Hello to all members of Applefritter,
a few years ago a very good friend of mine passed away. He had a very large internetsite
related to the life of Janusz Korczak, a famous doctor in Warzawa that was setup in a hostingcompany.
After he died by a unexpected fatal incident i found out, that he never had taken precautions
what to do in case of fatal incident and after the contract with the hosting-company expired,
the entire information of that site was threatened to pass away down the spill....
Allthough even his contacts to Mrs. Rabin the wife of the formerly asassinated former Israelian Primeminister
were very good and his activities for orphan children and the charta of children rights was supported by the
UNESCO this valuable part of the life of my friend was threatened to pass away too....
In those days i contacted the UNESCO and Mrs. Rabin to find out if any kind of foundation could take care of the site.
Finaly i was lucky that a member of the UNESCO was willing to take care of that site and the informations within there and I passed a entire backup from the site on CD by mail to the UNESCO with the idea that a foundation related to the UNESCO to re-establish the site and take care to preserve that informations....
so in the last week i remembered that challenge of information preservation....
and i started to think about that problem in relation to our community of collecting and exchanging information on former models of the applecomputer..... a lot of the members have private websites that sontain valuable information too... what happens with that contents after the owner of the website passes away ?
The normal path will be that after the contract with the hosting company expires or if the contract with the communication company expires ( in that cases the site is hosted on a server in the home of the member ) thereafter the contant and information is lost ....
of course google and other searchmachines still have the dead links to those pages but the useers will end up in normal case with a "RIP"-notice displaying the common page 404 errornotice "page not found".....
At least those members that have a site containing valuable information on Apple topics mostly never think about this problem....
and surely a lot of us have not mentioned a line in the documents related to that case....
What ideas could a member follow up to take care of the preservation of the information in his site in case it contains valuable information ( like downloadable manuals, schematics and other information ?
Of course the first reply would be to upload the stuff to asimov....
thats surely a part of a possible solution.....
but it does not solve the entire problem....
remember that asimov is designed for only a part of such contents....
what´s for example with those pages on private sites that describe with pictures and text a process of a hardware hack....
or parts of privat written programms or parts of programs or pictures of rare hardware like an exotic interface that was only sold 40 times and now only one interface left ?
Is there a possibility to create some kind of "heritage site" that would store that kind of information ?
Is there for example a kind of idea or possibility to create a kind of foundation to take care of such kind of heritage?
Should the member with such a site take cares to make at least once in a year a Backup of the valuable part of his site ?
( this is just for example in a lot of cases needed because a lot of private sites have mixed content also not related to the Apple´s )
i´m curious upon the replies and ideas to this thread and hope that it might lead to some practical solutions and i hope that the one or other member takes a minute time to think about the future of his own site....
sincerely speedyG
While not a perfect solution, there's always the Internet Archive: http://www.archive.org
Hello Neon Forests,
that´s realy a good hint !
this will offer a solution at least if the site owner starts archiving in lifetime or if he makes instructions availiable to his inheritor and takes care that the content is backed up before the contract with the provider is terminated or if he takes percautions that the contents on his computer are not deleted unless that kind of instructions have been executed.....
unfortunatly the most often case - at least to my guess - will occur as result of missing information to any kind of inheritor.... and missing knowledge to the problem itself.... in very many cases the computers have just been sold and the harddisks wiped due to missing knowledge .... and many cases occur, were the inheritor doesn´t have detailed knowledge to the site-related contracts...
if i take for example my site and the content on my computer and compare that - the contents are not identic....
i moved over the site 2 years ago from a windows server to a linux server and on the computer there are 2 different sites backed up : the one that has been corrected ( i.e. the ASP-scripts removed to restore the pages to working condition without those scripts ) and the old site not corrected causing buggy problems because the scripts like ASP counter or other ASP-feature is still inside the pages ).... I´m working now for more than 2 years to get the more than 1500 pages moved from 1 directory ( old site ) moved to the new directory ( new site ).... but thats just one part of the problem...
in fact i have to change now also stucture of the site to keep the different topics apart....
the part about martial arts contains more that 800 pages with movies and it was and remains to be targeted to German audience and therefor won´t be translated to other language...
while the part where i started the APPLEBOX is targeting to international community and therefor is in english language only....
the part related to ZEN-philosophy is in German language and still has not been translated to english language.... the other topic related to the cheyenne nation is in German language and shall be translated too and become some day availiable in both languages ( resulting to 2 independent strains in the directories of the site .. a english strain and a german strain...
and so on...
my proposal would be besides performing of regular beckups ( at least once a year a CD or DVD of the preservable content that is kept close together with a testament.... )...
but anyhow i fear it´s only a part of a possible solution...
speedyG
One could leave instructions/requests in their Will and everyone should have a Will at least here in Canada. When comes to backing up I use a FreeNas fle server works for Apple and Windows also a portable back up drive that I keep off site.
Todd
I wonder about the best methods of information translation, dispersal, and storage.
There's a movie called Spirit of '76 where in the future all data was digitally stored and subsequently lost when there was a huge solar flare that caused a massive EMP. (so then they send a time traveller back to retrieve a copy of the US Constitution so they can recreate their institutions).
Here's a different type of example. I made a set of very clean documents in a multi media wordprocessor, then saved them as a PDF. Because it wasn't just photo images, but included text, it can be searched/referenced/etc, and be infinitely scaled up or down cleanly (except of course for the photo's which have their resolution limits). I did this for the Apple //c memory expansion hardware and included ALL of the paperwork that came with it, including the box art to scale. I have freely sent this to legit Apple ][ archives. I would like to do this with all the A][ documents but it's just too darn time consuming.
Other than storing data in a EMP resistant/proof box, or dispersing it all across the web, I don't know what to suggest.
The Internet Archive isn't perfect.
Often photos are not stored and it's possible for a site owner to ask them not archive their site at all.
I'd be interested in those martial arts movies tho.
(My wife is a TKD blackbelt and teaches the sport.)
Hello Neon Forests,
if your wife is interested in that topic i have sent pm...
sincerely speedyG