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Data Storage Software

Vint Cerf Warns Against 'Digital Dark Age' 166

Posted by Soulskill from the strangely-silent-on-digital-bronze-age dept.
An anonymous reader writes: Vint Cerf, speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said we need better methods for preserving everything we do on computers. It's not just about finding better storage media — it's about recording all the aspects of modern software and operating systems so future generations can figure out how it all worked. Cerf says, "The solution is to take an X-ray snapshot of the content and the application and the operating system together, with a description of the machine that it runs on, and preserve that for long periods of time. And that digital snapshot will recreate the past in the future." Cerf is also pushing for better data preservation standards: "The key here is when you move those bits from one place to another, that you still know how to unpack them to correctly interpret the different parts. That is all achievable if we standardize the descriptions."
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Vint Cerf Warns Against 'Digital Dark Age' More

Vint Cerf Warns Against 'Digital Dark Age'

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  • Already happened to a good portion of the early we (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 14, 2015 @11:54AM (#49055085)

    A lot of the original web is gone, whats left is crowded out by seo bs. And I'd rather not have and ad company decide what part of the web is relevant to me.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      A lot of the original web is gone, whats left is crowded out by seo bs. And I'd rather not have and ad company decide what part of the web is relevant to me.

      Luckily I saved it to a floppy.

    • Already happened to a good portion of the early we (Score:4, Informative)

      by jordanjay29 ( 1298951 ) on Saturday February 14, 2015 @01:07PM (#49055559)
      I think this is Mr. Cerf speaking as the man who was instrumental in the Internet's creation, not as a Google employee.
    • Yep, first website I gave my CC info to was hothothot.com, back in, dunno, 92/93. Ordered hot sauce, the standout was Sriacha, aka Rooster Sauce. Website is long gone, as are the other things I ordered to get free shipping, but I go through 3/4 Sriacha bottles a year to this day. I think the Rooster sauce was the thing I used to push shipping to free, funny how things work.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Wasn't NSA around back then with their backups? ;)

  • That is what VM's are for (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 14, 2015 @12:02PM (#49055119)

    just put the system in a VM image, save it, and there you go. Problem solved.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by bazmail ( 764941 )
      lol. That put a smile on my face. You are either a jibbering fucktard or a comedy genius.

  • Welcome to the 90s! (Score:3)

    by Megol ( 3135005 ) on Saturday February 14, 2015 @12:18PM (#49055221)

    Or whenever the first person warned about the same thing. Which was a loong time ago...

    • As we become more sophisticated, we design things that are more delicate. The more advanced we are, the less likely our creations will be accessible to those who come after we fall.

      Which, considering that we've demonstrated these capabilities once already, and considering how long we or bipeds like us have been around, implies that it's happened before.

      If there were more advanced civilizations before us, there's no reason to think we'd know about them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by itzly ( 3699663 )

        If there were more advanced civilizations before us, there's no reason to think we'd know about them.

        Some things would have survived, just like some of our products will survive for a very long time. Our geostationary satellites will be there for a very long time, for example.

        • That seems like a bizarre example... there are plenty of other stuff that will hang around for a long time. Building ruins will be around for millions of years. Radioactive waste will be around for a long time too (which is why it's so hard to deal with). If there were any civilizations like us in Earth's past, we'd definitely know about them.

  • Our local time capsule... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bazmail ( 764941 ) on Saturday February 14, 2015 @12:22PM (#49055243)
    I remember our Mayor presided over the opening of a 25 year old time capsule put there by the local schools. Inside was a lazer disc. When he asked to view the contents of it, nobody could find a device to play it. Vint is right. And its not just a DRM thing, its a lack of standards thing too.

    • Library of Congress seems like the logical place to set up to archive old OS's, hardware, emulation and other items needed to read, archive, restore & recover old media. That is what the LoC does for 'documents.'

    • Re:Our local time capsule... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by solios ( 53048 ) on Saturday February 14, 2015 @12:52PM (#49055453) Homepage

      Part of my old job (in a museum Exhibits department) was upgrading interactives and videos from the 80s and 90s to modern equipment - that included "transferring" laser discs the old fashioned way - plugging one of the still-working players from the floor directly into the capture hardware.

      The thing is, I was transferring LD to DVD, which is actually a step *down* in quality. Kind of but not quite like how VHS is a step down from Beta (which I also dealt with).

      The great thing about standards is there's so many of them!

      • You must have been using a sub-par encoder then. A single layer DVD disc usually allows a significant step up in quality compared to what you would get with an LD disc.

      • Be thankful they were just plain laserdiscs - the BBC Domesday Project [wikipedia.org] is an oft-cited example of digital obsolescence, involving weird analogue/digital laserdiscs and custom computer hardware...

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      Well, luckily the trend has been away from tying one specific format to one specific media. Instead of the Audio CD you can have an MP3/OGG/AAC file that'll play from a HDD, SSD, USB drive, burned to a CD, DVD, BluRay, stored on a tape and so on. That eliminates the need for ancient equipment and media. Of course that doesn't really make it any easier for a time capsule, but the way to preserve is to copy forward. Along with integrity checking those photos you take today can be just as pristine in 100 years

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Bing Tsher E ( 943915 )

        Last week I made a fresh copy of my 'archive' of everything computer related from my 20's. I copied everything off the 5 DVD-R disks that I burned in the early 00's onto a USB hard drive.

        What was on the 5 DVD-Rs was what I copied then off about 30 CDR disks.

        What was on the earliest few of the CDR disks was what I had copied there off DC2120 tape cartridges.

        There is even one of the DVDs arranged with folders called 'CD4, CD4, CD6' and some of the CD folders have subfolders with names like 'Tape7, Tape8, Tap

    • I remember our Mayor presided over the opening of a 25 year old time capsule put there by the local schools. Inside was a lazer disc. When he asked to view the contents of it, nobody could find a device to play it. Vint is right. And its not just a DRM thing, its a lack of standards thing too.

      In the case of the time capsule you describe, it was a dork thing, not a lack of standards thing.

      Whomever put the laser disk in the time capsule thought they were being all futuristic and stuff. They should have put a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by bazmail ( 764941 )

        Whomever put the laser disk in the time capsule thought they were being all futuristic and stuff.

        Then can you tell me what data storage method will still be in use in 50 or 100 years time? Without "being all futuristic and stuff".

        • I'd vote for the humble DVD - although obviously even now it's a legacy format. It's reached such critical mass that there will likely still be some working DVD readers out there 100 years from now, if for no other reason than to transfer old DVD-based archives and videos.

          Even today you can buy floppy disk readers, for example. 100 years from now, you'll probably be able to buy external DVD/Blu-Ray/Whatever readers that plug into your USB 8.0 ports for $20 or so.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ihtoit ( 3393327 )

          my vote: hemp paper or vellum, and lampblack ink.

          It worked for the Chinese.

  • So far so good (Score:3)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Saturday February 14, 2015 @12:24PM (#49055261) Journal

    I can fire up a TI-99/4A emulator or an Amiga emulator and run all my old software from three decades ago. Can someone name a general purpose computing platform (IE not including mainframes or supercomputers or other exotic low-volume hardware) whose software we cannot execute using an emulator?

    • so far so bad, the most important wares from the past run on the category you excluded, various non-IBM mainframe architectures that helped rule the business world in decades past, besides the pre-1964 IBM ones. Instead you are focused on geek toy/hobbyist/consumer ones.

      • Business accounting will not be remotely as interesting to future generations as video games, aside from the records. How they got the numbers is zzzzz. What the numbers were may be relevant.

    • What mainframes lack in hardware volume they make up for with users. :-)

      An interesting list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Megol ( 3135005 )

      The Wang PC.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ihtoit ( 3393327 )

      XBOX Classic. ...

      "Xbox is just like a PC, it's easy to emulate!"

      Yes, we've all heard this silly and pointless argument a million times and it usually ends in the same, and rather ignorant conclusion (or should I say assumption) that just because the Xbox is PC similar, it's hardware should be relatively easy to emulate. That's a very wrong frame of mind. How hard can it be? Very. Xbox's hardware is very complex and still poorly documented to this day. This requires some explanation.

      1. Is a PC easy to emulat

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by itzly ( 3699663 )

        the Xbox's CPU can be emulated, but not accurately and not in real time - which is the whole point of a useful emulation.

        Not really relevant anymore. A single x86 CPU doesn't even run the same code in exactly the same way as it did 2 seconds ago. There could easily be an order of magnitude difference, if not several orders.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by ihtoit ( 3393327 )

          depends what else it's doing at that instant, I guess. But the idea of a hardware emulator I'm guessing here, is that it resembles a freshly powered up doing-absolutely-nothing-else-but-waiting-for-input target system as closely as technically possible - to the point where the *software* doesn't know the difference.

    • Plenty. Virtually all the AI software of the 60's and 70's is lost now. They were usually written in custom Lisp dialects for which no interpreter exists today. Even if you can find the interpreter code, there's no way you could run them, because they were heavily optimized for custom hardware that is long gone, the companies developing them also long gone, along with critical information that you'd need to write an emulator.

      Lisp is especially problematic in this area because of the huge variety of non-stan

  • We keep all the information about the Khardasians around?

  • ... software developers say no [slashdot.org].

  • The Apple business model. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by solios ( 53048 ) on Saturday February 14, 2015 @12:49PM (#49055425) Homepage

    Anyone who's used Apple software for more than five years has been burned by forced format obsolescence - ClarisWorks, AppleWorks, old QuickTime codecs, the PICT format, SimpleText, Font Suitcases, the list goes on. And on. And that's just *one* platform and set of formats off the top of my head. I lose data to software "upgrades" so often that it's the single biggest determining factor in my upgrade cycle and a huge determining factor in the uptake and use of new software. We aren't heading for a digital dark age - we're in one already.

    • There exists a conversion path for every thing that you listed. If you are concerned about the longevity of a particular format, you should probably avoid proprietary solutions.

      • A long and twisty conversion path. Just like with Microsoft. You need Word for Windows 2.0 to read the Word for MS-DOS files. You need Word for Windows 6.0 (Office 4.3) to read the Winword2 files. You need Office 97 to read the Office 4.3 files. It's even worse with Apple, because they can.

        • It is twisty, but chances are you don't need anything that you didn't bother to convert after several generations of product. A theoretical loss to historians, but also a nice low-pass filter for them as well :)

      • Stop using non-Free Software (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jbn-o ( 555068 ) <mail@digitalcitizen.info> on Saturday February 14, 2015 @01:58PM (#49055847) Homepage

        Quite right, in fact most of what gets posted to /. including this story could be responded to with a phrase Eben Moglen has been saying for years in his talks: "RMS was right". Richard Stallman had it right years ago and, equally importantly, for the right reasons. Not "Open Source" (the younger movement Brad Kuhn rightly points out is built to greenwash proprietary-supporting non-copylefted Free Software (copy 1 [linux.org.au], copy 2 [slingshot.co.nz]) but strongly copylefted Free Software released and developed for freedom.

        The Affero GPL version 3 [gnu.org] or later will keep software Free as in freedom and meet the needs of the future. Users will undoubtedly want to know how things work and benefit from software written by programmers allowed to understand how things work. This will help us avoid the very trap the grandparent post referred to (and you wisely advised against).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

      no you are and every other walled garden user

      meanwhile I can still boot ms dos on an i7

    • That's why I use Emacs. It's been around for 30 years, and based on that track record, I expect it will be around when I die. Seriously.

      It's worth it.

  • We all have them and Vint's agenda is good for Vint, and not much else.

  • Probably short sighted. (Score:3)

    by dmomo ( 256005 ) on Saturday February 14, 2015 @12:50PM (#49055437)

    If we survive as a society, in 500 years, our technology will be so advanced there will be systems we cannot even conceive of that capable of analyzing pretty much any data or bytecode you throw at it. Documentation or support systems will most likely serve a more historical than practical purpose.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dmomo ( 256005 )

      Though this fact doesn't lessen the importance of preserving as much as we can for posterity.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      That sounds reasonable, but think of the engineering the Romans pulled off. It's often said we didn't really understand how they did some of those things and I'd wager that some of them may have been difficult to duplicate in say 1800 even with the vastly superior technology of that era.

  • FUD ? (Score:3)

    by swell ( 195815 ) <jabberwock@poetic.com> on Saturday February 14, 2015 @01:08PM (#49055571)

    This is a great idea. Preserve previous generations of software & data, emulate old hardware . Then we will be able to enjoy all the goodies from the Apple ][, IBM 360 and Commodore 64 era!

    But wait, we can already emulate just about any old equipment. Most of what was worthwhile on floppy disks or tape is now online, available to most of us. Even our government, slow though they may be, has found ways of bringing old software & data to modern machines. Cloud storage and networking brings more interoperability over time and the future looks bright. Movies from the 1920s are available on modern media as well as Edison's cylinder recordings. So what's the problem? Oh, your dad's home movies. Sorry about that.

  • We desperately need legacy support.

    1) All existing and past applications should be able to run on current platforms. This can be done economically and gracefully with enveloping. That would even allow modern OSs to run software from all previous OSs even those not in their lineages or hardware histories. There is no good excuse for Apple, Microsoft and others making the OS's not compatible with legacy software. Access to legacy software is key to our being able to access our data into the future.

    2) OS maker

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by itzly ( 3699663 )

      There is no good excuse for Apple, Microsoft and others making the OS's not compatible with legacy software.

      Sure there is. It costs a lot of money to keep everything compatible.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by pubwvj ( 1045960 )

        "It costs a lot of money to keep everything compatible."

        What a short sited response you have. Consider:

        1) there are hundreds of millions of older iOS devices and Macs.

        2) older iOS offer an inexpensive way for new users to come into the fold and become customers.

        3) Apple makes the vast majority of their money on software and content.

        Ergo, by offering legacy support they greatly increase their market share and their income.

        The same argument could have been made for PCs except they don't last.

        Play the long gam

        • Play the long game. It's for winners.

          According to who? They only need to think on a time scale terminating at their retirement.

  • Some of mine are over 50 years old and still work perfectly. Reproduction doesn't even require electricity. They are very low maintenance, but not very space efficient.

    • There are some over 5000 years old and still work perfectly. Reproduction doesn't even require electricity. They are very low maintenance, but not very space efficient.

      See what I did there? You've suggested a medium which may be somewhat practical for a very limited purpose, but wholly unworkable for the type or quantity of storage needed today. Unless you were going for humor, in which case I proffer a wry smile.

      In reality, what is needed is not a static storage format but a dynamic one which regularly rea

  • RIP iPod click-wheel apps (Score:3)

    by CODiNE ( 27417 ) on Saturday February 14, 2015 @08:04PM (#49057493) Homepage

    I used to really like the Tempest game for that, and the card game wasn't too bad.

    I wanted to get Monopoly and Mahjong for it and some other games but by then they stopped selling them on the iTunes store. There was a pirate torrent going around but the apps were encrypted and no way to install them on another device. Finally they just stopped making them.

    Apps like that... gone forever.

    iOS 3.0 apps that got the App store going... gone forever. I still remember playing the unofficial lights off game, beat all 150 levels. (Wrote a program to solve them)

    Unless someone wants to make an emulator for the original iPhone you could do it by downloading the ROMs just like old Apple emulators, but how would you approve the apps without a 3.0 app store around?

    In theory someone could crack Apple's old signing keys and have a local "FakeAppStore" program that validates them and allows installation on the emulator.

    The "cease and desist" letter would probably arrive less that one minute after putting such project online.

  • My wife did her thesis on this subject

    The case for the creation of a reliable digital archive for the preservation of personal digital objetcs

    http://explorer.cyberstreet.co... [cyberstreet.com]

  • This has already happened to some university researchers who used proprietary software for research that required yearly licensing or platforms that are no longer supported by university IT staff. Even better, the company may have gone out of business or the software has been discontinued.

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