Acid paper continues to be a problem for archivists. pH balanced paper is expensive. Not because it is harder to make, but because the paper mills use various acids in bleaching the paper which are cheaper than other methods.
The paper mills don't HAVE to use them, it's just that our society is so deeply steeped in resource consumption, that it deems self destructing paper to be of greater value than the more permanent variety because much of what gets printed is of no consequence whatsoever.
The problem is: it still consumes resources. The average american consumes between 4 and 5 planets worth of resources.
Ummm, NO. The internet archive has so many gaps and holes in it, it's not even funny. Furthermore, the size of the internet and its rate of change are such that any significant archive would have to be exponentially larger, and grow exponentially faster, than the internet.
That said, the Archive is pretty fucking cool. Too bad so much is missing, *and will always be missing*.
Currently, the best way to back up data is RAID - and that's not even backing the data up, it's just making it more persistent. When you move to another machine, move all of the data to the new RAID. Repeat forever. To be extra safe, have a backup RAID just in case the first one suffers from a catastrophe.
Persistence is a good word. However, even a massive RAID with perfection data recovery and error correction isn't going to work. Why? Fashion, Moore's Law, and politics.
Fashion? Mac v. Windows.
Moore's Law? More data on smaller drives doesn't gurantee compatibility of the data on the new OS that can run the new memory - this goes to my earlier point on file format and OS compatibility.
Politics? RI/MPAA's favourite TLA: DRM.
Imagine it's 2505. The metal's been mined out of the planet so much that it's actually cheaper to mine the landfill mounds. the metal is often oxidised, unless it's buried deep - then it's in better shape. In 2505, the population of San Francisco is about 50,000 - the great die off of the mid 21st (yes, this means you and me - probably from the bird flu, starvation, nuclear war, or some asshole who figures out how to make AIDS airbourne) and early 22nd century cut human numbers way back, especially when the oil cost more to drill out of the ground than it could be sold for.
Our garbage picker, we'll call her "Maria" is about 150 down in the tunnel, pulling out aluminium cans, plastic bits of detritus, and lo and behold: a CD in PERFECT condition!!!! Still in its shrinkwrap (which has disintegrated a bit - it's browned and stuck to the CD case, but still there...) she takes it with her at lunch to show to her boss. The artist is a female, blond hair, with clearly enhanced breasts (this makes Maria roll her eyes as she mutters "what the FUCK were these people thinking? Oh - nemmind - they WEREN'T, and that's why this planet is such a fucking wasteland...) and she is dressed in tight clothing made of petroleum distillates. Her name is Britney Spears, and this record came out in 2017, at the height of the oil panic, during the Chinese-American cold war (the USA lost and was forced to devolve into smaller states viz. the Soviet Union, under its debt of 35 trillion dollars).
Her boss, Vaskez, says "Sure Maria - bring it to the Museum - see if they have any use for it."
So she hops on her bicycle and scoots over to the Museum. they are pleased with her find. The Museum tech, Jemmy, set up a solar panel and let it charge for a few hours (it's old and the batteries aren't/can't be made anymore) and then go into the recesses of the basement and fish out a CD player. They blow the dust off, and see that this old boombox was built in 1999. Not too bad! supposedly, it still works. They pop it in, and it fails to boot. Why?
DRM. The CD sees the old player as an "illegal device" and refuses to load. Because the CD wasn't a "classic" CD, but an enhanced DRM CD. So much for Britney. Jemmy notices Britney's inflated breasts and thinks "mmmmmm...breasts..."
Maria goes back, dejected.
THAT, my friend, is the Future of Digital Media. Crap to be dug out of a landfill in 500 years, that no one will properly comprehend, much less be able to experience.
Maria later found a VHS tape, but the acetate backing of the tape had long since rotted away. She saw an old tape play once when she was a child - it wsa the last working tape and the only example of actual media from the early 21st century left in country of Pacifica. The entire museum's electrical budget for a week was blown on a 3 hour extravaganza to watch a movie called Star Wars. It was in English, which no one there understood. they understood the story, and found it "typical" and "mythic" and not really worth the expense. The tape self destructed as it was played. They had no way to record the contents - electronic devices such as that no longer existed.
I have been in the same position the Author discussed, and I have come to ONLY negative conclusions. In a few words, and I hate to say this, but buddy:
WE'RE FUCKED.
Digital is a loser's proposition. backing up to analogue or even digital data on analogic substrates (such as DV tape) fail. Simply nad purely.
The *only* thing that comes close is some kind of RAID, and those, even with the plummeting price of storage, are still too expensive given the needs.
Also, a RAID assumes a continuity of several things that are not likely to be continuous:
With Video:
Framerate, number of lines, colour depth, aspect ratio, file format, compression format, Operating system compatibility, etc etc etc. All of these things are variables.
With Audio:
sample rate, compression format, bit depth, file format, etc.
Basically all of it points to very bad places.
I am fairly well convinced that our age will simply disappear. They will find our garbage, the few books not pressed on acidic paper, our paintings (fat lot of good the abstract stuff will mean to them) and drawings, that's about it. the rest will just be shiny little bits of crap in the landfill.
Since we will have used up all the dense energy forms, they will be appalled at the energy requirements just to get the few remaining museum piece devices to work. Archiving the 21st century will be impossible. To the 25th century, the 21st century will be seen as a dark age - not only for the holocaust of the die caused by the failure of the petroleum based economy, but from the simple fact that very little of the information formats we are totally geared into will survive, including this note on/.
His problem of saving personal video is just the tip ofthe iceberg. His problem is the problem of our very civilisation, writ small.
That's why I am abandoning video, and going back to painting. In 500 years, my painting CAN survive. the video simply won't.
Sure. It's terrible. It's bad. But you know as well as I do that the poor fuckers kicked out at the behest of the Leviathan will take the checks and go buy some other resource wasting suburban nightmare McMansion out in the middle of God Knows Where.
Will they wait for the mall to open and then a month before it's to open, go and torch the joint?
Fuck no.
Will they hunt down the plutocratic bastards who are responsible for their misery and chop them up into dog food?
fuck no
What will it take for the american public to wake up to the fact that the state and the corporations that own the state and the weaselly weasels who run the corporations that own the state do not give a flying fuck about them or their rights hopes and aspirations?
I don't bother DLing anything from anywhere. Periodically, I go visit friends with a Firewire HD, plug it into a computer, and then go to the iTunes music folder and then click and drag what I want. In a matter of a few hours dozens of gigabytes of incredible music are copied, and then I spend the next several months digesting it. The stuff I like I keep, the rest I delete.
Then I set about finding the records... I try to buy directly from the artist, but otherwise:
3. rip complete records, and keep it all n the drive.
It works and we all get incredible collections of tunage.
also, we ship each other DVD-Rs of tunes for perusal, same standards.
I recently culled a bunch of crap I didn't like, so now I'm down to 59.6 days of music. I can say that I have bought each record at some point in my long record buying career. I don't listen to music radio, except for a few hours a month to KUSF (a college station). So much music, so little time...
Perhaps the idea of building robot moon bases is this:
Japan is completely dependent on imported oil. Oil is presently peaking, and Japan is smart enough to see this (much as they saw they were deforesting their island too quickly several hundred years ago, and embarked on a process of radical reforestation and switching to coal - for more on this, see Jared Diamond's book "Collapse".)
It is calculated that there's about a million tons of Helium3 (He3) on the moon, and Japan would probably only need about 30 tons of it a year to power fusion reactors (The USA, consuming at its present insanely wasteful rate, would only need 45 tons per year) and that would give them electricity for the next several millennia.
So: set up robot bases on the moon that start melting the regolith for He3. Send it back to earth to the fusion reactors. Electricity right through the next ice age or two.
Maybe? Maybe not - but it's intriguing...
Here's a pdf on why He3 fusion is a good idea, and why it's not going to be easy:
you are being SO naive, it hurts. The USA trades DAILY with really nasty gummints all over the world.
Furthermore, the US gummint itself is doing really nasty things all over the world.
You drive a car? Where do you think the oil comes from? Some peace loving bunch of desert hippies?
You buy some sneakers? Who do you think made them? Some upper middle class suburbanite in a clean well lighted climate controlled office?
You buy your love a diamond ring? where do you think the diamond came from? Assembled in some pollution free factory in Middle America and dug from the earth by harmless robots?
EVERY purchase you make as a first world consumer has far reaching and devastating effects on other people and the environment. Your very lifestyle sits at the heart of an ignominious betrayal of the human spirit.
the difference is: I know this and I work to fight it as best I can - and I know that carping about China or Cuba isn't going to change things one bit. Yes they are despotic regimes, but Cuba's infant mortality rate is much better than the USA's and China's financing the federal debt so our idiot president can go pound the middle east and make the oil safe for the Chinese to buy - tool that he is.
and as of 4.15pm 14 JUNE 05 the top of the line machine they had for sale, for a LOUSY $730 was:
Dell Dimension 8400
Pentium 4 / 3.2 gHz
512 MB RAM / 80 gig SATA HD
floppy drive / Modem / Ethernet
optical 1: 16x DVD +/- RW Drive
optical 2: 48x CDRW Drive
audio: soundblaster 24bit Audio card
video: 128 MB PCI-X ATI Radeon X300 video card
Windows XP Home Edition
Now, KINDLY EXPLAIN TO ME, where I can get a Macintosh that has all those features at that kind of horsepower for $730?
It sure as hell isn't a MiniMac...
don't get me wrong: I prefer Macintosh gear to PC gear any day of the week, but I have NO ILLUSION that I have paid and will continue to pay more for the experience.
Unless they're the computers I've been using lately. In late April I was on tour and I was rehearsing in my flea bag motel room. I left for the afternoon, my laptop open, but turned off, on the table. I didn't use it again untul the next day, the DAY BEFORE MY GIG, when I decide to do a last little run through rehearsal.
Machine Was FRIED. Dead. D - E - D dead.
In a panic I race about trying to find a Macintosh repair site. I find one that's only a 1.5 hour drive away. Fine. I get it there and they say "It's been filled with some kind of a nasty corrosive liquid - smells like coca cola...."
I don't drink Coke (or any of that kind of crap) so it wasn't me...
I ended up borrowing a laptop from a friend and was able to "fake" my way through the gig using downloaded demo versions of my main apps and hacked together something roughly resembling what I wanted to do.
I wasn't too worried - I still had my back up computer. Every month I would back up the laptop onto the back up computer (A slow but reliable G3 Yosemite). Well, TWO WEEKS after the laptop was murdered (most likely by the illegal alien cleaning staff at the flea bag motel) my back up computer has a complete and total freak out. Some went compleely haywire - the drives went crazy, the screen went black and I had to unplug the machine to turn it off. On restart, nothing happened. I opened it up and it "looked" normal except for the smell of ozone. I bring it in and the CPU, motherboard and three of the native drives were totally fried. Not worth the price of fixing it.
So, I've borrowed a friends G3 Gossamer (which SOMEHOW is running OSX - I have no idea how - but it's DOG slow) I've lost huge chunks of data that will take a good deal of time to recover. Recovery software has helped, but many of the files are totally corrupt.
So, I beg to differ - users don't always break computers - sometimes it's idiot clumsy cleaning staff and sometimes - they just fry up. I realise that my case is EXTREMELY rare (esp. considering these were both Apple computers, which have been rock solid for me over the past 20 years) and I will (eventually) get most of my materials back (the drives that had video and audio were backed up on miniDV, DVD and CDR - I just have to figure out WHICH disks and tapes in the immense pile and boxes under my desk they are on...)
Oh - the end of the story?
Thursday I'm buying a new computer - A friend is selling me his slightly used Kick Ass PC (3.4gHz P4, 2 gig RAM, 200gig Drive, ATI PCIX video) for $500. He's buying some crazy dual Xeon monstrosity.
Have I abandoned the fold of Apple?
fuck NO! This PC machine will simply let me get work done until I can save up for a MacIntel!!!! WooHoooo! when I get the MacIntel, I'll convert this Dell Box into a Linux Box, and all will be well...
you have the top three at Microsoft worth approximate 9% of the entire Indonesian GDP. And Microsoft is pissed, i.e., the greedy plutocrats and lawyers who run Microsoft are pissed, that a nation where the average wage slave makes about $80 - $100 a month
and tantalum requires enormous energy to dig up, melt the rock and process it to get the tantalum.
I realise that the experiment was more a "proof of concept" and not an energy producing victory, BUT:
Any cold fusion process is going to have to kick out a FUCKLOAD of energy to merit attention, given the energy intensiveness of the process of just assembling the parts. Otherwise, it fails the EROEI test.
1. As noted elsewhere in this conversation, QuickTransit could be the bridge between OSX PPC and OSX x86.
2. IT WON'T BE ANYTHING LIKE A DELL. I'm fairly certain that it will have all kinds of encrypted ROM built into it, preventing you from buying OSX and installing it on the some no-name POS (cough) compaq (cough) computer you bought used at the monthly flea market at De Anza college for $50.
3. This could be where the rubber meets the road for Microsoft. Their OS is criminally unsecure, third rate, hard to use, and Just Plain Ugly. With Apple on x86 (either via Intel or AMD), and Linux on x86, they will finally have the competition they deserve.
4. This will force the Linux community to really get serious about user-friendliness.
5. This will force Apple to get off their ASS and fix their server software. Anandtech's recent article on how incredibley lame the X-Serve is illuminating....
A: By announcing they're going to x86, it will basically destroy their computer sales. For example: recently BOTH of my apple Computers blew up. Seriously: motherboard failures, out of warranty on my powerbook and my Yosemite. I'm borrowing a Yikes to access the internet for now. If Steve announces it's all x86 in 2006, I have ZERO incentive to go buy a PPC Macintosh. I'll just pick up some no name POS (cough) Dell (cough) and a Kick Ass firewall and run that for the next few years until I can afford the new x86 macintosh. What I want is G5 powerbook, but why would I even want to get one, when I'm going to have to replace all the software when i get the x86 powerbook?
I own literally over $9000 of software that I've collect over the past several years. I have Zero Interest in replacing it, and if I must, then the money's got to come from somewhere, and it will come at the expense of a second Apple computer...
B: This is going to open up a can of whoooop-ass on AVID. Their video Editing software is the flagship on Windows, but was cut down at the knees on the Mac platform with Final Cut Pro. With FCP on Intel hardware? Even Pricey Apple Intel Hardware? AVID will have a really tough time justifying their expense.
C: Apple will NOT be able to maintain the margins they have, and the Pricey Apple Harware will be (as usual) more expensive than your typical Windows boxen, but it won't be by very much. Apple will also begin feeling the heat from Linux (especially as Linux feels the heat from Apple, and they make their OS Truly "Ma and Pa" friendly like OSX.
That's my speculation. I think it's fairly resonable.
By end of this century, humans will be irrelevant as Transhumans move off-planet and actually require LESS resources because of more efficient functioning.
Shyeeeah... riiiiight... Dude: we stand a much better chance finding ourselves in a weird reduced form of solar based medievalism in a 100 years than your Trans-Humanist fantasy nonsense.
If you look at the back panel HERE you will notice that it has 3 USB ports, but NO Firewire. My Video camera has Firewire, and my external video drives (which are about the size of a MacMini each) are Firewire drives, as I find USB, even USB2, less reliable.
Just having the Firewire vaults even the cheeeeepy MiniMac ahead of the Intel box. Combine that with having to deal with the ugliness of MS Windows, and basically, this Intel box is a dud. It will fail.
Next, I want to see a MacMini with a low-end G5 in it...
By the by - the parent was a Total Troll, but a fairly insightful Troll, IMHO. At least he didn't accuse George Bush of being the goatse man, or something...
Sure, Hardware is beneath the OS, but if the OS *simply ignores* the hardware in question, then how useful is it?
Let's say you have some media: it may exist on a hardware substrate (say, a DVD or CD) and so you stick it in to your computer and attempt to copy it to your harddrive. The harware o nthe chip senses this, *but* it doesn't do this through gears and wires and similar devices. It will use SOFTWARE to do it, and this software will reside somewhere in the OS. All one needs to do is find that part of the OS that does that and hack it to always say YES or find some other work-around.
IT will certainly be a slwer process - these hacks aren't simple or easy - but I would think that they are inevitable.
Also, there is the single generation loss method - use an external recording system and then use that copy. Certainly, there is loss involved, but it's worth it if it's important.
Also, if this does go through and it does form some kind of real wall, it will be a real impetus to the popularity of FOSS and independent media channels. Unfortunately, given how the future is likely to have to exist on some TINY fraction of the energy we presently comsume, I seriously doubt that much, if any, of our present culture will be viewable or listenable in 100 years. As painting has been shunted aside by the New Media juggernaut for the past 30 years, it will be amusing to think what people 200 years from now will think of us. (other than cursing us for using up all the resources, and forcing them to live in late iron age penury with some solar power accoutrement)
The original documents locked up in DRM'd encrypted files, using bizarre and irrational video standards (like NTSC) and these objects falling apart over time, unrecoverable and lost. I think the people of 2505 (at least, the ones that survive the die off from the oil crash, the resulting civil wars, starvation and pandemics) will have a better grasp of the people of 1505 than the people of 2005.
The paintings of Renaissance Europe (or Asia, for that matter) only require a pair of eyes, a little light, and an open heart. Not DRM, Trusted Computing, DVI, COM, RI/MPAA and a nuclear power plant to operate the aluminum smelter to build the machines that permit a pair of eyes and an open heart to see our art and know us as people.
All these guides to oblivion - we live in a plague of lighthouse keepers.
Slashdot Mirror
The paper mills don't HAVE to use them, it's just that our society is so deeply steeped in resource consumption, that it deems self destructing paper to be of greater value than the more permanent variety because much of what gets printed is of no consequence whatsoever.
The problem is: it still consumes resources. The average american consumes between 4 and 5 planets worth of resources.
See what kind of a mess you're making here:
http://www.earthday.net/footprint/index.asp#
Full disclosure: I rated a 4.1
The crappy media, the lousy substrates, it's all garbage, and that's where it will end up.
RS
Bwahahahahaa!!!!
Ummm, NO. The internet archive has so many gaps and holes in it, it's not even funny. Furthermore, the size of the internet and its rate of change are such that any significant archive would have to be exponentially larger, and grow exponentially faster, than the internet.
That said, the Archive is pretty fucking cool. Too bad so much is missing, *and will always be missing*.
RS
You wrote:
Currently, the best way to back up data is RAID - and that's not even backing the data up, it's just making it more persistent. When you move to another machine, move all of the data to the new RAID. Repeat forever. To be extra safe, have a backup RAID just in case the first one suffers from a catastrophe.
Persistence is a good word. However, even a massive RAID with perfection data recovery and error correction isn't going to work. Why? Fashion, Moore's Law, and politics.
Fashion? Mac v. Windows.
Moore's Law? More data on smaller drives doesn't gurantee compatibility of the data on the new OS that can run the new memory - this goes to my earlier point on file format and OS compatibility.
Politics? RI/MPAA's favourite TLA: DRM.
Imagine it's 2505. The metal's been mined out of the planet so much that it's actually cheaper to mine the landfill mounds. the metal is often oxidised, unless it's buried deep - then it's in better shape. In 2505, the population of San Francisco is about 50,000 - the great die off of the mid 21st (yes, this means you and me - probably from the bird flu, starvation, nuclear war, or some asshole who figures out how to make AIDS airbourne) and early 22nd century cut human numbers way back, especially when the oil cost more to drill out of the ground than it could be sold for.
Our garbage picker, we'll call her "Maria" is about 150 down in the tunnel, pulling out aluminium cans, plastic bits of detritus, and lo and behold: a CD in PERFECT condition!!!! Still in its shrinkwrap (which has disintegrated a bit - it's browned and stuck to the CD case, but still there...) she takes it with her at lunch to show to her boss. The artist is a female, blond hair, with clearly enhanced breasts (this makes Maria roll her eyes as she mutters "what the FUCK were these people thinking? Oh - nemmind - they WEREN'T, and that's why this planet is such a fucking wasteland...) and she is dressed in tight clothing made of petroleum distillates. Her name is Britney Spears, and this record came out in 2017, at the height of the oil panic, during the Chinese-American cold war (the USA lost and was forced to devolve into smaller states viz. the Soviet Union, under its debt of 35 trillion dollars).
Her boss, Vaskez, says "Sure Maria - bring it to the Museum - see if they have any use for it."
So she hops on her bicycle and scoots over to the Museum. they are pleased with her find. The Museum tech, Jemmy, set up a solar panel and let it charge for a few hours (it's old and the batteries aren't/can't be made anymore) and then go into the recesses of the basement and fish out a CD player. They blow the dust off, and see that this old boombox was built in 1999. Not too bad! supposedly, it still works. They pop it in, and it fails to boot. Why?
DRM. The CD sees the old player as an "illegal device" and refuses to load. Because the CD wasn't a "classic" CD, but an enhanced DRM CD. So much for Britney. Jemmy notices Britney's inflated breasts and thinks "mmmmmm...breasts..."
Maria goes back, dejected.
THAT, my friend, is the Future of Digital Media. Crap to be dug out of a landfill in 500 years, that no one will properly comprehend, much less be able to experience.
Maria later found a VHS tape, but the acetate backing of the tape had long since rotted away. She saw an old tape play once when she was a child - it wsa the last working tape and the only example of actual media from the early 21st century left in country of Pacifica. The entire museum's electrical budget for a week was blown on a 3 hour extravaganza to watch a movie called Star Wars. It was in English, which no one there understood. they understood the story, and found it "typical" and "mythic" and not really worth the expense. The tape self destructed as it was played. They had no way to record the contents - electronic devices such as that no longer existed.
It's ALL going away. Soon.
RS
I have been in the same position the Author discussed, and I have come to ONLY negative conclusions. In a few words, and I hate to say this, but buddy:
WE'RE FUCKED.
Digital is a loser's proposition. backing up to analogue or even digital data on analogic substrates (such as DV tape) fail. Simply nad purely.
The *only* thing that comes close is some kind of RAID, and those, even with the plummeting price of storage, are still too expensive given the needs.
Also, a RAID assumes a continuity of several things that are not likely to be continuous:
With Video:
Framerate, number of lines, colour depth, aspect ratio, file format, compression format, Operating system compatibility, etc etc etc. All of these things are variables.
With Audio:
sample rate, compression format, bit depth, file format, etc.
Basically all of it points to very bad places.
I am fairly well convinced that our age will simply disappear. They will find our garbage, the few books not pressed on acidic paper, our paintings (fat lot of good the abstract stuff will mean to them) and drawings, that's about it. the rest will just be shiny little bits of crap in the landfill.
Since we will have used up all the dense energy forms, they will be appalled at the energy requirements just to get the few remaining museum piece devices to work. Archiving the 21st century will be impossible. To the 25th century, the 21st century will be seen as a dark age - not only for the holocaust of the die caused by the failure of the petroleum based economy, but from the simple fact that very little of the information formats we are totally geared into will survive, including this note on /.
His problem of saving personal video is just the tip ofthe iceberg. His problem is the problem of our very civilisation, writ small.
That's why I am abandoning video, and going back to painting. In 500 years, my painting CAN survive. the video simply won't.
RS
Will they wait for the mall to open and then a month before it's to open, go and torch the joint?
Fuck no.
Will they hunt down the plutocratic bastards who are responsible for their misery and chop them up into dog food?
fuck no
What will it take for the american public to wake up to the fact that the state and the corporations that own the state and the weaselly weasels who run the corporations that own the state do not give a flying fuck about them or their rights hopes and aspirations?
The american public won"t do shit rs
Then I set about finding the records... I try to buy directly from the artist, but otherwise:
http://www.gemm.com/
comes in handy that way.
We all just agree on a few basics:
1. MP3 only
2. 192 or better quality
3. rip complete records, and keep it all n the drive.
It works and we all get incredible collections of tunage.
also, we ship each other DVD-Rs of tunes for perusal, same standards.
I recently culled a bunch of crap I didn't like, so now I'm down to 59.6 days of music. I can say that I have bought each record at some point in my long record buying career. I don't listen to music radio, except for a few hours a month to KUSF (a college station). So much music, so little time...
RS
Japan is completely dependent on imported oil. Oil is presently peaking, and Japan is smart enough to see this (much as they saw they were deforesting their island too quickly several hundred years ago, and embarked on a process of radical reforestation and switching to coal - for more on this, see Jared Diamond's book "Collapse".)
It is calculated that there's about a million tons of Helium3 (He3) on the moon, and Japan would probably only need about 30 tons of it a year to power fusion reactors (The USA, consuming at its present insanely wasteful rate, would only need 45 tons per year) and that would give them electricity for the next several millennia.
So: set up robot bases on the moon that start melting the regolith for He3. Send it back to earth to the fusion reactors. Electricity right through the next ice age or two.
Maybe? Maybe not - but it's intriguing...
Here's a pdf on why He3 fusion is a good idea, and why it's not going to be easy:
fti.neep.wisc.edu/neep533/SPRING2004/lecture26.pdf
RS
For some horror stories on who PayPal really doesn't give a shit about you, go here:
http://www.paypalsucks.com/
read it and weep.
Paypal needs the competition - especially from a company like Google that professes a higher sense of ethics.
RS
RS
you are being SO naive, it hurts. The USA trades DAILY with really nasty gummints all over the world.
Furthermore, the US gummint itself is doing really nasty things all over the world.
You drive a car? Where do you think the oil comes from? Some peace loving bunch of desert hippies?
You buy some sneakers? Who do you think made them? Some upper middle class suburbanite in a clean well lighted climate controlled office?
You buy your love a diamond ring? where do you think the diamond came from? Assembled in some pollution free factory in Middle America and dug from the earth by harmless robots?
EVERY purchase you make as a first world consumer has far reaching and devastating effects on other people and the environment. Your very lifestyle sits at the heart of an ignominious betrayal of the human spirit.
the difference is: I know this and I work to fight it as best I can - and I know that carping about China or Cuba isn't going to change things one bit. Yes they are despotic regimes, but Cuba's infant mortality rate is much better than the USA's and China's financing the federal debt so our idiot president can go pound the middle east and make the oil safe for the Chinese to buy - tool that he is.
RS
http://www.boxedcpu.com/HW_P4_dsktp.htm
and as of 4.15pm 14 JUNE 05 the top of the line machine they had for sale, for a LOUSY $730 was:
Dell Dimension 8400
Pentium 4 / 3.2 gHz
512 MB RAM / 80 gig SATA HD
floppy drive / Modem / Ethernet
optical 1: 16x DVD +/- RW Drive
optical 2: 48x CDRW Drive
audio: soundblaster 24bit Audio card
video: 128 MB PCI-X ATI Radeon X300 video card
Windows XP Home Edition
Now, KINDLY EXPLAIN TO ME, where I can get a Macintosh that has all those features at that kind of horsepower for $730?
It sure as hell isn't a MiniMac...
don't get me wrong: I prefer Macintosh gear to PC gear any day of the week, but I have NO ILLUSION that I have paid and will continue to pay more for the experience.
RS
Thanks!
HW
Unless they're the computers I've been using lately. In late April I was on tour and I was rehearsing in my flea bag motel room. I left for the afternoon, my laptop open, but turned off, on the table. I didn't use it again untul the next day, the DAY BEFORE MY GIG, when I decide to do a last little run through rehearsal.
Machine Was FRIED. Dead. D - E - D dead.
In a panic I race about trying to find a Macintosh repair site. I find one that's only a 1.5 hour drive away. Fine. I get it there and they say "It's been filled with some kind of a nasty corrosive liquid - smells like coca cola...."
I don't drink Coke (or any of that kind of crap) so it wasn't me...
I ended up borrowing a laptop from a friend and was able to "fake" my way through the gig using downloaded demo versions of my main apps and hacked together something roughly resembling what I wanted to do.
I wasn't too worried - I still had my back up computer. Every month I would back up the laptop onto the back up computer (A slow but reliable G3 Yosemite). Well, TWO WEEKS after the laptop was murdered (most likely by the illegal alien cleaning staff at the flea bag motel) my back up computer has a complete and total freak out. Some went compleely haywire - the drives went crazy, the screen went black and I had to unplug the machine to turn it off. On restart, nothing happened. I opened it up and it "looked" normal except for the smell of ozone. I bring it in and the CPU, motherboard and three of the native drives were totally fried. Not worth the price of fixing it.
So, I've borrowed a friends G3 Gossamer (which SOMEHOW is running OSX - I have no idea how - but it's DOG slow) I've lost huge chunks of data that will take a good deal of time to recover. Recovery software has helped, but many of the files are totally corrupt.
So, I beg to differ - users don't always break computers - sometimes it's idiot clumsy cleaning staff and sometimes - they just fry up. I realise that my case is EXTREMELY rare (esp. considering these were both Apple computers, which have been rock solid for me over the past 20 years) and I will (eventually) get most of my materials back (the drives that had video and audio were backed up on miniDV, DVD and CDR - I just have to figure out WHICH disks and tapes in the immense pile and boxes under my desk they are on...)
Oh - the end of the story?
Thursday I'm buying a new computer - A friend is selling me his slightly used Kick Ass PC (3.4gHz P4, 2 gig RAM, 200gig Drive, ATI PCIX video) for $500. He's buying some crazy dual Xeon monstrosity.
Have I abandoned the fold of Apple?
fuck NO! This PC machine will simply let me get work done until I can save up for a MacIntel!!!! WooHoooo! when I get the MacIntel, I'll convert this Dell Box into a Linux Box, and all will be well...
RS
I thought that's what the "large black Lake-like" features were.
I think I missed something... When was it established that those weren't hydrocarbon lakes?
RS
http://www.indexmundi.com/indonesia/gdp.html
And as Bill Gates's personal wealth is esitmated at $46.5 billion
http://www.marxist.com/scienceandtech/bill_gates_c apitalism.htm
And Ballmer's worth is $12 billion
http://www.guardian.co.uk/microsoft/Story/0,2763,1 046102,00.html
And Paul Allen is worth $20.5 billion
http://www.guardian.co.uk/microsoft/Story/0,2763,1 046102,00.html
you have the top three at Microsoft worth approximate 9% of the entire Indonesian GDP. And Microsoft is pissed, i.e., the greedy plutocrats and lawyers who run Microsoft are pissed, that a nation where the average wage slave makes about $80 - $100 a month
http://countrystudies.us/indonesia/63.htm
has found that it makes economic sense to pirate an OS that costs more than an average month's wages?
Geee - poor babies. Greedy motherfuckers. Almost as evil as the slime moulds who run Indonesia...
RS
Lithium requires a lot of energy and sophisticated and highly energetic processes:
http://www.nccp.ru/EN/Li/
and tantalum requires enormous energy to dig up, melt the rock and process it to get the tantalum.
I realise that the experiment was more a "proof of concept" and not an energy producing victory, BUT:
Any cold fusion process is going to have to kick out a FUCKLOAD of energy to merit attention, given the energy intensiveness of the process of just assembling the parts. Otherwise, it fails the EROEI test.
http://www.eroei.com/
RS
See? We're still better than machines...
RS
2. IT WON'T BE ANYTHING LIKE A DELL. I'm fairly certain that it will have all kinds of encrypted ROM built into it, preventing you from buying OSX and installing it on the some no-name POS (cough) compaq (cough) computer you bought used at the monthly flea market at De Anza college for $50.
3. This could be where the rubber meets the road for Microsoft. Their OS is criminally unsecure, third rate, hard to use, and Just Plain Ugly. With Apple on x86 (either via Intel or AMD), and Linux on x86, they will finally have the competition they deserve.
4. This will force the Linux community to really get serious about user-friendliness.
5. This will force Apple to get off their ASS and fix their server software. Anandtech's recent article on how incredibley lame the X-Serve is illuminating....
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2436
These are some of the down sides:
A: By announcing they're going to x86, it will basically destroy their computer sales. For example: recently BOTH of my apple Computers blew up. Seriously: motherboard failures, out of warranty on my powerbook and my Yosemite. I'm borrowing a Yikes to access the internet for now. If Steve announces it's all x86 in 2006, I have ZERO incentive to go buy a PPC Macintosh. I'll just pick up some no name POS (cough) Dell (cough) and a Kick Ass firewall and run that for the next few years until I can afford the new x86 macintosh. What I want is G5 powerbook, but why would I even want to get one, when I'm going to have to replace all the software when i get the x86 powerbook?
I own literally over $9000 of software that I've collect over the past several years. I have Zero Interest in replacing it, and if I must, then the money's got to come from somewhere, and it will come at the expense of a second Apple computer...
B: This is going to open up a can of whoooop-ass on AVID. Their video Editing software is the flagship on Windows, but was cut down at the knees on the Mac platform with Final Cut Pro. With FCP on Intel hardware? Even Pricey Apple Intel Hardware? AVID will have a really tough time justifying their expense.
C: Apple will NOT be able to maintain the margins they have, and the Pricey Apple Harware will be (as usual) more expensive than your typical Windows boxen, but it won't be by very much. Apple will also begin feeling the heat from Linux (especially as Linux feels the heat from Apple, and they make their OS Truly "Ma and Pa" friendly like OSX.
That's my speculation. I think it's fairly resonable.
RS
Genius. I especially liked the replacement of
I wanna KILL!
with
I wanna SUSTAIN!
Your parody of Alice's Restaurant will go down in Net History.
best regards,
Ralph Spoilsport
4010 Rhode Island School of Design Terrace
Ukaiphah, CA.
Shyeeeah... riiiiight... Dude: we stand a much better chance finding ourselves in a weird reduced form of solar based medievalism in a 100 years than your Trans-Humanist fantasy nonsense.
We're facing a global DIEOFF:
http://www.dieoff.org/
and Chuckie here thinks we're going to live in space and push buttons for a living. Talk about living in a fantasy world.
RS
http://www.silentpcreview.com/files/images/compute x05/paradox2.jpg
you can see the lack of Firewire.
RS
Just having the Firewire vaults even the cheeeeepy MiniMac ahead of the Intel box. Combine that with having to deal with the ugliness of MS Windows, and basically, this Intel box is a dud. It will fail.
Next, I want to see a MacMini with a low-end G5 in it...
HW
Ralph Spoilsport: but It was COLD OUTSIDE - like 20 below - what am I supposed to do? Let my flesh stick to the frozen wheel?
The Judge: Look, if you don't answer the question, we can't persecute you to the fullest extent of the law! Now, what were you doing with that woman?
RS: Oh, that was no woman, that was Bottles! Doesn't she count?
Officer O'Malley: Only to ten.
RS: You people are nothing BUT A PACK OF CARDS!!!
RS
By the by - the parent was a Total Troll, but a fairly insightful Troll, IMHO. At least he didn't accuse George Bush of being the goatse man, or something...
RS
Sure, Hardware is beneath the OS, but if the OS *simply ignores* the hardware in question, then how useful is it?
Let's say you have some media: it may exist on a hardware substrate (say, a DVD or CD) and so you stick it in to your computer and attempt to copy it to your harddrive. The harware o nthe chip senses this, *but* it doesn't do this through gears and wires and similar devices. It will use SOFTWARE to do it, and this software will reside somewhere in the OS. All one needs to do is find that part of the OS that does that and hack it to always say YES or find some other work-around.
IT will certainly be a slwer process - these hacks aren't simple or easy - but I would think that they are inevitable.
Also, there is the single generation loss method - use an external recording system and then use that copy. Certainly, there is loss involved, but it's worth it if it's important.
Also, if this does go through and it does form some kind of real wall, it will be a real impetus to the popularity of FOSS and independent media channels. Unfortunately, given how the future is likely to have to exist on some TINY fraction of the energy we presently comsume, I seriously doubt that much, if any, of our present culture will be viewable or listenable in 100 years. As painting has been shunted aside by the New Media juggernaut for the past 30 years, it will be amusing to think what people 200 years from now will think of us. (other than cursing us for using up all the resources, and forcing them to live in late iron age penury with some solar power accoutrement)
The original documents locked up in DRM'd encrypted files, using bizarre and irrational video standards (like NTSC) and these objects falling apart over time, unrecoverable and lost. I think the people of 2505 (at least, the ones that survive the die off from the oil crash, the resulting civil wars, starvation and pandemics) will have a better grasp of the people of 1505 than the people of 2005.
The paintings of Renaissance Europe (or Asia, for that matter) only require a pair of eyes, a little light, and an open heart. Not DRM, Trusted Computing, DVI, COM, RI/MPAA and a nuclear power plant to operate the aluminum smelter to build the machines that permit a pair of eyes and an open heart to see our art and know us as people.
All these guides to oblivion - we live in a plague of lighthouse keepers.
RS