Back in 1980, when I was a hardcore high school AD&D player, my friends and I used to talk about how great it would be to have a table, with a computer inside, for gaming.
At the time, there were some utilities that could help with housekeeping in the game, but it was really clunky to have a whole computer there behind the DM's screen. Imagine, your character sheet and virtual dice right in front of you; automated tracking for dice rolls, combat and spell recovery; fancy graphics for your map, characters, and monsters; maybe even a soundtrack and audio effects.
And yes, WoW has all the features I just described, and more, but the element of everyone getting together around a table and playing face-to-face cannot be replaced.
Needless to say, I want one of these, especially for when I retire and go back to gaming full-time:-).
Yeah, most parents have enough energy to stay awake for at least 40 minutes after they put their kids to bed:-) (before you ask, I have twins who are four years old).
My favorite coffee comes from a can of Lavazza ground espresso made in a Bialetti mokka pot. The pot was $20, the coffee is about $5.50 a can. It takes 20 minutes to make on a stovetop, and it's nice and strong. I know it isn't as fresh as some methods, but it tastes good enough to me, plus it gives me a great buzz.
> Quick, list three bad things about communism. Go.
1. central planning model results in inefficient distribution of resources 2. government structure too easily lends itself to dictatorship 3. great need for all people to buy in to the philosophy of the state, leading to secret police and brutal treatment of citizens
As a QA guy, I can't tell you how many times I've been told, on a Monday, "Do whatever is required to make sure this software is stable, as long as you release it on Friday."
We're lucky we can get through a single pass of functionality testing; forget about load/stress/performance/long-term stability. We're lucky we have a test environment composed of hardware retired from production, because it was deemed insufficient to meet the needs of the production environment.
True story: I was supposed to be testing a product that interfaced with an IP videoconferencing bridge. Except we had no such bridge in our environment, and no budget to purchase one. No one in management thought this was absurd until I took a cardboard box and wrote "Video Bridge" on it, along with little holes labeled eth0, eth1, DS1, etc. (much like the famous P-p-p-powerbook). I complained to the VP of Engineering that our tests were blocked because I couldn't get the video bridge to come up on our lab network. When I showed him the "box," he got the point.:-).
In my experience, customers are more interested in getting new features ASAP than they are in reliability, which is why so many organizations put a premium on rolling out new features quickly. When was the last time anyone worked on a release with no new features outside of performance and stability improvements?
I'm not deprecating their stance, just questioning their right to articulate this stance in light of their other actions (or inaction, in this case). In this case, I have to respectfully disagree with your statement, or at least suppose that we are discussing this from two slightly different points of view.
By "keeping issues separate," as you suggest, I fear that I could slip down the slope of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." (i.e., "I support your stance on issue X, regardless of your position on A, B, and C"). Just look at the history of the relationship between the US and Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden for an extreme example of where this could lead. The US agreed with their positions in regard to Iran and Afghanistan, and thus supported them, without considering the implications of their stance on other issues.
I agree this is an overblown exaggeration when compared to the issues of Net Neutrality and the RIAA, but please take it as it is meant in the context of illustrating a point in this argument.
What I would like to know is: how do these artists feel about the extoritionist tacticts of the RIAA? Especially when their work funds the labels who pay the RIAA?
Any musician whose record label funds the RIAA has no standing, in my opinion, to make statements about what is just.
Not at all: I made the choice to spend only $14/month for basic cable antenna service, about $5/month on prepaid cell service, and about $150/week on groceries which I use to cook my own meals. Our cars are 7 years old, but are well-maintained (I hope to make them last at least 10 years each). The tradeoff is that, by foregoing these luxuries, it's possible for me to work and for my wife to stay home full-time and raise our two kids. I know many other people in my situation, especially in the tech field where many salaries (mine included) have not recovered to the levels they were at before the tech bubble burst.
Find a job working for a small company where you have to install, configure, and support every aspect of the business. You will be underpaid, will work ridiculous hours, and will be stressed because there's more to do be done than you can possibly cover. You will, however, learn everything you can about what you are doing, including the ways in which computerized tools impact the business. Document everything you do in a way that ensures someone else can figure things out if you leave.
After about two years, you can start looking for serious sysadmin positions. When you get into an interview, you will be able to look the person on the other side of the desk straight in the eye and say, "I have done x, y, and z. Here is how and why I did what I did. I may not be familiar with the tools in your organization, but let me tell you about my last job, and how I taught myself to do x, y and z. I have demonstrated initiative, a strong work ethic, and an ability to solve problems, even in areas where I have no experience. Hire me."
It helps if you have samples of your work. If they want someone who can write scripts, bring a few of your scripts, even if it's only hard copies, describe why and how your wrote the script, and walk through what it does. Show them the documents you wrote describing how you set up a kickstart environment, or the VPN, or automated backups.
When you get to the new job, keep learning more. Maybe pick up a certification if you can get reimbursed for it. Keep doing this for the rest of your career, learning and finding new opportunities to expand your skills. If you work hard and you're lucky, you will not only stay employed, but you'll also find that your jobs get better and better, especially when the markets recover (as they seem to be doing a bit now in some areas).
>If that were true, then how come the world's major religions ( Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism ) asked people to practice charity hundreds or thousands of years before the development of modern free markets?
Because the world's major religions preach that your spiritual welfare is more important than your material welfare, no matter the market or political system of your culture. Material wealth and comfort can distract you from what is important in life. Practices like compassion and doing good works lead to spiritual wealth, and enhance your spiritual life, which is more permanent and true than your physical life.
>But please don't misinterpret your results and give up. Generate an interest in the student and you'll find >students who will learn.
I absolutely agree. What I discovered is that a relatively small group of people can be "students who will learn." Maybe I had an inflated opinion of my own ability to teach, or maybe I ran into the wrong group of people, but that was my daily experience working in support for 5 years at two different companies.
I left support over 11 years ago for a job in R and D; maybe things are different now. I know they're different for me, as in much better in just about every way: more money, more interesting work, better people to work with.
I believed that all you had to do was give people the chance to learn the basics of what they were doing with a PC, the basics of what is actually happening when they open a file or copy a file, or start a program, and some magic light would go on in their heads and they'd "get it."
Then I started working in desktop support.
This was back in 1990. There was no web and no email at work (except for a few executives who used Procomm to connect at 33.6 kbps to the corporate mail server). Most companies had adopted PCs for use, but many, like mine, were still integrating them into their daily business tasks. We were experimenting with this newfangled thing called "desktop publishing," and the accounting department was debating the relative merits of Excel for Windows 3.1 vs. Lotus 123 for DOS. Some holdouts insisted on using Quattro Pro.
I was young and idealistic. I thought that the only problem most people had was lack of familiarity with these new, powerful tools. I thought a little education would fix it.
Boy was I wrong.
I gave seminars, I took time to explain what was happening every time I fixed a problem for someone. I wrote simple memos with pictures -- "How to Format A Floppy Disk" was one of my masterworks, as was "There are two kinds of hard disks -- those that have failed and those that will fail. So make backups!". For five years, I tried, and I believed I could make a difference.
I gave up and switched jobs. But I learned something from the experience.
I learned that the problem is twofold: 1.) the vast majority of the population doesn't care how a computer works and 2.) the vast majority also lacks the mentality required to understand what's happening inside a computer. I'm not saying these are unintelligent people; I'm saying there's a certain mindset that you need to understand what's happening in your computer, and you either have it or you don't. Just like some people really get off on balancing a ledger, or closing a sale. I've worked with janitors who went from not knowing how to turn the machine on to writing Macromedia Director presentations in less than a year, and I've worked with lawyers who were baffled at the complexities of saving a file to a floppy (and who never seemed to quite get the hang of it).
Call me cynical, but my conclusion is that's the way it is, and that's the way it always will be, regardless of how much education people receive.
>Anglo Saxon have rise to dutch, fresian and arguably German too. >They can't all be english. Its a bit like saying Latin is just >Old Italian/Spanish/French.
I agree that the Angles and Saxons comprised people and languages that are part of all the areas you mention.
I was talking specifically about a group of people living in Britain who spoke a particular dialect of Anglo-Saxon, which is considered by English scholars (such as JRR Tolkien) to be "Old English." This time period corresponds to 400 CE to 1066 CE.
Examples of Old English literature include "Beowulf," "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," and "The Dream of the Rood." One of Tolkien's contributions to the study of Old English is his lecture on Beowulf ("The Monsters and the Critics"), wherein he argues that the poem should be judged on its own artistic merits. Seamus Heaney's recent translation of Beowulf into modern English emphasizes that kind of a reading (I highly recommend it!).
In your example, Latin relates to Italian/Spanish/French as the Germanic "mother tongue" does to the German, Dutch, Fresian, and Old English languages of late antiquity.
Technically, Anlgo-Saxon is English, aka "Old English."
I think you also miss JRRT's background as one of the greatest scholars of Anglo-Saxon and Nordic languages in the 20th century. Naturally, he would have believed that his chosen field of study was the most significant literary period. Read the translation of some epics, eddas, and sagas, and you'll read stories about elves, dwarves, heroes, dragons, a magic sword that was broken and re-forged, and a magic ring.
OK, Mr. Cresanti, so the US is lacking in IT workers with the "appropriate skill sets."
Pray tell, then, what are the appropriate skill sets? What, you don't know? You just know that the IT-industry lobbyist who took you out for a lobster dinner and lap dance last night said we don't have the right kind of people in the US, and we need to allow cheaper workers in. He must know, because he's getting paid so much by the big IT brass, right?
Oh, wait, is the "appropriate skill set" something like eight to ten years of developing a particular part of a particular kind of application in a particular environment using a particular set of tools? Then BS, because you don't learn that in school.
From where I sit, I see thousands of experienced IT people getting laid off every month for the last five years. I don't see any of the employers who are crying labor shortage looking to scoop up even some of these people.
I don't see many employers striving to hire new college grads who lack experience, but have demonstrated ability, for purpose of mentoring them to be the next generation of leaders. (Oh wait, we are doing that with foreign workers, I forgot).
Cry me a river, Mr. Cresanti, but until you have some specifics to back up your argument, at least do us the favor of crying in private.
>> the Legislative (which happens to have the Congress and the Senate as its two main parts).
Uh, actually the Legislative branch is the Congress, which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Congress has two houses (House and Senate) because of a compromise reached when the U.S. Constitution was written. All states, regardless of population, have two Senators, so each state has equal representation in the Senate. The number of Representatives for each state in the House is determined by the population of each state. If there are more people in your state, you have more representatives in the House, thus ensuring representation proportional to the number of people in the state.
Good point about disaster recovery. The first thing that popped into my head when I read this was AT&T's mobile CO, which is a similar idea. Essentially, it's a complete, self-contained telecom central office in two tractor-trailers that can be moved anywhere in the US to restore service, even after a "smoking crater event."
From the parent: "If you're thinking of archives we want to be around for centuries, that's easy enough. Put them on a server with a fairly large RAID array, and replicate it over the Internet to another datacenter or two. If one hard drive dies, you swap it out for another. If one RAID controller or whole box goes down, hard, you build a new one and replicate the data back. If you don't want the hassle of doing this yourself, especially if it's just a small amount of personal data, you get Google to do it for you."
The problem is that, 100 years from now, if your RAID controller goes down, will you be able to get a repalcement? Will we still even be using disks 100 years from now? Will Google still be around in 100 years?
Fine, you might say, if there's no disks or Google or whatever you can always copy your data to the latest and greatest storage medium. But there's the rub: it costs, to copy and to maintain this stuff.
If you write something on paper, after you write it once, you're done for the next 100 years or more, as long as you store it correctly. The cost of maintaining your paper data for a long time is much lower than it is for electronic data.
Granted, you'll want an electronic copy of any important data you create. But who's to say that what people consider important now will still be important in 100 years? Or that someone in the future will find value in something we consider unimportant today?
If Martian or Lunar colonies become self-sufficient, it is possible that they may declare themselves independent of any Earth-based government. "Off-world" settlements are so distant that governments based on Earth will have no practical means of exerting control.
In answer to the "experts" quoted in this article: SF movies are a better indicator of what's happening today than they are of what the future will be like.
On the surface, it would seem that SF stories are about "the future;" that they're about making predictions, based on scientific extrapolation. I've also noticed, however, that many SF stories are about issues and concerns of the day. Orwell, even though he's known for two novels late in his career, was a prominent journalist: I wonder if Winston's job at the Ministry of Truth resembles anything Orwell saw his editors do? (btw, I think "Brave New World" is more accurate and scary than "1984") At the height of the cold war, how many SF movies were there about the effects of radiation ("Godzilla," anyone?), or about invaders from space?
And now, we think that movies about expanding urban blight (the gritty future of "Blade Runner"), the ethical dilemmas of advanced biological science ("Gattaca"), and rogue artificial intelligences (too many to choose from... "Colossus" springs to mind) are about the future? These stories challenge us to recognize and deal with problems that are here now, while they are small enough to be dealt with.
Recall that the writers of these stories, prescient though they undoubtedly are, are still people like you and me, living in the same era as we do. How can they escape letting the concerns and issues of the day into their writing?
Slashdot Mirror
At the time, there were some utilities that could help with housekeeping in the game, but it was really clunky to have a whole computer there behind the DM's screen. Imagine, your character sheet and virtual dice right in front of you; automated tracking for dice rolls, combat and spell recovery; fancy graphics for your map, characters, and monsters; maybe even a soundtrack and audio effects.
And yes, WoW has all the features I just described, and more, but the element of everyone getting together around a table and playing face-to-face cannot be replaced.
Needless to say, I want one of these, especially for when I retire and go back to gaming full-time :-).
Yeah, most parents have enough energy to stay awake for at least 40 minutes after they put their kids to bed :-) (before you ask, I have twins who are four years old).
... just wait a few years until they require an RFID implant before they'll interview you. :-).
My favorite coffee comes from a can of Lavazza ground espresso made in a Bialetti mokka pot. The pot was $20, the coffee is about $5.50 a can. It takes 20 minutes to make on a stovetop, and it's nice and strong. I know it isn't as fresh as some methods, but it tastes good enough to me, plus it gives me a great buzz.
> Quick, list three bad things about communism. Go.
1. central planning model results in inefficient distribution of resources
2. government structure too easily lends itself to dictatorship
3. great need for all people to buy in to the philosophy of the state, leading to secret police and brutal treatment of citizens
There are more, but you only asked for three.
As a QA guy, I can't tell you how many times I've been told, on a Monday, "Do whatever is required to make sure this software is stable, as long as you release it on Friday."
:-).
We're lucky we can get through a single pass of functionality testing; forget about load/stress/performance/long-term stability. We're lucky we have a test environment composed of hardware retired from production, because it was deemed insufficient to meet the needs of the production environment.
True story: I was supposed to be testing a product that interfaced with an IP videoconferencing bridge. Except we had no such bridge in our environment, and no budget to purchase one. No one in management thought this was absurd until I took a cardboard box and wrote "Video Bridge" on it, along with little holes labeled eth0, eth1, DS1, etc. (much like the famous P-p-p-powerbook). I complained to the VP of Engineering that our tests were blocked because I couldn't get the video bridge to come up on our lab network. When I showed him the "box," he got the point.
In my experience, customers are more interested in getting new features ASAP than they are in reliability, which is why so many organizations put a premium on rolling out new features quickly. When was the last time anyone worked on a release with no new features outside of performance and stability improvements?
I'm not deprecating their stance, just questioning their right to articulate this stance in light of their other actions (or inaction, in this case). In this case, I have to respectfully disagree with your statement, or at least suppose that we are discussing this from two slightly different points of view.
By "keeping issues separate," as you suggest, I fear that I could slip down the slope of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." (i.e., "I support your stance on issue X, regardless of your position on A, B, and C"). Just look at the history of the relationship between the US and Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden for an extreme example of where this could lead. The US agreed with their positions in regard to Iran and Afghanistan, and thus supported them, without considering the implications of their stance on other issues.
I agree this is an overblown exaggeration when compared to the issues of Net Neutrality and the RIAA, but please take it as it is meant in the context of illustrating a point in this argument.
What I would like to know is: how do these artists feel about the extoritionist tacticts of the RIAA? Especially when their work funds the labels who pay the RIAA?
Any musician whose record label funds the RIAA has no standing, in my opinion, to make statements about what is just.
Not at all: I made the choice to spend only $14/month for basic cable antenna service, about $5/month on prepaid cell service, and about $150/week on groceries which I use to cook my own meals. Our cars are 7 years old, but are well-maintained (I hope to make them last at least 10 years each). The tradeoff is that, by foregoing these luxuries, it's possible for me to work and for my wife to stay home full-time and raise our two kids. I know many other people in my situation, especially in the tech field where many salaries (mine included) have not recovered to the levels they were at before the tech bubble burst.
Find a job working for a small company where you have to install, configure, and support every aspect of the business. You will be underpaid, will work ridiculous hours, and will be stressed because there's more to do be done than you can possibly cover. You will, however, learn everything you can about what you are doing, including the ways in which computerized tools impact the business. Document everything you do in a way that ensures someone else can figure things out if you leave.
After about two years, you can start looking for serious sysadmin positions. When you get into an interview, you will be able to look the person on the other side of the desk straight in the eye and say, "I have done x, y, and z. Here is how and why I did what I did. I may not be familiar with the tools in your organization, but let me tell you about my last job, and how I taught myself to do x, y and z. I have demonstrated initiative, a strong work ethic, and an ability to solve problems, even in areas where I have no experience. Hire me."
It helps if you have samples of your work. If they want someone who can write scripts, bring a few of your scripts, even if it's only hard copies, describe why and how your wrote the script, and walk through what it does. Show them the documents you wrote describing how you set up a kickstart environment, or the VPN, or automated backups.
When you get to the new job, keep learning more. Maybe pick up a certification if you can get reimbursed for it. Keep doing this for the rest of your career, learning and finding new opportunities to expand your skills. If you work hard and you're lucky, you will not only stay employed, but you'll also find that your jobs get better and better, especially when the markets recover (as they seem to be doing a bit now in some areas).
Good luck!
kashi golean crunch cereal with fresh blueberries (no milk)
strong black tea
Really? I guess there's no good advice at all in the 766 comments to his question at this link, huh?:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200612291 71726760#comments/
You might get a better response there (i.e., less noise than /.), especially since Groklaw is about legal issues surrounding tech.
>If that were true, then how come the world's major religions ( Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism ) asked people to practice charity hundreds or thousands of years before the development of modern free markets?
Because the world's major religions preach that your spiritual welfare is more important than your material welfare, no matter the market or political system of your culture. Material wealth and comfort can distract you from what is important in life. Practices like compassion and doing good works lead to spiritual wealth, and enhance your spiritual life, which is more permanent and true than your physical life.
>But please don't misinterpret your results and give up. Generate an interest in the student and you'll find >students who will learn.
I absolutely agree. What I discovered is that a relatively small group of people can be "students who will learn." Maybe I had an inflated opinion of my own ability to teach, or maybe I ran into the wrong group of people, but that was my daily experience working in support for 5 years at two different companies.
I left support over 11 years ago for a job in R and D; maybe things are different now. I know they're different for me, as in much better in just about every way: more money, more interesting work, better people to work with.
I used to believe this too.
I believed that all you had to do was give people the chance to learn the basics of what they were doing with a PC, the basics of what is actually happening when they open a file or copy a file, or start a program, and some magic light would go on in their heads and they'd "get it."
Then I started working in desktop support.
This was back in 1990. There was no web and no email at work (except for a few executives who used Procomm to connect at 33.6 kbps to the corporate mail server). Most companies had adopted PCs for use, but many, like mine, were still integrating them into their daily business tasks. We were experimenting with this newfangled thing called "desktop publishing," and the accounting department was debating the relative merits of Excel for Windows 3.1 vs. Lotus 123 for DOS. Some holdouts insisted on using Quattro Pro.
I was young and idealistic. I thought that the only problem most people had was lack of familiarity with these new, powerful tools. I thought a little education would fix it.
Boy was I wrong.
I gave seminars, I took time to explain what was happening every time I fixed a problem for someone. I wrote simple memos with pictures -- "How to Format A Floppy Disk" was one of my masterworks, as was "There are two kinds of hard disks -- those that have failed and those that will fail. So make backups!". For five years, I tried, and I believed I could make a difference.
I gave up and switched jobs. But I learned something from the experience.
I learned that the problem is twofold: 1.) the vast majority of the population doesn't care how a computer works and 2.) the vast majority also lacks the mentality required to understand what's happening inside a computer. I'm not saying these are unintelligent people; I'm saying there's a certain mindset that you need to understand what's happening in your computer, and you either have it or you don't. Just like some people really get off on balancing a ledger, or closing a sale. I've worked with janitors who went from not knowing how to turn the machine on to writing Macromedia Director presentations in less than a year, and I've worked with lawyers who were baffled at the complexities of saving a file to a floppy (and who never seemed to quite get the hang of it).
Call me cynical, but my conclusion is that's the way it is, and that's the way it always will be, regardless of how much education people receive.
>Anglo Saxon have rise to dutch, fresian and arguably German too.
>They can't all be english. Its a bit like saying Latin is just
>Old Italian/Spanish/French.
I agree that the Angles and Saxons comprised people and languages that are part of all the areas you mention.
I was talking specifically about a group of people living in Britain who spoke a particular dialect of Anglo-Saxon, which is considered by English scholars (such as JRR Tolkien) to be "Old English." This time period corresponds to 400 CE to 1066 CE.
Examples of Old English literature include "Beowulf," "The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle," and "The Dream of the Rood." One of Tolkien's contributions to the study of Old English is his lecture on Beowulf ("The Monsters and the Critics"), wherein he argues that the poem should be judged on its own artistic merits. Seamus Heaney's recent translation of Beowulf into modern English emphasizes that kind of a reading (I highly recommend it!).
In your example, Latin relates to Italian/Spanish/French as the Germanic "mother tongue" does to the German, Dutch, Fresian, and Old English languages of late antiquity.
Technically, Anlgo-Saxon is English, aka "Old English."
I think you also miss JRRT's background as one of the greatest scholars of Anglo-Saxon and Nordic languages in the 20th century. Naturally, he would have believed that his chosen field of study was the most significant literary period. Read the translation of some epics, eddas, and sagas, and you'll read stories about elves, dwarves, heroes, dragons, a magic sword that was broken and re-forged, and a magic ring.
OK, Mr. Cresanti, so the US is lacking in IT workers with the "appropriate skill sets."
Pray tell, then, what are the appropriate skill sets? What, you don't know? You just know that the IT-industry lobbyist who took you out for a lobster dinner and lap dance last night said we don't have the right kind of people in the US, and we need to allow cheaper workers in. He must know, because he's getting paid so much by the big IT brass, right?
Oh, wait, is the "appropriate skill set" something like eight to ten years of developing a particular part of a particular kind of application in a particular environment using a particular set of tools? Then BS, because you don't learn that in school.
From where I sit, I see thousands of experienced IT people getting laid off every month for the last five years. I don't see any of the employers who are crying labor shortage looking to scoop up even some of these people.
I don't see many employers striving to hire new college grads who lack experience, but have demonstrated ability, for purpose of mentoring them to be the next generation of leaders. (Oh wait, we are doing that with foreign workers, I forgot).
Cry me a river, Mr. Cresanti, but until you have some specifics to back up your argument, at least do us the favor of crying in private.
>> the Legislative (which happens to have the Congress and the Senate as its two main parts).
Uh, actually the Legislative branch is the Congress, which consists of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Congress has two houses (House and Senate) because of a compromise reached when the U.S. Constitution was written. All states, regardless of population, have two Senators, so each state has equal representation in the Senate. The number of Representatives for each state in the House is determined by the population of each state. If there are more people in your state, you have more representatives in the House, thus ensuring representation proportional to the number of people in the state.
Good point about disaster recovery. The first thing that popped into my head when I read this was AT&T's mobile CO, which is a similar idea. Essentially, it's a complete, self-contained telecom central office in two tractor-trailers that can be moved anywhere in the US to restore service, even after a "smoking crater event."
From the parent:
"If you're thinking of archives we want to be around for centuries, that's easy enough. Put them on a server with a fairly large RAID array, and replicate it over the Internet to another datacenter or two. If one hard drive dies, you swap it out for another. If one RAID controller or whole box goes down, hard, you build a new one and replicate the data back. If you don't want the hassle of doing this yourself, especially if it's just a small amount of personal data, you get Google to do it for you."
The problem is that, 100 years from now, if your RAID controller goes down, will you be able to get a repalcement? Will we still even be using disks 100 years from now? Will Google still be around in 100 years?
Fine, you might say, if there's no disks or Google or whatever you can always copy your data to the latest and greatest storage medium. But there's the rub: it costs, to copy and to maintain this stuff.
If you write something on paper, after you write it once, you're done for the next 100 years or more, as long as you store it correctly. The cost of maintaining your paper data for a long time is much lower than it is for electronic data.
Granted, you'll want an electronic copy of any important data you create. But who's to say that what people consider important now will still be important in 100 years? Or that someone in the future will find value in something we consider unimportant today?
If Martian or Lunar colonies become self-sufficient, it is possible that they may declare themselves independent of any Earth-based government. "Off-world" settlements are so distant that governments based on Earth will have no practical means of exerting control.
In answer to the "experts" quoted in this article: SF movies are a better indicator of what's happening today than they are of what the future will be like.
... "Colossus" springs to mind) are about the future? These stories challenge us to recognize and deal with problems that are here now, while they are small enough to be dealt with.
On the surface, it would seem that SF stories are about "the future;" that they're about making predictions, based on scientific extrapolation. I've also noticed, however, that many SF stories are about issues and concerns of the day. Orwell, even though he's known for two novels late in his career, was a prominent journalist: I wonder if Winston's job at the Ministry of Truth resembles anything Orwell saw his editors do? (btw, I think "Brave New World" is more accurate and scary than "1984") At the height of the cold war, how many SF movies were there about the effects of radiation ("Godzilla," anyone?), or about invaders from space?
And now, we think that movies about expanding urban blight (the gritty future of "Blade Runner"), the ethical dilemmas of advanced biological science ("Gattaca"), and rogue artificial intelligences (too many to choose from
Recall that the writers of these stories, prescient though they undoubtedly are, are still people like you and me, living in the same era as we do. How can they escape letting the concerns and issues of the day into their writing?
Check out: http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.htm