Rakkav brings to my attention Kevin Kelly’s post on the Very Long-Term Backup, (Also at the The Long Now Foundation blog) discussing the Rosetta Project.

Storage that must outlast civilization must service neglect. Stone or paper in stone containers lasts. Readable print on these media don’t need devices to be read.

WordPerfect… [at] the height of its popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was the de facto standard word processor, but has since been eclipsed in sales by Microsoft Word. – Wikipedia

With exponential growth in storage capacity you can move data from old to new storage. Capacity is not the problem. Neglect and abandonment is. File formats of the copied data suffers the same. WordPerfect was at the top of the game until the masses moved to Microsoft Word. You may have copied WordPerfect files, but if you abandoned WordPerfect, or a computer that could run your copy, the data is good as lost. This is why the “text” media type is so wonderful.

An interesting characteristic of many such representations is that they are to some extent readable even without the software that interprets them. RFC 2046

Removable media is disadvantaged for it’s small size. You need a stack of DVDs to store it all. Previously, you needed a stack of CDs, Zip disks, floppies, or tapes. Removable media is economical and has some advantages. The only backup The Planet sells is online; no removable media. It’s big enough and conveniently always there. The data will last as long you care; backup, copy, keep it organized. (…and pay for the service.)

Next, I should look at the Long Server

The Long Server is the over-arching program for Long Now’s digital continuity software projects. Most recently we released an open source Timeline tool dubbed the Long Viewer, and are now working on a file format conversion project called The Format Exchange funded by the Elektra Foundation and Omidyar.net.

This dog could win a spot in the company costume competition.  One co-worker always dresses up in his Black Night medieval armor.  This pup could be his companion.

I suppose this dog is protected against being dressed in pink bunny ears and cuddly cotton. Just what do the police dogs in Sherwood Forest where?

Some of the others pictures in the e-mail…

That’s cute and cuddly knitting, but it just isn’t right for dogs. I think even the know knows this isn’t right.

Mere stoles is the most restrained of the bunch.

Rakkav is right titling his email, “More of why dogs bite people!!”

Fathers, do not embitter your dogs, or they will bite.

ASA claims Apple is incorrect for saying all part of the Internet are on the iPhone. Never mind the dead Java and popular Flash, the Internet is all the parts. The iPhone is just one part, and connected to the inter-network of hosts, networks and routers, called the Internet.

Flash is bloat I’m tired of. I haven’t reinstalled the Flash player so sites complain, and Firefox keeps sliding down it’s “pop-up” offering to install the missing plugging.

Ironic, I couldn’t even find the banned Apple advertisement in QuickTime, only Flash movies most places it’s mentioned. I even looked up the Apple websites, (US and UK). I guess Apple is avoiding the criticism.

Apple’s favorit video format is recognized by three standards bodies: MPEG, ISO, UTI, but it’s less ubuiquitous. Quoting Wikiedia:

It is also known as MPEG-4 Part 10, or MPEG-4 AVC (for Advanced Video Coding). … The ITU-T H.264 standard and the ISO/IEC MPEG-4 Part 10 standard (formally, ISO/IEC 14496-10) are jointly maintained so that they have identical technical content.

The only Java website I’m familiar with is time.gov. It offers a Java free version that doesn’t automaticly update the page. For the dislexics, that’s not free java, though you might be entertained by HTCPCP: Wikipedia, RFC 2324.

They, unlike me, are ageless. Even the iPod has been miniaturized for Legos by PodBrix.

Rakkav posts a short blurb about A Short Illustrated History of the Nerd by R J Evans. I find the pictures from Flickr to be the best part of the article:

• iPod tombstone
• clear monitor trick
• I am from the internet
• and of course the code cake

Elsewhere I have seen Star Trek and possibly a Star Wars cake.

• And the best image of all is obsession shown below.

Seems like a case of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” played out, rather than just imagined.

Nerd art, should have been illustrated with anything from elaborate mathematical plots. Or at least ASCII art. Google offers some nice sample.

I ripped this off a forum.  It’s an illustration of character and restraint worth repeating.  It contrasts American politicians between then and now.

It doesn’t matter how big a ranch ya’ own, or how many cows ya’ brand, the size of your funeral is still gonna depend on the weather. – Harry Truman

After President Truman retired from office in 1952, he was left with an income consisting of basically just a U.S. Army pension, reported to have been only $13,507.72 a year. Congress, noting that he was paying for his stamps and personally licking them, granted him an “allowance” and, later, a retroactive pension of $25,000 per year. When offered corporate positions at large salaries, he declined, stating, “You don’t want me. You want the office of the president, and that doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to the American people and it’s not for sale.” Even later, on May 6, 1971, when Congress was preparing to award him the Medal of Honor on his 87th birthday, he refused to accept it, writing, “I don’t consider that I have done anything which should be the reason for any award, Congressional or otherwise.” We now see that other past presidents, have found a new level of success in cashing in on the presidency, resulting in untold wealth. Today, many in Congress also have found a way to become quite wealthy while enjoying the fruits of their offices. Obviously, political offices are now for sale. Good old Harry Truman could have been correct when he observed, “My choice early in life was either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth, there’s hardly any difference. I, for one, believe the piano player job to be much more honorable than current politicians.” – Source: ____________

Google brought up a lot of forum posts, but nothing I’d count as a authoritative.  If you know who originally wrote it, e-mail me at blog at Lyndell.NET or leave a comment.

Seems we had better politicians then, but we have better toys now.  It begs the question: Would you choose character or toys?  But then, that should be an easy question.  It’s similar to the choice presented to Lot.

It was then, that America made revolutionary progress in science and technology: industrialization, space flight even computing and the Internet.  These were unexpected changes in the world.  Whereas now, we expect computing to get faster, cheaper and smaller.  We expect the Internet to proliferate.  Increased consumer access to the Internet is transformational, but it’s dosen’t have peopel relocating like Industrializatoin.  The most exciting thing we have is the iPhone, but that’s just a computer with an interface with a little thought put into it.  The PalmPilot was an ealier computer with a decent touch interface.  Sometimes I used my finger instead of the stylus.  The only thing revolutionary about the iPhone is…the character and restraint?

It was this hot:

Man catches big fish with granddaughter’s Pink Barbie fishing rod.

Man uses Barbie fishing rod to make record catch

…certified as a record by the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. …He landed the 21-pound fish on a 6-pound test line. It was 32 inches long, 2 inches longer than the rod. ___ Information from: Winston-Salem Journal, http://www.journalnow.com

Wow!  Look at all the Google results on this subject.  At this time:

• “about 222,000 for Barbie fishing rod. (0.15 seconds)”.
• “about 340 for Barbie fishing rod. (0.04 seconds)” in News results.
• “about 2,715 for Barbie fishing rod. (0.11 seconds)” in Blog results.

Yes, Google stated “about” even though they list four signifigant digits, down to the ones place.  Funny, though, I didn’t find the product.  I was trying to find the Barbie fish rod, instead I get all these news results.  I visit Barbie.com, but I’m not going to wade through all those Flash plug-ins.  You think I have gripes about HTML email, it’s nothing compared to Adobe Flash.  It’s a ubiquitous defacto standard, but not efficent.

So good it’s worth repeating:

“They say if you play the Windows Vista CD backward, you can hear satanic words.” “Oh, that’s nothing. If you play it forward it installs Windows Vista…!” (Oldie but goldie, via.) – Jan-Piet Mens

Be sure to also see Jan-Piet Mens‘ The Tao of Backup. While on the subject of backups, see The Admin Zen page on Backup:

1. Nobody wants backup, everybody wants restore.
2. To restore, you need a backup.
3. Have a backup.
4. RAID is not a backup.
5. There’s more to save than just the files.
6. Devices need backup too.
7. Even expensive hardware can fail catastrophically.
8. Do not hit the enter key before thinking about it.
9. Consistent against corruption.
10. Secure from disasters.
11. Protected from prying eyes.

– The Admin Zen: Backup

Some how that old Batmobile looks like a stylized Daffy Duck head and bill.

An authentic Batmobile from Batman Returns will go to the highest bidder at the 38th annual Kruse International auction in Indiana over the Labor Day weekend. — Wired.com

Bob Dullam has built functional replica Tumbler with engine using only photographs and DVD stills for reference.  This is a notch above buying a toy replica at Wal-Mart.  I’d be content with a HotWheels replica.

What I Expected

The Rad T-shirt, nuclear powered girl included.

What I Got

Some unread blog dud.

It’s the government’s one size-fits-all solutions; reducing selection to improve efficiency.

GOVERNMENT: If you think the problems we create are bad, just wait until you see our solutions.

Maybe I should get happy.