[Pops]

I bought my first CDR back in 199-something; maybe '93? Seems like I paid around $1,500! I had been using Syquest drives up to that time to transfer files to the printer, 44mb & 88mb at a time and eventually 100mb Zip drives - basically just hard drives with the disk in a removable cartridge.

The backup CDs from '95 are just as reliable as the day I burned 'em, I've never had a failure. 15+ years ain't forever but they haven't been hermetically sealed in a vault, just in jewel cases stacked in milk crates, riffled through periodically to extract some old art.

One thing to consider is deciding what to store. I have 250+ archive cds, at maybe 500mb average that's 125 gigs. When I first started doing DTP, my hard drives capacities were smaller than the RAM on this machine and I was very careful with files because of HD real estate. Heck with terabytes online now I rarely throw anything away. I have a one terabyte portable drive the size of an iphone and it only cost $100! Blows me away.


If this concerns you I'd say buy a half dozen cd/dvd recorders for $25-$30 each and a mil-spec laptop or even better several all-digital gizmos that can access the drives. Get a couple of PV panels and some electronics to heat everything up, burn Wiki to a DVD (7.3Gb), get the Gutenburg dump, etc, build a faraday cage inside a Pelican case, seal it up with a case of sorbent and put them where the temps are mild, maybe in your gun safe or next to the wheat berries.

[bochen280]

Note the word "rated".
The environmental conditions required for the rating are unmeetable in a world that can't even keep the internet running.

Sure, they'll last longer than the cd, and dvd media, if written properly, and stored in appropriate environmental conditions; but now put yourself in the world where you *need* that blu-ray. Does your bluray drive still work? Are you able to find a low humidity, roomtemp environment to take the disk out. Do you have a reliable media to write to from the disc? You aren't possibly thinking of reading from the disk repeatedly, subjecting it to continuous mechanical strain, are you?

Ten years after the net fails, and your rig has been subjected to hundreds of power anomalies; your ups' have long since failed, and you're working on a jury-rigged lead acid cell, exactly how is that blu-ray disc going to help you, even if the media remains unchanged? I'm just not seeing it as realistic, and certainly not worthy of entrusting something important too.

If I HAD to bet on some physical digital media; I'd probably go with a bag full of CF cards, rotate and refresh,so that they get a rewrite, no more than once a month, and no less than once a year. Its a very durable form factor, and as long as refreshed often enough, could manage to keep a dataset valid for a lifetime without relying on a mechanical drive, or exacting environmental conditions. But even there, its the willingness to carry out the regular maintenance that will insure the data's validity. The card's characteristics just make it possible. Keeping a computer running that long after the death of the net is a modest problem itself, but the ubiquity of CF readers/writers and their durability (no mechanical parts), should keep access within the possible as long as some machine can be found. (and if no cpu can be found functional, you no longer have a use for the digital data anyway.)

Human DNA is only about 750MB of data and it includes within it information to produce a human body via a complex process of molecular recombination (converting raw food stuff to flesh and cells) and how to recreate/reproduce that DNA in perpetuity.

How hard would it be to store on a single blu-ray disc (25+ GB) with all the blueprints and information necessary for a post EOTW society to reinvent the wheel and start from scratch and create a blu-ray device to keep the information alive and going?

Would it even be possible today to create a modern processor without other processors? Of course the answer is no, but rather the question should be HOW LONG would it take and what would be the quickest way to build up to such a processor? Surely it wouldn't take the original amount of time that it took the first time around!

Post EOTW, there will always be more hardware than precious information and/or data. If the internet (hypothetically) were to go out today, most people would have working computers, cd/dvd/blu-ray readers and burners, probably lots of usb sticks, external hdd, a blank disc or two to burn something on... but with everything being on the net and in the cloud, most people wouldn't even have to access to their own files and contents that THEY created, much less a copy of Wikipedia or whatever. If the net goes out say goodbye to all the stuff you stored on Google Docs, Dropbox, Amazon S3... you can kiss visualization and SaaS goodbye too... its all gone... all of it. You got nothing. Your streaming movies and videos on netflix and amazon prime? Forget about it. Oh your purchase game collection on STEAM? No mo multiplayer for youz.

The point is, it is fairly easy, trivial and economically cheap for people to find ways (as imperfect as they are) to prepare long term storage of data/information or archival purposes, ideally for a period of time when the net is down but the grid is till up... (which is quite possible, unless we talking about immediate full blown collapse and then it won't matter). Hey when the net gets cut off, or severely censored for business functions only (businesses, banking, government services, infrastructure, etc) people will have to find other diversions... they will wish they had a full copy of Wikipedia (or whatever equivalent) to read but it will be too late if they hadn't archived it ahead of time.

In Terminator 3 the Skynet cut network and internet communication prior to an physical attack; the first thing any government will do is cut off all civilian and nonessential internet communication prior to an all out martial law. They don't want people to figure out what is going on via communication or coordination. Cut off the internet, you cut off everything in one fell swoop.

Between the time they cut the tubes of the internets and me actually getting rounded up in a camp or center somewhere, I'd like to past the time reading Wikipedia and other text/books.

What I'm saying is, there will always be hardware lying around somewhere. It is data, good data like a full copy of Wikipedia or maybe some Bible (for those of you religious people out there) that will be hard to come by in the future. The hardware is always going to be more expendable than the actual content.

[AgentR11]

I wish I had the same experience with burned cd's and dvd's. Most have held, but a few have failed, and a few have shown some corruption over time. That's what I mean by having confidence in the archived data. Because some have failed, I can't look at any particular archived dvd and know with confidence that the data on it remains unaltered and accessible. Now, while that is true, the modern hard disk situation remedies a lot of the problem, other than for large organizations with petabyte sized datasets, driving down to Bob's Computers and buying 1 & 2 terabyte drives is barely an event worth even remembering.

Like Pops mentioned, for those of us that packed Lotus and Wordstar on 4.7mhz 8088 machines with 10 megabytes of hard disk space, and thought we'd died and gone to heaven, the current state of digital storage is pretty amazing.

I do have a thought about all this, if you're 5-10 years post collapse; net's dead, commodity system hardware is unavailable, power mostly dead; what will you not have already learned through physical use, that would both be useful, and in such an archive?

[bochen280]

I do have a thought about all this, if you're 5-10 years post collapse; net's dead, commodity system hardware is unavailable, power mostly dead; what will you not have already learned through physical use, that would both be useful, and in such an archive?

I remember when I got my first computer, our family purchased at the time a state-of-the-art Packard Bell Pentium I computer (75Mhz) from Best Buy and it included a Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia disc with it. Back then AOL was still charging us by the hour and the modem was a slow 14.4k. Basically, the computer was not really on the net much at all... we used it like an offline device.

Encarta 96 had like 20,000 articles and I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Wikipedia truly puts it to shame. Just the English version of Wikipedia has more than 3.8 million articles alone. And some of the longer articles are more like entire chapters of a book. I could spend the rest of my life finding new and interesting content to read on Wikipedia 2012 and it would never get stale.

Wikipedia represents the living and dynamic collective contribution of tens of thousands - if not millions - of editors from all across the world pouring countless man-hours into a project that can be freely downloaded by every human being on the planet (well, irony is you have to have an internet connection) and fit nicely onto a mere 8GB usb keychain. The sum of all open human knowledge in encyclopedia format within the grasp of your palms. It is also more or less a reflection and a written snapshot of the entire history of mankind seen from the early 21st century perspective, a magnificent work that itself was created during the pinnacle peak of humanity's own existence. (how supremely ironic the anthropic principle comes into play here) Without modern processors and the internet, Wikipedia itself could never have come into existence... but for the brief fleeting moment of span of 10 or 20 years when the technological and economic conditions on planet earth were just right, projects like Wikipedia naturally emerged and came into existence almost seemingly on its own... recording all of humanity, up to its highest high, right before the impeding doom, devastation and downfall and with the supreme irony of shortly after being subjected to an exponentially declining world that could no longer afford to prop up the very fabric of its (and Wiki's) own existence... to be subsequently disbanded and neglected, save the only sliver of hope of being archived to preserve a mere trace of its once glorious existence... to be transformed into a permanent and immutable fossilized record of the tragedy of man and both his prominent rise and inevitable fall.

Projects like Wikipedia are the collective work and contribution of countless volunteers during the BEST of times of humanity. Up until about 10 or so more years ago, the technology and infrastructure simply didn't exists for there to be a Wikipedia of sorts. For the vast majority of the history of mankind most of the population was illiterate, and those who could write were only the privileged few, and did so painstakingly on paper. In ancient times it would have been physically impractical not to mention technologically impossible for there to have been a global "Wikipedia" of sorts whereby effectively anyone could read, edit and contribute freely to a living, dynamic global encyclopedia.

There is this very narrow time-window in all of man's history when something like Wikipedia could have been conceived, implemented, where it strives and flourishes. In another ten years from now (probably not even that long!) the Internet as we know it will cease to viably exists, and so too shall Wikipedia perish.

Post TEOTW, never again will a project the sheer size and magnitude of Wikipedia be possible. In fact Wikipedia itself admits that it is already in decline. All the low hanging fruit articles have been written and perfected, editors are dropping like flies and the rate of new articles have flattened. It blames also the fact that we are moving (rather, have already moved) from desktop to smartphones and editing on small devices is far more tedious and difficult than on traditional full tower desktops. There has been a stead drop in unique readership, probably blamed on people time's being sucked away on Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter, Netflix, "Apps", etc.

So if there ever was something worth archiving, this would be it. Never before was there anything like this, never before was something like this possible, never again will there be anything like this, never again will there be anything like this possible. Again, I just think it is so ironic, all of this. The fact that Wikipedia owns its very existence to the Internet, and to our pyramid scheme perpetual free energy growth machine civilization and globalization, and also with that the inevitability of its (and our) own imminent decline and demise... but at the peak of our civilization we found a way not to step off Olduvai Gorge and hitch on to the bandwagon of omega point, - instead we did the next best thing - capture all of humanity retroactively from the standpoint of the early 21st century and to store that knowledge, that sentiment, that moment for all the future (and lesser) generations to come.

[Heineken]

. . . time's being sucked away on Facebook, YouTube, Google+, Twitter, Netflix, "Apps", etc.

And PO.com?

[Pops]

@AR11
Realize that the data I backed to CD has been only rarely accessed, the disks themselves touched but a few times. I have had pretty bad luck too with stuff accessed frequently.

Like you said, it would be a matter of redundancy and perhaps re-archiving any media as the first step when accessing. A much bigger problem than the media being unreliable has been operator error, for example merging too many layers in Photoshop to allow sufficient editing, neglecting to retain a font or logo, etc.

And of course there are always file format and software issues that would need to be considered. This is a huge problem for me and I assume anyone who uses retail machines and programs - this file needs that program that only runs on so&so platform and OS version Something.4.023, using such&such dbase driver and on and on. A setup would need to be complete and freestanding and dedicated and as clean as possible and then archived in amber never to be touched.

[AgentR11]

On your last problem, I have found the solution. VM Ware. (oracle VirtualBox also works good, but its licensing was too painful for me to figure out.)

Say I have a fortran compiler for an old 16 bit dos app with special libraries that cost a bundle and are no longer available or supported. The thought of keeping an old Pentium machine up and running so that I can boot NT 4.0 to which the compiler might be tied; its pretty painful. Especially as it sits either off, collecting roaches, or on, burning electricity, adding heat, and collecting dust in a power supply that is no longer manufactured. Granted, bizarre example is what it is. None the less, I can really startup VMware on my heavy linux workstation, and open an NT4.0 OS VM, or Win2k VM, or whatever else I might want to load. The VM's themselves survive hardware and base OS upgrading. So when I upgrade the CPU, those VM's will run exactly the same on the new hardware. You could do the same sort of thing with say Photoshop 4.0 in a Win2k VM; it'd be there, and available forever, but wouldn't require maintaining a set of hardware to support a legacy software requirement.

Lot of other stuff you can do with modern virtualization software, but that's what I needed it for.

So.. file formats and maintaining a working copy of Word Star 3.3 or Turbo Pascal from the 1980s doesn't concern me much. Maintaining and proving the validity of archived data, whole nuther level of irritating.

[ralfy]

Nineteenth- and early-twentieth century farm, gardening, and other books and manuals, some anthologies of canonical literature in hardcover.

[Rod_Cloutier]

If the establishment keeps eroding rights, dismantling entilements, failing to enforce anti-fraud laws for the banks, ect, ect. Then we will have revolution or civil war sooner rather than later.

Expect what we saw in Egypt, Libya, ect, last year to be coming to your home town shortly. (If it hasn't arrived with the occupy movement already). People are sharpening their knives, loading their guns, and preparing their guilotines for the bankers and the establishment. 1% with power vs. 99% with clubs, who will win?

[AgentR11]

1% with power vs. 99% with clubs, who will win?

The 1%.
Because it's not 99%.
Pretend all you like, but the top 20% is doing mighty fine in this current economy.

The 20% is also contemplating something new... If the economy gets bad enough for the 80%, they might decide that employing a servant or two from that 80% has become financially reasonable.

I so bad.

[SeaGypsy]

Things have to get really extreme before a crowd will stand in the face of a government using snipers to pick off leading individuals. In 1st world countries, crowds at protests normally thin by 80- 90% as soon as the cops bring out the batons.

[bochen280]

If the establishment keeps eroding rights, dismantling entilements, failing to enforce anti-fraud laws for the banks, ect, ect. Then we will have revolution or civil war sooner rather than later.

Expect what we saw in Egypt, Libya, ect, last year to be coming to your home town shortly. (If it hasn't arrived with the occupy movement already). People are sharpening their knives, loading their guns, and preparing their guilotines for the bankers and the establishment. 1% with power vs. 99% with clubs, who will win?

Not so fast. OCCUPY, like WIKILEAKS is a CIA front. TPTB is fully in control in the homeland. They have "INCEPTION-ed" you if you truly believe that Wikileaks, OCCUPY, Ron Paul, etc is actually accomplishing anything. It all boils down to Information Warfare. Arab Spring was the work of TPTB to topple the Middle Eastern governments that were not pro-US. Wikileaks is a reverse psychology information warfare attempt at "inception-ing" the paranoid, conspiracy nuts, tinfoil zombies... Do you really think what happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, etc occurred without the interference of CIA and Mossad? Why would TPTB wish to do the same back in the homeland? If anything, they want people such as yourself keep asleep believing that the 99% is any real power or influence over the 1%

It will be a LONG LONG time before the kool-aid drinking herd mentality zombie sheeple wake up enough to figure out the real truth and what is really going on... For these reasons, I doubt we will ever see a real revolt, revolution or ideological protest in this country.

[SeaGypsy]

Not so fast. OCCUPY, like WIKILEAKS is a CIA front. TPTB is fully in control in the homeland. They have "INCEPTION-ed" you if you truly believe that Wikileaks, OCCUPY, Ron Paul, etc is actually accomplishing anything. It all boils down to Information Warfare. Arab Spring was the work of TPTB to topple the Middle Eastern governments that were not pro-US. Wikileaks is a reverse psychology information warfare attempt at "inception-ing" the paranoid, conspiracy nuts, tinfoil zombies... Do you really think what happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, etc occurred without the interference of CIA and Mossad?

Proof? Relevance?

[ralfy]

Either you take kool-aid and accept the status quo or you take kool-aid and question it?

[SeaGypsy]

It seems Etheris has been drinking the spicy coolaid. Has never heard of ELM or at least certainly never studied it.
Long timers here know how long the 9/11 debate has raged/ dragged on, and this is only 1 incident, with piles of evidence of conspiracy, all of which has been trolled over and over. Do we really need to have conspiracy thrown up at every turn? Please Etheris, if you want to indulge this kind of writing here, please start a specific thread and keep it there, rather than this approach.

[Pops]

What Gypsy said, Etheris.