --Wm 00:42, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

OK; I moved the cover img again as described, and trimmed the cpn a little bit -- the US$ sales price should be enough, I think. But thanks for including the cover title. FYI, as time permits, I plan to contribute photos of the initial and final issues of BYTE (if no one else beats me to it, that is). :-) --Wernher 20:38, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

[edit] BIX

There is no mention of the online service/BBS that Byte was associated with, known as BIX. --Weyoun6 23:08, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

There probably should be such a mention, although my recollection is that despite Pournelle's boosterism (talking about his need for his daily "BIX fix") it was at best a modest success. It wasn't pioneering or anything—the bandwagon had been rolling for quite a while before BYTE jumped on. It's not mentioned in the same breath as CI$. My recollections (which are far too vague to go in the article) is that like many such systems of the time, it had its own unique (text-based) command language and user interface. And that nobody had anything either particularly good or particularly bad to say about it.

For a while, BYTE actually printed a "Best of BIX" section in the magazine, consisting of selected postings from BIX. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:55, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Move to BYTE magazine

Support The front cover of the magazine has BYTE in capitals --Lox (t,c) 22:21, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Comment There don't seem to be any objections, so I have tagged this for CapitalMove. If you do have any objections to this move, please do say so now! --Lox (t,c) 22:10, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Comment I've removed it for now, until a conclusion of proposed move over at Talk:Time (magazine) --Lox (t,c) 11:19, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

• I think the situation with BYTE is different. BYTE magazine always referred to itself using all-capitals. The current BYTE.com website uses all capitals. All-caps is used in the BYTE print archive, and here, and in this 1998 editorial. The name of the magazine was not "Byte," it was "BYTE." Just as the name of the programming language that was respectable in academia during the 1960s was not Algol, but ALGOL. I'm restoring your request. I hope you don't mind. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:00, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

• I don't mind at all, thanks for going ahead and doing that! --Lox (t,c) 16:06, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I changed the requested move from BYTE magazine to BYTE. The "magazine" isn't needed since BYTE (all caps) is unambiguous, and is currently a redirect. Mirror Vax 22:03, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

• BYTE magazine feels better, the word BYTE may be associated with someting else in the future. Pavel Vozenilek 22:28, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • It's not standard to explain what a thing is in the title. If it were ambiguous, the title would be BYTE (magazine), not BYTE magazine. Mirror Vax 22:51, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Agree with Mirror Vax that BYTE magazine is wrong. However, since BYTE has some kind of continuing existence as [BYTE.com]. Should it be BYTE, with the understanding that the article may be extended to include the website, or should it be BYTE (magazine)? I don't care, but I do feel strongly about the all-caps. Dpbsmith (talk) 23:48, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

This move was incorrect, per Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks). All-capitals are only used for trademarks when each letter stands for something, which is not the case here. See also Talk:Lego. Nohat 07:47, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

It's not a mere style issue in this case. The capitalization has disambiguation utility. Mirror Vax 09:15, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Disambiguation utility is not a valid reason to violate the style guide, sorry. Nohat 05:28, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Comment Now, whoever moves the page to another title, please remove double redirects immediately after doing so! This also goes when there is a risk that the page might be re-renamed/moved later on. I took the work of removing the dbl dirs the last time, but ths time I demand the "page-renamer" do his/her "duty", dammit! --Wernher 00:11, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

You shouldn't remove double redirects when a page has been moved incorrectly. You should just move the original page back to the correct title. Nohat 01:44, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Of course, but the reason for my previously removing the redirects was that I actually made the error of thinking the move would be permanent... --Wernher 03:28, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Article doesn't make sense to the uninitiated

I subsribed to Byte and Kilobaud way back when and was aware that there was some kind of competitive thing going on between Wayne Green and Carl Helmers but I never knew what the story was. The section "Tale of Two Publishers" doesn't explain anything to me. Basically as written the article says 1. Wayne Green was the founding publisher. 2. Wayne Green said a lot of bad things about Byte. So why did Wayne Green leave Byte and who was Carl Helmers?? What was the controversy? (Thomas144 23:21, 15 February 2006 (UTC))

[edit] Unprotection

Now that it has cooled off for a few weeks, is unprotection OK? Calwatch 09:17, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's weeks overdue. I'm unprotecting. --Tony Sidaway 16:44, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

User:Mirror Vax has once again moved the article to make it noncompliant with the MoS without being willing to discuss on this page. Please, Mirror Vax, explain why the MoS does not apply here. Nohat 20:04, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

???? Not sure what I'm getting into here, but the name of the magazine was BYTE, all-caps. Surely the manual of style doesn't say that an inaccurate title should be used? I don't have strong feelings about whether it should be "BYTE" or "BYTE (magazine)" but "Byte (magazine)" is just plain wrong. I'm looking at the Wikipedia:Manual of Style and I don't see where this issue is addressed. Does it say somewhere that articles about publications should follow the style prescribed by Wikipedia when that is different from the actual style used in the work as published? Dpbsmith (talk) 21:03, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

The letters in Byte do not stand for anything, so they should not need to be capitalized. This is just the standard rule of English mechanics. See Wikipedia:Manual of Style (trademarks), which says "Follow standard English text formatting and capitalization rules even if the trademark owner encourages special treatment". We do not have articles at macy*s and BEER NUTS and LEGO and TIME, and for the same reason this article should be at Byte (magazine) or Byte magazine, not at BYTE. It is not clear that there is any compelling reason for this article to not follow the capitalization and text formatting standards of English which have been adopted on Wikipedia. Nohat 21:34, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

How about the naming convention that says "Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things?" That would be "BYTE magazine," not "Byte magazine." Try a Google Groups search on byte magazine for example. Dpbsmith (talk) 15:28, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Byte and BYTE are the same name—the former is just the standard capitalization of the latter. "Use common names" does not apply here because the dispute is not between different names, but between standard and nonstandard capitalization of a trademark, for which there is an entry in the MoS that specifically applies. Nohat 17:10, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't believe BYTE is a trademark. No tm or circle-R on their webpage, anyway, no time to search USPTO right now. This isn't a case of trademark, this is a case of idiosyncratic spelling in a title. Does the MoS say we should move Enuff Z'nuff to Enough is enough? Oklahoma! to Oklahoma? Hellzapoppin' to Hell is popping? Thus Spoke Zarathustra to Thus spoke Zoroaster? Dpbsmith (talk) 17:34, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Of course "Byte" is a trademark. It is "a distinctive sign of some kind which is used by a business to uniquely identify itself and its products and services to consumers, and to distinguish the business and its products or services from those of other businesses". It is also a registered trademark: see [1]. (Note that the USPTO does not distinguish case in trademarks: all trademarks are displayed in all capitals.) The Manual of Style section for trademarks therefore undoubtedly applies. None of the examples you give are analogous because spelling and punctuation do make something a different name. Capitalization does not. The examples I gave of BEER NUTS and LEGO and TIME are analogous examples, and you should note how those articles are titled. Nohat 19:53, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... I think you're right. Dpbsmith (talk) 19:54, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Since there has been no further comment on the subject, I'm going to go ahead and move the page back to the MoS-compliant title. If you revert, please comment here why you think the MoS doesn't apply. Thanks. Nohat 21:00, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] TfD nomination of Template:Computer Magazines

Template:Computer Magazines has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. --Fourohfour 13:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

(Notice included here to get attention of unbiased cross-section of potentially interested parties. TfDs and this template don't seem to get much attention on their own, but this template appears in lots of articles.) Fourohfour 13:29, 12 December 2006 (UTC)