[Richard Crowley]

"Anahata" wrote ...
Yes, you *can*, and also you have to as the technology keeps changing. It
requires constant refresh activity to keep it usable. The digital
libraries of the future will be forever copying all their data to new
storage media to keep it accessible.

How easy it it now to read data on a floppy disk from a CP/M
system of 30 years ago?

I can read them. And I know others in my town who can, also.

What in another 20 years? 50? 100? ...and it a safe bet that
not all the 1's and 0's on that floppy are still the same, nor are they
stable on a typical CDR burned less than 10 years ago.

And yet 99.9999 % of this planet's most valuable data is archived
(and backed-up) on digital mag tape. A decision made by corporate
users with big budgets and the resources to pick the most reliable
and cost-effective method.

Digital mag tape is much more reliable than field-burned optical
media. I've got analog tape (on paper substrate even) 50 years
old that I can read likely better than when it was recorded. OTOH,
I've got CDR and DVDR discs that didn't last 6 months.

In contrast, we can still read a book that's been untouched on a shelf or
in a box for over 200 years.

Assuming it was printed on low-acid paper. Likely not your average
mass-market paperback, etc.

[philicorda[_6_]]

On Thu, 14 May 2009 15:12:09 -0500, Anahata wrote:

On Thu, 14 May 2009 11:28:53 -0700, Paul wrote:
A digital "1"
will always be a "1", as will the digital "0".

If only...

And hundreds of years from now, the problem will be how to read the
data.

My favourite story on this subject is from the Voyager interstellar
record.

As part of the preparation for the record, they were trying to get the
most simple binary encoding possible, so that even a completely alien
species would be able to read and understand it.

So, a Mr Drake made a test message where a '1' represented black, a '0'
white, forming a simple picture. There were many cues to help decoding
including a square in the top left, and mathematical relationships to
indicate the aspect ratio.

He sent the message to the elite 'Order of the Dolphin' whose members
included mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, biologists etc.

All except one of them failed to read the message. They were expecting
something more complex, and raster pictures were not so common at the
time. I think it says a lot about how 'obvious' binary data formats may
be a lot more cryptic than they first appear!

[[email protected]]

In rec.audio.pro Anahata wrote:
: How easy it it now to read data on a floppy disk from a CP/M system of 30
: years ago? What in another 20 years? 50? 100? ...

Indeed, much of the NASA data obtained from the early lunar landings
has become very difficult to read from the original tapes. And that's
just from the late 60s. Imagine all the scientific data that is stored
on hard drives and CDRs that may only last 15 years, if we're lucky.
Recovering data off of crashed hard drives is already a difficult and
expensive job, and not always successful, even for relatively recent data.

Yes doing backups is key. But as the total amount of data grows to the
point where constant backup of everything becomes less and less feasible,
we may come to miss the graceful degradation of analog media as opposed
to the all-or-nothing of digital. Just last month I had two hard drives
fail simultaneously... luckily one wasn't the backup of the other. But
it's only a matter of time.

[Richard Crowley]

"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Paul wrote:
Film is only one copy.

Well, this is also wrong. If you need more than one copy of film, it is
quite easy to dupe it with minimal or no perceptable degradation.

Maybe in 1 generation if you are very careful. But repeated serial
copying is guaranteed to decrease the SNR and screw up the
colorimetry and gamma. Especially as the materials and expertise
for traditional film dry up and die off.

[Paul Stamler[_2_]]

"philicorda" wrote in message
...

My favourite story on this subject is from the Voyager interstellar
record.

As part of the preparation for the record, they were trying to get the
most simple binary encoding possible, so that even a completely alien
species would be able to read and understand it.

So, a Mr Drake made a test message where a '1' represented black, a '0'
white, forming a simple picture. There were many cues to help decoding
including a square in the top left, and mathematical relationships to
indicate the aspect ratio.

He sent the message to the elite 'Order of the Dolphin' whose members
included mathematicians, astronomers, physicists, biologists etc.

All except one of them failed to read the message. They were expecting
something more complex, and raster pictures were not so common at the
time. I think it says a lot about how 'obvious' binary data formats may
be a lot more cryptic than they first appear!

Phil, I'm afraid the story is a little different. This happened way before
the Voyager project; it was part of the first conference on extraterrestrial
intelligence, held at Green Bank in 1959. Frank Drake was then the director
of the National Radio Observatory at Green Bank.

When he sent his message out, most of the participants in the conference
(the "Order of the Dolphin" you mentioned, so-named because one of the
participants was John Lilly, then the foremost authority on dolphins) were
able to decode it just fine. The failure came when he sent out the message
again, but missing one bit, not that unlikely in the case of real message
transmissions. *That* was the message all but one failed to read. The lesson
was that an ultra-simple coding system without error correction does not
produce a robust message.

Peace,
Paul

[Scott Dorsey]

wrote:
Indeed, much of the NASA data obtained from the early lunar landings
has become very difficult to read from the original tapes. And that's
just from the late 60s. Imagine all the scientific data that is stored
on hard drives and CDRs that may only last 15 years, if we're lucky.

This is entirely true, BUT you should know that most of that old data
is actually on analogue tapes of some sort. Part of the problem is
that instrumentation and video tape standards were still all over the
place back then.

Digital tapes from the sixties are most likely apt to be 7-track or
9-track IBM standard tapes and still easy to read.... but if you have
a tape recorded on an Ampex FR-900 helical scan radar track recorder,
there's only one of them running and it's taken a lot of work to get it
there.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Neil Gould]

Richard Crowley wrote:
"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Paul wrote:
Film is only one copy.

Well, this is also wrong. If you need more than one copy of film, it
is quite easy to dupe it with minimal or no perceptable degradation.

Maybe in 1 generation if you are very careful.

Applications that require duping film use the master to make as many copies
as needed. I dare say that almost no one other than the filmmaker has ever
seen the original film of any movie ever produced, yet that doesn't seem to
be much of an issue.

But repeated serial
copying is guaranteed to decrease the SNR and screw up the
colorimetry and gamma. Especially as the materials and expertise
for traditional film dry up and die off.

The real world has not gotten to that point, and is not likey to do so any
time soon. New film has been introduced each year, this one included.

--
Neil

[philicorda[_6_]]

On Fri, 15 May 2009 18:30:45 +0000, Paul Stamler wrote:

snip
Phil, I'm afraid the story is a little different. This happened way
before the Voyager project; it was part of the first conference on
extraterrestrial intelligence, held at Green Bank in 1959. Frank Drake
was then the director of the National Radio Observatory at Green Bank.

When he sent his message out, most of the participants in the conference
(the "Order of the Dolphin" you mentioned, so-named because one of the
participants was John Lilly, then the foremost authority on dolphins)
were able to decode it just fine. The failure came when he sent out the
message again, but missing one bit, not that unlikely in the case of
real message transmissions. *That* was the message all but one failed to
read. The lesson was that an ultra-simple coding system without error
correction does not produce a robust message.

Interesting stuff! Looks like I mangled it a bit in my recollection.
Where did you find this out?

I had a look at the book "Murmurs of Earth" by Carl Sagan where the
version I remembered came from. In the chapter "The foundations of the
Voyager record" by Frank Drake he talks about his first attempt, a 551
character message.

About this message, he says...

"As a a game I sent out the message, no hints given, to all members of
the Order of the Dolphin and challenged them to decipher its contents. It
has surprised me ever since that this exercise in interstellar
linguistics, which started out primarily as a source of entertainment,
has over the years taken on the aura of a great break-through in human
intellectual achievements.

In fact, the 551-character message contained a great deal of information
- indeed more than would be allowed by the conventional wisdom of
informational theory."

"And now, a depressing shock: almost none of the elite members of the
order of the dolphin were able to interpret this message. Never having
seen this kind of message before, it just didn't occur to them to try the
picture format. Nowadays thousands of people are aware of this possible
format and readily decode it. In any case, in those ancient times, my
letters to the members of the Order of the Dolphin enclosing this message
elicited only one reply. Back from Barney Oliver came a new message
consisting of a sequence of 0's and 1's. But at least I knew what to look
for, and indeed it was another very simple and inspiring message,
containing just one image: that of a martini glass with an olive in it!

The 551-character message was perhaps quite difficult to interpret even
after one did discover the picture format."

That they had not seen this kind of message before would seem to imply it
was the first message. I can appreciate though that these things are
often simplified for sake of a better story!


Peace,
Paul

[Scott Dorsey]

Neil Gould wrote:
Richard Crowley wrote:
"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Paul wrote:
Film is only one copy.

Well, this is also wrong. If you need more than one copy of film, it
is quite easy to dupe it with minimal or no perceptable degradation.

Maybe in 1 generation if you are very careful.

Applications that require duping film use the master to make as many copies
as needed. I dare say that almost no one other than the filmmaker has ever
seen the original film of any movie ever produced, yet that doesn't seem to
be much of an issue.

It is a severe issue.

Used to be films would be produced, they'd strike twenty prints off the
original negative, and those films would be shown in ten cities or so,
then they'd slowly work their way down the chain to the small towns six
months later.

These days films are premiered in the whole country, so they will
literally strike thousands of prints for a big release. This means
several generations of internegative and interpositive added and the
end result is a very soft-looking film.

Occasionally on a big release, high profile theatres and film festivals
will get an "EK" print specially struck off the negative, and it is
night and day better than the typical release prints we see today.

The solution to this has been to make a digital intermediate where the
negative is scanned at 2k and internegs plotted out at the same 2k
resolution. This eliminates worries about damage to the negative in
printing, it makes adding cgi easy, and it reduces some color timing
issues. The only problem is that it looks like crap because neither
the resolution nor brightness range of the 2k scan is particularly good.
--scott


But repeated serial
copying is guaranteed to decrease the SNR and screw up the
colorimetry and gamma. Especially as the materials and expertise
for traditional film dry up and die off.

The real world has not gotten to that point, and is not likey to do so any
time soon. New film has been introduced each year, this one included.

--
Neil







--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Richard Crowley]

"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Richard Crowley wrote:
But repeated serial
copying is guaranteed to decrease the SNR and screw up the
colorimetry and gamma. Especially as the materials and expertise
for traditional film dry up and die off.

The real world has not gotten to that point, and is not likey to do so any
time soon. New film has been introduced each year, this one included.

Go find a copy of Dr.No (1962) on BluRay and view the demonstration
of the digital restoration. They show a split-screen of the most recent
distribution dub vs. what they put on the BR disc. (They digitally scanned
the camera negatives and re-edited the film.) Quite a remarkable quality
difference.

The 4K digital scans of Hollywood productions can be digitally dubbed
in a few minutes, automatically. While film copies deteriorate every day
and take quite a bit of special equipment and specialized experienced
personnel to make a decent (but unavoidably lower-quality) copy.

[Richard Crowley]

wrote ...
Yes doing backups is key. But as the total amount of data grows to the
point where constant backup of everything becomes less and less feasible,

Indeed, however it takes fewer and fewer hard drives to make the
next generation backup/archive copy (because of rapidly increasing
capacity).

[Neil Gould]

Scott Dorsey wrote:
Neil Gould wrote:
Richard Crowley wrote:
"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Paul wrote:
Film is only one copy.

Well, this is also wrong. If you need more than one copy of film,
it is quite easy to dupe it with minimal or no perceptable
degradation.

Maybe in 1 generation if you are very careful.

Applications that require duping film use the master to make as many
copies as needed. I dare say that almost no one other than the
filmmaker has ever seen the original film of any movie ever
produced, yet that doesn't seem to be much of an issue.

It is a severe issue.

Used to be films would be produced, they'd strike twenty prints off
the original negative, and those films would be shown in ten cities
or so, then they'd slowly work their way down the chain to the small
towns six months later.

These days films are premiered in the whole country, so they will
literally strike thousands of prints for a big release. This means
several generations of internegative and interpositive added and the
end result is a very soft-looking film.

The problem is the "several generations" used for making distibution prints,
rather than the general concept of making a film dupe. It's not news that
analog media degrades with each generation... the point is that most
consumers find the distribution copies of analog media to be acceptable,
unless the copies were crap to begin with.

--
Neil

[Neil Gould]

Richard Crowley wrote:
"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Richard Crowley wrote:
But repeated serial
copying is guaranteed to decrease the SNR and screw up the
colorimetry and gamma. Especially as the materials and expertise
for traditional film dry up and die off.

The real world has not gotten to that point, and is not likey to do
so any time soon. New film has been introduced each year, this one
included.

Go find a copy of Dr.No (1962) on BluRay and view the demonstration
of the digital restoration. They show a split-screen of the most
recent distribution dub vs. what they put on the BR disc. (They
digitally scanned the camera negatives and re-edited the film.)
Quite a remarkable quality difference.

This is a dubious comparison technique. One should view the film live next
to their video playback and then decide which is more desirable.

I have a LaserDisc of the original director's cut of _Blade Runner_ , and
A/B'd it with the DVD. I prefer the look of the LaserDisc version because
even though the resolution is lower it lacks the DVD'S compression
artifacts. YMMV.

--
Neil

[Chris Hornbeck]

On Fri, 15 May 2009 20:34:57 GMT, philicorda
wrote:

I had a look at the book "Murmurs of Earth" by Carl Sagan where the
version I remembered came from. In the chapter "The foundations of the
Voyager record" by Frank Drake he talks about his first attempt, a 551
character message.

"And now, a depressing shock: almost none of the elite members of the
order of the dolphin were able to interpret this message. Never having
seen this kind of message before, it just didn't occur to them to try the
picture format.

The central, beautiful core of Sagan's novel _Contact_ was the
message contained in the raster image of the digits of Pi in
base eleven (IIRC), a circle.

Goes without saying that the lame-oid movie made of it
completely ignored this. I'm Shocked, Shocked!


Much thanks, as always,
Chris Hornbeck

[Paul[_13_]]

On May 15, 4:31*am, "Neil Gould" wrote:
Paul wrote:
On May 14, 1:21 pm, "Neil Gould" wrote:
Paul wrote:
On May 13, 1:28 pm, "Neil Gould" wrote:
Paul wrote:

Film is dead, except for maybe larger format cameras.

But even then, it will only be a matter of time.....

Baloney. Film is a different medium from digital, and is no more
"dead" than paint or other artistic media. The size of the market
is significantly lower than when there were no practical
alternatives to film, but that is a very different statement. If
all one needs is short-term use of an image, e.g. for publishing
in the newspaper or a website, then digital is the way to go.

It's dying for certain. Even Kodak is abandoning film.

I take it that you are not aware that Kodak has introduced new film
within the last month or so?

But, for archival purposes, digital sucks big rocks compared to
film.

Baloney. Film celluloid degrades over time. A digital "1"
will
always be a "1", as will the digital "0".

On what medium? Therein lies the problem. There is no practical
digital medim that is truly archival.

Assuming your storage format for your digital data is of good
quality, and under reasonable conditions, your digital photo will
be EXACTLY the same hundreds of years from now. Your film will
be withered and aged....

There is no available digital storage format that will survive for
as long as film, and any degradation can mean a total loss of your
data. OTOH, there is film that is over 100 years old, and is still
in decent condition.

* * *But you can backup on many formats, and have redundancy.

And, none of them are archival, so one winds up spending a good deal of time
in a never-ending loop if archiving is one's intention.

Having spent the last 30+ years working with digital media, the best I can
suggest to you is to do some homework before you get sorely disappointed by
losing something important to you.

* * *Film is only one copy.

Well, this is also wrong. If you need more than one copy of film, it is
quite easy to dupe it with minimal or no perceptable degradation.


Incorrect. There is ALWAYS a generational loss with film
dupes.

[Richard Crowley]

"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Richard Crowley wrote:
"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Richard Crowley wrote:
But repeated serial
copying is guaranteed to decrease the SNR and screw up the
colorimetry and gamma. Especially as the materials and expertise
for traditional film dry up and die off.

The real world has not gotten to that point, and is not likey to do
so any time soon. New film has been introduced each year, this one
included.

Go find a copy of Dr.No (1962) on BluRay and view the demonstration
of the digital restoration. They show a split-screen of the most
recent distribution dub vs. what they put on the BR disc. (They
digitally scanned the camera negatives and re-edited the film.)
Quite a remarkable quality difference.

This is a dubious comparison technique.

It directly speaks to the claim of minimal loss with modern
production and distribution practice.

[Paul Stamler[_2_]]

"philicorda" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 15 May 2009 18:30:45 +0000, Paul Stamler wrote:

snip
Phil, I'm afraid the story is a little different. This happened way
before the Voyager project; it was part of the first conference on
extraterrestrial intelligence, held at Green Bank in 1959. Frank Drake
was then the director of the National Radio Observatory at Green Bank.

When he sent his message out, most of the participants in the conference
(the "Order of the Dolphin" you mentioned, so-named because one of the
participants was John Lilly, then the foremost authority on dolphins)
were able to decode it just fine. The failure came when he sent out the
message again, but missing one bit, not that unlikely in the case of
real message transmissions. *That* was the message all but one failed to
read. The lesson was that an ultra-simple coding system without error
correction does not produce a robust message.

Interesting stuff! Looks like I mangled it a bit in my recollection.
Where did you find this out?

I had a look at the book "Murmurs of Earth" by Carl Sagan where the
version I remembered came from. In the chapter "The foundations of the
Voyager record" by Frank Drake he talks about his first attempt, a 551
character message.

About this message, he says...

"As a a game I sent out the message, no hints given, to all members of
the Order of the Dolphin and challenged them to decipher its contents. It
has surprised me ever since that this exercise in interstellar
linguistics, which started out primarily as a source of entertainment,
has over the years taken on the aura of a great break-through in human
intellectual achievements.

In fact, the 551-character message contained a great deal of information
- indeed more than would be allowed by the conventional wisdom of
informational theory."

"And now, a depressing shock: almost none of the elite members of the
order of the dolphin were able to interpret this message. Never having
seen this kind of message before, it just didn't occur to them to try the
picture format. Nowadays thousands of people are aware of this possible
format and readily decode it. In any case, in those ancient times, my
letters to the members of the Order of the Dolphin enclosing this message
elicited only one reply. Back from Barney Oliver came a new message
consisting of a sequence of 0's and 1's. But at least I knew what to look
for, and indeed it was another very simple and inspiring message,
containing just one image: that of a martini glass with an olive in it!

The 551-character message was perhaps quite difficult to interpret even
after one did discover the picture format."

That they had not seen this kind of message before would seem to imply it
was the first message. I can appreciate though that these things are
often simplified for sake of a better story!

Actually, it looks like I oversimplified a bit too, and perhaps two stories
got conflated. I relied on my memory of the book "We Are Not Alone" by
Walter Sullivan, published in 1964, close to the events. It turns out that
the number of bits was actually 1,271, which is the product of two prime
numbers, 31 and 41. Arranging the bits in a raster 41 units wide and 31
units high produces a meaningful picture. It was, however, Bernard Oliver
who was able to interpret the message correctly. Where I read about the
missing bit, I don't know -- it's not in the Sullivan book.

We need a folklorist here.

Peace,
Paul

[Neil Gould]

Richard Crowley wrote:
"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Richard Crowley wrote:
"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Richard Crowley wrote:
But repeated serial
copying is guaranteed to decrease the SNR and screw up the
colorimetry and gamma. Especially as the materials and expertise
for traditional film dry up and die off.

The real world has not gotten to that point, and is not likey to do
so any time soon. New film has been introduced each year, this one
included.

Go find a copy of Dr.No (1962) on BluRay and view the demonstration
of the digital restoration. They show a split-screen of the most
recent distribution dub vs. what they put on the BR disc. (They
digitally scanned the camera negatives and re-edited the film.)
Quite a remarkable quality difference.

This is a dubious comparison technique.

It directly speaks to the claim of minimal loss with modern
production and distribution practice.

I don't recall that as being the question at hand. But, if a split-screen
comparison is all it takes to convince you, I have a bridge that might
interest you... ;-)

--
Neil

[Richard Crowley]

"Neil Gould" wrote...
Richard Crowley wrote:
"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Richard Crowley wrote:
"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Richard Crowley wrote:
But repeated serial
copying is guaranteed to decrease the SNR and screw up the
colorimetry and gamma. Especially as the materials and expertise
for traditional film dry up and die off.

The real world has not gotten to that point, and is not likey to do
so any time soon. New film has been introduced each year, this one
included.

Go find a copy of Dr.No (1962) on BluRay and view the demonstration
of the digital restoration. They show a split-screen of the most
recent distribution dub vs. what they put on the BR disc. (They
digitally scanned the camera negatives and re-edited the film.)
Quite a remarkable quality difference.

This is a dubious comparison technique.

It directly speaks to the claim of minimal loss with modern
production and distribution practice.

I don't recall that as being the question at hand. But, if a split-screen
comparison is all it takes to convince you, I have a bridge that might
interest you... ;-)

"If you need more than one copy of film, it is quite easy to dupe it with
minimal or no perceptable degradation." - Neil Gould, 15-May-2009

[Neil Gould]

Paul wrote:
On May 15, 4:31 am, "Neil Gould" wrote:
Paul wrote:
On May 14, 1:21 pm, "Neil Gould" wrote:
Paul wrote:
On May 13, 1:28 pm, "Neil Gould" wrote:
Paul wrote:

Film is dead, except for maybe larger format cameras.

But even then, it will only be a matter of time.....

Baloney. Film is a different medium from digital, and is no more
"dead" than paint or other artistic media. The size of the market
is significantly lower than when there were no practical
alternatives to film, but that is a very different statement. If
all one needs is short-term use of an image, e.g. for publishing
in the newspaper or a website, then digital is the way to go.

It's dying for certain. Even Kodak is abandoning film.

I take it that you are not aware that Kodak has introduced new film
within the last month or so?

But, for archival purposes, digital sucks big rocks compared to
film.

Baloney. Film celluloid degrades over time. A digital "1"
will
always be a "1", as will the digital "0".

On what medium? Therein lies the problem. There is no practical
digital medim that is truly archival.

Assuming your storage format for your digital data is of good
quality, and under reasonable conditions, your digital photo will
be EXACTLY the same hundreds of years from now. Your film will
be withered and aged....

There is no available digital storage format that will survive for
as long as film, and any degradation can mean a total loss of your
data. OTOH, there is film that is over 100 years old, and is still
in decent condition.

But you can backup on many formats, and have redundancy.

And, none of them are archival, so one winds up spending a good deal
of time in a never-ending loop if archiving is one's intention.

Having spent the last 30+ years working with digital media, the best
I can suggest to you is to do some homework before you get sorely
disappointed by losing something important to you.

Film is only one copy.

Well, this is also wrong. If you need more than one copy of film, it
is quite easy to dupe it with minimal or no perceptable degradation.


Incorrect. There is ALWAYS a generational loss with film
dupes.

Perhaps you overlooked the words "minimal or perceptable".

The question is not whether there is *any* generational loss in analog
duplication, because the degradation resulting from a single generation dupe
is not perceptable. But, to the point at hand, even the dupes are more
archival than any existant digital media.

--
Neil

[Jean-David Beyer]

Neil Gould wrote:

Incorrect. There is ALWAYS a generational loss with film
dupes.

Perhaps you overlooked the words "minimal or perceptable".

The question is not whether there is *any* generational loss in analog
duplication, because the degradation resulting from a single generation dupe
is not perceptable. But, to the point at hand, even the dupes are more
archival than any existant digital media.

Here is an interesting experiment, if you like to call it that, showing the
results of duplicating an analog voice recording. It is quite famous as a
work of art;

I Am Sitting in a Room (1970) is one of composer Alvin Lucier's best known
works, featuring Lucier recording himself narrating a text, and then playing
the recording back into the room, re-recording it. The new recording is then
played back and re-recorded, and this process is repeated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfssj80oNuM

--
.~. Jean-David Beyer Registered Linux User 85642.
/V\ PGP-Key: 9A2FC99A Registered Machine 241939.
/( )\ Shrewsbury, New Jersey http://counter.li.org
^^-^^ 09:05:01 up 52 days, 15:19, 3 users, load average: 4.32, 4.30, 4.62

[philicorda[_6_]]

On Sat, 16 May 2009 06:38:03 +0000, Paul Stamler wrote:

"philicorda" wrote in
message ...
snip
That they had not seen this kind of message before would seem to imply
it was the first message. I can appreciate though that these things are
often simplified for sake of a better story!

Actually, it looks like I oversimplified a bit too, and perhaps two
stories got conflated. I relied on my memory of the book "We Are Not
Alone" by Walter Sullivan, published in 1964, close to the events. It
turns out that the number of bits was actually 1,271, which is the
product of two prime numbers, 31 and 41. Arranging the bits in a raster
41 units wide and 31 units high produces a meaningful picture. It was,
however, Bernard Oliver who was able to interpret the message correctly.
Where I read about the missing bit, I don't know -- it's not in the
Sullivan book.

551 is also the product of two primes, 19 and 29, and gave the aspect
ratio in the same manner.

Drake, in book I have, says the 1,271 bit message was created by Bernard
Oliver after the difficulties people had with the first message. It
contains much more white space and a larger, less ambiguous picture.

It also mentions a third message, of 1679 bits (product of primes 73 and
23) named the 'Arecibo message' after the radio telescope it was
transmitted from.


We need a folklorist here.

Peace,
Paul

[Neil Gould]

Jean-David Beyer wrote:
Neil Gould wrote:

Incorrect. There is ALWAYS a generational loss with film
dupes.

Perhaps you overlooked the words "minimal or perceptable".

The question is not whether there is *any* generational loss in
analog duplication, because the degradation resulting from a single
generation dupe is not perceptable. But, to the point at hand, even
the dupes are more archival than any existant digital media.

Here is an interesting experiment, if you like to call it that,
showing the results of duplicating an analog voice recording. It is
quite famous as a work of art;

I Am Sitting in a Room (1970) is one of composer Alvin Lucier's best
known works, featuring Lucier recording himself narrating a text, and
then playing the recording back into the room, re-recording it. The
new recording is then played back and re-recorded, and this process
is repeated.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jfssj80oNuM

Surely, you can understand that this is not the way to make a first
generation analog dupe if quality is a concern? It is more akin to using a
digital video camera to record the image off a TV screen! ;-)

--
Neil

[Neil Gould]

Richard Crowley wrote:
"Neil Gould" wrote...
Richard Crowley wrote:
"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Richard Crowley wrote:
"Neil Gould" wrote ...
Richard Crowley wrote:
But repeated serial
copying is guaranteed to decrease the SNR and screw up the
colorimetry and gamma. Especially as the materials and
expertise for traditional film dry up and die off.

The real world has not gotten to that point, and is not likey to
do so any time soon. New film has been introduced each year,
this one included.

Go find a copy of Dr.No (1962) on BluRay and view the
demonstration of the digital restoration. They show a
split-screen of the most recent distribution dub vs. what they
put on the BR disc. (They digitally scanned the camera negatives
and re-edited the film.) Quite a remarkable quality difference.

This is a dubious comparison technique.

It directly speaks to the claim of minimal loss with modern
production and distribution practice.

I don't recall that as being the question at hand. But, if a
split-screen comparison is all it takes to convince you, I have a
bridge that might interest you... ;-)

"If you need more than one copy of film, it is quite easy to dupe it
with minimal or no perceptable degradation." - Neil Gould, 15-May-2009

Perhaps it wasn't clear to you that I was speaking of first-generation
dupes, not multiple sequentially duped materials. One can make as many
first-generation dupes as needed, and they will have minimal or no
*perceptable* degradation.

--
Neil

[Scott Dorsey]

Neil Gould wrote:

Perhaps it wasn't clear to you that I was speaking of first-generation
dupes, not multiple sequentially duped materials. One can make as many
first-generation dupes as needed, and they will have minimal or no
*perceptable* degradation.

No, that's why theatrical prints go through so many generations. Run your
camera original through a contact printer enough times and it starts getting
torn up... the perforations wear and the image gets jittery, and because you
can't make everything perfectly clean, you get scratches. Plus you always
get handling marks on the beginning and end of every reel no matter how
careful you are.

Some of the films from the fifties and sixties now have substantial negative
damage as a result of so many prints being struck directly off the negative.
This is one of the big reasons why restoration becomes necessary.

Make an interpositive and an internegative and print off of that, and you
have now cubed the number of prints you can get with the same risk to the
originals.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[philicorda[_6_]]

On Sat, 16 May 2009 02:02:28 +0000, Chris Hornbeck wrote:

On Fri, 15 May 2009 20:34:57 GMT, philicorda
snip
"And now, a depressing shock: almost none of the elite members of the
order of the dolphin were able to interpret this message. Never having
seen this kind of message before, it just didn't occur to them to try
the picture format.

The central, beautiful core of Sagan's novel _Contact_ was the message
contained in the raster image of the digits of Pi in base eleven (IIRC),
a circle.

Goes without saying that the lame-oid movie made of it completely
ignored this. I'm Shocked, Shocked!

There was some great sound design though. The graunching sound of the
alien signal is just perfect.



Much thanks, as always,
Chris Hornbeck

[Neil Gould]

Scott Dorsey wrote:
Neil Gould wrote:

Perhaps it wasn't clear to you that I was speaking of
first-generation dupes, not multiple sequentially duped materials.
One can make as many first-generation dupes as needed, and they will
have minimal or no *perceptable* degradation.

No, that's why theatrical prints go through so many generations. Run
your camera original through a contact printer enough times and it
starts getting torn up... the perforations wear and the image gets
jittery, and because you can't make everything perfectly clean, you
get scratches. Plus you always get handling marks on the beginning
and end of every reel no matter how careful you are.

Scott, these are decisions made as a matter of practicality, and don't speak
to the issue of the multiple sequential dupe "experiment" that I was
addressing. One of the great benefits of digital reproduction is the ability
to make exact copies without risking the originals, but that's not at all
the issue that I was responding to.

--
Neil

[[email protected]]

And hundreds of years from now, the problem will be how to read the data.

Let us hope that all the optical playback drives don't disappear at the
very same time.

[[email protected]]

"Richard Crowley" wrote:

I've got CDR and DVDR discs that didn't last 6 months.


My CDRs from 2001 are still error-free.
I took care of them, and chose brands carefully rather than go for the
cheapest stack at Staples.

Live and learn.

[Geoff]

Jean-David Beyer wrote:
Neil Gould wrote:
geoff wrote:
Anahata wrote:
On Thu, 14 May 2009 11:28:53 -0700, Paul wrote:
A digital "1"
will always be a "1", as will the digital "0".
If only...

And hundreds of years from now, the problem will be how to read the
data.
Yo can back up digital onto many different forms of media (even
stone tablets) with zero generation loss each time. Unlike film,
where every sequential transcription gives some deterioration.

How many digital stone tablets of your music to you have? And, how
about that reader? ;-)

Stone tablets are not that great anymore, by the way. I knew a
composer (Ernst Lévy) who had a gargoyle from Notre Dame cathedral in
his apartment. It was barely recognizable.

That's alright. As long as it is clearly differentiated from the flat table
around it, it is 100% possible that the fact it was there (or not) can be
reconstructed.

geoff