Anybody else here visit the Snowjournal forums?  Appears that on May 15th it will cease to function after 15 years:    http://www.snowjournal.com/page.php?cid=topic21076

A lot of the photos I've posted in the DCSki forums over the years are hosted there and I think they may go POOF on May 15? 

Jim, I think all the people that were there that are here are already there.  

We might be able to recover the files, but without the service, the links from here will all be broken.  sad.

This is the type of situation that I've always feared about the cloud server age.  I had a problem using one of my machines on PhototBucket awhile ago and started using G+ and facebook as my online photo storage.  I still keep a copy of photo images in house but not so much with the larger video files.  I've stopped burning DVDs of everything and just uplod them.  There are millions of people running on mostly phone devices that would be SOL if YouTube and Vimeo went down.

This is a very good point, and at least a few people have started thinking about it.  

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/feb/13/google-boss-warns-forgotten-century-email-photos-vint-cerf

Some of my NASA colleagues wanted to digitize the photographic plates taken by astronomers over the last 150 years, before they degrade and are lost.  This was the only medium for storage of astronomical data before the current digital era.  I dont know if its been done but it could be valuable to trace the record of supernova, comets, glowing gas clouds, etc. over that time.  The above article makes me wonder if the photographic plates might outlive the digital data.

If we were whiped out by a massive solar flare and visitors from other worlds or the future life here found our relics would they be able to recover our digital photos and digital documents, or would they only have the stone carvings previous civilizations left to go on as who we were and what we acompolished??

There was a preliminary statement on Snowjournal today indicating it will continue.

crgildart wrote:

If we were whiped out by a massive solar flare and visitors from other worlds or the future life here found our relics would they be able to recover our digital photos and digital documents, or would they only have the stone carvings previous civilizations left to go on as who we were and what we acompolished??

Ok, that is a pretty deep idea.  Chances are still non zero that we wipe ourselves out.  We need to store data in the exo-terrestial cloud rather than the edno-terrestial cloud.  First step, we need a physical and digital library on the moon.  Then we need to go beyond our solar system.  Maybe that is the real reason for space exploration.  

Hows about one of them subspace computer thingies from Star Trek? Maybe it can be housed on Trantor. Maybe JJ Abrams will be called on to reboot it if it flops.

Unfortunately, as I feared many of my photos in reports I posted in the forums have gone poof with the closing of the original SnowJournal website.  I wonder if there is a less than super painful way to restore them?  

The new SnowJournal site is nice:  http://www.snowjournal.com/

Jim,

Have you contacted the old SnowJournal folks, both by phone, website, Facebook and email of previous owner?  Might also try to contact present owner to see if they have the file?

The Colonel

pagamony wrote:

crgildart wrote:

If we were whiped out by a massive solar flare and visitors from other worlds or the future life here found our relics would they be able to recover our digital photos and digital documents, or would they only have the stone carvings previous civilizations left to go on as who we were and what we acompolished??

Ok, that is a pretty deep idea.  Chances are still non zero that we wipe ourselves out.  We need to store data in the exo-terrestial cloud rather than the edno-terrestial cloud.  First step, we need a physical and digital library on the moon.  Then we need to go beyond our solar system.  Maybe that is the real reason for space exploration.  

Even if they found a flash drive or hard drive would they be able to figure out how to decode and read it?  Binary code might be completely foreign to them.  They might think a flash drive was some kind of ancient jewelry or something,

Been out of touch with SJ for a while, but I mostly went there for the NELSAPping and lost ski areas anyway. If I had anything up on the site, it was not worth saving (ski area designs) or I have backups.

GGNagy wrote:

Been out of touch with SJ for a while, but I mostly went there for the NELSAPping and lost ski areas anyway. If I had anything up on the site, it was not worth saving (ski area designs) or I have backups.

no worries it came back stronger than ever.   SJ 2.0 rocks.

pagamony wrote:

GGNagy wrote:

Been out of touch with SJ for a while, but I mostly went there for the NELSAPping and lost ski areas anyway. If I had anything up on the site, it was not worth saving (ski area designs) or I have backups.

no worries it came back stronger than ever.   SJ 2.0 rocks.

Is it teh haps?

GGNagy wrote:

pagamony wrote:

GGNagy wrote:

Been out of touch with SJ for a while, but I mostly went there for the NELSAPping and lost ski areas anyway. If I had anything up on the site, it was not worth saving (ski area designs) or I have backups.

no worries it came back stronger than ever.   SJ 2.0 rocks.

Is it teh haps?

It's in there!