On 8/9/19 8:03 AM, Russell Reiter via talk wrote:

On Fri, Aug 9, 2019, 2:45 AM Kevin Cozens via talk <talk@gtalug.org> wrote:

On 2019-08-02 8:03 a.m., Russell Reiter via talk wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 2, 2019, 7:23 AM Stewart C. Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org

[snip]

I recently discovered I have a cassette tape with 4K BASIC for Altair 8800
dated 1976. I have now archived the audio on that cassette that on to my
computer. I have other cassette tapes I used with old computers that I'm
doing to digitize and attempt to decode.

There are also technologies which were developed but which got overwhelmed by rapid changes in other areas. The lazer optical turntable for playing old records is one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_turntable

Also from this link, a camera which scans the vinyl grooves and uses software to reconstruct the sound. Both of these technologies were eclipsed by compact disk technology, yet each of them could (probably) non destructively read the records and reconstruct the sound. Sort of a microfiche picture treatment of sound, instead of its traditional use for tiny copies of text and pictures.

The problem with records in general was the destructive playback systems the more you loved your music the worse it got.
The old 78RPM recordings were made of a shellac material that I believe was more resilient than vinyl but both the masters and produced records were subject to degradation with use.

It is interesting to realize that a lot of this "old school technology" has
survived many a decade yet modern devices like CDs, DVDs, and hard drives
often have much shorter shelf lives.

One of the philosophical founders of media theory, Marshal McLuhan said; "the medium is the message." This is probably more true today than it was when he coined the phrase, given all the hyperbole around the collection of metadata on the net these days.

The issue with recording data electronically is bit-rot. This problem is amplified by making a copy of a copy of a copy etc. Having a master copy, no matter what the form, would be be beneficial for any data recovery expert, should they have an urgent need to reconstruct the original data after suspected corruption.

bit-rot is not new but dates back to the earliest recording technologies(clay tablets) where people copying something they would make errors and the meaning of the work would change slightly.
When books were copied by hand the error rate was very high but the move to the printing press dramatically reduced the error rate.
The current state of the art in error detection and correction has an amazingly low error rate and some schemes can suffer large chunks of data loss.
What are the chances that someone on this mailing list will see a misspelled word due to bit-rot?

I have some old records that I converted to digital recordings because I liked the music and cranking up the old gramophone is so much more work than point and click.
I can assure you that my "master" copies suffered from bit-rot but at least now the loss per replay has gone down by a factor measured in 10 to the power of some number.

We can't reverse entropy, at least not yet. The best we can hope to do is retard it. Whether data is corrupted by dust and scratches in vinyl or cd records, we should always be able to recreate the old technology used for the creation of media at the time it was originally written. Except of course that which is lost to the ancient past, like the lazer anti gravity devices used by the Egyptians to cut and stack rocks into pyramids.

We have the lazers but fall short on the anti-gravity devices. Personally I believe that if we don't bit-rot the planet first, we will get there eventually. ;-)

What happens when we digitally encode the world with next gen ECC systems.
We can live forever and never have to worry about forgetting our stupid mistakes because they will be preserved with perfect digital fidelity.

-- 
Alvin Starr                   ||   land:  (647)478-6285
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