The Time Capsule That Went Through A Wall ...

Samrobb asks: "My wife and I are just finishing remodeling a 150-year-old farm house, and as it turns out, we have some dead space behind one of the walls in the wiring closet. We'd like to seal up something in there for the next owner to discover -- kind of a personal time capsule. I was thinking of pictures, a newspaper, that sort of thing, until my wife suggested burning the deCSS source on a CD and tossing it in :-) That got me wondering -- what else could we put in there to make someone a hundred years down the road go 'What the ...???' Any suggestions?" Man! I wish I could find a house with a lot of little crannies like these!

CD readable after 100 years?

[Kip]

Two small concerns. Are CD supposed to be good for that long? Bigger concern is that is anyone even going to have a CD-ROM drive capable of reading the CD in 100 years? Look at the way storage medium has advanced over the last 30 years. You have to go to some length to read a 9-track tape.

You almost need to place a small laptop computer with a power supply in the capsule to be sure. (Of course that begs the question, can a laptop doing nothing survive 100 years?)

Don't get me wrong, I think the capsule is a great idea, I just wonder if they will be able to read it.

How about licences ?

[Bake]

If you're going to put the deCSS code in there, you might as well put the GPL in as well :)

If you have a cool desktop, why not taking a screenshot of it and print (extra points for printing on something that gives it the look/feel of a regular photo)

just my 0.02 euros...

foo

[PD]

Coins definitely are good, but don't forget about mint condition paper money. How many of us have held a mint condition dollar bill from the Civil War (a lot of money at that time was counterfeit). Money is high quality paper, so a few dollar bills would last a very long time.

You may want to write two separate letters to the future: one, a personal one, with whatever you want to say. The second one should have some factual stuff - number one would be the date, and some nice information about each of the items you put in the box. Try to imagine something neat about each item that people of the future just might not know. For example, with the dollar bills, tell them to look for the little bird above the "1" in the upper right corner. Who's going to know that in the year 2100? That sort of information is what will make your capsule valuable. Without it, it's just a box of old junk.

Make sure everything is well protected. Plastic is a good way to protect things, but you need to think about rodents too.

I'd use some kind of aluminum box on the outside (steel will rust away) and a plastic box on the inside to keep water out (rats would eat that if they can get to it). Tupperware would probably be OK I guess.

Throw in a few of those silica gel things for good measure before you seal the thing up tight. Gotta think like an archivist here. I bet the National Archives has some sort of gubment publication they would send you with some tips on how to make a time capsule.

That's a great idea by the way. It sure would be sweet to be there to see the next owners of the house discover it.

Oh, another thing: Photographs won't do well unless they are black and white. Color dyes are unstable. And if you're worried about paper, you can photocopy whatever you have onto acid free paper. Remember that if you have all acid free paper, but you stick one newspaper article in there on newrag, the acid in that newsrag will eventually wreck everything else in the box. Don't put a single thing in there unless you're sure it's acid free. If in doubt, photocopy it first!

Re:CD readable after 100 years?

[SEWilco]

A recordable CD may not last that long, but you can try it. You could also put your own digitized images in there. And an archive of today's articles from your favorite news site. You've got a lot of room on a CD... and burn 2-3 copies of each CD, in case someone really wants to read them and they degrade differently.

Make sure you put some commercial CDs in there, as the pressed CDs will last a long time. There are Linux distros with a source CD for $3. Suppose a boxed "Red Hat" would have collector value? How about one "Red Hat" stock certificate? ["Registered Owner: 123 Main Street"]

Maybe a parallel port CD drive, with two parallel port cables (for parts and interfacing) and specifications on acid-free paper (including parallel port timing diagram).

Putting it all in a sealed metal container in a nitrogen atmosphere would provide protection from corrosion, pests, and the drill of the unfortunate electrician who discovers the cache.

Anything not geek? (And geek suggestions also)

[kcarnold]

What if your future homeowner is a non-geek? Why not some other sorts of "signs of the times"?

A few examples:

• Collectable cards (baseball and PCI)
• Video game systems
• • Playstation 2 (so maybe you won't give up yours that easily...)
  • X-box -- with whatever is needed to get it to run Linux :-), but some 'native' games too
  • Gameboy?
• Antique gizmos:
• • Analog telephone
  • Chips that still use silicon dioxide (not entirely geek)
  • Scotch tape (write the 10 or whatever it was GB on it first)
  • Post-its (especially the weirder shapes and sizes)
• Magazines (for Ben.B, that copy of PC World you got even though you cancelled the subscription 2 months ago)
• Newspapers (the big ones, but the local paper also)
• A book:
• • Godel, Escher, Bach -- Douglas Hofstader
  • Geeks -- Jon Katz
  • DOS 3.0 manual :-)
  • Yield to your conscience and throw in some old Unix book that is already out of date
• Data storage media:
• • Zip disks
  • CD-ROMs
  • Floppy disk (5 1/4" or elder is even better)
  • blank and recorded CD-Rs and CD-RWs
  • Drives to read all of them (throw in the ATAPI spec, and any other applicable info)
  • That brand-new 60 GB hard drive you just bought :-)
• Cabling
• • AT floppy/floppy tape
  • IDE/ATA
  • That crazy UDMA cable that has 80 wires but only 40 pins (why?)
  • S-Video
  • RCA plugs
  • USB and FireWire
  • grounded AC cable
• Misc.
• • Joystick
  • Graphing calculator
  • Batteries, rechargable and regular
  • Flashlight
  • House :-) -- seriously, if only it would fit!
  • Pencil (wood and mechanical)
  • Plants
  • DNA
  • BUCKEYBALLS! (sorry, I couldn't resist)
  • Pencil sharpener
  • The dog
  • The net
  • A copy of Google's robot scripts
• And of course,
• • DeCSS code (shirt, paper, CD, CD-R, CD-RW, Zip, hard disk, floppy
  • GPL (and LGPL, etc. -- heck, get the entire *://*.gnu.org!) (in the above formats if possible)
  • A kernel.org mirror (preferrably wait until 2.4.0 comes out)
  • A complete Linux distribution -- heck, why not all of them? (don't forget Debian) (in the above formats minus shirt :-) but adding a working notebook with world power converter and a DC-to-DC converter just in case)
  • A bz2'ed copy of the entire Slashdot story archive (Taco Commander, help here :-))
  • 5000 copies in different forms of the Linux kernel source tree -- and might as well include the source for GCC, libc, binutils, bash, ipchains/netfilter, w3m, etc., and binaries for the above for any and all conceivable platforms (cygwin, DJGPP, BSD plus Linux compatibility layer, etc. etc. etc.)
• Oh and of course all the manuals and documentation for everything, printed on water-resistant paper

Now how you fit all that stuff into a box, yet alone into your house, is another story.

Oops, forgot a few:

[kcarnold]

More juicy tidbits for the Slashdot squirrel population:

• Furby!
• Some facts, figures, and original creations by you and your family
• Any cool-looking stuff:
• • Business-card-size CDs
  • The emblem on the front of your car, if it isn't that important to you
  • (If you have a cool car, find some way to stuff it in -- hundreds of thousands as a collecter's item, even in their money if it's a decent car. That's assuming you can live without it for 100 years.)
• Red Hat's prospectus
• Slash
• A working web server, with as many different kinds of network cards as you can shove in the poor thing (and protocol description for each, and the HTTP RFC)
• Technical information, such as:
• • All the RFCs, on any convenient medium
  • Some good books on programming for [Unix|X-[xlib|gtk|qt]|Windows|Macintosh[HyperCard| real code]] and learn-how-to-program-in-[C|Basic|Pascal|FORTRAN|Pe rl!|Tcl/Tk|[emacs]LISP|[i386|m68k[PowerP C]|Alpha|etc] ASM].
  • The online manuals for stuff like LILO, X, etc.
  • Specs for all compression and encryption formats known
  • JPEG, MPEG, MP3, outdated 8-VSB, COFDM, ELF, a.out, etc. binary file formats
• And most of all ... a copy of your MP3 collection!

How could I possibly miss this one?

[kcarnold]

Include a FURBY!!!

Don't burn the CD

[shario]

Print the DeCSS source, or better, get the shirt with the source on it. CD won't last 10 years...

I like this...

[Doug McNaught]

... my wife suggested burning the deCSS source on a CD and tossing it in.

You have a cool wife!

-Doug

Stuff

[Admiral Burrito]

Some stuff...

• A dollar bill in some sort of plastic cover. By the time it's discovered $20 coins will be pocket change and a $1 bill will seem odd.
• A bottle of hard stuff. Most booze gets better with age. Don't bother with wine as it will go bad unless it's really well bottled. Who knows, alcohol might even be illegal when it gets found (if history repeats).
• Genetic material. No, not to clone yourself. :) Seeds and stuff. By the time they're found those plants may be extinct or re-engineered.
• A computer mouse. Only because someone will probably pick it up like a microphone and say "hello computer" :) [Star Trek IV reference].

And other things I can't think of right now.

Re:CD readable after 100 years?

[Detritus]

I wouldn't expect a laptop to last 100 years. Capacitors dry out, metal contacts corrode, lubricants evaporate and become gummy, plastics crack and become brittle. I used to fix old tube hi-fi equipment from the 1950s that had been in storage for decades. I almost always had to replace the power cord and all of the electrolytic capacitors.

some ideas...

[dlc]

Here is what I came up with...

• a copy of the GPL (printed on something water resistant);
• A copy of Windows 2000 -- might be the last piece of software Micro$oft puts out before the breakup;
• A copy of the US's stupid encryption/export laws so future generations can marvel at our stupidity and ass-backwardsness;
• A CD holding all of Paul McCartney's songs in MP3 format;
• deCSS source is a great idea (you have a cool wife);
• how about a 100-base hub and a big-ass fileserver? ;)

darren

Cthulhu for President! [cthulhu.org]

Hmmm..

[technos]

Having lived in/renovated/torn up several old houses/hotels/barns, I can gleefully tell you that pocket change is always the most exciting find. (Pulling a jar of Flying Eagles out of a plaster wall is bliss!) It may only be three or four bucks now, but to whoever finds it in near-mint 100 years down the road it won't be.

Another good one is 'dated' print. Technical manuals and newspapers. Imagine some tech-head in 2075 finding a book on Unix, or some gear-head flipping through the Detroit Free Press and seeing the 'new 2000' models his father was too young to drive.

If you wanted to put music in there, I'd opt for LP. Speaking as someone with a RCA Victorola in his living room, I don't think the ability to play them will die off anytime soon. It can be reduced to just a pencil, a straightpin, and a rolled up bit of paper, after all. You might consider a set of directions for playing it that way. Or include the items to do it with.

A cross-section of "Geek Life"

[Cid Highwind]

How about throwing in:
1: A twinkie (they'll last forever)
2: A can of JOLT cola
3: Printouts (on acid-free paper) of the day's User Friendly and/or Penny Arcade strips
4: A printout of the /. main page
5: MP3s of some current music
6: The Bill Of Rights, the DMCA and the DeCSS lawsuits (the contradictions will have legal scholars puzzled for years!)
7: Any .com stock certificate
8: A gun (they'll probably be illegal by the time the capsule is opened)
9: A hard drive (or ZIP drive if you're short on $$) containing Linux, GCC and the source code to PGP, GPG, and any other good "stong" crypto.
10: Documentation of the EIDE or SCSI interface for the drive.