Bootstrapping an IBM PC with only blank media and no tweener machine

[Chuck(G)]

If you're into hype... I've got a really nice bridge for sale, cheep.

Other than TIME itself there is no process that can accurately simulate its effects. It just an educated (or uneducated, in some instances) guess.

Well, warranties are generally worth less than the paper they're printed on. Kodak used to warranty floppies for life. I'm still alive, I don't have any working Kodak floppies left. Kodak hasn't made floppies for quite some time.

 

[Stone]

Kodak used to warranty floppies for life. I'm still alive, I don't have any working Kodak floppies left. Kodak hasn't made floppies for quite some time.

I do! Bought them in 1988.

But they don't say anything about lifetime warranty. Just this:

If your Kodak diskette is found to be defective, Kodak will replace it at no cost.

No time reference so I guess that could be lifetime.

 

[krebizfan]

Well, warranties are generally worth less than the paper they're printed on. Kodak used to warranty floppies for life. I'm still alive, I don't have any working Kodak floppies left. Kodak hasn't made floppies for quite some time.

I think Kodak honored the warranty until they went into bankruptcy which qualifies as for life to me. Beats the current crop of warranties I see which cost more to try get the vendor to honor the warranty than to buy a new product from a competitor.

 

[ropersonline]

When the Aztecs wanted to preserve data they engraved it onto gold sheets. Then they got a visit from some guy named Cortez.

OT, but I just watched this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZyB47qGXoI

However, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that among pre-Columbian native Americans, only the Mayans had really developed a fully-fledged writing system with which they could write everything they could say (well, their scribes could). It's understood to have been substantially logosyllabic, and this looks surprisingly similar to Japanese kana (though it's almost certainly parallel evolution). See PDF pp. 77 for the "letters".

As for actual Aztec writing, Wikipedia has this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_writing
Never heard of Aztecs engraving writing in gold sheets though (admittedly, me not hearing about it doesn't mean much).
That Cortez dude was kind of a dick, not as much of a dick as all those germs, but a dick nonetheless, though in fairness, so were the Aztecs. Think Abraham and Isaac, with the teensy tiny difference that the Aztecs followed through, regularly and big time.

 

[Chuck(G)]

There's always parchment, which has survived for more than 1000 years. Hard on the sheep, though.

Kodak changed its warranty several times. Originally, they offered to recover the data from a failed floppy at no charge, then it was a lifetime guarantee (I think, at some point, Verbatim offered the same deal), then it was simply to replace any defective ones.

Reminds me of a shovel I bought from a well-known national maker. The label proudly proclaimed a "lifetime guarantee". About a year in, I managed to break the shovel blade in half, so I contacted the manufacturer. It turned out that "lifetime" to them meant whatever they wanted it to mean. In the case of a shovel, they had determined that "lifetime" was two years. I asked them how it was that I have a 30 year old shovel made by them (or a company of the same name) that's still doing fine. I received a lot of mumbling, but no admission that their stuff was now garbage... and their "guarantee" was pro-rated over the expected lifetime of the shovel.

 

[Timo W.]

Reminds me of a shovel I bought from a well-known national maker. The label proudly proclaimed a "lifetime guarantee". About a year in, I managed to break the shovel blade in half, so I contacted the manufacturer. It turned out that "lifetime" to them meant whatever they wanted it to mean.

As for that, "lifetime" always refers to the lifetime of the product - not of the buyer's lifetime. The misunderstanding is of course intended by the producers and pure marketing jugglery. In Germany, we have a law that says "lifetime guarantee" must be at least 5 years.

 

[KC9UDX]

Craftsman tools have a lifetime warranty. I bought a small fortunes worth of them 20 years ago.They were very hard to break, but when they did, Sears replaced them with second rate junk, no questions asked.

Some of the replacement parts didn't even carry the warranty anymore.