Saturday, August 12, 2017
Rare wisdom
ZH has a sort of interesting but skimpy article on digital decay, one of the many faults that incompetent "genius" Berners-Lee designed into the Web.
Other institutions have proper provisions for change of address or end of business or end of life or disappearance of information. Post offices, banks, libraries, landline phone systems, all have mechanisms. The wonderful Web, so carefully and painstakingly assembled by "genius" Berners-Lee to serve NSA, didn't bother to copy those well-established mechanisms.
Even the business end of the Web makes no provision for a vendor who dies or disappears. The storefront keeps running, taking orders and sending out digital products. Where does the money go?
Amid the usual squabbling and irrelevance, a sharp exchange in ZH's combox:
Anything worthwhile is not in a book. Anything worthwhile is common knowledge.
That's wisdom. A comment that makes you stop and think. Yes. Monsters who want their words to be part of history KNOW that the web is ephemeral, and they ALSO KNOW that librarians of all types, both paper and web, are firmly on their side. Librarians will carefully store and catalog vicious genocidal lies, and librarians will carefully MemoryHole plain truth.
= = = = =
Footnote: Computer languages also have exception-handling facilities. Use this file or item; if the file or item isn't there, fall back to a default file or item. If "genius" Berners-Lee had ever used a computer, he would have been familiar with this concept. The web could then have included a similar beneficiary link mechanism...
Anything worthwhile is not in a book. Anything worthwhile is common knowledge.
That's wisdom. A comment that makes you stop and think. Yes. Monsters who want their words to be part of history KNOW that the web is ephemeral, and they ALSO KNOW that librarians of all types, both paper and web, are firmly on their side. Librarians will carefully store and catalog vicious genocidal lies, and librarians will carefully MemoryHole plain truth.
= = = = =
Footnote: Computer languages also have exception-handling facilities. Use this file or item; if the file or item isn't there, fall back to a default file or item. If "genius" Berners-Lee had ever used a computer, he would have been familiar with this concept. The web could then have included a similar beneficiary link mechanism...
Python exception works like this......
try:
fig=scene.CurrentFigure()
except:
fig=scene.Figure("NullFig")
Beneficiary link could work like this.....
<a href="http://polistrasmill.blogspot.com"bref="http://ockhamsbungalow.com">As Polistra said,</a>
Labels: Answered better than asked
¶ 11:39 PM
