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From: Rich on 17 Nov 2009 12:59
On Nov 17, 9:56 am, "Tzortzakakis Dimitrios" <no...(a)nospam.com> wrote:
> ? "Dave Cohen" <u...(a)example.net> ?????? ??? ??????news:hdsbvt$3kk$1(a)news..eternal-september.org...> Tzortzakakis Dimitrios wrote:
> >> Supposed to last for 1000 years. Instead of an organic dye, they have
> >> some mineral, and they need a special burner, that costs $5000. If you
> >> want to send the data to the company, it costs 30 euros for a DVD (4.7
> >> GB, of course). Full story here, only in german:
> >>http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/gadgets/0,1518,661479,00.html
>
> > I see, and if after say 5 or 6 hundred years the thing becomes non
> > readable, do I get a refund.
>
> lol, never thought of that.
>  The problem would be that in a couple generations the
> optical drives will be obsolete to quantum drives or
> whatever the new technology woil be.
>
> --
> Tzortzakakis Dimitrios
> major in electrical engineering
> mechanized infantry reservist
> hordad AT otenet DOT gr

I honestly doubt that any civilization 500 years from now would be
prevented from reading a crude optical disk because specific players
weren't available.
From: Think on 17 Nov 2009 21:02
On Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:59:10 -0800 (PST), Rich <rander3127(a)gmail.com>
wrote:

>On Nov 17, 9:56�am, "Tzortzakakis Dimitrios" <no...(a)nospam.com> wrote:
>> ? "Dave Cohen" <u...(a)example.net> ?????? ??? ??????news:hdsbvt$3kk$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...> Tzortzakakis Dimitrios wrote:
>> >> Supposed to last for 1000 years. Instead of an organic dye, they have
>> >> some mineral, and they need a special burner, that costs $5000. If you
>> >> want to send the data to the company, it costs 30 euros for a DVD (4.7
>> >> GB, of course). Full story here, only in german:
>> >>http://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/gadgets/0,1518,661479,00.html
>>
>> > I see, and if after say 5 or 6 hundred years the thing becomes non
>> > readable, do I get a refund.
>>
>> lol, never thought of that.
>> �The problem would be that in a couple generations the
>> optical drives will be obsolete to quantum drives or
>> whatever the new technology woil be.
>>
>> --
>> Tzortzakakis Dimitrios
>> major in electrical engineering
>> mechanized infantry reservist
>> hordad AT otenet DOT gr
>
>I honestly doubt that any civilization 500 years from now would be
>prevented from reading a crude optical disk because specific players
>weren't available.

You mean like all the knowledge and wisdom that was lost during The Dark
Ages and the christians' Crusades when they destroyed everything according
to christians' laws? From which we still haven't recovered nor found what
was lost.

E.g.1 There remain hints to important herbal cures once known, but not the
actual cures. I studied herbalism/herbology for over a decade looking for a
cure for something that has no known cure today but there was a cure in the
distant past. I always ran into the christian-created Dark Ages'
brick-wall-of-ignorance in my research, no matter which avenue I used to
try to uncover that knowledge. Time and time again. E.g.2 There remain
hints of the Druids, but no actual writings nor factual information about
their real-life existence. Any books written on them today are just
author's fabrications and speculations, no matter what anyone might claim
to the contrary. (This is why Druids are a favorite of historian authors,
nobody can disprove what an author might conjure up about them.) E.g.3 Etc.

It's not just a matter of storage-media technology, it's a huge matter of
human behavior and values.

In 500 years you could have TWC, "The World Corporation", wipe out access
to all recorded knowledge in order to control you better. In their
corporate wars they might bury the technology needed to read optical-media
by generations 500 years from now (if those generations even still exist).
Creating their laws that their obedient and brainwashed indentured-servants
will carry out for them. That all knowledge be moved to their newly
"patented" muon nano-cube storage system. All previous storage means
destroyed, by law. They then edit out the pertinent parts that they don't
want anyone to know, so that nobody can ever go back and reclaim the
knowledge needed to undermine their self-imposed and self-declared
authority over you. (No different than what christians did just before
their having caused and created The Dark Ages and remain defending their
actions and values to this very day.) The means to reclaim that knowledge
no longer taught in schools, it's now a TWC corporate crime to do so.
Punishable by death. The method to read optical data could disappear in
well under 150 years.

I have a box of 8" dia. floppy-disks in my storage shed (single-sided, 168k
capacity). Do you have a drive, interface card, and the software to read
them? This is from only 30 years ago. Yes, they could be read. But who
still has the proper hardware, cables, and software readily available? Who
is going to go through all that trouble and expense just to see what might
be on all those unmarked floppies to try to reclaim any fading data? Some
genius might have recorded the means to jump through time and space in a
text-file digital journal on one of them. His intentional method of storing
it that way to prevent a presently undeserving populace from having that
knowledge just yet. But who's going to go look for, or even suspect that?
The knowledge now lost forever due to a simple storage-media shift in less
than 40 years. The hardware too difficult to find, too costly a venture,
there's probably nothing interesting on them anyway even if you could
recover the data on them. It's just not worth the bother. Toss them in the
incinerator.

Just as they might do with any old optical media of yours that they might
find in another 50 years. There's too many other things going on to waste
their time on your old CDs and DVDs and hard-drives. It might even be made
illegal to have something like that in your possession. So you blindly
obey, just as you now all blindly obey to all present corporate and
religion invented laws. You've been socially programmed to do so, whether
you want to believe that or not. Toss 'em, burn 'em. There's nothing
interesting on them anyway and you might get in trouble with someone's laws
for even wanting to see what's on them.

The actual storage-media and method used is just a tiny fraction of the
real problem.
From: jls on 18 Nov 2009 11:21
On Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:02:58 -0600, Think <think(a)tank.org> wrote:

>>
>>I honestly doubt that any civilization 500 years from now would be
>>prevented from reading a crude optical disk because specific players
>>weren't available.
>
>You mean like all the knowledge and wisdom that was lost during The Dark
>Ages and the christians' Crusades when they destroyed everything according
>to christians' laws? From which we still haven't recovered nor found what
>was lost.
>

If you don't want to read a deeper historical context, skip down a bit
to the more on-point discusson.....


********* very brief historical context

Funny, thing is, this was "the way of the world" (tm) for eons of
human existence. Whole civilizations were being wiped out way before
Christianity entered the picture, and even since then, it hasn't only
been Christianity that's done the wiping (e.g.1, muslims have done
their own share).

Don't take this as any defense of the actions of some who follow
Christianity, but taken in context, the world was a much different
place.

Our more "civil" attitudes are really, very very recent in the overall
history human existence. And, in fact, in general most of human
civilization placed nearly zero value on "human life" prior to
Christianity (and yes, I am fully aware of that irony). Again, not
saying that Christianity has saved the world, just pointing out that
your blinders may be set too narrowly focused.

******* skipped brief historical context

The real issue isn't that we would "forget" that knowledge, but that
it would not be readily available.

For example, we haven't lost the knowledge of how to read 9-track mag
tapes, but most people would have a very difficult time finding a way
to read one (the drives, the controllers, the drivers, etc.). And
there have been probably 10 generations of magnet tape devices since
them, and only the last 3 or so gens are readily accessible to anyone
who would want to use them.

I did an estimate for a financial institution a couple of years ago
who wanted to know how much it would cost to restore 9,000 tapes,
going back 7 years. They no longer had the hardware to read many of
those tapes, and we'd have had to go to 3rd parties who specialized in
doing that work - and even those 3rd parties didn't have some of the
needed hardware and software to do the job. In some cases, they may
have had to work out a contract with the Smithsonian to use some of
their old stuff, I can't recall for sure. Anyway, the estimated cost
just to READ all of the tapes and put the data on hard disk drives
would have cost over $3.5 million (USD).

From: Wolfgang Weisselberg on 20 Nov 2009 10:56
jls <notvalid(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:02:58 -0600, Think <think(a)tank.org> wrote:

> I did an estimate for a financial institution a couple of years ago
> who wanted to know how much it would cost to restore 9,000 tapes,
[...]
> their old stuff, I can't recall for sure. Anyway, the estimated cost
> just to READ all of the tapes and put the data on hard disk drives
> would have cost over $3.5 million (USD).

An average 389 USD per tape, which includes buying/renting really
old and rare tape machines isn't exactly expensive. It would be
interesting how much data (bytes) was involved.

It would also be interesting why those tapes were not migrated
to newer media as old systems started to become unavailable ---
probably due to cost cutting by some manager who should be forced
to pay the money he 'saved' by increasing costs by something like
3 million USD.

-Wolfgang
From: Allodoxaphobia on 20 Nov 2009 11:29
On Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:00:10 +0200, Tzortzakakis Dimitrios wrote:
> Supposed to last for 1000 years.

So, will there be DVD readers a millenium from now?

Hell, will there be DVD readers even 10 years from now??
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