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.
It’s less fun, but ultimately saved lives
But at what cost…
What Futurama level bureaucrat do I need to be to get assigned this post?
Just gotta be able to limbo!
Technically correct.
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.
I’m glad they kept the cabinets grey
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.
This system hasn’t lasted ~90 years because they just throw someone in a chair and let them figure it out on the job.
Any reliable system, electro-mechanical or digital, needs thorough user training and checks.
The worry with this one is it’s a single authoritative record with no easy way to backup or replicate it. They say there are non-authoritative (at least legally) digital versions of most(?) of the records. I hope/assume they’re actually more consistent with that than the video makes it seem because those are the only feasible off-site backups they really have. If not one fire is all it would take to wipe out an entire countries SSA program.
This is a government office. A government should be able to build the technical knowledge required to keep a private signing key secure.
I do agree that individual-to-individual cryptography is more difficult, but how often do you need to check the authenticity of a document from a friend or acquaintance, digital or otherwise?
Well, a bank. A financial transaction. Health records. Not just email to your friends.
Government has the technical knowledge - heck many people here have that - but implementing a standard is a different problem, it’s a political problem. A pit full of vipers, in a sense. We’re unlikely to see standardized crypto signing anytime soon. At least IMO.
What about the blockchain?
no.
Has the potential. It’s another case of having a technical solution, but the implementation of it is the real problem, and the real hurdle.
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.
Cryptocurrencies have absolutely nothing to do with cryptography, they just appropriated the name.
Uhm Actually 🤓 crypto is called crypto, because it is based on cryptograhy
It’s called cryptocurrency because Bitcoin used sha256 as it’s proof of work algorithm for funsies, but has no actual tie to cryptography. Proof of work is not cryptography.
I hate to be that guy, but Bitcoin uses elliptic curve cryptography to sign transactions, and SHA256 is definitely in the field of cryptography. While cryptocurrency isn’t purely cryptography, it is cryptography plus economics. Borrowing the “crypto” prefix, at least in my opinion, is reasonable.
Tell me you have no idea about cryptography without telling me
Yeah, obviously it’s the user’s fault for not holding crypto correctly. This is why my crypto is stored on a floppy disk that can only be read by my 8086 computer with no Internet connectivity. If you loose money it’s always your fault for not being prepared.
There is a difference between cryptography and cryptocurrency…
Nonsense argument. It is much easier to forge or steal a paper copy of a document that it is to do so with an equally well protected digital copy.
Vast majority of digital theft is done via social engineering and not through some exploit in the underlying technology.
If the local county records get broken into and every property deed gets stolen, the theif doesn’t have ownership of every property in the county. Anything that represents physical ownership of an item is way more secure with a physical paper trial than a digital one. I understand that cryptocurrencies are different than cryptography, but a physical copy of a record i own and an official copy that a relevant party owns, such as a local government, hospital, or bank will always be more secure than digital tokens of ownership.
That’s just demonstrably false. Lots of historical precedent for people losing property, access, etc due to lost or incorrectly filed documents, clerical errors, corruption and a billion other ways. None of this really affects digital assets.
Because paper and ink are impossible to Forge…
Easier than a date stamp on a digital file? No.
Easier than a file’s checksum? Yes.
Depends, but fair point.
Nobody writing laws knows what a checksum is.
Maybe it’s time they learn it, 60 years after its introduction, since they’re working in a field that now primarily deals with electronically stored information.
I’ve been thinking that for 30 years.
Nothing yet. They’re actually getting worse.
I sort of love that.
Very Brazil
Not enough pipes!
Hey! Prague was one of the last cities ever to operate a public pneumatic mail system (until 2002).
When people ask me why I so very much want to go there, I always respond “Why the Prague not?”
“Why the Prague not?”
Very Praguematic.
Damn what a brilliant film
One step further back, very Orwellian, or even Kafkaesque.
Kafka was from Prague, probably no coincidence!
My first thought also
That looks kinda dope ngl.
I’d be a 1937 file clerkYou’re gonna have a real blast in 5 years
2 years.
alright, I’ll bite, what do you mean.
He’s just saying it’ll be great when there’s some management changes and you’ll get promoted to chief Jewish inspector … That is if you know German and aren’t Jewish yourself.
im so austrian i forgot ww2 existed for a second
Well you guys technically didnt exist during the war itself so fair enough.
meanwhile, i cant wait to find out how we cause ww 3 too
all “good” things come in three ehProbably some damned silly thing in the Balkans.
Probably by accidentally invading Lichtenstein and through a comedy of errors Milan gets nuked or something.
1942 is the middle of WW2. 1937 in Central Europe is not somewhere i want live, because things are about to go sideways.
im an austrian woman, im fine, for the most part
Except for the German soldiers “quartering” in your bedroom.
deleted by creator
“The offices of the Central Social Institution of Prague, Czechoslovakia with the largest vertical letter file in the world. Consisting of cabinets arranged from floor to ceiling tiers covering over 4000 square feet containing over 3000 drawers 10 feet long. It has electric operated elevator desks which rise, fall and move left or right at the push of a button. to stop just before drawer desired. The drawers also open and close electronically. Thus work which formerly taxed 400 workers is now done by 20 with a minimum of effort.
DAMNIT KEVIN STOP LEAVING THE FUCKING DRAWERS OPEN
I can see how that’d inspire Kafka
Made in 1936 and Kafka died in 1924. He would probably have died in a concentration camp if he lived to see this. Nazis did not give special treatment to Jewish writers, for example Josef Čapek (✝ approx. 14 April 1945 Bergen-Belsen). Still, there must have been other bizarre filing systems in his era, a multi-story vertical conveyor belt of filing cabinets is used in some town halls to this day.
Nazis did not give special treatment to Jewish writers, for example Josef Čapek
They kind of did. The Nazis started out by hunting down and imprisoning or killing academics. If you were smart and educated, and not well connected inside the Nazi party, then you were enemy number one at the start of their takeover.
Yeah, that kind of special treatment, absolutely. But once in a concentration camp, they’d be just another subject with a number, albeit likely a lower one.
🎵They say the world looks down on the bureaucrats,
They say we’re anal, compulsive, and weird,
But when push comes to shove,
You’ve got to do what you love,
Even if it’s not a good idea!🎵I am Bender, please insert girder
Workers of the Adeptus Administratum. Terra, 937.M1
seems like it came straight from harry potter
wes Anderson, is all I’m saying
Or Jean-Pierre Jeunet.
What Terry Gilliam movie is this from?
Brazil?
