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Ask Slashdot: Storing Items In a Sealed Chest For 25 Years?
New submitter accet87 writes "We are celebrating the Silver Jubilee of our graduation next month and have come up with an idea where we will build an air-tight chest in which each of us will deposit something and will open the chest only on our Golden Jubilee, i.e. after another 25 years. I want to understand what kind of items can be safely stored for 25 years and what kind of precautions are required to be taken. I am sure things like paper, non-ferrous metallic objects, wood, etc., will hold up well. What about data storage electronically? I don't think CD/DVDs, etc., will be usable. Even if the data is retained, reading it in 2037 may be a challenge."
On my first day of class of Junior High school, my Mother packed a lunch for me, which include a Thermos full of milk.
I promptly threw it in my locker and forgot about it.
On my last day of class, I was cleaning out the locker and found the abandoned Thermos. I brought it home unopened.
My Mother made me take it out to the far end of the lot and open and empty it out there, which I did.
The moral of the story: Don't put milk in your sealed chest!
If I were storing stuff for a long time, I would consider using an airtight sealed case, oxygen absorber and a dessicant, making sure that if any liquid came out, it could not touch the protected device. I would separate out items just to be safe.
Some items, like SD media, I'd also consider using anti-static packaging just for peace of mind as well.
Just load all of your photos, videos, data, etc onto a retina macbook pro and toss it in the case.
Maybe by 2037 someone will have figured out how to change the battery.
If so, you've got your data and you're good to go.
Get a container which is airtight and watertight. Pump it full of nitrogen.
I disagree with CDs and DVDs not being readable. Compact discs are a mature technology. As long as they're kept someplace cool, dark and dry they should be fine and readable when the container is opened in twenty five years. No idea if memory sticks or hard drives would survive.
No worries man, end of epoch isn't until 2038.
It's been over 30 years now, and as long as DVD or Bluray players still exist, the CD will still be readable. CDs aren't going anywhere. (Note I said CD not CD-R or CD-RW which are self-erasing when the dye fades.)
VHS video will still be readable too (if necessary you can buy a used VCR from ebay in 2037). It's analog so even if it degrades it will still be watchable..... I know this from personal experience with 25-30 year old tapes.
That's about it. I wouldn't trust hard drives or flash drives to still work 25 years from now. I have an HD that I left sit for just 2 years, and already it's sluggish as if it doesn't want to start spinning.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Be careful about your hermetic seals, water leakage has turned many time capsules into a soggy brown liquid. I suggest some silica gel (the kind you shouldn't eat) to absorb any latent water in the air when you seal it so you don't get condesation. Anything you seal inside should either be readable by normal human means or include the reader. Avoid batteries or other volatile chemicals as they will leak. Burned CDs are really just like polaroid photographs and fade in about 15 years on the outset depending on the burn speed and qualities of the dyes. Include black and white photos or 3 color separations so that it is easy to put back together. Same goes for 3d photos, the future is likely to use more stereo photography so take a picture with 2 cameras next to each other of the same type. I use two iphones and tap the shutters simultanously a few times to see if I can get a match. Make sure you deposit the item in a place unlikely to face future development or it will just be shoveled up onto a trash pile. There's a start, but think long term. A lot can happen in a quarter century. LONGNOW DOT ORG
Some cans of beer, so you have something to celebrate with.
Just make sure they are properly chilled first.
World is ending in December!
Just for kicks, I pulled out a floppy with some files on it from 1987 ( My resume was short back then! ). I had no problems reading the files. However, I could not run any 16 bit programs ( I found a copy of Norton SI -- I was wondering what the speed index on my Core i7 would be ).
do something else. How weak minded do you have to be to be unable to to think what should go in a box.
Brew your own beer. Make sure there's anough alcohol in it and let yourself be surprised that in 25 years the taste will certainly be different but if brewed good it will still have a chance to taste good.
make sure any connectors have caps on them and are in a vacuum sealed bag - wary of rust here. rusting requires oxygen, so remove the oxygen. and maybe fill the whole capsule w/some non-toxic gas to push out the oxygen. nitrogen? or a flouro-inert? a noble gas? just make sure it's something safe to breath. also a usb key might be a connector that will last. 25 years though? not sure.
I have some 5.25" floppy disks that are over 30 years old, and I can still read them. I also have some that don't work, but most are fine. We're just hitting the point where it's hard to find PCs that will read 25-year-old 3.5" floppies (but good luck with an 800K Mac floppy).
In an air-tight container with no light exposure, I would expect a CD or DVD to be just fine after 25 years, and I would expect that you would still be able to find older computers that could read them.
Your best be for electronic data would probably be a USB flash stick. While the USB standard will evolve, if it goes to something incompatible, there will be plenty of conversion dongles.
Also, a USB flash stick would be a good representation of portable storage.
Or just put the data in "the cloud" and write the URL down on a piece of paper. I'm sure that will work. :)
Digital data can be stored for hundreds of years as a collage where marshmallows represent a 0 and twinkies are a 1. Decoders are sold as a kit from Adafruit Industries.
Those fuckers are going to hang around forever. You'll always be able to get ahold of one.
Seriously tho. usb keys will still be readable and supported most likely. they're tiny, cheap, and convienent.
If you want all your junk to last you need a durable, airtight vessel wherein you have replaced the ambient air with a dry inert gas like nitrogen. And you need to make sure the contents are secured from abrading each other as well as securing the vessel itself in a protected space, like Yucca Mt.
Once you have everything in place and secured, then you have only to remember to pay the bills on space, hope you picked a politically secure country and a geologically stable location and avoid the temptation to open it ahead of time.
If you're religious you can pray that no meteors or asteroids strike the general area or that the storage facility or other ownership entity is well managed.
Perhaps now would be a good time to point out that solid-state media can hold many times that of optical media for equivalent or lower costs. A 32 GB flash drive costs around $1 per GB these days. For another $30, you can buy a pico computer capable of HDMI output. The display may be a problem; You will need to bury your capsule to a depth of about 8 feet (if memory serves) to prevent it from freezing. It will then maintain a temperature of about 50 degrees.
Electricity hasn't changed at all in the last 50 years... you should be able to just plug it in and go. Total cost: Less than $150. And anyone can drop a pen drive in the box then with hours of video footage and recordings. Although, you'll have to wait longer than 25 years for it to be legal to play it back... A lot longer. -_-
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Even if no one uses the same physical media as we do now, and even if no one uses the same file formats, storing an entire PC is likely to solve the problem. You can get a small, inexpensive PC for cheap - a couple hundred dollar atom-based machine should do the trick - and throw a large amount of storage in it. I'm fairly certain that standard power connectors will still be available 30 years from now. VGA connectors may not be, so think about storing a small monitor in there as well (someone else can speak to the chances that a monitor will turn on after 30 years).
Going this route gives you practically unlimited storage for photos, music, text, etc.. with very high chances that it will be recoverable.
Nemilar http://www.techthrob.com - Visit Me!
1) In 25 years any foam rubber will have turned to goo.
2) Obvious but easily forgotten: remove batteries from electronic devices.
I helped setup a "time capsule" back in 1985 for my college's centennial celebration, we expect to open the capsule in 2035. I hope to be alive when it happens, because I put some items in there. We placed lots of plastic, wood, paper, and metal objects in the capsule. For paper products,we treated each piece of paper with a mild basic solution that neutralizes the sulfur compounds used in the paper production so that the paper doesn't yellow and deteriorate. For wood, we only allowed solid pieces, and only "natural' wood, without lead or "weird" paints. Plastic was a wild card.. we didn't really know how they would react, so we decided to only allow "hard" plastic items, and no styrenes or lightweights. Metals had to be brass, iron, or "slightly" reactive metals. We wrapped each and every item in a anti-static bag, and then evacuated the bags before boxing them up. We used normal cardboard boxes for boxing.
So.. stay away from color printer output (they degrade very fast) and any pseudo-soft plastics like polycarbonate (CD/DVD) because they'll break down too. Black and white prints are the safest picture types. You might spray your paper products with a baking-soda bicarbonate solution and then dry out.
good luck!
What about an oil barrel? :D
You'll need it in 2037!
Plus, you could sell it for a few thousand dollars and buy vintage stuff from 2012
paper has been around for a LONG time. There is even paper that is made to last long. Bit more expensive, but it will last much longer.
For 25, just use normal paper. Write whatever you want. e.g. how you feel about people, politics, the future, your state of mind. Write about your dreams and your thoughts of now.
Once you have printed it, seal it in plastic. You can put a LOT of information on it and it will be very personal as well.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
People who store food for long periods either often put nitrogen in, co2 in, or throw iron sachets in that eat the oxygen. The CO2 might join any moisture to make a weak acid and the iron can eat so much oxygen as to create a small vacuum that just pulls in air anyway. So a toot of nitrogen is probably best. Compared to oxygen nitrogen is basically inert. But an iron sachet wouldn't hurt on top of the nitrogen as it will eat any oxygen that leaks in.
The other key will be variety. If you use a technology that you could be certain of can you be certain of the longevity of the materials. I have 10 year old burnable CDs where the data layer just flaked off. I also have a very old external HD where the rubber feet turned to liquid goo. So even if you decided that a USB memory stick would be the way to go I would suggest buying 2 or three very different brands.
As to worrying about how to read the format just throw in an old laptop (minus its battery) which might last and be ready to read your data.
Also separate the different storage media into different ziplocks or containers so that if one melts into a corrosive goo that the rest might be spared.
If you throw in some silica gel packs to eat any moisture be aware that if moisture is getting in regularly over time those packets can start pooling moisture around them. Thus put it at the bottom with the good stuff propped above to keep it safe. Also the iron packs can become warm if exposed to a blast of air (like the handwarmers) so keep that away from the important bits that you don't want cooked.
Lastly keep the temperature cool and stable as entropy is slower when cold.
From personal experience, I can vouch that Apple II floppy disks hold up over 25 years!
Make sure someone else knows about the case, in case whoever buries it doesn't live another 25 years.
How about Twinkies and a Happy Meal. They should have no problem surviving.
I'd add a bottle of good scotch. It will be even better in 25 years (and something to toast your discovery with).
/me takes dusty 1995 Linux CD-R that we wrote off shelf, and puts it in:
dg@major:/media/CDROM$ ls -l
total 575
dr-xr-sr-x 3 dg dg 69632 Jul 12 1995 bitmaps
dr-xr-sr-x 2 dg dg 2048 Jul 5 1995 ddd
-r--r--r-- 1 dg dg 441397 Jul 18 1995 DirList.180795
dr-xr-sr-x 13 dg dg 6144 Jul 18 1995 documentation
dr-xr-sr-x 2 dg dg 4096 Jul 10 1995 ELF-GCC
dr-xr-sr-x 10 dg dg 2048 Jul 11 1995 emulators
dr-xr-sr-x 2 dg dg 2048 Jul 5 1995 fvwm
dr-xr-sr-x 2 dg dg 18432 Jul 10 1995 gnu
dr-xr-sr-x 11 dg dg 2048 Jul 10 1995 kernel-source
dr-xr-sr-x 3 dg dg 2048 Jul 11 1995 languages
dr-xr-sr-x 2 dg dg 6144 Jul 18 1995 leftovers
-r--r-xr-- 1 dg dg 99 Jul 13 1995 Leftovers_dir_list
dr-xr-sr-x 7 dg dg 4096 Jul 12 1995 logos
dr-xr-sr-x 2 dg dg 2048 Jul 11 1995 Networking
dr-xr-sr-x 6 dg dg 2048 Jul 18 1995 pgp
dr-xr-sr-x 2 dg dg 2048 Jul 11 1995 Printing
-r--r-xr-- 1 dg dg 5814 Jul 18 1995 README.html
dr-xr-sr-x 11 dg dg 4096 Jul 10 1995 slakware
dr-xr-sr-x 4 dg dg 2048 Jul 18 1995 sunsite.unc.edu
-r--r--r-- 1 dg dg 1015 Jul 18 1995 TRANS.TBL
dr-xr-sr-x 5 dg dg 2048 Jul 10 1995 www
dr-xr-sr-x 3 dg dg 4096 Jul 11 1995 X
dr-xr-sr-x 2 dg dg 2048 Jul 5 1995 xemacs
Looks ok :-) That's been stored on a dusty shelf in my room for the last ~17 years (in jewel
case) having said that it was a good quality kodak blank, and your mileage may vary.
IMHO store multiple copies written on multiple vendors media written on multiple drives;
use a few types of storage (CD, USB-flash from a good vendor), and something like
laser printed (not-ink jet) QR code on good paper; I'd wrap each separately (hmm what in?)
Oh, and in 25 years come back and tell us how much data is visible.
Leave a gap at the bottom for stuff to drip into safely if anything can leak (think a tiny pallet).
Put dry cloth between surfaces that might stick to each other.
No Polaroid photos unless the chemical packet isn't present).
Oxygen getter and desiccant.
Store it somewhere cool - preferably with a non-varying temperature.
Don't make it look like a valuables container like a safe.
Put data on at least 2 types of media (duplicate copies).
No food or liquids unless very very stable.
Nothing with batteries.
---------
Finally, no kittens. They'll just turn into cats.
Talking about cannibalism, if the electricity supply has gone, or if a suitable transformer is not available, not the society has already fallen apart and the roving bands of hungry feral humans have already killed you and eaten your corpses so it would not matter.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
That'll never go down or anything- just password protect the file and then don't open it until then. It'll be the worlds first Cloud based Time Capsule! Epic!!! Duuude!! EPIC!!!
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
Instead of storing data in the box directly, where you then rely on media retaining viability over 25 years you could always strongly encrypt the data you would like to logically store in the box and then write (or etch in stone, whatever) the decryption key and store that human readable quantity of data in the box and then maintain the cipher-text outside the box in a redundant distributed fashion over multiple generations of media. Of course I fail to see what the advantage of keeping the data secret over the time period would obtain, and it prevents transcoding to new file formats, so I'd just suggest keeping copies of the data as you would any data you want to have in 25 years (not locked in a box).
You see, physical objects are placed into a time capsule because they would normally deteriorate and not be archived properly if they weren't removed from the harsh existence of everyday life. Data however doesn't work like that, neglect is the biggest problem and hence a time capsule is not a good means of preserving data the way it is for preserving objects.
I'd get a cheap laptop that has the ability to read all of the media you're putting into the chest, into the chest as well. I'm sure you can find something cheap on ebay. Make sure to remove the battery and DO NOT put it in the chest. If the battery blows, there goes all of your data... You can run most laptops just from the power cord without an attached battery.
;-)
You may even have an old laptop laying around that you can donate to the cause. Just remember. Remove the battery. Don't even think about putting it in the chest. throw it away so someone else doesn't throw it in there "just because there is room". =)
CD-Rs and DVD-R's tend to loose their 'readability' due to heat and light. If they are stored properly, the data on them should be readable in 25+ years. That being said, if that's your media of choice make sure to make duplicate copies of your data, and store it on different brand's / types of media.
32GB of data, whether it's on DVD, USB hard drives, or SD cards, is extremely affordable nowadays. I think SD cards may loose their charge after 10 years or so but hard drives will always be readable as long as they spin up. For Hard Drives, 25 years ago from today, SCSI/IDE drives were the standard, and I know I can still read them today using a cheap USB interface.
I guess what i'm trying to say here is you have options. Depending on how important this data is, use multiple options to ensure the data is readable. If you include a reader in your chest (the laptop sans battery) you increase your chances of easily being able to read the data.
Oh, and if you do put a laptop in the chest? Don't forget the power cord.
Meep Meep!
Throw in a couple of Twinkies and the aura will keep everything fresh for 100 years.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
They are constantly used or exposed to varying or pretty hot temperatures, or fluctuating EM fields.
Easy mode:
For ultimate peace of mind, get an old hard drive and write the data 50 times. (any sub-250 drive should do)
Larger sector drives have larger write areas which will lessen the loss of data even in those conditions mentioned above.
If you write that data so much that it is ensured to be almost all over the sector within the boundaries of the random fluctuations in head position, you'd be almost guaranteed the ability to read it.
Now to read it? Just slap a Raspberry Pi in there with a USB hard drive adapter. Simple.
Medium mode.
You could also print out binary data on to sheets and scan them in later in the future.
There are many programs out there for printing archives of binary data out.
Bonus points if you print on to solid sheet plates using a laser.
Hardcore elite super turbo pro mode:
Equally try modding a CD drive to have an actual laser that burns. Get some plastic disc frames and literally burn your data in to the plastic.
Since you only need to care about 25 years, that plastic should be completely fine. Just make sure to get a tough plastic and not something that is biodegradable!
If you were aiming for 2500 years, then you'd need to use something a little tougher.
I'm sure there is a bunch of guides out there to do this. Or at the least some heavy discussion on the methods to do it.
Reading this? That's sure problem to solve.
One method I can think of would be to fill all the pits with another colored material, then making the hardware look for that for the 1s.
To make this easier, blast holes right through the actual disc material so you can easily smooth out excess material to prevent read errors.
Don't depend on optical discs. It is too risky to figure out which discs are good and which will degrade horribly.
Same too with flash. They are just too unpredictable.
And with all of these methods, encode all the information with high redundancy.
Better to be overly careful than to lose precious memories.
Make it a science project.
Put identical data on one of every type of storage technology and see which survives. In 25 years you will have a very interesting case study while being nostalgic about the data storage media used back when you were young.
If they all fail then laugh at how silly you were all those years ago and how you should have done x instead.
I use it for everything I need to store; backups of tax returns, keeps veggies crisp for decades, and turns incompetent employees into wonderful conversation pieces.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Forget Flash memory, the data retention of 10 years won't be enough even if usb ports remain viable in 25 years.
My tip: print your digital data out in hex along with documentation on how to read it out. Be sure to include redundancy among multiple stacks of paper. Oh and make sure the shipping container you use keeps out moisture...
metal box, dry nitrogen flush, wax seal. Put a cd-rom drive in there. ta dah!
I can't imagine wanting to see any of the retards I went to school with after 15 years. Much less after 25 or 50. Finished school. Got the fuck out. Moved the fuck on with my life. Re-uniting with school chums is like re-uniting with people who were a POW with. Why would you want to inflict that on yourself?
It is not a trivial request to ask how to make things survive a 25 year isolated containment, even if you solder or weld the outer container shut and it stays sealed.
Batteries, capacitors, wood, paint, plastics, bugs in the wood, polymer coatings can all outgas. Some plastics naturally keep changing very slowly as their molecular cross linking changes and plasticizers move to the surface.
Those outgassing chemicals can wind up interacting, or corroding if you wish, the other item's materials and you don't get what you think you will in 25 years.
If you actually put a battery in their you can get other reactions occurring very slowly as the battery discharges. Don't forget that many electronics use a milliamp or so to keep some functions ON all the time, even though the devices is supposed to be turned off. Batteries are notorious for having their liquids eventually leaking out.
When you handle all the items, getting ready to load the time capsule, there are going to be all sorts of finger oils and millions of bacteria that are on each piece you put in the container, plus what is on the inside of the container and its seal materials. Some bacteria are anaerobic, so just because there is no Oxygen (if you load the capsule with Nitrogen), doesn't mean there won't be live bacteria in there.
Lastly, if your container is totally sealed and outgassing raised the internal pressure, then chemical reactions can occur more rapidly.
I did some temp work at a document storage warehouse repacking some damaged file boxes. One thing I learned is that rubber bands have a useful life of about two years. After about five years, all rubber and elastic bands had failed, and worst of all, after about eight years, the remnants of rubber bands had all turned into a permanent solid glue. Lesson learned: no rubber bands allowed for long-term storage.
You know, in case the apocalypse happens in the next 25 years, you'll have something to eat when you open your time capsule.
Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16852830
Free Manning, jail Obama.
Then when they open the box in 25 years, at least they'll have something to eat.
Don't get back together in 25 years... 95% of those high-school hotties will be fat middle-aged chicks.
Supposedly. Even in hot and humid conditions.
http://millenniata.com/
I'd probably save the files, and make sure I can read them on any old DVD drive BEFORE putting them in the airtight chest. Also, make sure the DVD drive supports the M-Disc format, supposedly only some LG drives do that). For that matter, throw the entire DVD drive in there, power supply and all, and hopefully there will be still ways to connect to and read from a USB mass storage device.
I have toys older than that and they weren't stored in airtight chests.
Everybody's NES still works, and they're older than 25 years.
This is the dumbest discussion.
The cake should last edible for a 100 years, if it's made correctly.
They're practically indestructable.
Why not store data redundantly in several different formats? You could use flash, HDD, and DVD. That will increase your chances that at least one will work. Or, you could store it online, and just put the password on a piece of paper in the chest.
The (incorrect) starting assumption you are making is that the relationship between work, worth, and pay is a linear one. It is not. It may be approximately linear for lower values of work and worth, but once you are past a certain point, it is no longer. Some similar areas that might help to illustrate this to you would be scarcity theory, and also think about a bell curve or gaussian distribution.
Having said that, I do work for an employee owned company, and while still not completely equitable, it's much closer than a publicly traded company. Employees don't have any real say in anything (the shares are placed in a trust under your name, and hence not directly owned by you), but you still have a stake in the success of the company and if the CEO made 200x anyone's salary (being paid with our money), there would still be hell to pay. I have often wondered why shareholders in publicly traded companies tolerate the salaries being paid to their sometimes competent, sometimes not CEO's. After all, every dollar that goes to their salary/golden parachute is a dollar that could have been paid in dividends. I've reached the conclusion that it's a mix of having the board of directors not adequately looking out for the company's interests and being in bed with the CEO, and the fact that most of the shares in most companies are owned by big funds and individual shareholder's proxies don't really amount to much.
that's only due to the 1, high salt content 2. dessication, not the other preservatives. Essentially the same things that make jerky last. nothing to see, move along
Dump anything that's not multimedia on high-quality printout. Multiple copies (10+) to ensure redundancy. Multiple copies in multiple formats (CD,DVD,HDD,pen drive) of the multimedia as well, along with a device that only needs a power source to access them (netbook...) alomg with its power adapter...
.
Assuming they're well made and don't delaminate, pressed CDs and DVDs may still be readable, if you can find a drive. As may re-writable CDs and DVDs, which store data in phase-changing crystal which requires high temperatures to change. Write-once discs on the other hand store data by burning off a die, usually an organic one. And that die will spontaneously degrade so errors will start creeping in within a year or so, and your data will likely be completely unreadable after a couple decades.
As for being able to find a drive to read them - I doubt that'd be a problem only a few decades out. People made a huge investment in CDs and DVDs, and just as today you can still find a cassette or VHS player without difficulty I doubt CD/DVD drives are disappearing any time soon.
High-quality flash memory might theoretically last long enough, but there isn't much real data on the subject. Low-density Hard drives would probably last, magnetic media tends to be fairly stable as long as the bits are large enough - I'd go for the physically largest, lowest-capacity drive you can find. If you can find a 5-1/4" drive go for it (does anyone even still make those?). I'd probably use an external USB drive as well - or at least include a quality USB-to-SATA adapter. That will give you two potential interfaces to work with, odds are at least one of them will still be supported.
Regardless of medium, I'd recommend storing at least two copies - one in "normal format" for easy reading, and one in a heavily redundant ECC format, the kind that doubles or triples your data size, and ideally has low physical locality so that a corrosion spot on the platter will remove a little redundancy from a lot of data rather than all copies of a little data. I can only assume that there are archiving tools out there that will store data in such a format.
And I second the nitrogen idea - oxygen is a rather hideously destructive element.
Of course if you want data to be *really* reliable go with HD-Rosetta, good luck finding someone to record it for you though.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Paper.
I suggest acid free paper. If you're familiar with high density 2D barcodes you can store digital on it but most inks in inkjets will degrade fast. Laser printers are even worse as the pages will stick together.
Pick a good India ink and acid free paper and learn to write. ;)
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Take everything you want included as information (as opposed to toys, etc) and incorporate in into a book. Send a copy to the Library of Congress, and let them deal with the maintenance. Include a stone tablet in the box with the ISBN number chiseled into it so you can find the book when the box is opened.
Semiconductors do degrade over time. They're made of pure silicon (an insulator) which has been precisely contaminated in specific places with very small quantities of dopants (e. g. boron, phosphorous) giving one side of the junction an excess of electrons and the other side a scarcity. Over time, the dopants diffuse across the junction, changing the characteristics of the transistor by leveling out the excess/scarcity gradient. A 25 year old transistor will no longer meet it's specs. A diode will have greatly increased reverse leakage. AND gates turn into MAYBE gates.
Some capacitors will degrade quickly, some will last much longer. Ceramic capacitors will last a century, electrolytics at most 20 years. The electrolyte dries out.
Use a DLT tape (30 year retention guarantee), use tar as the archive format and transcode everything to a non proprietary codec or plain text. That'll probably be fine in 100 years. I've got a 25 year old DLT my father created on a VAX and that was readable last year still!
If this is a then consider this Feeding Time
Wages are based on specific conditions and according to well mapped out and set by local conditions and of course policy. But, ignoring the worker's salary for the moment and answering your question:
As a general rule, there are 3 factors which go into determining the salary for specific specialist jobs. These are:
1) Personal Life Risk
2) Specialist Education or Role Requirements
3) Role Impact
If a job falls into one of these categories then the pay scale is set at a minimum bar. Two.. and it goes up? All 3? Jackpot.. you will be rolling in money.. but would you want the job? Let's examine this..
Point 1 is Personal Risk to your Life. An example here is: deep earth miner. People need to be paid additional money to perform this job due to the danger involved. Call it Hazard Pay if you like.
Point 2 is Specialist Education or Requirements for the role. A university professor is a good example of this. You can't get the job without spending a lot of your life (time) and money and energy into building the knowledge required to do the job. So, you get paid more to compensate your demonstrated worth.. as the role of 'University lecturer' can only be awarded to someone with a specific level of education and certification.
Point 3 involves how much impact your role has. Let's use 'Nurse' here as an example. When a nurse interacts with a patient they can affect that persons Lufe or Quality of life. This involves stress. Coincidently, it also touches on point 2 (ignore that for the moment). Take from this point that the more Impact your job/role is .. then the more stress and other negative factors are involved and hence you are compensated for that.
Now comes the interesting part. If you have a profession which combines any of the above points, or rates highly in them, then you get paid more.
Doctor is a good example of combining point 2 and point 3. Some doctors train for the better part of a decade to become qualified. Add to that the impact a doctor can have on their patients - literally life and death - and watch the potential salary rise. Difference between a GP and a specialist, say a gyno, is less about the pay (the GP does not earn as much as a specialise, generally) but more about how hard the job is, the effect the job has on the person and how much damage can occur if they screw up.
Now, your question is why a Business Owner may be paid a lot more than an average worker. Let's use the above rules to work this out, as a start.
Point 1: No, being a CEO doesn't generally involve personal risk. However, there could be a case for saying here that if the CEO makes a big enough mistake then they may lost *everything* (in this case, everything means their house, life savings, credibility, ability to get another job..)
Point 2: Yes, being a CEO (generally) requires either specific knowledge or role requires. In most cases, to the highest level possible. It is possible to be a CEO and clueless.. but in that case the board is running the show not the CEO so this is a fringe case
Point 3: Impact. This really is where a CEO can justify their wage. The CEO may only make 5 or 6 big decisions a year, but one of those decisions could be the difference between the company being profitable that year and the company going into receivership. These types of decisions include business partnerships, large scale investments, company direction, etc. An example of this is that when the Internet was flourishing Microsoft decided to ignore it.. someone, probably a CIO or CEO, made this decision. Look what it cost them. The impact of management of this level can be catastrophic and could result in hundreds or thousands of people losing their jobs, or the company going under. It is very stressful. It can destroy your life (socially, personally, eat your time, sap your energy, etc).
Add turnover to this and you are in for a shocker. These people, CEO and CIO etc, run the company, set the company di
If you use a good brand (Tayo Yuden) and store them in dry nitrogen. However, plastics pass gases and vapors like nuts. You need a true hermetic material for the container, metal or glass, and even then the gasket would be problematic over 25 years.
You don't want to be these guys. They buried a 57 Plymouth in a time capsule, only to open it and find water halfway through. They also packed some gas and oil from the 50's just in case fuel was obsolete by 2007.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mr6aoM8eG0c
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tulsa,_Oklahoma
Then you will have something to do for the next 25 years - discussing if the cat is probably dead yet.
I suppose lots of food & water might be needed as well. Anyone know a breed of cat that might live 25 years ?
You should write down the definition of Jubilee and put it in the container.
Stamp the # of living roaches you throw in there on metal, and compare to the number that are there when you open it. Hopefully, you won't be restoring them after a successful global extermination.
25 Years is a start. It's not very long really. But when you open it up you will want to do it again to continue the preservation. The most fun I've had is reading the old newspaper used to line draws and wrap old china. For 25 years that will make excellent packaging material. Photos (name your medium but I wouldn't rely on ink-jet inks) of you in your 'fashionable' wear with everyday haircuts will give hours of amusement in the future. A pair of underpants is a guaranteed "how the hell did I ever fit into these".
You are probably better off not sealing your box airtight. Providing the atmosphere is dry and you have a wasp and mouse-proof container then you'll be fine. Best of all if you're going to all this trouble remember that digital data is relatively easy to keep and access but it is things and original documents that belong in a box in an attic. When you white-haired ones open the box will there be some of yours when it was coloured and to prove you had some?
Just make sure it's at a sufficiently high altitude so it's still above sea-level when you want to retrieve it.
Smivs on the intertubes!
How about storing all digital data on a netbook with instructions on how to recharge the damn battery?
Stone (everyone)
Intaglio bronze plates (Romans, especially for Senate documents)
Clay tablets (Babylonians)
Parchment (Everyone)
Acid free rag paper (Chinese and later the europeans)
Linen - required in many town halls for registered surveys and plats (last hundred years)
Mylar - also required for many town halls for registered surveys (ever since the invention of mylar drawing media).
We have clay tablets from thousands of years ago.
We have parchment documents from hundreds of years ago
We have paper documents from hundreds of years ago
Linen became popular when it was machine made - it is extremely durable and will last hundreds of years if given even minimal care.
Mylar can last thousands of years even after being abused.
One of the most indestructible and compact ways of storing data is punched mylar tape. It can be dumped in a bucket of oil in the shop, wiped off, and sent through the reader. It's simple to make a reader too. Herman Hollerith would have understood immediately how to read punched mylar tape had he been alive to see it. Mylar is also very stable, and not prone to rot. I would like to see the look on a wandering novice monk's face in a few thousand years unearthing an earthenware container packed with dessicant and spools of mylar and all of it entirely readable mechanically or electronically with simple tools.
It would be a new twist on the Sacred Shopping List.
And here we're merely talking about 25 years. Even a paperback written on fast-yellowing paper will survive that, given an airtight and light tight container and a pack or two of silica gel. Photographs on archival paper would be good. Microfiche would be excellent. Anything on an acid-free paper. Basically anything that can be read mechanically or optically including QR codes printed out on acid free paper with good ink.
Things to not store for 25 years and expect to be able to read: Any electronic format that depends on a proprietary reader in a proprietary format. That is *guaranteed* bit rot.
--
BMO
The elephant in the room that nobody is discussing... what's your container going to be made of? How are you going to seal it and keep it sealed? These are non-trivial questions. Containers react with the materials inside and corrode both inside and out. Seals dry out. Etc... etc...
There's a lot more to this than just the items inside. The container has to maintain its integrity too.
Surprised nobody has suggested this...save yourself the hassle of trying to pick a storage device that will still be compatible in 25 years and just get something with a network interface, I.E. a NAS. If you want to bank on something still being easily available in 25 years, bank on HTTP. It's been around for a very long time and isn't going anywhere. Just get yourself a NAS that supports IPv4 and IPv6 with an integrated webserver and you're golden for probably the next 50 years. Make sure it has a ethernet port, you should definitely be able to find ethernet enabled gear or at least some sort of ethernet adapter in 25 years. Also, most NAS boxes will also have USB and potentially firewire, Thunderbolt, etc. Those don't hurt, the more connectivity options the better. Make sure you have the data you want to save on several drives in case one goes bad.
Aside from the suggestion of packing a cheapo minibook (or netbook, or whatever they're called these days) along with say a USB flash drive, the best way would be to use good-quality media.
25 years isn't much time really. I've a 21-year-old IBM PS/2 which still boots up just fine (into Windows 95) - its Seagate SCSI drive is still going strong. I've a box full of Commodore Plus/4 floppies which still read just fine despite being over 25 years old, as do the old PC Plus coverdisks I kept back from my first PC (although they're only 21 years old).
I have a 5.25" drive hooked up to my (Sandy Bridge) PC and yes, it still works. I've another drive in an old P3 I keep ticking over for DOS games; that one's hooked up to a CatWeasel ISA card and that can read pretty much any format you're likely to come across.
As for optical media, I was too poor to afford a CD writer in the early 90s but by the late 90s I could afford one - I still have a few dozen CD-Rs containing source files from back then. The Kodak Gold Ultima discs read perfectly fine, but they were expensive - over a pound a disc. Some of the cheaper discs haven't made it, as the dye's faded and they're now unreadable using standard equipment.
Mitt is the creepy guy in your fraternity who thought it would be a good idea to assault fans of the opposing team because he thinks that's a prank (no it isn't) and that it's funny (no, it's a crime). Then he had his obligatory Mormon wedding and produced 5 clones of himself. If he runs healthcare there won't be a line for bypass surgery. There will be a footrace. He'll have a jolly good time watching grandma grab her chest and fall 10 feet short of the finish.
but I've had factory made DVDs die on me after a few years simply because I preferred to keep the AC in my apartment low.
As good as the ancient Egytians were at making mummys, an anomalous ancient Chinese genius beat them. Instead of a corpse that looked like a charcol brisqute, the royal woman he preserved, found thousands of years later, still had skin, organs, bendable limbs, etc. Like she died recently.
His method? Concentric coffins.
The inner one holding the body, floated inside of another larger coffin filled with a liquid antiseptic.
You might want to consider battery issues with a laptop. Can the battery catch on fire with age? Can the battery leak battery acid? If so, anything in the time capsule might be damaged. Even desktops might not be safe because there is a tiny battery in them. Age does some pretty strange things to electronics.
Archival Gold CDRs should be fine. The medium is supposed to good for 300 years based on accelerated testing.
http://www.mediasupply.com/mamgold.html
Make a redundant copy and you should be fine.
As far as being able to read it, there is so much stuff on CD sized optical media I would be truly shocked if in 25 year readers would not be commonly available. I've already had CD music players for that long.
E-ternally your, the case for the development for a reliable archive for personal digital objects.
http://explorer.cyberstreet.com/CET4970H-Peterson-Thesis.pdf
Laser printer pages don't stick together.
I have banker's boxes full of documents (mostly code listings) circa 1986 printed on the first HP laser jet. No sticking problem.
The only sticking I've seen in laser printing is from early models (circa 1975) of IBM 3800 laser printers (mainframe laser printers) which printed so fast the thermoplastic never had time to cool before it was pressed down by the sheet above. Print jobs directly off the back end would sometimes stick together. This was solved in a few months by a toner change.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
1. Keep it low tech:
Assuming you graduated college at 21, you'll be around 71, you won't be that interested in figuring out high-tech stuff. It won't be long until the tech we have now is obsolete, because the rate of change continues to accelerate. Try finding a punch card reader these days.
Print stuff out on paper, regular paper works fine for only 25 years. Add a desiccant, and pump in nitrogen or argon if you can.
2. Redundancy:
Many of you will be dead and many will have lost their memory.
Print out a copy for everyone. Everybody gets one. Store in metal boxes clearly labeled on the outside so you don't have to keep opening it to see what it is.
3. Locators:
Include a list of everybody who gets a box in the box. Include personal identifiers (full names, DOBs) so you can track people down on the Internet (or whatever it is called 25 years from now.)
You may find 25 years from now that there are already records or copies of whatever you put in the box* but the greatest treasure will be locating your old buddies.
*Most people who open time capsules find old newspapers. The exact same newspapers which are also in storage in the newspaper office down the street. Probably when you open your box in 25 years you can find everything you put inside still on eBay.
Good luck!
I've got CDs I burned sometime in the mid-late 1990's that still work just fine, 1996-1998ish. I don't know why you'd be worried about them not working. They'd possibly degrade and become unreadable if they were in the sun all the time, but how much sun do you think they're going to get in your package? ;)
I'd also recommend regular cheap paper. It can have a nostalgic look to it, when it turns yellow.
testing out my trending skills
If you don't want to read the data until the chest is opened, encrypt it and only put the encryption key in the chest (something like a piece of paper will do). Periodically migrate the encrypted data itself to new media as you would with any data.
Who's chest??? Depending who's, it could be a bit damp.
Then slip a 4-pound cod in there.
Any domesticated cat can live up to 25 years, but it's hit or miss. The odds are low, though.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
HTR? I think this guy just wants to store some geeky crap not his ex-wife....
I'm a lot older than the OP and have a different perspective. Some people my age spend a lot of time thinking about 'the good old days'. Those people strike me as non-functional, fossils, relics...
A few people my age forge ahead, engage with the world, eagerly anticipate exciting changes in our culture. They don't have time for ritual, reminiscing and memorabilia.
The OP doesn't say what he graduated from. If it was the Apollo astronaut team, then go for it- you've earned a place in history. Otherwise, reconsider the silly ritual; live in the present and enjoy the unfolding of history around you.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Whenever you "save" something, there is an inevitability that you need to get it back at some point in the future.
I have found that if you come up with processes that allow for items to be migrated to newer tech and back again, then you have a means of maintaining the information. This of course means that it can become a bigger and bigger costly process to maintain the information, but the upside is that the information is less likely to be "lost" due to the tech becoming so obsolete that retrieval is impossible.
I have experienced such as case (in about 1993) where there were reels of tape containing such old data (about 1983 vintage) that there was a need at the time to maintain what there was before that information was lost forever. Unfortunately a few of the tapes were no longer readable, so we managed to get a significant portion of them.
or did u forget ...
Whatever you do, DON'T BURY IT! Lots of time capsules have ended up lost that way. People lose track of them, forget where they're buried, and next thing you know it's 30 years later and a hotel has been built on top of where your time capsule was buried.
I have underwear that old!
Personally I think you should just put whatever seems poignant into the time capsule and see what happens. To me that's the fun.
They'll be able to give you proper information about how long things keep, how best to protect them, and maybe what kind of items may be of particular interest to put in there.
If you're feeling particularly motivated, you can hire one on contract to help you out, too. (There's loads of us looking for work right now, in Canada anyway..)
25 years isn't all that long of a time. I think you could easily get away with using something like a "Gamma Seal." these seals easily last 10 years with regular use. 25 years should be easily attainable. In theory they attach to any bucket but this may not be durable enough for your needs. A Vittle Vault is both durable and sealed tight from the elements thanks to a Gamm Seal. Becoming a variety of sizes and can be picked up at any pet supply store.
For good measure throw in one or two blocks of silica gel and some oxygen absorbers. I don't see why set up like this wouldn't deliver your stuff 25 years to the future and beyond.
Rocks (and stones and pebbles and even grit), on the other hand, don't suffer from this (depending on the flourine content), so are the proper objects to put into the chest as they will certainly be intact and usable in twenty-five years.
The records on the Voyagers and Pioneers didn't just contain audio, you know.
They contained video as well.
RCA tried (and failed) to commercialise this technology in 1981 as the CED Videodisc System.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Paperback novels, that I've reread a number of times and that live on my bookshelf. They aren't in pristine condition, but they are just fine.
Assign a handful of people to be on the contact list for the depository, and put your materials in a safe deposit box. The climate-controlled environment will make things last a lot longer, and the depository will be in contact should something happen, such as a move, or an accident, or the depository failing.
Definitely keep track of people who pass on, and assign new contacts in that event.
Set a date for everyone to appear at the depository to open the box.
This is a great idea but it is not all that hard. I have lots of stuff that is in my attic which has been sitting for over a quarter century and it is fine. I would agree with the concern about CD-R dyes however there are some disks that are advertised as being archival quality and good for over 100 years. I buy those and I make multiple copies.
The biggest issue is format changes and lack of support for old software, hardware and data formats. Companies like Apple should be ashamed at their abandonment of compatibility with the old in their relentless drive for new, new, new.
Sure, you can use CDs/DVDs. I mean, look how long some people have been using VHS (which has been around since the mid-70's). So, it shouldn't be so bad to do that. If nothing else, toss a few random CDs in there anyways just as a display of the, by-then, incredibly antiquated storage medium.
Get some oxygen absorbers and seal it with wax. Hand warmers can be used in a pinch to suck up O2. Plus, they'll wonder WTF the hand warmers were for.
Assuming that you can put in more than 1 thing, put in several storage technologies. Flash drive, CD/DVD, etc. That way, at least one of them will survive, and if multiples do, it will make it easier to find something on which to read them. Also, avoid batteries (normal batteries like AA will almost certainly still be in use anyway, though things like laptop batteries and other specialized ones may be harder to find) since they will leak and damage stuff. Most normal paper should survive 25 years if kept in good conditions. And dont forget the desicant.
You may need by then.
...after the gubernment takes them away you'll be glad you did! Just in time for the epochalyse too!
The thing you should be interested in is what isn't being said. The government budget projections are based (still) on the idea that businesses will pay for employee insurance after 2014. Guess what? Every conference I've been to says the plug gets pulled January 1st 2014 or thereabouts. Sure, companies will have to pay around a $2500 penalty - compared with $20,000 per employee for insurance, which is about double of what it is today.
Why? Well, mostly that in 2014 all insurance plans in the US have to cover some government-mandated set of things. Right now it is controlled by each state so in California they have to cover acupuncture but in New York they don't. That ends in 2014 - one nationwide set of minimum standards for all insurance plans that are federally qualified. Today, insurance is more expensive in California than it is in, say, Iowa, because of the individual state requirements. So we all end up with one set and basically one price - a higher one. There are also other things that will be required and they are adding to the individual cost for group plans.
But none of this really matters because if the employer doesn't offer coverage the employee gets a subsidized plan from the government. It is the cost of those subsidies that isn't being factored in because of the assumption that employer-provided insurance will continue. With the government subsidies the spector of massive numbers of uninsured people is lifted from the employers, the costs go up and the penalties are a joke. End result is as I said, the plug gets pulled right around the beginning of 2014 because no employer wants to be on the hook for what is likely to be a set of ever increasing employer costs - and if they step back the government is going to step up and give it to everyone. So, nobody loses, right?
The problem for anyone with a job is that this is "single payer" that got passed by Congress without every knowing it was a single payer plan. Nobody voted on the government taking over health care through a program of mandated minimum standards and subsidies. But when the employers drop insurance - and everyone in business says they are going to do just that - it will turn into sort of an ass-backwards single payer system with the government picking up the tab through insurance companies and the entire system we have today. No benefits of eliminating the paperwork or having only one administrator for everything.
Have a house? If so, good - better keep it. January 1st there is a 3.8% tax on home sales which will introduce some significant changes in the housing market - as it will be drying up. Someone selling a $200,000 home will be paying out nearly $8000 at closing as a result of this tax. This can mean the difference between having enough of a down payment for the next house or not.
So, do we keep going down this road?
Nuff said
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Twenty-five years is nothing. I have used Kleenex that are older than that. How old are you, three?
If you fill the container (mostly) with inert gas, everything will age substantially more slowly. Bloxygen is a spray-can solution used by woodworkers to evacuate air from a container of wood finish before re-sealing it, so shelf-times get much, much longer. Would probably be useful here.
The thing you should be interested in is what isn't being said. The government budget projections are based (still) on the idea that businesses will pay for employee insurance after 2014. Guess what? Every conference I've been to says the plug gets pulled January 1st 2014 or thereabouts. Sure, companies will have to pay around a $2500 penalty - compared with $20,000 per employee for insurance, which is about double of what it is today.
This argument doesn't make sense. Businesses are currently not required to provide any health insurance at all. They do so, not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because it's part of the package of benefits that was offered to employees. If they stop providing insurance after 2014 and require employees to pay their own way in the exchanges, that's a massive pay cut. If employers thought they could get away with imposing a substantial pay cut on their employees, they would already have done so. The fact that the money is being spent on benefits rather than salaries is irrelevant – the employer doesn't care. Remember that for years, employers have justified the lack of cash pay raises on the grounds that insurance costs have gone up.
Have a house? If so, good - better keep it. January 1st there is a 3.8% tax on home sales which will introduce some significant changes in the housing market - as it will be drying up. Someone selling a $200,000 home will be paying out nearly $8000 at closing as a result of this tax. This can mean the difference between having enough of a down payment for the next house or not.
Bullshit.
For long-term storage I've had good luck with the following. You will need:
Place your objects in a vacuum-sealable bag. Use the vacuum cleaner to extract as much air as possible from the bag. Replace the air with dry nitrogen (i.e., nitrogen at 0% humidity), but do not overinflate: leave some room for the nitrogen to expand with temperature changes. Seal the bag. Place the bag inside an opaque plastic bag (a black garbage bag works well) and put into storage.
The two major contributors to chemical decomposition over time are oxygen and energy. By purging the air (78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, approx) with nitrogen, you get rid of most of the oxygen. By making sure you're using dry nitrogen there's no water present in the bag, and water as you can probably figure out is an oxygen source. No oxygen equals no oxidation reaction. Nitrogen is also a fairly inert gas: it's not argon-level of inert, but it's pretty damned unreactive.
By putting things into a black garbage bag, you seal it off from sunlight. No more ultraviolet light doing ultraviolent things to valence shells, kicking out electrons, etcetera.
Now that you've got oxidation and ultraviolet light controlled, store it in a fairly temperature-controlled place. 25 years of thermal shock can destroy things, and your keepsakes deserve better. A basement works well.
Insofar as how to make sure the digital media is still readable... buy a cheap laptop and put that in the nitrogen-atmosphere, UV-shielded, temperature-controlled time capsule, too, along with a USB-to-RS232 cable. In 25 years we'll still be able to read data out over a serial connection, even if Ethernet is still a thing of the past.
I don't think it's been mentioned here, but flash data retention is typically stated for 10 years... the chances of the data on a USB memory stick still being readable after 25 years isn't that great considering memory sticks are all about price and capacity, not longevity. I'd go for a storing data on a SATA hard drive.
reliable mechanical switches for DC are a LOT more expensive than for AC, because you don't have the voltage/current going through zero periodically to quench the arc.
One can make a very low loss transformer (what you refer to as an AC inductive voltage converter).. it's all a matter of money and safety. Many wall warts have high loss because a)it's cheaper and b) it's easier to get safety certifications with a lossier design.
Real numbers.. a typical distribution transformer (pole pig) used to be doing ok if it was 1% losses (that is, 99% efficient), but in the last 30-40 years the change to better iron (cold rolled) and better winding designs have driven than down by a factor of 3 or 4.
But everyone buying transformers does a whole cost benefit analysis over the expected many decade life. Do you spend $1000 more to buy a 20kVA transformer with 0.5% loss instead of 1% loss? That 1% loss is 20W. Cutting it by 10W is about 87kWh/year. At $0.09/kWh (utility cost of power) that's about $8/year. Over a 50 year life time the extra electricity losses cost $400, compared to the $1000 cost to buy the better transformer. And that's not even calculating the appropriate discount for net present value of that $8/year.
When the rich got rich because of the way the system is set up, they need to kick back into that system so others have the same opportunity they did. Seems pretty straightforward to me. Why do you hate a level playing feel where all can benefit from hard work?
Store your data on ROMs. Include a VERY simple ROM Reading device that emits a serial signal. Include a small paper document that explains the ROMs, the ROM Reader, and how to properly hook it up to a serial data input line on any digital device. Provide basic information of data format, start with an ASCII character table, then simple text files describing in technical detail whatever other file types are on the ROMs including images, video and or sound files. Your ROMs could be electronic, laser etched glass with a metal coating, hell, cuneiform on clay tablets, choose a technology that's nonvolatile and sports the data density you like and have at it. Oh, yeah, mark your ROMs so that they're read in proper order... don't make future readers have to guess about anything.
You know, seeing as this question crops up repeatedly every so often, it would be a great idea to have someone come up with a nonvolatile storage medium that is high density, standard, and registered among a number of international governments and standards agencies, so future generations can access these things at some future time without scratching their heads and asking WTF. Of course if as a species, considering we have a bugger all hard time ensuring the future air is fit to breath and water fit to drink, we probably aren't gong to make sure that future generations get the pleasure of seeing reruns of "Gun Smoke".
You may also want to include a paper document that explains human based data starting with our math. Just in case we extinct ourselves, and the folks who open the capsule have zero human context. Just a thought. Don't forget to use acid free paper.
Sounds like my guild chest on my guild ship in DDO. Nobody ever touches the crap in there lol. My suggestions for an "IRL" one would be lots of shotguns and shells...for the zombie apocalypse (or hyper-intelligent monkeys).
Very authoritative /techon.nikkeibp.co.jp article. It claims that even resting the newer 3 bit per cell flash chips earmarked for consumer grade USB thumb drives can lose data in as little as a year. There is better one bit per cell flash. But having read this piece (if it is at all accurate) I would never store a consumer grade SSD for 25 years and expect to read it without difficulty.
I think If I wanted to store data reliably for twenty five years on machine readable media I would choose -- as some have already suggested -- an archival gold DVD. Since a lot of important data are being stored on these currently it should be no trouble to find a reader capable of reading them in twenty-five years. My guess is that at least some future optical drives will be backward compatible. If only because 100 year archives are currently being created on long-life discs. You might have to pay a professional to load your data to your cloud account, however, as consumer hardware might include optical drives. But there is little doubt that you could get a DVD read in twenty five years with ease.
I have read that optical discs should be stored in their jewel cases standing on edge; that is, perpendicular to the ground. I think if you add in a duplicate to the mix then you will guard against some random defect sandbagging you. Maybe the dupe should be from another brand, like Verbatim. Bag the discs in plastic. And throw in a pouch of desiccant as others have said. Not a need for special treatment for the box IMHO. Cool dry place. Twenty five years will go by in the blink of an eye. Lemme tell ya. I recently opened some storage that was put up when I went overseas in 1989. Everything was in pretty good shape.
The broader question of what to put in the box is more interesting than how to preserve it. A video postcard from each participant would be nice. (Stored on the gold DVD.) A small personal item worn on the day of the silver jubilee might be worth seeing. What about a secret message from each person in a sealed envelope?
Something like: "I loved you from afar in history class back then. But you noticed me not. And I would have never divorced you and taken every penny like SHE did. But then you always were a damned fool, you damned fool."
Then again you could always just do butt scans on the copier. My guess is that the copy paper will hold up better than your butts will after 25 years.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
You don't think you will be able to read CDs or DVDs in 15 to 20 years? What are you a moron? Do you think all the CD and DVD players are going to magically disappear? We STILL are able to read floppys, VHS & Beta Tapes, Cassettes, 8-tracks, LPs, Laser Discs. I have 5 1/4 diskettes that are almost 40 years old that I can still read. Kids, I swear.
Put the data in on various forms such as a portable USB hard drive, flash drives, and multiple DVDs. I would suggest looking into a RAID array as well--if a hard drive or two has errors, the error checking might make it accessible anyway. Stick a PCI-e/PCI USB and SATA adapter card in there as well. Also stick a laptop in there with the power adapter but don't put the battery in there. The battery will have died by then, and might blow up or something after a while and destroy everything. I think it would be safe to assume that power plugs will always be the same for the next fifty years or so. You would be safe even if USB/CD are not in use anymore if you have the entire device needed to read them in there.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
+cuneiform
(1) Store the reader device with the data.
(2) Store multiple copies of the data, clearly labeled as such.
(3) Explain in plain text (on paper) what each reader or media thingy is, and what standards it adheres to. Searching for such a device will be easier if they know what it's called.
(4) Remove all batteries, but include AC adapters. 110 V AC will still be around in some form. This includes CMOS backup batteries. Do not expect the future users to replace the batteries.
(5) Only include things you have tested, and had 4-year-old test, and had an Alzheimer's patient test.
(6) Include users manuals for the readers - people may know how to unlock an IPhone today, but they will not in 25 years. (Actually, the IPhone is a horrible example because you can not remove the battery.)
(7) Assume that very dim-witted people from the 1700's will open it.
(8) Pressed media will last much longer than burned media.
(9) USB memory sticks > SD Cards > CDs.
(10) For USB memory sticks, be careful as to what needs to auto-install a driver. Imagine trying to find a driver for a Parallel Port CD-ROM drive so you can install a driver for a PCMCIA card that attaches to a QIC tape drive (which I recently tried to do on an IBM ThinkPad 500 486SLC2-50. The end of the line was that I no longer have the proprietary tape read/write program that crammed a few extra MB on a QIC-40 cartridge.)
(11) Use the most standard formats possible. No Open Doc Formats; No Ogg Vorbis. (SORRY!!!)
Good Luck!
Just remember, when you (individual or government) can take from the rich simply because their rich, then you can also take from the poor...
No you can't. They don't have anything. That's why they're called poor.
: - )
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
1. Twinkie - will still be edible
2. favorite movie on Bluray (bluray will be a odd relic by then)
3. bottle of wine - any decent one will do (this one item could potentially put your kids through college)
4. note to self: things you like, hate, love. what others you, what you are worried about in the world, etc
5. Prediction of what the world will be like in 25 years (jetpacks, reanimated woolly mammoth as a pet, etc)
...answer your questions, but you should at least register it with them as extra insurance of not losing track of where you put it.
http://www.oglethorpe.edu/about_us/crypt_of_civilization/international_time_capsule_society.asp
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
There are cheap ways to get oxygen absorbers and silica gel desiccants:
Hand warmer = oxygen absorber
(some) kitty litter = desiccant (make sure it has silica gel; Fresh Step Crystals, Petco Crystals are both OK)
The hand warmer will generate more heat than a food-grade oxygen absorber, so make sure it doesn't touch the stuff you want preserved. Also consider putting your kitty litter in a cloth bag to keep it contained.
Good luck!
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
It's expensive... often 4-10 times as expensive as the common MLC media, but flash media is the most promising at this time for long term storage... 25-50 years I think. If you look at it, even today, it is possible to read 8" floppies with a little effort. With a bit of work, I was able to help someone read an old IBM370 disk pack on a PC a little while back. Whether it is convenient to read or not is a different story. But the fact is that reading ancient media isn't impossible. Flash is promising since it should experience almost no bit rot if you use single level media which tends to have fairly gigantic cells. Making use of 45nm or larger tech is an even better idea. So, in reality, a USB thumb drive that was a bit price a while ago might be your best option. I regularly buy industrial grade flash which is single level based, in an age where a 256gig flash drive can cost $300 or less, these still cost about $300 for 8gigs. They will however last a great deal longer than the alternative varieties.
I am not a big believer in disc based media since purchasing a 8" floppy drive and connecting it to a PC can easily end up costing $1000 or more these days. I feel strongly that it will be much harder in the future. I would even recommend finding a really cheap single board computer with a USB port on it and putting it into the box. With some exposed pins and access to the Internet, a high school kid in an electronics course should be able to use that to rig up a reader for the Flash drive if USB happens to go the way of the dodo. Remember though, this is 2012 and I still use RS-232 every single day I'm at work.
This is just an idea I'm throwing out there, based on the idea of a networked disk.
You could have a legal firm tasked with updating the media every 5 years in perpetuity.
Of course if you actually kept a disk connected to the Internet it could be hacked, this is probably 100% certain by the year you are planning to open it. So you could instead put a usb drive in a bank vault. Perhaps put a laptop in too.
Then every 5 or 10 years, someone comes along to copy it onto the latest media type. Perhaps one day soon we will even have a Library of Congress data vault where people can pay to store data and have it preserved. If such exists, it can also be used in parallel.
I am thinking it is going to be much more secure to put things into a vault than burying it in the ground and wondering if random chemical processes will destroy it or not. It sounds very possible you could even have flooding from rising seas or natural disasters from global warming, get zapped from EMF bombs or who knows.
So while burying a time capsule is romantic if you want something to be safe maybe you should at the same time, distribute it digitally in commercial physical structures.
It should be perfectly fine in a perfectly sealed box for 25 years. Or not.
Note how I did not use "purrfectly". There is still some sanity left!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
On the other hand, I have code listings printed back in 2002 on a low-end LaserJet 1200 using an HP cartridge that were stuck together pretty badly when I went through them a couple of years ago. Different printer/toner/paper combinations can yield different results.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
That is all.
Why not open Google Drive account and just upload this data? You can still store the password for retrieval / decrypting.
a bottle of scotch, duh.
nonsense, here in illinois we have several schemes to soak the poor for what little they have. One is the State Lottery, there are at least six more.
All you need is an Itablet it's what most of our ancestors used before steve jobs was around and dang it, it just worked. Though back in their day they called it a chisel and stone tablet, I can almost guarantee you that this thing will still be around 1000 years from now as long as you take care of it.
Put a single sheet of paper in the box with the details of a cloud storage account to which you have uploaded all your digitized memorabilia. Like, say, maybe, Megaupload....
--
If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. - Mark Twain
the best storage medium of all time is still stone carving... some of that has lasted for thousands of years, try that with a CD =p
Put a floppy disk in there, that'd confuse the hell out of them.
Maybe someone has already suggested this, but, just in case: put a bottle of wine. If it's really good suff, make sure you drink it though as 25 years is a long time.
As for the DVD, you may as well lock a functioning player. I bought a CD player in 1991, it still plays.
There are myriad number of issues you might not find addressed on this thread and will not be able to guess at. Archivist are professionals in long-term storage in various environments; some of them have been at it for over 25 years already. Society of American Archivists (SAA) members have a certification process. You should be able to find contacts and relevant publications here:http://www2.archivists.org/
Bongs last forever
-- Wife looks menacingly at husband of 26 years when he is ten for ten on the smoothest ones.
-- Another wife looks on in dismay at her husband when he is ten for ten on the hairy ones.
-- And all look on in fear at the smug woman who is 20 for 20 -- both hairy and smooth.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Rupees for a future hero that might save the land...
At my third startup, Auspex Systems, we did make a time capsule the evening of our first Xmas/holiday gala. This was almost exactly 25 years ago. (dec '87). I remember exactly the two things I contributed -- 1) a toy plane (because startups are all about the toys), and 2) code from the Auspex micro-kernel. I'm sure it was on media that couldn't be read today -- I probably used DECtape or something (we had a VAX 11/70 at the time, maybe). That wasn't the point. The point was choosing objects that are meaningful to you, and then holding on to those memories.
Enemies are: heat, light, EMF, moisture, Oxygen.vermin, insects, humans.
For electronic media, provide equipment necessary to access the material. 25 years should be o.k. for CD/DVD material, but they need to be separated by materials which won't affect the surface (remember, the important surface is the BACK, not the side you read from. Multiple copies in different formats is good insurance.
The chest should be filled with an over pressure of inert gas, dry nitrogen is a.normal choice, but CO2 can be used successfully--ideally you want a massive gas to slow the transfer out of the container, so Argon or Krypton are good choices.. Add appropriate amounts of oxygen absorber (used for food storage--sucks up all the O2 and moisture absorbers. Activated carbon will absorb many other gaseous materials which will out-gas from plastics and other materials. Archival quality paper and film is pH balanced to avoid self-disintegration through the formation of acids. Archival quality prints of photographic materials are reliable.
HDPE containers inside the chest work well, for the exterior I'd look to one of the airtight/watertight shipping cases (military surplus are good--though heavy.) These will keep out water, air, insects and vermin. Humans...well. :)
Things like fabric, wood, etc. should be separately sealed in their own heavy plastic containers in inert gas...moisture content in these can be iffy, since many such materials require some moisture to survive. sealed woods and artificial fibers will usual stand up well. Natural fibers kept at nueatrual pH and inert gas no O2 low humidity should be o.k. for that short a period. (Dyes, paints, textiles and such are all individually quite variable. The 'pastel' pant colors replicated in the 1960's for Revolutionary War era paints were the paints as faded over time, the originals were much brighter.)
Photos should include gray scale and color palette representations on the same media to help evaluate the original colors. Photographs of physical items will help determine their aged characteristics.
Remember, you may expect to open it in 25 years, but shit happens, and it could be a thousand!
The higher the quality the playback equipment, the more likely it will still work. There is some trade-off between state-of-the-art and older equipment....the smaller the detail on electronic chips (the newer) the more likely it will be damaged by normal radiation over time....
EMF protection is offered by a metal case or foil lining....minimized Mylar bags vacuum sealed with inert gas and o2 absorbers will protect most electronics...don't leave in any batteries! If you do want to leave some power cells, wrap them in insulating plastic, vacuum bag them with os absorbers, activated carbon packets and water absorbers in minimized Mylar, double layer and then in HDPE containers. Only store long-life lithium primary cell. They have a normal shelf-life of up to 10 years, most other power cells will be dead and corroding after 5-10 ears. Provide manuals (operating and repair) for playback equipment.
Store in a cool, dry, constant temperature and humidity location. Temperatures below -20F will reduce most chemical activity to a near standstill, enabling even food products to endure long term storage. Avoid places with wide temperature swings.
Seeds require special handling...look it up. This is because they are alive.
Don't store live pets or children :)
It feels like once a month there is an Ask-Slashdot question worrying about the long-term storage of digital information.
Get two or three raspberry PI, and copy the same data (a linux distro + everything needed to read the files) in a dozen or so different SD cards, from different brands. Data redundancy should keep you safe, and having more than one hardware, too. Add a cheap screen (although Raspberry can output RCA), and you are good to go.
The Folks here: http://millenniata.com/m-disc/ write data to discs that will survive for hundreds of years. They are effectively writing digital data into a stone tablet that looks like a DVD.
Be sure to leave an apology note for destroying the environment in your box.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff