for those that don't know http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZfcJsWEtl0

________________________________ From: "arcarlini at iee.org" <arcarlini at iee.org> http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Hitachi-quartz-glass-data-dots-Takao-Wa tanabe-Superman,17856.html I wonder if this will turn out to be any more "real" than the various other "archival" solutions that have cropped up. Still, if it just needs a microscope to read the data out (and some software, unless you are extremely patient), then it has promise for those of us who'd like to be able to peruse our documents after the apocalypse. C: I don't know what you mean exactly by the _apocalypse_, but if you're referring to *the* apocalypse, it already happened. A long, long time ago. The most common misconception is it's yet to occur. So common it's scary. ?If people simply used a bare bones file system, w/redundancy, w/backups faithfully made every 6 months, what's wrong w/optical storage? I know, there's been loads of discussion.

From: "arcarlini at iee.org" <arcarlini at iee.org> Whichever one you may be referring to, it's only one of many. But, to clarify, I meant the *next* one (affecting this planet). C: The greek word that corresponds to apocalypse means simply to reveal, pictorially as spreading a curtain. The notion of calamity is not inherent in it's meaning. discussion. Well, building a CDROM drive (or DVD-ROM drive) from scratch might be a bit of a challenge. A microscope, on the other hand, is something that we've been able to build since the 1600s. Admittedly this technology will need something slightly better than that, but at least we'll have many subsequent generations to perfect the technology. Whereas if the survivors had to build CDROm drives from scratch, they might find most of the media unreadable by the time they succeeded. C: Well, the page describes optical storage. Hitachi states it'll last forever. But you don't need anything to last forever. If the need for the medium was to last forever, how important could it be? It needs to be viewed periodically, I would assume, which presumes some sort of handling. And if it gets handled alot, it's bound to degrade. ?You say a cd/dvd drive might need to be recreated. Well viewing miniscule data through a uscope would need some sort capture and processing. So computers will also need to be recreated. And you'll need to utilize the data on a computer anyway. Unless we manage to get slugs to process and execute all these old proggies. Let's work on that problem first :) ?Largely I think this quest for a solution lacks a problem. No offense, I've contemplated this stuff over the years myself. So much so I've come to the conclusion that even if a few bits were lost, if it's critical enough, there's a brain out there big enough to recreate them. Just don't ask me ;) ?I find at times the prospect of having to rewrite say a driver for a *empty* piece of h/w isn't all that much to ask. We concentrate a lot on nostalgia here. But sometimes you need to shovel all that and concentrate on what's most important. ?Even recreating rudimentary technology will seem simple before long. A lot of stuff is so commonly available you could in all likelihood jury rig an optical drive in 5-10 years from scrounged parts, if not a lot sooner. Depending on the need.

In article <CANij+dd46tZFX9HBdRxh=6aQQ0_oObWripobYO=4zuiXwQLKNw at mail.gmail.com>, William Donzelli <wdonzelli at gmail.com> writes: Most of the cards I fished through are warped in some manner or another; some of the boxes clearly had water damage and they are stored in a corner of the building that has obviously had water dripping through the ceiling because of the damaged ceiling tile. Caveat emptor :). -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline> The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org> The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals.classiccmp.org> Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

Hmmm...what I feared. I did not have the time to go deep into the corner of the store where they were stacked, and the cards on the surface of the stack were less than optimal. I guess deeper into the stack things did not get a whole lot better. -- Will