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William Gibson's AGRIPPA Recovered and Revealed
Bud Cook writes "While the text of William Gibson's elusive electronic poem AGRIPPA is widely posted around the Web, it has not been seen in its original incarnation — custom-built software designed to scroll the poem through a single play before encrypting each line with an RSA algorithm — since 1992. Today is the 16th anniversary, to the day, of the poem's initial release. A team of scholars at the University of Maryland and UC Santa Barbara used forensic computing to restore the code from an original diskette loaned by a collector and have placed video of the complete 'run,' as well as never-before-seen footage from the night of AGRIPPA's public debut in 1992, up on a Web site called the Agrippa Files. There's also a detailed essay documenting the forensic process, plus a mess of stills, screenshots, and a copy of the disk image itself."
Worse it was stored very poorly:
>>>UC Santa Barbara used forensic computing to restore the code from an original diskette
This is why you should always print your source code to PAPER for backup. Diskettes lose their magnetism, and CDs fade, but paper can last 3000 years even if buried underground (Dead Sea Scrolls). Retyping everything from the paper is a chore, but still preferable to permanent loss.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
Hmmm. So how long is a paper's lifespan?
I have Bibles from my family that are over a hundred years old. They are still in very good shape. I wouldn't be surprised if they were still readable at age 1000. Replace "Bible" with "source code" and I could easily imagine someone trying one of my ancient programs in the year 2900..... by which point the original disks would have long been erased.
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
I found some CDs with old DOS games that I thought were lost.
A friend of mine that has been collecting them since the late 80's once burned me a copy. CD Writer it was burned on was a powerful 2X Traxdata SCSI drive.
And I have kept them safe all these years, but one of them still got lost. Probably borrowed to someone who forgot to return it.
BUT...
Since he has recently decided to make another backup on a DVD, he gave me his original CDs. Didn't have the heart to throw them away.
And what do you know - his copy of the CD I was missing is just fine and readable despite being scratched a bit.
And to top it off - he lost his DVD he made the copy to.
And called me today to ask if I can make him a copy.
He also completely forgot he gave me his originals.
I wonder... Had I submitted this a story, would 39 guys find THIS story as interesting as the story about how they managed to copy a floppy?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Those sound like thermal jets. They don't use actual ink, but just apply heat to a thermal-sensitive paper. Lay a hot pizza on that paper and it will turn black!
A true inkjet "squirts" ink on a page which then absorbs the ink like a sponge. That type of printing will last very long..... perhaps not as long as the old impact printers, but still longer than any of us will survive. I recently found my old 8th grade science notes which were printed over 20 years ago and are still the original white color (except on the edges).
FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.