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Vint Cerf Warns Against 'Digital Dark Age'
An anonymous reader writes: Vint Cerf, speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said we need better methods for preserving everything we do on computers. It's not just about finding better storage media — it's about recording all the aspects of modern software and operating systems so future generations can figure out how it all worked. Cerf says, "The solution is to take an X-ray snapshot of the content and the application and the operating system together, with a description of the machine that it runs on, and preserve that for long periods of time. And that digital snapshot will recreate the past in the future." Cerf is also pushing for better data preservation standards: "The key here is when you move those bits from one place to another, that you still know how to unpack them to correctly interpret the different parts. That is all achievable if we standardize the descriptions."
A lot of the original web is gone, whats left is crowded out by seo bs. And I'd rather not have and ad company decide what part of the web is relevant to me.
The same Vint Cerf who refused to take a stand against DRM?
...wants you to upload all your data to google so they can look after it for you.
just put the system in a VM image, save it, and there you go. Problem solved.
Not everything needs to be preserved for future historians. Mortality and the oblivion of time are fundamental aspects of the human condition; therefore, the things that do escape oblivion, like better literature and song and monuments, serves as a kind of immortality for men who achieved something worthwhile. Your tweets don't deserve that kind of glory.
Or whenever the first person warned about the same thing. Which was a loong time ago...
we won't exist for long...it will be the problem of the AI's that take over after the singularity, if they should even care.
I remember our Mayor presided over the opening of a 25 year old time capsule put there by the local schools. Inside was a lazer disc. When he asked to view the contents of it, nobody could find a device to play it. Vint is right. And its not just a DRM thing, its a lack of standards thing too.
Well, I must say, that's a better argument for NOT preserving everything that's on the web than I was going to make,
That being said, from the second link:
The obsolescence of data is a real problem. Much of my old digital art is on Jaz discs, which are obsolete and very expensive to get transcribed.
Couldn't have been THAT important if you didn't make a copy to other media when you saw that Jaz disks were obsolete. Just like there were probably 1,000 floppies (5-1/4, 3-1/2) that I tossed while going through my "archives." Anything important was long moved to other media.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I can fire up a TI-99/4A emulator or an Amiga emulator and run all my old software from three decades ago. Can someone name a general purpose computing platform (IE not including mainframes or supercomputers or other exotic low-volume hardware) whose software we cannot execute using an emulator?
Better known as 318230.
A 15 year old datafile or binary doesn't sound nearly as impressive as it used to.
Apple II emulators and disk images may have passed that 15 year mark.
You must be new here.
Digital preservation has an Achilles Heel in that a serious Carrington Event renders all this information useless.
We keep all the information about the Khardasians around?
A lot of the original web is gone, whats left is crowded out by seo bs. And I'd rather not have and ad company decide what part of the web is relevant to me.
Luckily I saved it to a floppy.
I'm pretty sure you are confusing "Golden Girls" with the comedy "Benson" that ran from 1979 to 1986.
Have gnu, will travel.
Yes, there is good stuff available on the web, but how much is just chatter or background noise? Nothing to see here..... I tend to visit science and tech sites, trying to feed my brain.
Anyone who's used Apple software for more than five years has been burned by forced format obsolescence - ClarisWorks, AppleWorks, old QuickTime codecs, the PICT format, SimpleText, Font Suitcases, the list goes on. And on. And that's just *one* platform and set of formats off the top of my head. I lose data to software "upgrades" so often that it's the single biggest determining factor in my upgrade cycle and a huge determining factor in the uptake and use of new software. We aren't heading for a digital dark age - we're in one already.
We all have them and Vint's agenda is good for Vint, and not much else.
If we survive as a society, in 500 years, our technology will be so advanced there will be systems we cannot even conceive of that capable of analyzing pretty much any data or bytecode you throw at it. Documentation or support systems will most likely serve a more historical than practical purpose.
Library of Congress seems like the logical place to set up to archive old OS's, hardware, emulation and other items needed to read, archive, restore & recover old media. That is what the LoC does for 'documents.'
I think this is Mr. Cerf speaking as the man who was instrumental in the Internet's creation, not as a Google employee.
This is a great idea. Preserve previous generations of software & data, emulate old hardware . Then we will be able to enjoy all the goodies from the Apple ][, IBM 360 and Commodore 64 era!
But wait, we can already emulate just about any old equipment. Most of what was worthwhile on floppy disks or tape is now online, available to most of us. Even our government, slow though they may be, has found ways of bringing old software & data to modern machines. Cloud storage and networking brings more interoperability over time and the future looks bright. Movies from the 1920s are available on modern media as well as Edison's cylinder recordings. So what's the problem? Oh, your dad's home movies. Sorry about that.
...omphaloskepsis often...
I'm sure there's more people who think Al Gore invented the Internet than know about Vint Cerf and his contributions.
Chatter is just as significant to the heartbeat of our society as is literature and media. If we had recordings or transcripts of more chatter from the past, we could understand much more about our own history, just as such information will help future historians understand us.
So true and sad, a lot of the things that were relatively commonplace (as far as literature) have either been removed entirely, relocated to servers in russia/china, and/or utterly buried in disinformation and lies such that I've spent the last 15 years just trying to make sense of what the F happened.
Actually, Bea Arthur said in an interview that it was actually "commandant," from the time she served in the marine corps and fought the Germans in WWII.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
You are embedding more information that could interest a future historian than you may think...
Is nested VMs is a workable fallback for this problem? (If it is, its definitely a slow one)
If legacy VM images really becomes an issue VMs will have to add support for legacy images. The problem then is transferred to being diligent about holding on to legacy code & tools to keep that legacy support possible.
http://www.geek.com/games/prin...
>. You obviously do not understand encryption. Unless a weakness in the underlying algorithms is found, "a faster computer" will never be sufficient to break modern encryption.
Indeed you seem to be completely ignorant of the subject. The whole science of encryption is all about finding operations that a) can be done quickly by a smart phone yet b) cannot be undone slowly by a cluster. That's far from a solved problem. In fact it's funny you mention "modern encryption" because ALL modern methods of encryption have been broken within about 10-30 years. The ONLY unbreakable encryption is an old method, the one-time-pad. It's unbreakable because the key is at least as long as the combined total of all of the messages it will ever encrypt. That makes it not particularly useful in most cases. Any and all other methods of encryption are subject to at least brute-force attack, which means they can be broken almost instantly, given sufficient computing power.
A strong cipher is one which takes a lot of computing power to break. That can calculated as (resources required to brute force) / (shortcuts known). Both of those factors always get less secure over time. The cost of the computing resources required to break it drops quickly, while at the same time new methods are discovered to break it with smaller amounts of resources.
Little known fact: _Benson_ and _The Golden Girls_ were the same show.
We desperately need legacy support.
1) All existing and past applications should be able to run on current platforms. This can be done economically and gracefully with enveloping. That would even allow modern OSs to run software from all previous OSs even those not in their lineages or hardware histories. There is no good excuse for Apple, Microsoft and others making the OS's not compatible with legacy software. Access to legacy software is key to our being able to access our data into the future.
2) OS makers should be building their OSs so that they run on older hardware. This can be done gracefully and economically with targeted compiling and fall back on features that older hardware is not able to support.
Companies are driving our data to extinction. Legacy support should be required. If it was required they would figure out how to do it gracefully because that means economically.
I think what parent is referring to is the analysis that said breaking some modern encryption methods by brute force would literally take more energy than the sun will put out in it's lifetime. This is assuming some extremely small amount of energy to change the state of a bit represented by a single electron or some such thing. What the parent seems to be ignoring are things like quantum computing and whatever may be the next big thing that shortcuts brute force.
Quite right, in fact most of what gets posted to /. including this story could be responded to with a phrase Eben Moglen has been saying for years in his talks: "RMS was right". Richard Stallman had it right years ago and, equally importantly, for the right reasons. Not "Open Source" (the younger movement Brad Kuhn rightly points out is built to greenwash proprietary-supporting non-copylefted Free Software (copy 1, copy 2) but strongly copylefted Free Software released and developed for freedom.
The Affero GPL version 3 or later will keep software Free as in freedom and meet the needs of the future. Users will undoubtedly want to know how things work and benefit from software written by programmers allowed to understand how things work. This will help us avoid the very trap the grandparent post referred to (and you wisely advised against).
Digital Citizen
Any and all other methods of encryption are subject to at least brute-force attack, which means they can be broken almost instantly, given sufficient computing power.
I think you may be underestimating how much computing power is required to brute-force attack modern encryption, especially when using a sufficiently long key. At the moment, we're talking about a modern PC operating until the heat death of the universe timeframe to break the encryption of a 2048-bit SSL certificate. Many of the early encryption schemes were broken because of flaws in the algorithms which allowed massive shortcuts to be taken or were weakened with very short keys (remember 48-bit keys?). Remember, with every bit added to the key, we double the inherent strength of the encryption, and cryptologists have gotten much, much better at creating incredibly secure algorithms as well.
It really isn't just a matter of waiting for hardware to catch up. Even with exponential speed increases in computing power (which isn't happening anymore, btw), in 30 years, we'll still be nowhere close to breaking today's state of the art encryption unless breakthroughs have been made that allow us to shorten the compute time via a weakness in the algorithms. It would take an unbelievable leap in computational efficiency (say, quantum computing) before we can even dream of brute forcing keywords of today's most secure algorithms, even within our lifetimes.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Back in the early days you needed a few smarts to make things work. That was before it was polluted by the millions of dummies and ads.
You want a car enology? Too bad. The train enology, it jumped the tracks and crashed.
The NSA's data centers will record everything we need.
Nah, it's from The Odd Couple, that show about the NASA Astronaut and Russian Cosmonaut who were totally-not-gay roommates. "I'll be your cosmonaut".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Some of mine are over 50 years old and still work perfectly. Reproduction doesn't even require electricity. They are very low maintenance, but not very space efficient.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What the hell is an "enology"? Is it the study of wine?
One gets the feeling that you are one of the millions of dummies polluting the "it" you are (obscurely) referring to.
There is no physical law that ties energy consumption to computing power. Efficiency increases, new concepts etc will take care of the that.
There are some over 5000 years old and still work perfectly. Reproduction doesn't even require electricity. They are very low maintenance, but not very space efficient.
See what I did there? You've suggested a medium which may be somewhat practical for a very limited purpose, but wholly unworkable for the type or quantity of storage needed today. Unless you were going for humor, in which case I proffer a wry smile.
In reality, what is needed is not a static storage format but a dynamic one which regularly reads, verifies, updates, re-stores, and then re-verifies the files on a regular basis.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Being that Bea Arthur looks a lot like Brezhnev, cosmonaut is acceptable, too.
Actually there is.
There is no physical law that ties energy consumption to computing power.
The Planck Constant begs to differ.
Efficiency increases
The law of diminishing returns would also like a word.
new concepts etc will take care of the that.
Ah, the secular religion of progress. Any rationalist will tell you the god you call Technology doesn't answer prayers.
I used to really like the Tempest game for that, and the card game wasn't too bad.
I wanted to get Monopoly and Mahjong for it and some other games but by then they stopped selling them on the iTunes store. There was a pirate torrent going around but the apps were encrypted and no way to install them on another device. Finally they just stopped making them.
Apps like that... gone forever.
iOS 3.0 apps that got the App store going... gone forever. I still remember playing the unofficial lights off game, beat all 150 levels. (Wrote a program to solve them)
Unless someone wants to make an emulator for the original iPhone you could do it by downloading the ROMs just like old Apple emulators, but how would you approve the apps without a 3.0 app store around?
In theory someone could crack Apple's old signing keys and have a local "FakeAppStore" program that validates them and allows installation on the emulator.
The "cease and desist" letter would probably arrive less that one minute after putting such project online.
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
Yep, first website I gave my CC info to was hothothot.com, back in, dunno, 92/93. Ordered hot sauce, the standout was Sriacha, aka Rooster Sauce. Website is long gone, as are the other things I ordered to get free shipping, but I go through 3/4 Sriacha bottles a year to this day. I think the Rooster sauce was the thing I used to push shipping to free, funny how things work.
>. cryptologists have gotten much, much better at creating incredibly secure algorithms as well.
The evidence indicates otherwise. In fact, we're currently proving that most material which is currently encrypted can be readily decrypted by quantum comouters. We thought MD5 was secure, until it was broken. We thought SSLv1 was secure, until it was broken, we thought SSLv2 was secure, until it was broken. That goes back to the Caesar cipher. Caesar thought it was secure - until it was broken.
We have some new algorithms which might be reasonably secure against quantum computing, maybe. We don't know what people will do with quantum computers. Remember ten years ago when CAPTCHAs were reasonably secure, computers couldn't solve them efficiently?
I've written some of those "heat death of the universe" computations - as part of my marketing material. I compare the time since dinosaurs and the time since the birth of the solar system to the time required to brute force Strongbox. It would take MUCH longer to brute force Strongbox than the time the solar system has existed. That's explained on my sales pages. On our R&D systems, we're making constant improvements because we know the actual time frame before we get owned is more likely to be in the next few years, if we don't keep constantly improving. We pitch "billions of years", and we've had two urgent security updates because there have been issues that black hats could exploit right away.
The evidence indicates otherwise. In fact, we're currently proving that most material which is currently encrypted can be readily decrypted by quantum comouters [sic].
What evidence? What quantum computers? I know of one (D-Wave) and it cannot do decryption. As a matter of fact, it's questionable whether the D-Wave machine does anything better than existing scalar architectures.
We thought MD5 was secure, until it was broken. We thought SSLv1 was secure, until it was broken, we thought SSLv2 was secure, until it was broken.
All of those were broken due to a flaws in the algorithms, NOT compute power. Plus, SSLv1 was never publicly used, it was found to be faulty before it was ever released.
I think you need to do more homework for your marketing campaigns to hold any water. If you think it's so easy to brute force a 2048-bit key, put your money where your mouth is and try. Or, ask someone with more brains than you about why it can't be done. If they answer you without laughing I will be shocked.
I think that CMU is doing something like this already:
https://olivearchive.org/
One of the key players is the person who brought us AFS. How cool!
Will
remove nospam. to email!
Thank god for https://archive.org , they even have Geocities just before it went offline.
Wasn't NSA around back then with their backups? ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
My wife did her thesis on this subject
The case for the creation of a reliable digital archive for the preservation of personal digital objetcs
http://explorer.cyberstreet.co...
What with them being 'just the same as us', and not having an average IQ of 70? I mean, what difference does it make to your once safe, white country, if millions of AFRICANS move into it? It's not as if they're incapable of making their own, shitty third world countries work, is it? It's not as if they're here to STEAL your country from you, because they can't make their own countries work, is it...
This has already happened to some university researchers who used proprietary software for research that required yearly licensing or platforms that are no longer supported by university IT staff. Even better, the company may have gone out of business or the software has been discontinued.
... because AFRICANS sure as hell aren't going to produce anything of any technological value to the world - EVER.
Care to show us any evidence to the contrary?
Freedom without the right to be free is not freedom.
Freedom with the right to tell someone else no to their own property isn't.
I don't think they kept the old site archived though hothothot.com is still around and they were offline for a long time during some kind of remodel and no longer carry Clancy's Fancy after the remodel. Strange since I figure they would try to have the largest selection possible. But anyway, the site is still online and might be the oldest web shop by now. As far as I know, it was the second web shop ever but I cannot recall which might have been the first.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
You think a 2048 bit key makes a cipher secure? Most SSL implementations vulnerable to POODLE are using 2048 bit key with DES encryption in cipher block chaining 3 mode. So unless you're going to argue that POODLE doesn't exist ...
There's actually a reason those of us who do this stuff for a living haven't all retired, saying "we're done", the algorithms are secure.
You may want to check the project Liitin home page http://liitin.org
It deals with software and hardware compatibility and endurance of data, functionality and even user interfaces. It is more current time and future oriented, but could also serve as a reliably storage place for virtual images.The primary goals have been reducing the frustration of loosing data and functionality even in our time, but also to offer a trustworthy foundation to build new things on top of existing ones, something that none of the currents systems are capable of.
Additionally it offers an easy and innovative means of open-source collaboration.
Luckily I saved it to a floppy.
You should upload it somewhere so we can all enjoy it. I want to see some 640x480 boob pictures.
You could use reversible computing to crack (classical computing-based) encryption, so it would only take however much energy you need to keep the system shielded from the environment. The only potentially-unknown bits that need to be erased are those used for error correction.
"dymanic" sounds like very high maintenance. We will never have anything like the 2000 years of papyrus and stone. Glass disks might work, but reproduction issues still have to be worked out. It has to be human readable with absolutely minimal effort for a very long time.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”