As many others I subscribe to a substantial number of mailing lists and often follow mail threads with hundreds of messages. The standard Thunderbird thread view has the problem that threads with new messages can be hidden "400 mails down", making one miss them. By using Tools->Options->Advanced->Config Editor and then changing the value of mailnews.thread_pane_column_unthreads to FALSE, threads with new messages are resorted by date and hence appear at the front of the list of messages. Very useful.

To store 720p AND 1080p copies of every movie and tv-show listed on IMDB would probably take something like 10 PB. That would likely cover dubbed soundtracks and subtitles as well.

And at Sun's prices, that'd be about 10 million dollars for a single copy (not including data center costs) stored in 21 racks.

Add in all the books ever written, music and news papers published, what are we looking at? 50 PB for a full copy? Obviously you'd need redundant storage placed on various continents, and you'd expect to replace the hardware every once in a while, but what is our entire cultural history worth to us as a civilization? A billion dollars a year? Two? Keep in mind, it shouldn't just be the US or the EU funding this, it should be everyone.

Make it a requirement for companies that if they want copyrights on their works, they have to submit it unencumbered to the storage facility. That way there can be no excuses from the companies, that they don't have $work in production any more, as it'd be easy to sell access to a particular work. And if they can't submit it for whatever reason? Copyright expires on that particular work. That'd certainly get their asses in gear to get their entire back catalogue digitized.

via MartinShou @ slashdot
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1360387&cid=29343037