[LAD] [OT] Richard Stallman warns against ChromeOS

[gene heskett]

On Friday, December 17, 2010 06:13:53 am Ralf Mardorf did opine:

> On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 05:57 -0500, gene heskett wrote:
> > On Friday, December 17, 2010 05:52:17 am Ralf Mardorf did opine:
> > > On Fri, 2010-12-17 at 05:30 -0500, gene heskett wrote:
> > > > On Friday, December 17, 2010 05:15:04 am Philipp �berbacher did
> > > > opine: [...]
> > > > 
> > > > > I guess it really depends on what you try to achieve. Afaik the
> > > > > average life-span of a HD is puny 2 years.
> > > > 
> > > > Some maybe.  I have a 1Gb seacrate hawk I use on a TRS-80 Color
> > > > Computer that is a good 15 years old, and I hooked up an old
> > > > Quantum P40S beside it the other day that must be close to 18
> > > > years old.  No bad sectors were found when I did a logical verify
> > > > of the surface.
> > > 
> > > Ok, my 40MB SCSI Seagate for the Atari is ok for more than 20 years,
> > > heavy usage, several startups a day. Sometimes I need to start it 2
> > > or 3 times, but than it's ok.
> > > 
> > > > > From what I heard the magnetic tapes
> > > > > used by for example ESA a long time ago have a life-span of 80
> > > > > years. If 'store it good and forget' is what you're after then
> > > > > tape seems like a good idea.
> > > > 
> > > > That seems to be a recipe for disaster.  Will there be a working
> > > > tape drive to read those old tapes in even 40 years?
> > > 
> > > For analog tapes Dirk Brauner had Telefunken machines that are as
> > > old as you are and they were better than a lot of modern machines
> > > ;).
> > 
> > I'll have to call you on that one, Ralf.  It was some of your folks
> > that invented the wire recorder in about '38 or '39, and the coated
> > paper tape was sometime in the later 40's.  I was born in '34.
> 
> I corrected myself, it's just because you're looking younger on your
> photos ;).

Of course I do, that pic on my front page is 6 years old now. ;-)

> Of cause, I guess the Telefunk - or was it AEG? - machines
> were without tubes. The magnetic tape head had visible slots.

The first Telefunken wire, or tape machines I saw, were definitely tubes.  
And older types at that, 8 pin octal based stuff.  Yes folks, I have been 
chasing electrons for a living for a long time.  And TBT, my first  
experience with a wire machine was enough to break me of any further 
interest.  No amount of level winding contraptions could stop the 
backlashes & broken wire.  Not to mention the head wear rate was very high.  
At least we could get 200-400 hours out of the first tape heads if we fed 
then plastic tape.  Wire, maybe 50 hours as the wire sawed them deeply in 
just a few hours. 

> Because the tapes were stored spooled to the end, there even was no
> audible crosstalk at the beginning of the recordings.

Print through was a real problem in the early years.

-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Experiments must be reproducible; they should all fail in the same way.