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Software Archaeology
Plug1 writes "Salon (day pass needed) has an article about preserving software for historical purposes. It discusses source code archiving, and the effect the DMCA is having on attempts to catalog and analyze legacy code. It will be a shame if in the future a wealth of information is locked away because knoweldge of the underlying technology is lost."
That the DMCA DOES NOT APPLY outside the USA. However, hardware Digital Restriction Management DOES.
I really dont want strong crypto keeping out of stuff that I OWN, or My CONTENT.
I'td be a neat experiemnt to create a Linux driver that emulates TCPA chips so that stupid software thinks you're auth'ed.
What real use other than nostalgia would this serve? And, personally, I think not too many people will care that much if obsolete software is de-constructed?
Plaigarism would be if he copied the article, and claimed it was his own. However, this could constitute copyright infringement. I'm not sure how it works. You're allowed to copy sections(small?) from a book and put them in an essay, as long as you specify where they came from. Why would you not be allowed to post something from somewhere else as long as you specified where it came from?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
This probably falls under the category of fair use.
If it doesn't then there is still the matter of the government (the US at least) being able to do whatever it pleases with copywrited material. In this case the government's authority to copy what it wants is a good thing.
The Library of Congress is already making archival coppies of copywrited music and it is going to continue this dispite any hypothetical protestations of the RIAA. Why, because it is deemed neccessary for the preservation of culture. It will ultimately be the governement who will have the authority to do the kinds of backup that is neccessary to preserve our programming heritage.
It is our job as citizens to open the government's eyes to the need to copy this code before the technology that will allow us to do so becomes obsolete and otherwise unusable. Like any other technology programming will continue to advance but it is important to remember simpler the roots of the technology in order to provide the kind of perspective that lets us know where we've been and where we might be going.
Software development as an art/craft/science/whatever you think it is has evolved rapidly. There are "fashions" in code - try reading 20 year old C code: the language itself hasn't really changed much, but you will immediatly notice the differerence. People have tried things that failed, and have found interesting solutions that are now forgotten. This will all be lost.
What would literature be like if we hadn't accesss to the classics? Or architecture? There is a lot of knowledge that is worth being preserved.
And, of course, digging in old software is way cool.
Programming can be fun again. Film at 11.
Wouldn't they want the link?
Assuming that the people goto the site to read the article (as opposed to reading it here from the comment in which the whole article was posted) it would drive up the number of ads served which would be a good thing. I would think
You know, it really isn't fair-use to repost an entire article from another website site.
There's also the problem of grave robbers and that whole burning of the great library thing.
The Egyptians could very well have written down the instructions for building them. There have been numerous opportunities for that information to be have been destroyed. Or they may have viewed their construction as too sacred and only passed down information on a need to know basis.
Our problem is that we charge for rocks and lack the motivation. We just assume we couldn't build such things as they did but never really bother to try.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
No one ought to knock VB because it really is the best tool for what it does, but it also lowers the barrier to entry for would-be programmers. This can only lead to worse programs.
This is coming from someone who started in assembler and has been programming for over 20years now (primarily various assembly, C, C++), but I completely disagree with that statement. It's all in the context. Applications are about solving problems and if VB is the best tool for a particular problem, then it and the programmer who uses it don't necessarily lead to "worse programs". What leads to bad programs are things like bad programmers (regardless of background), poorly/undefined requirements, lack of resources, etc. I've met the gamut of programmers high level/low level and the common thread is the individuals ability to understand a problem and use the tools at their disposal to solve it. Obviously if you're looking for someone to code a compiler for you, you are going to avoid the VB guy who thinks C is no different than assembler. By the same token, I've seen apps written by assembler/C guys that were basically useless because, while the code may be good, the app itself didn't solve the problem (or did it in a very poor way).
In this day and age, the apps are way too large and there are too many specialties/languages/environments to simply discount anyone because they never happened to program in C/assembler.
If you have the source code for something then you have no cause to fear the DMCA, since you don't need to decrypt it. And if you don't have the source code, where is the value? Is there really any value in running lotus 123 for the Apple//? Perhaps if you have an Apple//, but so what? You cannot "fly over the code" from any height (as was mentioned in the article) because you don't have any code to fly over. You have an executable, and the "structure" there is quite different than looking at source code.
If you want source code for DOS, hit freedos.org and download it. It's not Microsoft's source, but so what? It does the very same job and, in many cases, it's superior to the original. Works that have value will be replicated and emulated; works thta have no value simply have no value - where is the need (or logic) in "preserving" them?
Take the Doomsday Project (in the UK) as an example. An Acorm Archimedies lazerdisc full of content relating to life in the 20th century. The problem came when they wanted to get the data off .. and couldn't easily find a compatible lazerdisc reader.
Of course, the format of the data is an issue. But if you can't get the data off the media, then the format of it isn't going to matter in the slightest.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
On my last move I had to "retire" a couple of 11/725s and most of my "wall of orange". It was a sad day, but I had moved those heavy monsters far too many times and there just wasn't room this last time. One worked, the other was parts, had DECnet and a coax ethernet, not to mention dual tape drives and a removable platter (I think it was 26 meg ramovable, and 26 meg internal, it's been a while).
:)
Your right, those things cost money to keep them going. And for what? A novelty? These things were doing any work or anything for me. I ended up buying them for their documentation. Then, when they were no longer needed, do you know how hard it is to keep the wife happy when she wants to decorate, and can find nothing that goes with an orange wall?
The sad thing is these were not "interesting" enough for any of the "computer museums" or "computer history" places I was able to contact. I even tried to give them away to anyone that would pick them up on craig's list in san francisco. In the end, they were trashed because absolutely no one wanted them.
. 62,400 repetitions make one truth -- Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
At least with jay-walking, no matter how many times you do it, the road will still be there. But if you post the full text of Salon stories without either subscribing or getting the FREE day-pass, eventually we will no longer be able to pay fine writers like Sam Williams and Rachel Chalmers to write the stories that Slashdot readers like to read.
Editor, Salon Business & Technology
Salon.com
The most fundamental concept in computer science is logic, not algorithms (or worse programming languages). If a 'programmer' hasn't written a program in a low level language like C or assembler, the hiring manager should beware. Without hands-on experience with the fundamentals of computer science that person is lacking at the most basic level, regardless of whether he knows 1 language or 50 languages. He is handicapped.
Bullshit.
"Computer science is about computers in the same way astronomy is about telescopes" --Edsgar Dijkstra
Programming isn't about knowing how to twiddle bits in registers or even how to leverage strengths of a particular processor.
Programming is about dealing with complex problems which can be solved by manipulation of information. I would say the the quality a programmer needs most of all is not logic or math, but just the ability to hold and manipulate large and complicated structures inside his head. And no, it doesn't have anything to do with assembler, low-level languages, ALUs, bits, etc. etc.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
What's really amazing about the pyramids is not really their size so much as the fact that they're nearly perfectly square, to within under 1% error. Also, that they're aligned North-South nearly perfectly as well. The ancients were much more clever than we typically give credit.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
You watch an ad to get a day pass. Advertisers pay to sponsor the daypass. The more people use the daypass, the more valuable that sponsorship, and the more we can charge for it.
Editor, Salon Business & Technology
Salon.com
Without hands-on experience with the fundamentals of computer science that person is lacking at the most basic level
That's like saying that a journalist is lacking in his ability to write if he's not fully competent in Latin. Just because someone doesn't know how to allocate memory doesn't mean he can't code in a language that does it for him automatically.
I get the same thing.
Having the Day-Pass system is only useful if it actually works.
Microsoft is already doing this. Each version of a new MS operating system and office product generally includes a pretty much unedited copy of the previous copy of all prior editions of the software. So they are preserving history.
Each new version, the software gets bigger and bigger and biggers. It is an archealogical wonder in itself. Another name for this coding style is called bloat. Linux has many of the same things going on.
This argument about the need to preserve prior formats has been around for quite awhile. The truth of the matter is that software is largely an evolutionary process. Most file formats build upon the past, so there is a tendency for software to naturally preserve its path.
Of course, for Grady Booch, who wants to be reconized as an intellectual giant a thousand years from now, the main question is if his name will invoke the same awe as say Euclid and Archimedes. He is, after all, one of the trinity of OO modeling approaches.
This is a good argument for mandatory source code deposit. To get a copyright on code, you should have to deposit a copy of the source with the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress has the authority to require this, but currently they only require a printout of the first ten and last ten pages, because they didn't want to store all the paper. That should change.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
What if the software acheologists don't have the required plugin?
You know, my first response to this is "tough cookies." I don't see any other popular sites using this forced-ad-viewing method. If they did, I would just delete my bookmarks for them.
Any entity that begins to implement anti-consumer actions in order to stay afloat are doomed to begin with (RIAA, SCO, etc.) If you can't stay out of the red by simply providing your service with a *reasonable* amount of revenue-generating methods, then that should tell you that either:
a) You need better revenue-generating methods
or
b) Your service isn't profitable
Like most online entities in trouble, you assume (a) and look for alternate ways to get paid. Unfortunatly, instead of finding better "quality" services, you sacrifice your customer's resources (time, effort, patience, etc) instead. Eventually, you cross that fine line between mild-nuisance and "not worth the effort."
I find your recent actions "not worth the effort" and will not be visiting your site. But hey, that's just one netizen. What harm can that do, right?
Why is obsolete software technology worth preserving where obsolete manufacturing technologies are not?
Who's making this double standard you speak of? Have you read the article? Perhaps you could point out the bits where the author states that manufacturing technologies aren't worthy of recording?
In a 100 years, will we really need access to the billions of JPEGs that were spewed out by digital cameras everywhere?
Yes. If you don't understand this, then you don't understand why history is so important. History gives us a sense of our past - it provides a link to where we came from, and gives us a better understanding of who we are.
More importantly, even if we don't need every picture, we at least need some of them, which is what the article says - if we lose the ability to decode JPEGs, then not only do we lose the ability to view "unimportant" (in quotes because this is very subjective) JPEGs, but we also lose the ability to view the ones that ARE important.
There is no double standard.
Conserving data is not as easy as it seems. I wonder whether it'd be more efficient to print out the source codes on acid-free paper and store them like books - or perhaps microfiches - in a number of locations around the world.
One modern 80GB hard disk.
80GB = 80,000,000,000 bytes = 80,000,000,000 ASCII characters.
One stanarded printed US-letter-sized page is 80 X 60 characters or 4800 characters.
80,000,000,000 characters / (4800 characters/page) = 16,666,667 pages (rounded off).
This is potentially just the data on Joe Schmoes Best Buy laptop. Now consider that the amount of data generated by humans is something like terabytes per day...
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
That same SciAm article mentioned the impending loss of archived data from NASA, data collected from satellites launched at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Some of this data is useless, today. In the future, someone might find it useful. Do we allow this data to degrade, and then possibly launch a new satellite to collect new data (if that's even possible, in some cases, it's not - how do you gather climate data from the 1970's?).
The main problem is the tape backup companies no longer support the old tape drives, and new tape drives don't support the old tapes and tape formats.
Funny thing is, 5 years ago, I was there with everyone else saying that we should put this data on CD ROM, because that format will never, ever, ever go away. Now, I'm not so sure - if they ever straighten out the DVD standard, I can see a future, 10 years from now, when you won't be able to buy a new device that can read a CD ROM.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I have some old AutoCAD 3 files from high school, a hopelessly optimistic design for an automatic vacuum cleaner, if I recall.
My dad still has a program he wrote on punch cards someplace.
That's the trouble, isn't it? Even if the data survives, the hardware to read it might not.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton