Digital Domesday Defies Doom 176
Hulver writes "The BBC Domesday project, originally completed in 1986 and under threat (as reported in this old slashdot story) has had its data recovered. The contents of the laserdiscs have been put on DVD, and new programs written so that PCs can access the data. Interestingly, most of the images and films were not recovered from the laserdiscs, but were instead re-digitised from the original analog films at a higher resolution than the laserdiscs contained. Full details of the recovered data are at the Public Record Office website."
Here come the "they mispelled Doomsday" posts! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Here come the "they mispelled Doomsday" posts! (Score:2)
+1 Funny
Re:Here come the "they mispelled Doomsday" posts! (Score:1)
Re:Here come the "they mispelled Doomsday" posts! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Here come the "they mispelled Doomsday" posts! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Here come the "they mispelled Doomsday" posts! (Score:2)
Re:Here come the "they mispelled Doomsday" posts! (Score:1)
Something else this reminds me of (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Something else this reminds me of (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Something else this reminds me of (Score:3, Insightful)
I say this because I can't help but think of how many tombs have been robbed regardless of warnings to keep out. In fact, we usually think of it as stupid superstition and proceed headlong.
That would be bad at Yucca of course, because for once the curse -- that people will get sick and die due to invisible forces -- is true.
Re:Something else this reminds me of (Score:2, Interesting)
Unless we go through World War III and end up as scattered tribes of man, this warning is useless.
It's much more likely that we'll continue to progress, socially and technologically. In that case, the warning is moot - even if the United States falls, Yucca is common knowledge right now. It's doubtful everyone who's heard if it would be eliminated. It's also doubtful that all English speakers of the world will be eliminated. As such, a big giant, "STAY THE FUCK OUT! RAD
Your forget one thing though (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Your forget one thing though (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Your forget one thing though (Score:5, Insightful)
Good thought (Score:2)
Re:Your forget one thing though (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Your forget one thing though (Score:2)
The thing is, the internet means that people all over the world will get exposed to new trends and new words much quicker, making it less likely that different languages will evolve
Re:Your forget one thing though (Score:1)
So, there's no way set up an annuity to pay someone once every 100 years to update the sign?
I'll put $1 in it right now. In 100 years that should pay someone to update the signs. Heck, it could be some sort of cool family tradition for some famous family -- every family member reaching 25 gets to redo the signs! Wow! Think of all the free press!
Re:Your forget one thing though (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Your forget one thing though (Score:1)
Our 102003ad ancestors will see a HUGE CONCRET SLAP on top oh a big hole with cruel symbols on it. They quickly turn on their x-ray vision to look whats beneath and see that there is a lot of alpha and gamma radiation.
No probs.
Re:Your forget one thing though (Score:2)
What makes you think people won't do the same at Yucca mountain? After all, it's an important warning sign. If America's main language gradually shifted to Spanish, all the road signs, billboards, and, yes, even Yucca mountain warning signs would get translated.
What do you think is going to
But (Score:2)
Re:Your forget one thing though (Score:2)
True, but you can still label something with Caesar's Latin or Homer's Greek or, if I'm not mistaken, Confucius's Chinese and every town with a population of over 10,000 has someone who could puzzle it out.
Not quite (Score:2)
Re:Not quite (Score:2)
Maybe if you pounded on the door at 3:30 in the morning and demanded the decipher it right then. Assuming what we think we know about Indo-European is correct, there's probably millions of people who could decipher it by going down to their library and checking out the right books.
But that misses part of the point. Homer's Greek was not the origin of thousands of languages, nor spoke over a huge area; but it wa
Re:Not quite (Score:2)
Aha! But we have had writing (and by writing, I mea
Re:Your forget one thing though (Score:2)
What makes you think that pictoral language will make it any easier to communicate? Understanding pictoral symbols still relies on conventions.
Re:Something else this reminds me of (Score:2)
Since I would consider myself an "eco-nut" I guess from your words, I would have to say that this is a pointless crusade. It doesn't matter to me whether or not we know what's in Yucca in 100,000 years, because unless there is a radical change in human perspective about the world, there won't be humans to go exploring there anyway.
I don't know why I even bothered replying to you, when you obviously feel that people
Re:Something else this reminds me of (Score:1)
He says that either humans will be (nearly) extinct or they will be smart enought to detect radiactivity.
You say: mankind will be extinct and you are an idiot and im an eco-nut und you suck.
Hey, if your definition of a "green" way of live is living like in the stoneage (you seem to suggest so with your "people living in tribes arent stupid but you for saying so", btw: ive never read a paper in phys. rev. ect by someone living in a tribe. They really seem to b
Re:Something else this reminds me of (Score:2)
Re:Something else this reminds me of (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Something else this reminds me of (Score:2)
Re:Something else this reminds me of (Score:2)
Re:Something else this reminds me of (Score:2)
Placing the grantor of rights outside a government, makes the government a servant and not a master of the individual.
It is a significant philosophical difference. That an American citizen and voter cannot see this worries me.
Land mines. Small ones. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, there'll be a few casualties, but by god what ever our pig ignorant descendents make of the situation, they'll be wary investigators. Death is a pretty fucking good keep out sign, and probably a lot less loss of life will result than if they carve their way inside and start wearing uranium as jewelery from the ancient gods...
Re:Land mines. Small ones. (Score:2)
Re:Land mines. Small ones. (Score:1)
... and after 100 years, the explosives have perished and there so full of dust the trigger won't budge, in 1000 years archaeologists will dig them up and claim they were some sort of ritual object
Even if you could make landmines that last indefinatly, If/When civisilation took a downturn, the landmines would be a valuable commodity
Re:Land mines. Small ones. (Score:2)
Re:Something else this reminds me of (Score:1)
Re:Something else this reminds me of (Score:5, Interesting)
The cool thing about that project is, they can't say "stay the f*** out" because in 100,000 years people won't be speaking english, or if they somehow did, it would have evolved so much that the warning wouldn't mean anything... This project has to use nonverbal, non-language based warnings, something that would scare you away....
i am actually reminded of Planet of the Apes, with all the scarecrow looking guys were hangin to warn apes away from the forbidden land....
Re:Something else this reminds me of (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, you'd hope that in the future people would be bright enough stay away from the place where the trees have tentacles and the squirrels shoot laser beams out their eyes.
re-digitised? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:The disc is digital, but... (Score:2)
What about the new Slashdot story? (Score:1)
Here you go (Score:1)
storage space (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why I have all my CDs stored as
graspee
Storage space and FOSS (Score:2)
In a worst-case scenario (no source code works on "modern computers"), FLAC is open-source and could be reimplemented, if the people looki
Re:Difference between open and closed formats (Score:1)
Open format specs will survive far into the future (just try googling for any free and open specification). As Linus said, "Only wimps
Re:Why would you need to store as .flac... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why would you need to store as .flac... (Score:2)
Considering that the masters are probably 24 bit at 96khz sampling rate, and undoubtably more than two channels.. I'd have to say both FLAC and the original CD are "nothing like a perfect backup"
Re:Why would you need to store as .flac... (Score:1)
Uh? (Score:5, Funny)
michael, you font of knowledge you. I wondered what the hell 'defeation' was so I Googled [google.com] it. I must say I understand what Google is suggesting.
Re:Uh? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Uh? (Score:1)
--
Quality (Score:4, Insightful)
That's great as long as the film hasn't degraded to worse than the quality of the laserdisc images and the resolution is there to begin with.
Re:Quality (Score:1)
Re:Quality (Score:5, Informative)
it is actually the medium that degrades, data corruption is a side-effect. film is vulnerable to heat and light and laserdisc is vulnerable to scratching. the format of the data is irelevent.
you should also realize that just the act of digitizing data is degrading it. the digital version will always be a subset of the analog version. really the only upside to digital is the ability to make exact copies.
the only thing you can do is preserve the original in analog format the best you can, digitizing it once in a while whenever better digitizing technology is available.
Re:Quality (Score:1, Interesting)
While not precisely true, an analog format has essentially continuous resolution. That means that even a shift in an atom is enough to change the data (albeit to a miniscule degree). From the laws of thermodynamics, we know that entropy
Re:Quality (Score:2, Informative)
Laserdisc stores infinite horizontal resolution, and carries a full NTSC (or PAL, or whatever you like) signal, which, if done properly, ensures most of the 525 (or 625) lines of resolution are on a disc without laser rot. According the the FAQ [oz.net] it's actually 420 lines, but since they are 100% wrong on the resolution of DVD (500 lines is NOT a standard NTSC DVD resolution and won't play back on a great numb
Re:Quality (Score:1)
It is analogue. That does not make it infinite.
According to:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~leopold/Ld/ResolutionC
laserdiscs are 560x360 which is worse than DVD's.
Also check the scanning tunnel microscope picures on that page.
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~leopold/Ld/HowLDsLoo
Re:Quality (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, it does make it infinite. In fact, that is the very DEFINITION of analog.
analog: <electronics> (US: "analog") A description of a continuously
variable signal or a circuit or device designed to handle such
signals. The opposite is "discrete" or "digital".
Continuously variable, of course, means infinite.
If it were finite (like digital) you would be able to discern points if the image were blown up large enough. As you increase the size of a
Re:Quality (Score:1)
But that does not mean that it is infinite. It's just undefined.
> doing so is a complete insult to the very idea of an analog signal.
Nyquist's theorem does make a comparison possible.
>The fact is that with an analog signal, with better technology the signal can be improved to any point you like by improving the signal to noise ratio.
Not really. The resolution (actually capacity accounting for different playing times) of DVD's and LD a
But where is it...? (Score:5, Interesting)
The first thing that struck me when I went over was...where's my copy? This was put together as an educational tool using public money, but now there's only one copy of it in Kew Gardens, London? Why can't I just download it? All the data's public domain anyway.
As it happens, I don't live that far from Kew Gardens and so will probably go to see this. But what I'd really like to do is download the lot and use it as a referece tool at home. Or perhaps accessible online.
Incidently, no word on the formats used to rescue it. It now has a Windows interface - good news, but what about people running other things? That's not a trite statement - they already came close to losing it once in just fifteen years, and in fifteen more years' time I'll guarantee you that it won't be XP on people's desktop. Need to have the formats available so that people can write their own interfaces to it.
Cheers,
Ian
Great idea! (Score:5, Interesting)
The guarenteed way of protecting data against time is to make lots and lots of copies. The internet is the perfect medium for that. So yes, why don't they put it on the internet?
M$ format = they'll have to do the same again (Score:5, Insightful)
The guarenteed way of protecting data against time is to make lots and lots of copies. The internet is the perfect medium for that. So yes, why don't they put it on the internet?
Becasue they are stupid, probably.
The ironic thing is that because they have decided to convert it to a proprietary Microsoft format, they will probably have to repeat the exercise in another 15 years. Bloody idiots.
Re:M$ format = they'll have to do the same again (Score:2, Redundant)
Dude, they're running IIS 4.0, take that back.
Re:M$ format = they'll have to do the same again (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:M$ format = they'll have to do the same again (Score:2)
Any machine-readable-only media must be constantly 'refreshed' and maintained over the years, unlike a nice paper book.
the New Rosetta Project [rosettaproject.org] has the right idea...
--jeff++
Re:But where is it...? (Score:5, Informative)
expensive and timeconsuming, even if they could find all the information...
Excuse me but... (Score:1)
Re:But where is it...? (Score:2)
I meant the original Doomsday project, however
Re:But where is it...? (Score:1)
Re:But where is it...? (Score:1)
Re:But where is it...? (Score:1)
it's the BBC that made this. The first `B` there stands for British... take a guess sherlock?
Re:But where is it...? (Score:2)
No probem - answered in parent:
"...now there's only one copy of it in Kew Gardens, London?"
Cheers,
Ian
The wonder of modern methods. (Score:5, Insightful)
Domesday Book II, Laser disks and computer files, in need of rescue after 17 years.
Progress ?
Re:The wonder of modern methods. (Score:4, Insightful)
Doomsday 2 - text, sound, moving pictures, photographs, cross-linked statistics and from how its been described a very intense lookup system.
Yup. Progress. Things have changed significantly in 17 years. I just hope people learn from these kinds of media mistakes.
Re:The wonder of modern methods. (Score:2)
I know what you mean. But please -- only 900 years? I say, everything should have to be wiritten on stone tablets... they can last thousands of years...
The argument is specious because the kinds, amounts, and breadth of data is vastly different between the two. And, of course, the original Domesday Book probably isn't sitting on someo
Re:The wonder of modern methods. (Score:1)
Dude -- it's only been 900 years. Let's be honest.
Re:The wonder of modern methods. (Score:1)
pft.. (Score:1, Funny)
wait.. dOh!
If this system were off on a planet somewhere (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:If this system were off on a planet somewhere (Score:3, Insightful)
This just in (Score:1)
a serious answer (Score:1)
And consider the lubricants in the spinning components....
I made that... (Score:3, Interesting)
Rob.
Static media is really no use (Score:5, Insightful)
Therefore transferring the information from format to format automatically as new and cheaper solutions arrive. This means a process and to simplify and reduce costs, some automatic tools to do the job.
There are hierarchical storage management[1] solutions around which can do this for you, Tivoli do quite a good one, but, because we're talking long term, the software really also needs to be cross platform and open source.
[1] http://itmanagement.webopedia.com/TERM/H/HSM.html
Re:Static media is really no use (Score:1, Insightful)
The fact of the matter is, assuming they don't rot, a CD is going to be just as readable 1000 years from now as a book. The problem is that the information you need to read it might not be preserved (but then again, the same applies to a book--the same sort of problem applies to forms of ancient writing that haven't been preserved,
Re:Static media is really no use (Score:2)
Computer technology is simply not designed to stand the test of time. Heck, most digital media and digital file formats that is only ten years old end up being useless. Progress is nice, but this is a critical shortfall in the system when older technology and older formats are completely deprecated with zero chance of backward compatibility.
With DVD, it might be able to hold out longer as the DVD consortium was smart
Another copy at "RetroBeep" at Bletchley Park? (Score:3, Interesting)
Next time (becouse there will be a next time) (Score:2)
(Meaning CR and LF)
It's universal enough. Everyone uses one or the other some times both. Should continue to work well into the future.
(After all 7 bit ASCII text is almost 50 years old.)
Document the formats in ASCII, Englishn(psudo code), French, German, Klingonis.. and list Klingonis as the offical laguage of earth at the time. Just to mess with peoples heads.
Then maybe we can wait a whole 50 years before havi
close to becoming unreadable (Score:1)
Am I hearing this right? They make it sound like they only had 1 copy of this on LaserDisc - and since everyone's players were going to shit the content was in danger of being lost forever. ???
Man they'd better be careful with that info... (Score:1)
Put it on P2P (Score:1)
look at the www.textfiles.com archive.
15 years, try 15 minutes! (Score:3, Insightful)
Our school bough one of the Domesday kits and on the first day all the teachers were bringing us through in to the library class by class to show it off. This was until one of the teachers dropped one of the discs and it shattered, bearing that in mind I am very surprised there are still discs in woking order after all this time.
I would hope now that they will work on some of the other discs that used the Domesday hardware. I vividly remember a disc that featured an interacitve film. Basically the topic was about wathching a group of kids mucking around and every 2-3 minutes it would freeze and various options would appear over the characters, e.g "Simon calls Peter stupid". Depending on what you chose (using the track ball) the film would take a different path, either they would all go home happy or they would end up in some sort of trouble. Never mind the brainwashing apsects of the film (i.e. don't misbehave kids), the technology was trail blazing. This was in 1987! Years before DVD and even now I've seen very few interactive DVD films.
Aparently there was over an hour of film and 4 possible endings to a 15 minute program on one of those discs. Whats more the system was very quick and totally foolproof.
As an 11 year old obsessed with technology I was in awe of all this fancy equipment, Domesday wasn't just a great archiving project it also introduced some fancy technology which even today seems new fangled.
What the BBC and their partners should have done is to add new material to the Domesday archive every 5 or so years. As well as the obvious enrichment of the archive, this would also mean there was a chance to update the technology in steps in order to keep track with data storage devlopements. Instead once it was finished it was forgotten about, meaning 15 years later when people realise the value of the project you have to get university's on board to make sense of the storage medium, data and software. That would have been a much better way to preserve the data.
Re:[ed. note: no it isn't] (Score:3, Informative)
YFI
-uso.
Re:please tell me (Score:1)
-uso.
Re:please tell me (Score:1, Insightful)
i have no idea, please enlighten me...
Re:EDITORS! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:EDITORS! (Score:2)
No, wait, I lied, they don't.