This is what SQL took away from us. Never forget.
Now the drop table is merely a database command instead of a table actually falling down from an elevator failure.
What Futurama level bureaucrat do I need to be to get assigned this post?
Scientists in 1985: “This data can now all fit on a computer thanks to CDs. Get a few of them pressed at Gramozávody Loděnice every year and keep the index plus updates on a HDD or tape.”
Scientists in 1990: “With CD-R, you don’t have to pay a fortune to have a few copies of the database pressed every year. You don’t need the magnetic storage buffer either, updates can be written on the disks.”
Scientists in 2000: “Screw CDs. Many-gigabyte HDDs are decently cheap. You can store full scans rather than transcripts.”
Scientists in 2010: “You can afford terabytes in SSDs now, and keep a few copies off-site for backup, all in a cloud solution with access from anywhere with less latency than the HDDs.”
Central Social Insurance Institute Card File in Prague-Smíchov in 2013:
No shit? I always wondered where Futurama got the floating buerocrats from.
Don’t see an easy way of walking around those counterweights as it looks pretty tight or you get smacked in the chin as he suddenly rockets up
Here’s a video of them in action - you can see the Nazis tried to create popular high-budget movies despite the war costs. They weren’t very fast even back in the day and now that they are only used for historical records, they probably go even slower. I’m pretty sure their usage is very restricted and still they likely needed an exception from the European equivalent of OSHA.
Part of me wistfully mourns for the loss of edifices like this, caused by computers. Another part recognizes that those guys would probably have given their left nut to get out of those desks and in front of a computer.
I’m sitting here wondering what modern safety programs would find wrong with the processes involved here. Looks amazing though.
The obvious one is an enclosure or latches door to prevent accidental falls. They might be wearing fall protection that we can’t see but I doubt it.
There’s a good chance nobody ever fell from one of these but those regulations exist for a reason.
Maybe less obvious is fail-safes for any elevator system so if the brakes fail it doesn’t freefall into the ground.
It is still in use. I had to revisit this video where you can see it. (It has eng subtitles)
Amazing. They say the records are digitized but they still use the paper version as the authority for court cases and things like that. That’s amazing because the rest of the world is rushing to jettison the idea of paper as authority and everyone accepts easily faked electronic documents.
Cryptography and PKI makes it pretty feasible to authenticate digital documents.
When used completely and properly. Which rarely, if ever, happens because it requires end-users to know how to use keys and keep them offline somehow.
So do authorized notaries and paper trails for physical documents. Everyone who had a wallet hacked that lost NFTs or currencies can tell you that crypto cant protect your assets.