Wayback Machine hardware up in FLAMES (but interwebs' DeLorean WAS backed up) The internet archive charity behind the Wayback Machine has launched an emergency funding drive following a fire which wrecked more half a million dollars worth of equipment. A fire ripped through the Internet Archive’s (IA) San Francisco scanning centre at 3.30 am last night. Although fireman were on the scene in minutes and …
...what with saving the snow leopard, saving the rain forest, saving the whale,
saving the icecaps, saving the dodo (think that one was a con) and saving
the environment i've just got no disposable income left...i do have some
advise though, make sure you keep the location of your 'Backups' to
yourselves otherwise the NSA might try to torch those locations too
...i do have some advise though, make sure you keep the location of your 'Backups' to yourselves otherwise the NSA might try to torch those locations too
Thank goodness the last mob to torch books on any significant scale were triumphantly put out of business by Montgomery, Eisenhower and Zhukov! If ever the NSA had a death-wish then destroying the Internet Archive would be an 'excellent' way to begin.
Amongst its other backups, the Internet Archive mirrors itself with the new Library of Alexandria (Bibliotheca Alexandrina):
http://www.bibalex.org/internetarchive/ia_en.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibliotheca_Alexandrina
From the mostly puerile posts to this story, it's pretty clear that El Reg readers have little idea of the importance of the Internet Archive, or what it does, or even that for which it stands. It really is a rather pathetic indictment of the one-sentence-is-almost-too-much Twitter and Facebook world that many of us are now forced to endure.
FYI, the type of equipment the Internet Archive has lost will be similar to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmhIJOqepVU .
The fact that the IA is a non-profit charity run by a few farsighted individuals instead of a mainstream activity of humankind, is it itself a tragedy. The fact that there isn't widespread concern about such news is another.
________
This story isn't alone: also today on El Reg we even see Bletchley has to go a begging to HP to make its archives available to the masses: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/08/bletchley_park_snoop_station_to_put_secret_wwii_archives_online/
Dear Rob Hib,
I never thought that my words would cause such annoyance to
anyone. When i comment on articles on this website i try to do
so in a lighthearted and pithy way ( i'm full of pith ).
It was never my intention to make you or anyone else frown.
What you need to remember is, not to take the comments
or views that people express here too seriously....i'm sure
that as i sit here typing this you are already donating a
sizable chunk of your hard earned salary to the Wayback
charity and that it will be gratefully received...i unfortunately
have no spare funds to do the same...hence my poor attempt
at humor.
As far as Bletchley Park is concerned, since it is an ex MOD
installation and all the physical materials contained within
the site are the property of the ministry, maybe they could find
the funds necessary to archive and preserve this valuable historic
trove, as they seem to have plenty of money to waste on Warships
that aren't fit for purpose, jump jets that don't jump and billions
of pounds of kit that was over ordered and never used.
You get a B+ only.
...Since the Reg has done a Google and BLOCKED
comments on the Max Mosley story i thought i would
take the opportunity here to say to Max (If he or his
Lawyers are reading) ' Well done sir...i hope that
when i reach your age i'll be able to take on FIVE
prozzies and be able to walk away without having
to go to A&E first...tea and medals all round sir'.
while I'd hope that the Reg would take a (legal) stand regarding any important bit of IT-related whistleblowing it might happen to report on; I don't see any reason for the Reg to make such a stand over what commentards might happen to say on your chosen off-topic topic.
Today's story tells us that behind the Wayback machine (an internet archive) is the Internet Archive (IA) charity.
And that the IA charity is seeking money to continue digitising. Digitising the Internet?
Perhaps The Register would like to fill in the gap in the story?
Not content with archiving ALL the internet*, they also store pretty much any data they can get their hands on, including in this case books, which they digitise with rather funky book scanning machines.
From a mention of "our library partners" in their press release/blog post I suspect they were helping a library scan old books.
More info here: http://archive.org/scanning
* all the internet their spiders can reach anyway
My first thought was: maybe now they can buy some decent hardware. That site has always been slow, generally timing out.
I applaud their efforts to retain the minutiae of the ever expanding dung heap if the interwebz. However I jus hope they run the new stuff on something better than 286's
My second thought was: I wonder if they've ever tested their backups.
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