If I'm limited to 17th century technology then I guess my other solution is out too. Compressor: Drop Wikipedia into a black hole Decompressor: Read Wikipedia out of the hawking radiation
Ahh well. On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Tim Starling <[email protected]>wrote: > Brian wrote: > > Wouldn't the most cost effective solution to be to first fund research in > > compression so fewer bits have to be etched out? > > In that case these guys are already on the job: > http://prize.hutter1.net/ > > The obvious reply to that is that the Rosetta project aims to make an > archive readable with 17th century technology, which digital > information compressed with advanced algorithms is not. > > They try to make an issue out of the obsolescence of digital > technology, which I think is overwrought. Just because I don't have a > slot in my computer where I can insert a 1970s era magnetic tape > doesn't mean it's unreadable. I don't have a 750x optical microscope > lying around either. Both media are readable using extant technology. > > There have been some problems with restoration of data where the > decoding software has been lost. But the popular, well-documented > digital formats of the past are as readable as ever: I have a program > on my computer called groff which is largely backwards-compatible with > runoff, one of the earliest digital typesetting formats, dating back > to the 1960s. > > There is still a great deal of extant text dating to ancient times, > despite the fact that copying was fantastically expensive, and that > everything was written on flammable materials in a time when flame was > the only artificial light source. Maybe the future will be more like > Orson Scott Card's Homecoming series than the dark ages: a future with > such a weight of carefully recorded and preserved history that > studying it, even in overview, becomes the work of a lifetime. > > Anyone who claims to know what the far future will be like is a > charlatan. But I think it would be foolish to assume that it will be > anything like the past. > > -- Tim Starling > > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
