Slashdot Mirror

I'm a Canadian and the acronym RFP is used here as well. Judging by a quick search it's also uses in the UK (ie. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2012/07/goldoa.aspx ).

And that proves what?
You pointed to the term being used in a further two countries, as if that somehow negates the GP's point that you should not expect everyone on an international network to be familiar with your particular culture's abbreviations and other shorthands.

He might have ended his post with pointless flaming, but then you went and turned yourself into the exact stereotype he was accusing you of representing: You thought the world consists only of you and others like you.

What we can thus gather from this is that you're an ignorant fucking retard.

Oh, the irony.

I'm a Canadian and the acronym RFP is used here as well. Judging by a quick search it's also uses in the UK (ie. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/funding_calls/2012/07/goldoa.aspx ).

  What we can thus gather from this is that you're an ignorant fucking retard.

16 years isn't such a long time, but just to be sure, put a netbook inside the capsule. Make sure it can run on external power alone, and remove the battery.

Agreed. If you intend to archive the actual digital objects (and not transcribe them to some other medium like paper), you need to include the hardware/software to decode them. A netbook is a cheap way to do this.

For some additional reading on the digital dark age problem:
* http://www.smh.com.au/news/technology/the-digital-dark-age/2005/09/22/1126982184206.html
* http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/FileFormatsreport.pdf

The UK JISC are a funding body. My open source project received 6 months funding and I'm half way through. We have worked carefully to ensure that sustainability is high on the agenda. We have contingency for tackling the more mundane tasks; good communications, collaborative processes and quality development tools. Design has been a fundamental part of the process. I strongly believe open development methodology only needs a small amount of quality guidance. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/ http://www.diaser.org.uk/

From an end user perspective, the most significant change to the service will be that it will only offer freely available technical software resources. Scholarly and Academic resources will no longer be mirrored. It is expected that the current portfolio of technical resources will continue to be mirrored and that any inconvenience to users during the changeover of service will be kept to an absolute minimum.

Or not, given that they're funding Eduserv to provide a mirror of "freely available technical software resources".

(Press release)

If you want to register your disapproval, try their "general enquiries" email address: info@jisc.ac.uk.

Just found an interesting link on jisc...

Some of the first software that I ever released for public consumption is still on mirror.ac.uk from it's time as HENSA back in the early 90's. So my earliest experience of giving and receiving software for free is intrinsically linked to this site. Cue mist & fade up nostalgia in 3..2..1...

As of this time the JISC don't appear to have announced a replacement, but nostaligia aside, the mirror.ac.uk site discusses termination of mirrors, so I can't help wonder why all data & contracts are not being transferred to the new provider, as would be done if a business were to change hands. This is, after all, a publically funded service and one could reasonably expect it to be run in the same way as a government office - the inland revenue records don't get shredded just because a different company has the contract to run the systems; cue mist, cue daydreaming.

Without such agreements in place we risk the loss of some of the earliest pieces of intellectual property and prior art that were put in the public domain.

So I wonder... is anything in mirror.ac.uk going to be lost for good when it closes?