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PaperBack – How to store data on a single A4/Letter sheet

ollydbg.de

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Re: PaperBack – How to store data on a single A4/Letter sheet

#71

Post by xpinguin »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #40
sowbug wrote: post #18

The name of the project is unfortunate, as it makes it very difficult to search the web for related projects such as Linux or OS X ports.

Many projects fall in this trap. I use Awesome as my window manager, and the Awesome theming library is called Beautiful. Now try googling "awesome beautiful wallpaper"...

UPD: http://i.imgur.com/TVLZgqw.png

I don't know, how google did it, but the first result for exactly the query of yours is: http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Beautiful

What surprises me, is that it works in firefox private mode, where neither of search customizations should work, in theory (fresh clean cookies and local storage, isn't it?). However, yeah, I do indeed google awesome-related stuff from time to time.

UPD #2: it works from different browser and different IP either. So it seems that you example is not relevant anymore :)

Re: PaperBack – How to store data on a single A4/Letter sheet

#72

Post by vbezhenar »

mkup wrote: post #55
semi-extrinsic wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, sorry, it's not. That's already trivial: Take a microSD card with your info. Put it together with a couple of tablespoons of oatmeal into a tightly and well wrapped plastic package. Swallow it. Travel. Arrive. Poop. Voila. Also, if you bring big stacks of paper it will often be inspected, since a common way of smuggling currency is putting hundred-dollar bills between the pages of books.

I guess it's better to upload TrueCrypt container somewhere in the cloud and transfer just password/URL. Password/URL may be derived from the first letters of each sentence in the U.S. Constitution or other similar public source of static random data.

Or just remember password and URL. It's not that hard if you really need to.

Re: PaperBack – How to store data on a single A4/Letter sheet

#73

Post by keithpeter »

harel wrote: post #39
ant6n wrote: post #6

So I'd like this on medium that's a bit more permanent than paper, but with similar information density per kg, and similar re-creatability without having any of the original tools available. I'd like to store data for say 100 thousand years.

Clay tablets? They survived from Sumer, Assyria and Babylon thousands of years ago.

True, some of them did. Any idea what fraction survived?

I quite like the idea of being able to frame the backup an important piece of text and put it on my wall.

Re: PaperBack – How to store data on a single A4/Letter sheet

#75

Post by apricot »

This brings back memories.

In the late eighties, I wrote a program similar to this one for archiving one Apple II floppy disk on a sheet of paper.

One floppy disk is 140 kilobytes (35 tracks of 16 sectors containing 256 bytes each), so a sheet of paper with a 7-inch by 10-inch printed area needs a data density of just 2 kilobytes per square inch to fit a floppy disk, which comes out to a linear resolution of 128 dots per inch. This was (barely) within the specs of my dot matrix printer.

I was a teenager at the time so I had no clue about error correcting codes and the like, it was a straight bit-to-pixel mapping.

At the time, this was a write-only medium, as I did not have access to a scanner. No matter, I used it to archive my most important data disks, figuring that after a few years, technology would have improved enough to allow easy scanning. I eventually lost the sheets of paper, but the floppy disks themselves were robust enough to last until 1994, at which time I wrote a program to send them to my PC through a null-modem connection.

Re: PaperBack – How to store data on a single A4/Letter sheet

#76

Post by sago »

kabdib wrote: post #49
ant6n wrote: post #6

So I'd like this on medium that's a bit more permanent than paper, but with similar information density per kg, and similar re-creatability without having any of the original tools available. I'd like to store data for say 100 thousand years.

You'll want something that an unsophisticated civilization can make copies of. Might be interesting to have a stylized form of a modern language with layout that incorporates simple integrity checks. The monks who copied documents in the middle ages made a lot of errors.

The Jewish scribes who copied the Masoretic text of the Hebrew bible did use a system of integrity checks, in a traditional apparatus called the 'Masorah parva'. It wasn't perfect, and didn't have checks throughout, but as a computer scientist, I was fascinated to see how they'd dipped their toes into the idea.

I wonder if there are other texts that were copied by hand that had similar approaches. The Qur'an, perhaps?

Re: PaperBack – How to store data on a single A4/Letter sheet

#77

Post by sago »

ant6n wrote: post #65
dandelany wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One nice thing about the gold-on-glass idea is that it can be read with a simple slide projector or similar. It's small but not ridiculously so.

Gold itself may not be a very good medium for storage, because in the meantime (e.g. some intermittent dark ages) someone may decide that the gold is worth more than the bits they encode, and scrape them off.

The Church of Scientology is transcribing L. Ron Hubbard's writing onto stainless steel plates, encased in titanium capsules and buried in the desert[0]. So in the event of a global apocalypse any future survivors or aliens may think that Dianetics was the pinnacle of our culture!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trementina_Base

Re: PaperBack – How to store data on a single A4/Letter sheet

#79

Post by theli0nheart »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #42
ekianjo wrote: post #38

This is a revolution for transporting confidential information through customs :) If it's not electronic they won't even bother checking it!

No, sorry, it's not. That's already trivial: Take a microSD card with your info. Put it together with a couple of tablespoons of oatmeal into a tightly and well wrapped plastic package. Swallow it. Travel. Arrive. Poop. Voila. Also, if you bring big stacks of paper it will often be inspected, since a common way of smuggling currency is putting hundred-dollar bills between the pages of books.

I think you (unintentionally?) are proving the OP right. Because it's far easier to swallow and poop out a plastic bag with a microSD card in it than it is to put a piece of paper in your carry-on.

Plus--wouldn't full-body scanners catch something like this?

Re: PaperBack – How to store data on a single A4/Letter sheet

#80

Post by sago »

njharman wrote: post #63
aw3c2 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standing outside with a stack of paper, being able to give them to passers-by, staying anonymous and free of network surveillance.

Always doubt your anonymity. Many color laser printers output hidden, self identifying serial codes.

I did not know this, do you have a source?
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