On Jun 21, 2:44 pm, Rozzie <rozziewil...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Rex Ballard wrote:
> > Unfortunately, these were articles published by InfoWorld, E-Week,
> > CRN, and other weekly trade journals. Unfortunately they are
> > notorious for NOT archiving their content for long-term access on Web
> > Sites.
>
> How convenient.
Not really, after all, if a web site keeps purging the articles it
publishes, we can very easily find ourself in the world described in
Ferenheit 451, were paper books and print publications are banned,
because history can't simply be "erased" or "rewritten" on paper, but
it's so easy in the electronic media.
It's amazing how different the coverage of the Kennedy Assasignation
was on the actual day of the assasination, and how radically that
coverage changed even within 24 hours. Video Tape recordings
dissappeared.
In the paper publication, when you print something, you can't "take it
back", so you print a retraction. In on-line publishing, you can not
only make a page or an article "dissappear", but you can even make the
retraction "disappear" as well.
Of course, when online publications make a habit of making docuents
"disappear", the only alternative for most folks is to fill up a spare
room or storage facility with magazines, just in case you ever need to
reference an article.
There are some people on this usenet newsgroup who post contriversial
headlines, but put an expiration on the posting, so that the original
document and article disappears.
The net result has been that history is very "mushy".
If I were being paid to do these postings, I might want to spend a few
hours in a public library, building up the appropriate references to
articles that I've read over the last 30 years. I read an average of
500 pages/week, and spend an average of 1000 hours per year keeping up
to date on the latest technology. Add to that my 2500-3000 hour/year
work schedule, and my biological requirements (sleep, food, talk), and
it makes for a pretty full year.
I was divorced in 1990, and my ex-wife didn't want me to visit them,
which meant that many of the hours I might have spent teaching my son
how to play catch, or playing barbies with my daughter, were spent
talking to 8,000 publishers about the possibility of putting their
commercial content on the internet, talking to businesses about how to
take orders for merchandize over the internet, talking with banks
about how to safely do cash transactions over the internet.
I suppose I should feel guilty that I can't remember the exact page of
the exact publication out of the 5 million pages I've read since I was
21, or the 7 million pages I've read during my lifetime.
I tried to keep some of it storage, but after completely filling a 14
foot by 14 foot by 10 foot storage room with magazines, books, and
other reference materials, and paying $100/month on it for 12 years, I
finally had to let it go. Yes, it was nice having every copy of Byte
Magazine from 1977 to 1995, and every issue of several weekly
magazines, but it got to the point where it was a fire hazard.
Humidity and Temprature made them smell funny, and locating a specific
article could take several hours.
I did manage to salvage some 6250 BPI reels of BSD Tar content,
including usenet articles, including articles I posted, and articles I
found interesting enough to keep, from 1983 to 1987.
I also have similar archives on QIC-150 Sun cartridges. I also have
some exebyte tapes. I even have some QIC-250 cartridges.
Unfortunately, I don't have the hardware to "replay" them, and I
haven't found a good company who can do the media conversion for a
price I am willing to pay ($250 to convert 40 megabytes of tape into a
CD-ROM seems a bit expensive, but at this point I'd pay it if they
could guarantee recovery).
Keep in mind that the material in question is copyrighted, which means
I can't just download 180,000 pages worth of web content onto a CD-ROM
and publish it from my "private" archive.
I do have a modest archive on http://open4success.org/List.html
Still, that is only personal e-mails and usenet postings, and legally
cannot include copyrighted work.
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