Thursday, January 22
Glenn Reynolds has a new Tech Central Station column up, this time about memory - both computer and human. It's worth reading, though I do have a couple of nits to pick.
First, he suggests that 10TB of storage would be enough to hold a lifetime's worth of experiences, given an estimated data stream of 100MB per second. A quick calculation (86,400 seconds in a day, 365.25 days per year, say 75 years life expectancy) yields a number around 2400 times larger than that. The original article is just a short piece in Wired (scroll down to Digital Recording for the Analog Soul) so I'm not sure exactly what was meant to go into that 10TB - possibly just selected or compressed data.
When Glenn says
Every time I buy a new computer, I just copy my old files over. I should go through and delete the unnecessary ones, but I don't. The reason is that it's too much time and trouble, and the new hard drive -- being, inevitably, much larger than the old hard drive -- has plenty of room. The result now is that I have over 100,000 files.I just have to laugh. Not at him, mind you, but at myself. My latest Linux box has a 720GB RAID 5 array containing 1.7 million files... There are actually more than that, but some of them are still compressed into archives following the Great Transition a few weeks back. My Windows box holds another 350,000 or so, a point which was brought to me with great force when my filesystem got corrupted. Just scanning the file allocation table took hours. It took several days to recover all the files.
There's one flaw in the article, though, that I can't easily excuse. Glenn talks about indexing and library science, even quoting Robert Heinlein on the subject:
Figuring out how to index and find all of this stuff simply underscores the wisdom of Robert Heinlein's statement: "library science is the foundation of all sciences, just as math is the key -- and we will survive or founder, depending on how well the librarians do their jobs."But he utterly fails to mention the seminal work of literature on the subject, Hal Draper's Ms Fnd in a Lbry. It's been out of print for decades, though you may be able to find a second-hand copy of Laughing Space, a collection of science fiction humour edited by Isaac Asimov and Janet Jeppson.
Ms Fnd in a Lbry is about the collapse of civilisation when the master index to the Great Library becomes corrupted, a quite remarkable insight given that the story was written in 1961. The other key insight in the story is that the indexes, bibliographies and glossaries (not to mention the index to indexes, the bibliography of glossaries, and so on) so far outweigh the actual data that the data itself ends up getting lost.
A hint as to the source of this insight came from (of all places) a Marxist mailing list from 1997: Hal Draper became a part-time microfilm acquisitions librarian at the University of California at Berkeley. I can see how that job might have sent his thoughts heading in a particular direction.
If you can find Ms Fnd in a Lbry somewhere - it doesn't seem to have been posted to the web, which is something of a surprise since everything else has - then do read it, because not only is it both insightful and foresightful as I have said, it is also very funny. (As a geek I particularly enjoyed the discussion of how to store multiple bits of data on a single subatomic particle, and how nudged quanta won out over notched quanta. But that's just me.)
Note: The first version of this post used GB when it should have said TB. Twice. I'm sure that's a sign of... Something.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
10:31 AM
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Look out everyone! It's a meme:
And you know something? You know something? Not only are we going to Sto Helit, we're going to Sto Lat and Genua and the Pseudopolis and Lancre and Slice! We're going to Omnia and Ephebe and Djelibeybi! And we're going to Al Khali and Bes Pelargic and HungHung and EcksEcksEcksEcks! And then we're going to Ankh Morpork. To take back Unseen University! YEEEAAARGH!!And then there's:
And you know something? You know something? We're going to the ampulla of Vater! And the esophagus! And the duodenum! And the gastric fundus! And the small intestine! And THEN, especially then, we'll go to the anal canal... and take back the integrity of your intestinal tract! BLURRRGH!Ntot xto mtenxtion:
And you know something? You know something? Not only are we going to Tenochtitlan, we're going to Tlatelolco and Atotonilco and Coatepec and Tehuantepec and Oaxaca! We're going to Tzintzuntzan and Xochimilco and Iztaccihuatl! And we're going to Huehuetla and Zacualco and Acaxochitlan and Cihuatlan! And then we're going to Popocatepetl. To take back The Temple of The Moon God! YEEEAAARGH!!And finally, for those with smaller horizons:
And you know something? You know something? Not only are we going to Pennsylvania Avenue, we're going to Oriental Avenue and St. Charles Place and St. James Place and Community Chest and Chance! We're going to Kentucky Avenue and Ventnor Avenue and Marvin Gardens! And we're going to Water Works and Pacific Avenue and B & O Railroad and both shitty purple ones! And then we're going to Broadway and Park Place. To go past Go and Collect $200! YEEEAAARGH!!
(Thanks to the commenters at Tim Blair's place.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
09:22 AM
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Your hosting company says that they suspect there is a problem related to software RAID on your server, and they would like to disable it while they run some tests.
And you say, well, the server is not in production yet, so fine, go ahead.
And then they say, how do you disable software RAID anyway?
I think the new server will be a few days yet.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
09:16 AM
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Wednesday, January 21
Now the Nintendo Gamecube can run Minx too. Which is good if you can't get your hands on an AS/400.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
11:40 AM
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Tuesday, January 20
Thanks to Mitch H. of Blogfonte for the link to (ta da!) Nadesico Thumbnail Theatre!
Ruri: Enough with the screeching already! Mr. Greenfield, take the amphetamines AWAY from Spike Spencer and Jennifer Earhart.You know you want to!
Thousands of Anime Fans: Shut up, Ruri! This is the best dub ADV has ever put out. No wonder it took them so long to release it.Ruri: Grr. Idiots.
Akito: Did someone say anime???Akito, Megumi, Ruri, Minato, Howmei, Seiya, Goat and Admiral Fukube: WHOA!
Ruri: Ha ha, you have to wait until after the commercials to see what Gai showed us.
Thousands of anime fans: No we don't, we've got DVDs.Ruri: Grrr.
Nadesico Logo: Quack Quack.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
01:16 PM
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Which Typical Anti-Hero Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
(Thanks to Stevie.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
11:44 AM
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Crashy badness has migrated to the new MuNu server, which has fallen over five times in the last four days.
I think it may just be a faulty disk drive. Now I just have to persuade the hosting company to do something about it.
Update: At least the hosting company is being helpful. They're taking a look at the server now to see if they can fix the problem. We may be stuck on old MuNu for an extra week while this gets sorted out, but I think we'll survive that.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
10:53 AM
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Not only Steven Den Beste, who we know had already fallen victim, but now Porphyrogenitus too!
Where will it end, people? Where will it end?
Will Glenn Reynolds be the next to fall? Or maybe (shudder) Lileks?
I'm a lost cause, but maybe you can save yourselves. It's not too late...
P.S. Still no crashy badness. Yay!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
03:21 AM
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Monday, January 19
Kei, my Windows XP system, has been rock solid since I replaced the video card.
So apologies to Myxi, my Logitech MX 700 mouse, and I will be buying some nice King Island brie on the way home tonight. Mmm, cheese.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
02:38 PM
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Like vampires-in-training, the scientists sleep in rooms with blackout shades.The Toronto Star, still struggling with the concept of time zones.They wear strange wristwatches that sometimes tell them it's the middle of the night when the rest of the world is eating lunch.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
02:30 PM
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