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Science Technology

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."
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Digital Domesday Defies Doom

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 12, 2003 @03:09AM (#6422651)
    Let's see how quickly it happens.
  • by Raul654 ( 453029 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @03:11AM (#6422665) Homepage
    This article reminds me of something else I read - that the DOE is currently paying good money [salon.com] for people to help design a warning for Yucca Mountain (the giant nuclear storage facility out in Nevada). That one has to last as much as 100,000 years, albeight it has to store a lot less information (stay the F*** out). I wonder what kind of overlap there would be between the two?
    • Sorry about the reply to my own post, but the article refers to Francis Bacon's shrieking pope paintings. Here's a link [francis-bacon.cx].
    • I'm kind of inclined to think that it's not possible. Instead we might be better off just concealing the site.

      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.
      • by Anonymous Coward
        Here's the funny thing though..

        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
        • by Raul654 ( 453029 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @03:31AM (#6422728) Homepage
          Language drifts and changes. Pick up a copy Beowulf, circle AD 800. Chances are you won't understand a whole lot, it's written in old english. What with the great vowel shift [harvard.edu], the meanings of most of those words have significantly changed. Now, instead of 1200 years, imagine what 100,000 years of language evolution would do to such a warning. That's why ANY warning they choose will probably be pictoral, not script.
          • by Raul654 ( 453029 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @04:05AM (#6422809) Homepage
            Sorry for another reply to my own post, but here's a great resource [virginia.edu] for seeing how the language has changed over time. It has .wav readings of beowulf. The reason I keep citing beowulf (no, I don't have some computer-cluster fetish) is that it is basically the only surviving example of old-english, or so I was taught. If you listen to it, you can really see how in just 1200 years, the language has totally changed.
            • by IvyMike ( 178408 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @04:28AM (#6422868)
              I wonder if widespread printing, audio, and video recording technology might have a long-term stabilizing effect on language.
              • Yes, that might be true. Nowadays, for the first time in history, it's possible to record the actual speech (as opposed to symbols for speech). But, by the same token, the advent of the internet will only speed language evolution. For the first time, it's easily possible to sit down and communicate with someone half a world away. That will almost certainly encourage language homogenization, but that still means change.
              • by happystink ( 204158 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @06:06AM (#6423011)
                U think so? me 2. tru! LOL!
              • As someone else have mentioned, it will probably lead to language homogenization, not to stabilisation. On the contrary, I think the internet will lead to more rapid change. Look at the changes that chatrooms and cellphones have led to: A long series of abbreviations are now commondly understood and more or less used as words.

                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

          • >Now, instead of 1200 years, imagine what 100,000 years of language evolution would do to such a warning.

            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!
          • I'm not sure pictorial warnings would be any better. The guys in 102003 A.D. will probably think the gruesome images are irrational warnings of holy ground by the superstitious lowtech people of the 21 century. It's not like 20:th century people heeded warnings in pyramids and such before desacrating them.
            • Well, point is that the warnings in the pyramids WERE IRRATIONAL, only to keep the stuff from being stolen.

              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.
          • Your argument suffers from the flaw of false equivalence. Sure, we can find old english versions of Beowulf. Guess what? That's not the version I read in high school, because someone who knew the language translated it.

            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
            • by Raul654 ( 453029 )
              The principle idea in building yucca is they *assume* it is going to be forgotten about and not updated. (Good engineering, btw - they plan for the worst) I mean, in 100,000 years a lot can happen, and chances are that the sign won't be kept up to date.
          • Language drifts and changes.

            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.
            • There are maybe a few dozen people in the world who could even partially decipher indo-european, and that is only some 10,000 years old (it started in Ankara around 8,000 BC and is the mother tongue of the latin and germanic families). Now, instead of 10,000, what is it were 100,000 years. How many people would speak it then?
              • There are maybe a few dozen people in the world who could even partially decipher indo-european

                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
                • That's a good question. There is, however, a material difference between the future and the past: writing and libraries. Unless we assume widespread distruction on a unprecedented level, there still will be people who understand some of the major languages of this era. Written language is very compact and clear, compared to pictographs; it'd be worth a try in addition to pictographs, especially for the most heavily radioactive first couple thousand years.

                  Aha! But we have had writing (and by writing, I mea
          • That's why ANY warning they choose will probably be pictoral, not script.

            What makes you think that pictoral language will make it any easier to communicate? Understanding pictoral symbols still relies on conventions.

        • Humans are making themselves extinct a lot faster than we're forgetting our old languages.

          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
          • Then whats your problem with the orignial post?
            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
            • Please teach me the great things that technology, etc. have given humanity and how we are so much better off than those who do not have such great things?
              • This has GOT to be a joke. You're asking this question using a computer connected to the internet? This can't be a serious question...
                • How is it a joke? I am questioning how technology has truly made things better. Can I not question my government while using my right to free speech given to me by that same government? Then why is it so funny to you to question technology while making use of it?
                  • Man, civics education sucks in this country. Government goes not GIVE you the right to free speech. You have that right from God (read the founding documents). Government's job is to PROTECT that right, not GRANT it.
                    • Not at all. The grantor of a right holds that right. The idea that government holds rights is a dangerous philosophical mindset. It is nothing more than the Divine Right that kings claimed for themselves.

                      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.
    • by vkg ( 158234 )
      Seriously. I really think that a couple of hundred thousand mechanically activated (or perhaps solar so they come awake when they're dug up?) landmines are the answer.

      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...
      • Land mines and other traps would probably just encourage future treasure-hunters, because "if somebody would go to such great lengths to keep an area protected, there must be something of value there."
      • Seriously. I really think that a couple of hundred thousand mechanically activated (or perhaps solar so they come awake when they're dug up?) landmines are the answer.

        ... 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

      • So, wait, the method to keep people away from something that will kill them is to kill them? What am I missing?
    • by burns210 ( 572621 ) <maburns@gmail.com> on Saturday July 12, 2003 @04:38AM (#6422889) Homepage Journal
      " This article reminds me of something else I read - that the DOE is currently paying good money for people to help design a warning for Yucca Mountain (the giant nuclear storage facility out in Nevada). That one has to last as much as 100,000 years, albeight it has to store a lot less information (stay the F*** out)."

      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....
      • by garyok ( 218493 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @06:30AM (#6423046)
        The best idea I heard of was to make the site inaccessible by covering it in a huge slab of black concrete. The concrete soaks up all the heat, becomes a big storage heater storing more and more heat over time and anybody that gets too close gets cooked.

        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)

    by Anonymous Coward
    laserdisc is, in fact, analog...so how can 're-digitised' be correct?
  • There was a story about this very recently here. Why not a reference.
  • storage space (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Graspee_Leemoor ( 302316 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @03:23AM (#6422709) Homepage Journal
    "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. "

    This is why I have all my CDs stored as .flac, so I can be laughing in the distant future when everyone has crappy mp3s just because they wanted to save some space decades ago when 700 meg was a lot.

    graspee

    • You're assuming that the FLAC software will be compatible with computers and operating systems in 20-30 years. Will the current version of FLAC be compatible with gcc 6.x on a 64-bit system? Is FLAC 3.x going to be capable of reading files encoded by 1.1.0? And even if the software and compiler are compatible, how well will they work with files that aren't DRM certified?

      In a worst-case scenario (no source code works on "modern computers"), FLAC is open-source and could be reimplemented, if the people looki
      • You're assuming that the FLAC software will be compatible with computers and operating systems in 20-30 years. Will the current version of FLAC be compatible with gcc 6.x on a 64-bit system? Is FLAC 3.x going to be capable of reading files encoded by 1.1.0? And even if the software and compiler are compatible, how well will they work with files that aren't DRM certified?

        Open format specs will survive far into the future (just try googling for any free and open specification). As Linus said, "Only wimps

  • Uh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by The Bungi ( 221687 ) <thebungi@gmail.com> on Saturday July 12, 2003 @03:36AM (#6422739) Homepage
    from the obsoletion-defeation dept.

    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.

  • Quality (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hackwrench ( 573697 ) <hackwrench@hotmail.com> on Saturday July 12, 2003 @03:39AM (#6422749) Homepage Journal
    ...re-digitised from the original analog films at a higher resolution than the laserdiscs contained.

    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.
    • Remember that laserdisc video is analog too (and the audio also, except on newer discs that use CD-like PCM). So the laserdiscs may have degraded much like the film has. As far as which would be better quality, your guess is as good as mine. There are a lot of variables involved: storage conditions, materials used, etc. I do know that the right kind of film can give fantastic resolution if processed and stored right, whereas IIRC the resolution of laserdisc is only somewhat better than VHS and not as go
      • Re:Quality (Score:5, Informative)

        by gfody ( 514448 ) * on Saturday July 12, 2003 @05:28AM (#6422966)
        from your statement it seems you think that just because data is not digital, it will degrade.

        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)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Actually, there are good theoretical reasons why data would be more prone to degradation if it's in an analog rather than digital format. Of course, in practice, analog also degrades a lot more than a digital signal, just because you can't keep the analog media pristine.

          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)

        by shepd ( 155729 )
        >whereas IIRC the resolution of laserdisc is only somewhat better than VHS and not as good as DVD.

        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
        • >Laserdisc stores infinite horizontal resolution,

          It is analogue. That does not make it infinite.

          According to:
          http://www.cs.tut.fi/~leopold/Ld/ResolutionCo mpari son/
          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/HowLDsLook Like.ht ml
          • Re:Quality (Score:2, Informative)

            by shepd ( 155729 )
            >It is analogue. That does not make it infinite.

            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
            • > there is simply no point giving LD a horizontal resolution

              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)

    by mccalli ( 323026 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @03:39AM (#6422750) Homepage
    I submitted the original Domesday story (the old one referred to), and I noticed this new bit of news yesterday.

    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

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 12, 2003 @03:41AM (#6422753)
    Domesday Book, vellum and ink, still readable after 900 years.

    Domesday Book II, Laser disks and computer files, in need of rescue after 17 years.

    Progress ?
    • by adri ( 173121 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @04:57AM (#6422922) Homepage Journal
      Doomsday 1 - text and possibly sketches.

      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.
    • Blockquoth the poster:

      Domesday Book, vellum and ink, still readable after 900 years.

      Domesday Book II, Laser disks and computer files, in need of rescue after 17 years.

      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

  • pft.. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Shouldn't it be "Digital Doomsday Defies Dome"?

    wait.. dOh!
  • by matty ( 3385 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @04:26AM (#6422864) Homepage
    ...in a perfect vacuum, and someone discovered it thousands (millions?) of years later, would it still work? (provided there was power for it, some type of solar, perhaps?)
  • I made that... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ratbag ( 65209 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @05:14AM (#6422945)
    well, I made some of the entry for the village of Wickenby, near Lincoln, with a childhood friend, Ann. We both had BBC computers at home so we sort of got co-opted into typing some stuff. As children of farmers we concentrated on that side of life in the area. Sweet innocent times...

    Rob.
  • by Moderation abuser ( 184013 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @05:18AM (#6422953)
    It's clear that any specific format will last for a while and then be obsoleted within a decade or so.

    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

    • by Anonymous Coward
      People are approaching this whole problem from the wrong angle. There's no way you'll be able to preserve media if you assume that formats are going to be constantly changing.

      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,
    • Someone else mentioned that the original book only needed one format to last 900 years.

      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
  • by LouisvilleDebugger ( 414168 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @05:25AM (#6422961) Journal
    RetroBeep [retrobeep.com], a retrocomputing museum at Bletchley Park (near Milton Keynes, close to London) has the VL-reader and a BBC micro. The proprietor (John Sinclair, whose son is also active at the site) discussed the Domesday project when I was there in May 2003. I'm not sure if there's a copy of it there, but they did have the hardware, and were trying to connect one device to the other.
  • Next time use public domain file formats and document the hell out of them using Dos-CP/M text.
    (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
  • As a storage technology, LV-ROM has been superseded by CD-ROM and DVD, leaving the BBC Domesday discs perilously close to becoming unreadable

    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. ???

  • Just think of all the nasty things a terrorist could do with those disc(s). It's a threat to national security! It's a good thing we have nothing like that here in America... HA
  • Just say its pirated warez, throw it up on a torrent, kazaa, winmx, or whathave you, and it will last for years. ;P
    look at the www.textfiles.com archive. :)
  • by grundie ( 220908 ) on Saturday July 12, 2003 @08:38PM (#6425652)
    I was at school when the Domesday project was being built, in fact my school was one the schools responsible for covering part of Carlisle in Cumbria.

    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.

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