6 Sep
1999
6 Sep
'99
9:01 a.m.
I just watched a fun but somewhat silly program about Stonehenge, narrated
by Leonard Nimoy. It was claimed that Stonehenge preceded the druids.
If so, did the previous owners sandblast it to erase their data before
they handed it over to the druids?
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin(a)xenosoft.com
> A
display case shows the progression of storage disks, starting with
> one from 1965 that's the size of a tractor-trailer tire. It held 2.5
> megabytes of data and had to be sandblasted to be erased.
> Had to be sandblasted to be erased? Huh??
Quite a while back, we discussed some systems for
LONG-term data storage.
Stonehenge was [jokingly] mentioned as being a hard-sectored long term
data storage device. (probably stationary media with moving head)
Assuming a high data density stored as surface markings or pitting,
sandblasting WOULD be the needed method for erasing surface data. How
long before our silly speculation finds its way into the computer
histories, and later generations are told that the druids invented
hard-sectored disks?
Well, you either want to prevent the correct information from
disappearing,
or prevent the incorrect information from spreading. It's too late to
retract the joke, so you have to vigorously insist that it was a joke and
hope that your correction lasts longer than the joke itself.
-- Derek