When The Going Gets Tough…

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

The tough go shopping, in this case for a specific service.

I have no liking at all for the ugly video advertising hoardings over the M5 (Sandwell?) viaduct in West Bromwich; nor for the equally tacky trailer-side posters littering the Cheshire countryside.

Nevertheless I was intrigued by one of the latter.

It was for something called “ToughCAD”. The word “plans” suggested architectural rather than engineering, but curiosity led me to read “ToughCAD…..co.uk”.

The rather over-produced company web-site (too many media-studies graduates about) suggested the building trade as indeed the likely primary market, though I thought not necessarily so. However, ToughCAD is not as it seems, a drawing programme such as for, oooh, maybe spaghetti-Western set-builders?

Instead it is a printing company specialising in putting CAD-file drawings on plastic film to survive soggy building-sites.

“Oh” , I thought, “I like that – an admirable service with more applications than building!”

Then I read the last sentence and wondered how many future managers of major changes to some big project, so asking for the original plans, will be met with “Sorry – they were recycled once the paint was dry!”

It reads:

“When your plans have served their purpose, we take immense pride in committing to the recycling of 100% of these materials. “

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Nigel you have completely missed the point that the Digital files will still be available as originals and quite possibly a complete set of each sucsessive revison. Which can be called up and printed, revised or used as a basis for alterations/extensions at any time in the future.

Not really any different to the architect or designer issuing plans/drawings from their originals be they on linen, film or whatever has been used in the past. They retain the original and the shop floor or site uses copies.

EDIT. Although I mentioned shop floor it is less likely to apply there as more and more things are made by machine it just needs the file and not a paper drawing for someone to make a part these days.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

I hadn’t missed the point at all!

I was being very tongue-in-cheek!.

The company offers prints that would be far tougher in wet conditions than paper copies that would probably not be expected to last long anyway. Of course I realise both the paper and plastic ones are copies of which as many can be made as needed from originals kept safely in the office.

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There is though a serious point beyond this one; apart from some blunder which throws away the originals as well as the copies. That is, how the originals and any local copies are archived. Would a plan-set, or any documents, in electronic form be at all readable in say, fifty years’ time without regular re-saving fully intact in whatever is the new format each time?

No medium is indestructible, but so far no-one has invented one with the potential, and proven, longevity of ink on paper. Even a print on plastic may not last as long, due to the material degrading despite careful storage.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

But digital media changes. The stuff I did 30 years ago and stored on 5.25″ floppies is gone, not only don’t I have a reader, the discs are stuck to the cardboard due to degradation of the plastic. Acid free paper is the medium preferred by archivists

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

At work we had an old HP computer that took eight-inch floppy discs!

I have noticed a curious form of degradation on photographs stored on 3.5″ discs.

Much of the lower part of the image was replaced by a full-width rectangle in a strange purple-brown colour, leaving the rest intact. I asked various people I thought might be able to explain it, but none could.

 

[Howard LewisParticipant @howardlewis46836]

NG2 has found one of the apparent advantages of going paperless, and storing data on a “cloud” somewhere.

I have lost count of the number of CDs and DVDs that have degraded over time.

Magnetic tape is a much more durable medium for data storage, but machines capable of recording / reading are scarcely available to the domestic consumer. “Don’t get no call for them” will probably be the response, since we have all been coerced / compelled to “progress” to less durable forms of storage.

Strangely, the black and white photographs that I printed over 60 years ago have not degraded, nor the slightly younger colour prints. Transparencies do not like daylight, presumably the UV degrades them

Is this progress, or another version of The Emperor’s New Clothes?

Over the years, we have been told what fantastic stuff were cigarettes, Thalidomide, Diesel cars and many other products which “will enrich our lives”.

Howard

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

NG2 has found nothing of the sort!

If you do put all your data on obscure server there is no more guarantee of their security and retrievability than with any other remote archiving system.

For a start it means you having the means to retrieve your own data, in, say 20 years’ time; unless you have spent a lot of money buying a new computer and software every few years to do only what you used your original one for. And quite likely if not now then in future, costly, open-ended “subscriptions” with all T&Cs in their favour, to Microsoft or whoever.

CDs and DVDs can degrade, yes, but I made the point that so do magnetic records, whether they are tape or discs. They are all plastics of uncertain life-spans with the best will in the world, and magnetism can fade; but even if they don’t break down the computer industry is driven by just a few, powerful money-grubbing companies who do not want equipment and software to have long lives.

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I am afraid those illustrations you give are not very good. For a start no-one claimed they are to “enrich lives” although cigarettes certainly were pushed hard for much of the 20C as being somehow good for you.

Thalidomide is one of the medicines used against multiple myeloma; and apparently – also with very great care – helps some treatments of leprosy in men and post-menopausal women.

Diesel vehicles are far more fuel-efficient than petrol equivalents so cause less pollution – the massive anti-Diesel campaign arose not only over particulates from poor combustion (worn or mis-adjusted engines) but also nitrous oxides that occur when any hydrocarbon fuel and indeed hydrogen, are burnt using ordinary air. Problems overcome with modern compression-ignition but not spark-ignition engines – it is Diesel not petrol the politicians should still encourage while both fuels are still needed. Though most of them would barely know the difference, or why that strange blue liquid is sold in the filling-stations.

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My point was that although nothing man-made is indestructible; no-one yet has been able to determine how long anything can be kept intact and retrievable in electrical (including magnetic) forms. These have not been around for very long, historically, and so far do not seem very long-lived at all.

Prints, both black ink and colour images, from ordinary computer-printers are not very stable.

Properly stored, photo-chemical images can last over 100 years. Paintings made from animal and vegetable binders and mineral pigments exist from some hundreds of years ago. Thousands if you include Ancient Egyptian tomb and far older cave-wall paintings, though all these were in practically sealed, light-proof, even-temperature “stores” for millennia.

Parchment, vellum (and silk?) and paper documents are still readable from one, two, even more millennia ago; though paper at least can become extremely delicate.

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If someone saves our words here on the so-called “cloud” (why not just say “internet”?) will anyone in 2123, let alone 3023, be able to read them? I suspect not. 

 

In any case, if the whole idea is to reduce world-wide electricity demand we won’t achieve that by extending the Internet to the Nth degree – just the opposite if anything.

 

 

 

 

 

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