Sorry for the latecoming... but was out-of-electronic-touch for a week;
just catching up.
Rumor has it that Derek Peschel may have mentioned these words:
>I wrote, and Fred Cisin replied:
>
>> > A display case shows the progression of storage disks, starting with
>> > one from 1965 that's the size of a tractor-trailer tire. It held 2.5
>> > megabytes of data and had to be sandblasted to be erased.
>> > Had to be sandblasted to be erased? Huh??
>
>> We've seen that particular bit of silliness before. Once an authoritative
>> statement of wrong information is made, others will follow, and if/when
>> challenged merely refer to the authority.
>
>I assumed that by "particular bit of silliness" you meant "the 'erased by
>sandblasting' idea" but after a little thought, I realized that maybe you
>just meant "the spreading of a patently false statement".
>
>I wonder how such a ridiculous idea (about sandblasting, I mean) could have
>gotten started in the first place. Do you have any details?
>
>> Quite a while back, we discussed some systems for LONG-term data storage.
>> Stonehenge was [jokingly] mentioned as being a hard-sectored long term
>> data storage device. (probably stationary media with moving head)
>> Assuming a high data density stored as surface markings or pitting,
>> sandblasting WOULD be the needed method for erasing surface data. How
>> long before our silly speculation finds its way into the computer
>> histories, and later generations are told that the druids invented
>> hard-sectored disks?
>
>Well, you either want to prevent the correct information from disappearing,
>or prevent the incorrect information from spreading. It's too late to
>retract the joke, so you have to vigorously insist that it was a joke and
>hope that your correction lasts longer than the joke itself.
Why????? Wouldn't it be cool to see that stuff being taught to our
great-grandkids (assuming, for myself, that I have no more heart attacks
for the next 60 years) so we could say "yea, I was there when Stonehenge
was sandblasted to erase the data... Later on, we re-interfaced it to our
Commodore 64's and formatted it Double-Density!"
Kind of a geek's "We had no shoes, we had to walk 10 miles to school
(uphill both ways and snow 30 feet (9.9 meters) of snow for 11 months out
of the year, of course... ;-), and we were *happy* to have a piece of
bread-crust for lunch!!!"
Just a (twisted) thought...
"Merch"
--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger --- sysadmin, Iceberg Computers
Recycling is good, right??? Ok, so I'll recycle an old .sig.
If at first you don't succeed, nuclear warhead
disarmament should *not* be your first career choice.
Received on Fri Sep 10 1999 - 21:20:38 BST