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posted by mrpg on Saturday June 30 2018, @04:58AM   Printer-friendly
from the 404 dept.

Vint Cerf, the godfather of the Internet, spoke in Sydney, Australia on Wednesday and issued a blunt call to action for a digital preservation regime for content and code to be quickly put in place to counter the existing throwaway culture that denies future generations an essential window into life in the past. He emphasized that this was especially needed for the WWW. Due to the volatile nature of electronic storage media as well as the format in which information is encoded, it is not possible to preserve digital material without prior planning and action.

[...] While the digital disappearance phenomenon is one which has so far mainly vexed official archivists and librarians for some years now, Cerf's take is that as everything goes from creation, the risk of accidental or careless memory loss increases correspondingly.

Archivists have for decades fought publicly for open document formats to hedge against proprietary and vendor risks – especially when classified material usually can only be made public after 30 to 50 years, sometimes longer.

From iTnews : Internet is losing its memory: Cerf


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  • (Score: 5, Touché) by NotSanguine on Saturday June 30 2018, @06:15AM (10 children)

    % man smbclient [die.net]

    Just a crazy thought.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
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  • (Score: 1, Redundant) by Snotnose on Saturday June 30 2018, @06:27AM (9 children)

    by Snotnose (1623) on Saturday June 30 2018, @06:27AM (#700576)

    Yeah, that's how I found out the webpage was either dodgy or way out of date.

    I'm a technically savvy guy, spent way too many hours debugging a simple problem, and webpages that give bad advice need to sink to the bottom of the google rankings. Cuz google led me there.

    --
    Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Saturday June 30 2018, @07:16AM (8 children)

      Yeah, that's how I found out the webpage was either dodgy or way out of date.

      My point was that the man pages (already available on your system, or at least should be) should be the *first* place you go, not the last.

      There are definitely issues for which the man pages aren't so helpful, and some web pages are incredibly helpful.

      Too many people just google whatever it is they want and copypasta whatever the site tells them to do. I think that's the *wrong* way to do things.

      In that respect, I think that having the crappy pages (those with the most google ads on them?) near the top of search results may be better -- in that it may force people to actually think about what they're trying to accomplish and search more intelligently (no offense meant). I can't speak to the issue that you had, but if I wanted to do something with samba, samba.org would be my first choice -- after the man pages of course.

      That said, there's plenty of software whose online documentation is often worse than useless, even with common issues, and some enthusiast's blog does have the goods. VMWare is an excellent example of this.

      --
      No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @08:49AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 30 2018, @08:49AM (#700593)

        Even if a website is outdated, or not completely correct in the example it gives, it should give a hint to how to get to the answer you need.

      • (Score: 2, Flamebait) by crafoo on Saturday June 30 2018, @09:30AM (2 children)

        by crafoo (6639) on Saturday June 30 2018, @09:30AM (#700597)

        Modern Linux has trained users that man pages are shit. Because modern Linux man pages are largely piles of shit. Don't be surprised when users go to them as a last resort.

        • (Score: 1, Troll) by Arik on Saturday June 30 2018, @10:33AM (1 child)

          by Arik (4543) on Saturday June 30 2018, @10:33AM (#700610) Journal
          If the command is internal to linux you're probably going to want to look at info instead of man for current docs.
          --
          If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
          • (Score: 2) by KiloByte on Saturday June 30 2018, @04:59PM

            by KiloByte (375) on Saturday June 30 2018, @04:59PM (#700716)

            Info files stopped being updated around 2000 or so, they're used by nothing but some GNU tools. And usually come with a non-free license so you don't even get them without jumping through extra hoops.

            --
            Ceterum censeo systemd esse delendam.
      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday June 30 2018, @07:21PM

        by frojack (1554) on Saturday June 30 2018, @07:21PM (#700765) Journal

        He could have also simply used Google's date filter on his google search. He said he was "savvy". It doesn't rely on a date being printed on the page.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
      • (Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday July 01 2018, @02:09AM (1 child)

        by Snotnose (1623) on Sunday July 01 2018, @02:09AM (#700829)

        My point was that the man pages (already available on your system, or at least should be) should be the *first* place you go, not the last.

        It's an embedded system with no man pages. If I was lucky I could "some_command --help", but that worked maybe 1/3 of the time. Google was how I figured out how to do stuff.

        --
        Why shouldn't we judge a book by it's cover? It's got the author, title, and a summary of what the book's about.
        • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday July 01 2018, @08:33AM

          It's an embedded system with no man pages. If I was lucky I could "some_command --help", but that worked maybe 1/3 of the time. Google was how I figured out how to do stuff.

          A fair point. I could embark on a long diatribe about the shortcomings of UIs for embedded platforms, but you, apparently, are all too aware of such issues.

          Google, in my experience, doesn't do a very good job providing quality results to technical queries. I often find myself reformulating my searches to get what I'm looking for.

          Which brings us to the real issue with google and other search tools/information aggregators: they are not your friends and they do not exist to make your life easier. You (or more properly, your search habits and whatever other information they can glean from their interactions with you) are the product they sell to their actual customers. If they point you at poor quality information, it's because it benefits them in some way. Resolving your particular need/desire for specific information isn't even a consideration.

          And that touches on the larger point WRT TFA: we're losing stuff not because it isn't useful, but because it isn't making *someone* money.

          --
          No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @02:19PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 01 2018, @02:19PM (#700974)

        My point was that the man pages (already available on your system, or at least should be) should be the *first* place you go, not the last.

        In my experience that's more true for stuff like FreeBSD...

        Linux distros? Not so much.