Random thoughts thread

[Sarlacc]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

THIS^
I have been on forums that if you even remotely went off topic the post was deleted.
Yes, the threads were very nice and orderly and it was extremely easy to read. All 4 of the people that stuck around there had great on topic conversations all the time. Right up to the point that the forum died and eventually disappeared from the net completely and I never even knew that could happen.
As I have said many a time, if a topic is strong enough it will survive a derailment. If it can't it was probably doomed anyway. Just look through the tech threads that are usually hands off for derailment and see how many bad questions get 2 or 3 responses and then just die.

Indeed. Well put.

Regarding the disappearing websites, that's quite interesting.
The creative output of the human race has increased in volume exponentially in later years, but at the same time much of it is silently disappearing.
Old newspapers are kept in neat microfilm archives for future generations; but digital text, images and video typically gets deleted off-hand when it gets old. After a few months, years at most.

I have personally taken down a double digit number of websites. With events, discussions, humour, clues into people's lives. And I've never given it a second thought.
A new website replaces the old one. Owner does not want to pay to have old content converted and the server is old, so it's physically removed and eco-friendly recycled.

How much of all the creativity, the context, the backdrop for the major events from this decade will be available to historians in a hundred years?
I say 99.999% will be gone. Deleted by people like me.

And I will be completely forgotten. All my photos, insights, ramblings and jokes are digital. There will be no trace left of my existence.

And I don't care. Not my problem.

[Tcoat]

Originally Posted by Sarlacc

Indeed. Well put.

Regarding the disappearing websites, that's quite interesting.
The creative output of the human race has increased in volume exponentially in later years, but at the same time much of it is silently disappearing.
Old newspapers are kept in neat microfilm archives for future generations; but digital text, images and video typically gets deleted off-hand when it gets old. After a few months, years at most.

I have personally taken down a double digit number of websites. With events, discussions, humour, clues into people's lives. And I've never given it a second thought.
A new website replaces the old one. Owner does not want to pay to have old content converted and the server is old, so it's physically removed and eco-friendly recycled.

How much of all the creativity, the context, the backdrop for the major events from this decade will be available to historians in a hundred years?
I say 99.999% will be gone. Deleted by people like me.

And I will be completely forgotten. All my photos, insights, ramblings and jokes are digital. There will be no trace left of my existence.

And I don't care. Not my problem.

Well now I am depressed.

[Sarlacc]

Originally Posted by Tcoat

Well now I am depressed.

Sorry. I've got the blues today.

[jawn]

Originally Posted by Sarlacc

Sorry. I've got the blues today.

But, but, there's a new trailer today!

[bcj]

Originally Posted by Sarlacc

And I don't care. Not my problem.

Originally Posted by Tcoat

Well now I am depressed.

There's always the Wayback Machine

[Sarlacc]

Originally Posted by jawn

But, but, there's a new trailer today!

Good news! The old one was getting a bit drafty.

[jawn]

Originally Posted by Sarlacc

Good news! The old one was getting a bit drafty.

[Sarlacc]

Originally Posted by bcj

There's always the Wayback Machine

Yes, and what a wonderful initiative it is!

The rest of this is TL/DR, just skip it, ok.

- It's still just a heap of servers. They will need constant backups and upgrades or they will rot.

A lot of content is not even on there now; because of legal stuff, flash or javascript based content, or simply this
"Page cannot be crawled or displayed due to robots.txt"

Even if the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Flash etc. IS preserved, people will not have the software to read it.

An example: I have floppy disks with my first attempts at writing a novel some 20 years ago. I used WordPerfect 4.2. A wonderful piece of software, by the way.
Even if the disks are still intact and uncorrupted (which is doubtful) I don't own a computer with a 5¼-inch floppy drive any more, motherboards don't have the connectors for them and there's no device drivers for them in modern operating systems. The file format is probably not readable anyway.
It's sitting right there in a box on a shelf, inaccessible, lost for ever.
Doesn't matter, it was all rubbish anyway. But the principle matters.
Backwards compatibility is impossible in the long run, because the baggage gets to heavy.
So without regular backups AND conversion to new formats, content will be lost.
The reality is that we're too busy creating new stuff to care about the old stuff. We always have been like that.
The difference is that until recently the old stuff could be dug out of the ground and inspected.
Often as broken pieces, but still carrying meaning. (The Dead Sea Scrolls, the Rosetta stone.)
When someone digs my old floppy disks out of the dirt they will not be able to read a single sentence of the hundreds of pages I wrote.

[elBarto]

Originally Posted by M-17

What to be for Halloween?

[ichitaka05]

Originally Posted by elBarto

LMAO That totally fit @M-17

[Sarlacc]

@jawn Yes, I am aware that Disney has purchased some rights and will be releasing an abomination soon.

I will celebrate the occasion by burning about 150 paperback and hardcover novels which brought me such joy until the heartless penny counters decided to disregard all that wealth as "legends" and start from scratch.

- I did mention my current mood, right?

[jawn]

Originally Posted by Sarlacc

@jawn Yes, I am aware that Disney has purchased some rights and will be releasing an abomination soon.

I will celebrate the occasion by burning about 150 paperback and hardcover novels which brought me such joy until the heartless penny counters decided to disregard all that wealth as "legends" and start from scratch.

- I did mention my current mood, right?

Don't worry, when the inevitable heat death of the universe occurs, no one will remember they retconned out Luuke.

[Sarlacc]

Originally Posted by jawn

Don't worry, when the inevitable heat death of the universe occurs, no one will remember they retconned out Luuke.

You're right! How comforting. I'll speed up the process by burning as much mineral oil as I possibly can.

[jawn]

Originally Posted by Sarlacc

You're right! How comforting. I'll speed up the process by burning as much mineral oil as I possibly can.