Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

[Blue Mountain]

Except nobody accepts digital documents, they demand paper. I'm about to buy a new car, it took me days to assemble all the necessary documents needed. Titles, tax receipts, proof of insurance, etc. And I'll end up with even more once I get the car. From the dealer, from the DMV, from the city, et al. All of whom use millions of dollars worth of computers...but print everything important and require printed everything.

In many cases paper can be more durable than computer records. See, for example, the BBC Domesday Project:

The BBC Domesday Project was a partnership between Acorn Computers, Philips, Logica and the BBC (with some funding from the European Commission's ESPRIT programme) to mark the 900th anniversary of the original Domesday Book, an 11th-century census of England. It has been cited as an example of digital obsolescence on account of the physical medium used for data storage.

Less than a decade after the BBC produced the original laserdisc it was unusable because there were no devices left that could read the disc. By contrast, after 900 years the original Domesday Book is still accessible, provided one can read Latin in the old script.

Sure, computer records on a network can be accessed from pretty much everywhere, but their file formats and the programs needed to read them are subject to obsolescence.

Of cource, paper is vulnerable to fire and water. Fired clay tablets are about the best long term storage medium, or carving your message on a cliff face. [Wikipedia: Behistun Inscription]

 

[catsmate]

I needed to open a DJVU file recently.

 

[malbui]

Throughout my career I've had to deal with the requirements for keeping accounting data available for ten years, that kind of thing, which isn't too tricky. My current employers, however, need to keep a fair chunk of stuff available for 150 years. Seriously. 150. This is extremely non-trivial.

 

[TragicMonkey]

Throughout my career I've had to deal with the requirements for keeping accounting data available for ten years, that kind of thing, which isn't too tricky. My current employers, however, need to keep a fair chunk of stuff available for 150 years. Seriously. 150. This is extremely non-trivial.

That's a sweet gig! "I've come up with a method of perfectly preserving data for 150 years! But you can't access it until then. So I'll be doing this the rest of my career here and you can check back in 150 years to make sure it worked. If you're not completely satisfied then we can review my methodology at that time."

I managed to drag out an unreviewed three month project into two years worth of "work" but 150 years? That's awesome. I'm very impressed.

 

[alfaniner]

That's a sweet gig! "I've come up with a method of perfectly preserving data for 150 years! But you can't access it until then. So I'll be doing this the rest of my career here and you can check back in 150 years to make sure it worked. If you're not completely satisfied then we can review my methodology at that time."

I managed to drag out an unreviewed three month project into two years worth of "work" but 150 years? That's awesome. I'm very impressed.

That restore from incremental is going to take forever!

 

[JoeMorgue]

My backup strategy is just to assume that chaos mathematics and statistical probability will get good enough in the future to extrapolate any information from the current state of the universe.

 

[malbui]

That's a sweet gig! "I've come up with a method of perfectly preserving data for 150 years! But you can't access it until then. So I'll be doing this the rest of my career here and you can check back in 150 years to make sure it worked. If you're not completely satisfied then we can review my methodology at that time."

I managed to drag out an unreviewed three month project into two years worth of "work" but 150 years? That's awesome. I'm very impressed.

In a slightly different context I know of a bloke in another business unit who managed to spin out an 18-month project for four years and has managed to blag himself another $2 million of funding to run a follow-on project for the next four years. Which will take him nicely up to retirement age. I'm very impressed.

 

[gnome]

Throughout my career I've had to deal with the requirements for keeping accounting data available for ten years, that kind of thing, which isn't too tricky. My current employers, however, need to keep a fair chunk of stuff available for 150 years. Seriously. 150. This is extremely non-trivial.

"Hi, we'd like you to add these six fields that come from a separate table every month. Can you put them in past data too?"

 

[JoeMorgue]

I'm not talking about archiving stuff to survive an asteroid strike.

I'm talking about killing a tree just to have a physical copy of something transitory that you and literally everybody else who will ever look at it can view just as easily online.

I'm talking about one little ole' lady typing up something in an online program, printing it out, walking it over to another little ole' lady who then types up a copy... in the exact same online program.

I'm talking about the same document being printed out, scanned back in, sometimes 4 or 5 times in its lifecycle.

I'm talking about printing out copies of webpages.

 

[Elagabalus]

Throughout my career I've had to deal with the requirements for keeping accounting data available for ten years, that kind of thing, which isn't too tricky. My current employers, however, need to keep a fair chunk of stuff available for 150 years. Seriously. 150. This is extremely non-trivial.

Get a hold of an old daguerreotype camera and take a picture of your screen?

 

[malbui]

Get a hold of an old daguerreotype camera and take a picture of your screen?

That’s a more practical suggestion than most of what the geniuses in our infrastructure group have been coming up with.

 

[Blue Mountain]

Get a hold of an old daguerreotype camera and take a picture of your screen?

Daguerreotypes are actually very fragile. The image is present only on the surface of the plate and unless carefully taken care of could tarnish beyond recognition or be ruined by a palm print.

 

[TragicMonkey]

I'm not talking about archiving stuff to survive an asteroid strike.

I'm talking about killing a tree just to have a physical copy of something transitory that you and literally everybody else who will ever look at it can view just as easily online.

I'm talking about one little ole' lady typing up something in an online program, printing it out, walking it over to another little ole' lady who then types up a copy... in the exact same online program.

I'm talking about the same document being printed out, scanned back in, sometimes 4 or 5 times in its lifecycle.

I'm talking about printing out copies of webpages.

You're in healthcare, right? I'm sure you've encountered those doctors who get their secretaries to print out all their emails so they can read them on paper, then dictate the response to be taken down on a steno pad and typed up later.

I've heard one elderly doctor complain that he can't find any young ladies who know shorthand so he's stuck with secretaries his own age. So much to unpack there, and all of it so wrong.

 

[arthwollipot]

I'm done with printers. Why is anything being printed? It's 2021 near literally every human being is carrying a supercomputer linked to a global network on their person at all times that can store, display, and retrieve any document they could possibly need.

Inertia and conservatism.

In an old job I did everything I can to encourage people to reduce the amount that needed to be printed, up to and including making and distributing PDF copies of absolutely everything relevant.

In the leadup to our annual conference, the secretariat typically spent an entire day printing of thousands of pages of the conference documentation. I made all of it available to conference attendees as PDF documents, and do you know how many people took that option? None of them. Not one of a hundred and fifty attendees in each of the the five years I worked that conference took the paperless option.

People like paper. That's all there is to it. Paper is seen as more reliable, more relevant, and - strangely, in my opinion - more secure.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Inertia and conservatism.

In an old job I did everything I can to encourage people to reduce the amount that needed to be printed, up to and including making and distributing PDF copies of absolutely everything relevant.

In the leadup to our annual conference, the secretariat typically spent an entire day printing of thousands of pages of the conference documentation. I made all of it available to conference attendees as PDF documents, and do you know how many people took that option? None of them. Not one of a hundred and fifty attendees in each of the the five years I worked that conference took the paperless option.

People like paper. That's all there is to it. Paper is seen as more reliable, more relevant, and - strangely, in my opinion - more secure.

Overthinking it. It doesn't need batteries and technology to read.

 

[Sideroxylon]

The technology to read it is ubiquitous.

 

[arthwollipot]

Overthinking it. It doesn't need batteries and technology to read.

Some of the conference attendees were... technology challenged.

 

[Sideroxylon]

Some of the conference attendees were... technology challenged.

When you encounter people who are self-professedly useless with technology, it raises the question of basic skill requirements for a given role.

 

[Norman Alexander]

The technology to read it is ubiquitous.

In a sense, sure!

NB. Like Arth, I'm an advocate of paper use reduction. But in a hospital system, guess which method is most prevalent for exchanging vital documents: FAX, i.e. long rolls or sheets of paper.

*SIGH*

 

[Norman Alexander]

When you encounter people who are self-professedly useless with technology, it raises the question of basic skill requirements for a given role.

True story.

A surgeon we worked with some years back claimed he wasn't going to use our new data capture and reporting system because "I have never learned to use a computer, especially one with a damned mouse! Give me a dictation machine instead!"

However this gentleman had no problem setting up and driving the very complicated image processor in the OT that had a mouse attached...like a boss.

Some sort of logical disconnect, I guess.