Yes. Especially if you have an ironic/sarcastic/sardonic mind. Something relatable and recallable : Banking? AllMyEggsInOne Facebook? PeopleCareAboutThisCrap Digg? AMillionMonkeys/.? YouInsensitiveClod
L33T as desired for added security. Though with phrases you really take note of sites that have an arbitrary length limit. "Between 6 to 8 characters? Really?"
Yes we do know, with much much greater certainty and scientific comparison of evidence than how we understand the lifespan of optical and magnetic media. Searching "paper" on the ISO website gives well over a hundred relevant standards ranging from biological degradation to recycled quality, chemical absorption, chemical transfer to food, inkjet, and photographic permanence.
Paper has been around long enough to actually have a control group, and we can manufacture paper, papyrus, or vellum chemically identical to any point in history. Today's paper can be completely pH neutral, or buffered against acidity, so it stands a chance of lasting even longer. Newsprint degrades because it's designed to be economic and easily recycled, not because we haven't worked out the glitches.
If that doesn't suit the purists, you can always make your own paper in your home with the same process it was made hundreds of years ago. Go to a museum gift shop and ask them to find you a starter kit. I suggest trying one that asks for an old pair of blue jeans for the fiber.
As for ink, assuming it still comes from plants or animals, it's pretty well the same if not better these days. You can still buy good old India ink, which is cleaner now than it was 2300 years ago, or else it probably wouldn't be used by microbiologists. Discussing the finer points of plasticized inks would be more relevant in the advertising and food packaging industry.
You might as well ask how today's paints are different from what da Vinci used. Of course they're different, but they aren't worse unless they're designed to be.
You laugh, but I know people (over age 50) that have actually rewound their DVDs to the beginning after the credits roll. College and University professor people.
It would sound slightly less ridiculous if this happened in the days of laserdiscs (and I'm sure it did), but if you've always rewound your movies, and nobody tells you how an optical disc works, what else are you supposed to think?
OT: Thinking Normal and Metal is an equalizer setting makes total sense. How would this kid know some cassettes were silver, and what that meant? It doesn't make sense to think that people only want two equalizer settings, but in the absence of other knowledge we just go with what we know. If TFA's language is the kid's own, he's intelligent, but it's simply a foreign concept that a music player would not have an equalizer, or that storage media has two sides.
You'd be wrong then. Epson's pigment based inks are archival grade, are projected not to fade for over 100 years; I have a $99 printer that uses them (never mind it's $160 for new ink).
Speaking as a film and digital photographer, with a sometimes-career in digitizing archival and library special collections, I do love Epson's archival inks. However your operative word there is "projected". We know for a fact that traditional paper and ink lasts over 500 years when cared for. In the next 500 years do you even think we'll be using ink or paper or optical discs for our day to day lives? But those books will still be there. Two-thousand years of human history will still be there, unless we choose to destroy them.
Basically these media companies (meaning the manufacturers of injkets, and optical discs) are selling us inexpensive product with the assumption that we will be dead or apathetic by the time our 4,000 pet and baby photos have disintegrated. In my lines of work, I have to switch modes between the client that wants to pay reasonably for a nice portrait on the wall for maybe 15 years plus 50 in the attic, and the institution that exists to keep a piece of history for the next 300 years until the building falls down. They're not the same. Do you really think your great-great grandchildren want to see your lolcat material? Maybe in fifty years everything will be equal in quality and price, but it's 2009 and we're not there yet.
On topic: The library information Ray Bradbury is extolling will still exist long after "Today's Internet" is an archaic memory. Though, I'm sure the Pokemon wiki pages will still be completely up to date. So there's that at least.;)
Slashdot Mirror
For a long time zero was represented as a space, so the coders aren't incorrect, just 800 years behind the times.
Compound interest is a bitch, though.
Yes. Especially if you have an ironic/sarcastic/sardonic mind. Something relatable and recallable : /.? YouInsensitiveClod
Banking? AllMyEggsInOne
Facebook? PeopleCareAboutThisCrap
Digg? AMillionMonkeys
L33T as desired for added security. Though with phrases you really take note of sites that have an arbitrary length limit. "Between 6 to 8 characters? Really?"
Yes we do know, with much much greater certainty and scientific comparison of evidence than how we understand the lifespan of optical and magnetic media. Searching "paper" on the ISO website gives well over a hundred relevant standards ranging from biological degradation to recycled quality, chemical absorption, chemical transfer to food, inkjet, and photographic permanence.
Paper has been around long enough to actually have a control group, and we can manufacture paper, papyrus, or vellum chemically identical to any point in history. Today's paper can be completely pH neutral, or buffered against acidity, so it stands a chance of lasting even longer. Newsprint degrades because it's designed to be economic and easily recycled, not because we haven't worked out the glitches.
If that doesn't suit the purists, you can always make your own paper in your home with the same process it was made hundreds of years ago. Go to a museum gift shop and ask them to find you a starter kit. I suggest trying one that asks for an old pair of blue jeans for the fiber.
As for ink, assuming it still comes from plants or animals, it's pretty well the same if not better these days. You can still buy good old India ink, which is cleaner now than it was 2300 years ago, or else it probably wouldn't be used by microbiologists. Discussing the finer points of plasticized inks would be more relevant in the advertising and food packaging industry.
You might as well ask how today's paints are different from what da Vinci used. Of course they're different, but they aren't worse unless they're designed to be.
You laugh, but I know people (over age 50) that have actually rewound their DVDs to the beginning after the credits roll. College and University professor people.
It would sound slightly less ridiculous if this happened in the days of laserdiscs (and I'm sure it did), but if you've always rewound your movies, and nobody tells you how an optical disc works, what else are you supposed to think?
OT: Thinking Normal and Metal is an equalizer setting makes total sense. How would this kid know some cassettes were silver, and what that meant? It doesn't make sense to think that people only want two equalizer settings, but in the absence of other knowledge we just go with what we know. If TFA's language is the kid's own, he's intelligent, but it's simply a foreign concept that a music player would not have an equalizer, or that storage media has two sides.
You'd be wrong then. Epson's pigment based inks are archival grade, are projected not to fade for over 100 years; I have a $99 printer that uses them (never mind it's $160 for new ink).
Speaking as a film and digital photographer, with a sometimes-career in digitizing archival and library special collections, I do love Epson's archival inks. However your operative word there is "projected". We know for a fact that traditional paper and ink lasts over 500 years when cared for. In the next 500 years do you even think we'll be using ink or paper or optical discs for our day to day lives? But those books will still be there. Two-thousand years of human history will still be there, unless we choose to destroy them.
Basically these media companies (meaning the manufacturers of injkets, and optical discs) are selling us inexpensive product with the assumption that we will be dead or apathetic by the time our 4,000 pet and baby photos have disintegrated. In my lines of work, I have to switch modes between the client that wants to pay reasonably for a nice portrait on the wall for maybe 15 years plus 50 in the attic, and the institution that exists to keep a piece of history for the next 300 years until the building falls down. They're not the same. Do you really think your great-great grandchildren want to see your lolcat material? Maybe in fifty years everything will be equal in quality and price, but it's 2009 and we're not there yet.
On topic: The library information Ray Bradbury is extolling will still exist long after "Today's Internet" is an archaic memory. Though, I'm sure the Pokemon wiki pages will still be completely up to date. So there's that at least. ;)