ASCII by Jason Scott » Search Results » archive+team

Wikiwhatever (A Retirement)

Jason Scott — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:57:49 +0000

Since oh, January or thereabouts, I’ve had this entry about Wikipedia’s 10th anniversary sitting around. I actually write most of these entries as drafts and let them sit, then come back and touch them up and do what you do with actual writing. The entry sat there for a whole year, and I just deleted it, as I’d realized something.

I’m kind of done being The Wikipedia Critic. I still find issues, and the landscape is rich with targets and self-important process lawyers and all the sketchy shit Jimbo Wales and other members have done over the years, but I am just kind of done being That Guy. The one who spends time after time proving a negative, showing the problems, then indicating why the problems are problems, and then doing it forever until I’m in the ground.

You know, for the past week, I’ve been adding a mirror of Jamendo.com onto the Internet Archive – I’m more than halfway done, and the collection will be here. When I’m done, over 971 days (real, 24-hours apiece days) of music will be on the Internet Archive servers. I’m also adding out of print comic books, more computer magazines, and whatever else strikes my fancy.

In all these cases, I didn’t add things to then watch people change the content, the meaning, and blow down a bunch of legibility rules or linking policies to essentially destroy them. They’re items. They were made. They got scanned or recorded. Here they are. A much better week, in other words, than constructing cogent arguments about process. A much better week.

These days I’m the Archive Team Guy. I’m the Archiving/Preservation Guy. My speeches are still fiery, my rage is still in effect, and my boundless need to make things better and more accessible still burns bright. It’s just getting things done now. I like being this guy. I think I’m going to stay being him.

See you in the archives.

The Flood Never Ended (And a Pledge Drive)

Jason Scott — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 10:56:20 +0000

Still lovin’ the job at the Internet Archive. I’m starting to forget I ever worked anywhere else and all those times I wasn’t enjoying myself.

(I actually enjoyed myself a lot at the various jobs I used to have, but it was rarely because of the job itself.)

I last posted that I’d added some materials to the archive back in September. That list of periodicals and other materials is way out of date, kids. Let’s do a quick update.

So there’s another thousand magazine issues for you to paw through.

“What, is that it?” you say. Archivist, Please!

How about some french-language computer magazines? I got a huge ingestion of those a while back, and I’ve been steadily adding them the last couple of months. They include:

There’s plenty more to add (over 100 different runs) but that’s ongoing. Spanish and German collections are arriving as well.

But who the hell wants to read, you say. What you want is some sort of software.

Yeah, on that as well. In the Shareware CD Archive I’ve been curating, I took the thing from an embarassing 35 CD-ROMs to the current count of roughly 761 CD-ROMs, including a massive collection of FREEBSD installationCD-ROMs courtesy of a donor from the Noisebridge hackerspace. They were going to be turned into wall art, and someone on their list said “Maybe swing those by Jason, first?” so here we are with a pretty much complete set of CD-ROMs from FreeBSD version 2.0 up through 5.4 – a motherlode of unix and programming history.

With this latest batch, it is my firm belief that archive.org is now the largest collection of historical shareware on the internet. I would love to be proven wrong, just so I can make things right the only way I know how, by absorbing even more into the archives.

The full GET LAMP Interviews are still coming in, although they tend to hose the machine that’s doing the rendering, due to the High-Def and the noise reduction and all the rest. But they are getting done! Interviews were added for David Shaw, Lucian Smith, and the one and only Don Woods. Additionally, all the footage I shot in the cave that Adventure is based on is now online in a big pile, and the High-Def version of the MC Frontalot video I shot snuck on one evening.

Other dumps include the 2010 @Party Demoparty Footage, the ROFLcon Summit presentations including this one with me and Brewster Kahle of Internet Archive, and terabytes and terabytes of Yahoo! Video.

Wow, STILL not satisfied? Fine, I whip out the best for last.

The DNA Lounge in San Francisco makes webcasts available of performances going on at the club. All the performances. All the time. Since they re-opened in 2002. Well, people who care have been saving those webcasts. They sent the webcasts to me, on a hard drive.

So here you go: Over 2,000 performances of acts at the DNA Lounge over the last 10 years. This is over 10,000 hours of music, spoken-word, DJs, breakdowns, triumphs and musical madness. Ten thousand hours.

While you’re eagerly browsing the acts and checking out the years, let me now make an appeal to you.

The Internet Archive is amazing. Besides the massive amount of data I just dumped there, there’s many other groups adding untold quantities of books, sounds, video and whatnot. Top among that is the Internet Archive itself, which I calculated out as adding a new digitized book every 90 seconds to the site. Seriously. They’re adding that many, that fast. To do this, they have a very small staff, and the costs of the archive, while a massive bargain for what it does, still means that they have to always be on the lookout for new donations, new underwriters, all that stuff that comes along with providing this service, a service that includes the unique and amazing Wayback Machine.

So this year, the Archive is trying a pledge drive. Here’s the pledge drive page. Donations to the archive are potentially tax deductible depending on where you live.

I just threw over 25 terabytes of material at you. Try throwing 25 bucks back.

And thanks.

Escalation

Jason Scott — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 07:00:23 +0000

So, here’s how this goes.

By my very, very rough estimation, I probably engage in about three thousand transactions related to my projects in a given year. This consists of people who need information, people who want me to send them something, people who want to send me something, and so on – the normal back and forth of doing what it is I do. (I’m not counting mailing out the DVDs of the documentaries – that’s pretty basic.) Some of these transactions are as simple as responding with a number, and some of them are taking possession of materials and doing stuff with them. The latter take longer.

Most of these, I get done somewhat quickly, enough that I get complimented for it. But that’s definitely not the guaranteed situation – I’ve had cases of months getting back to people. I apologize, I try to make up for it somehow, but it does happen. I owe probably a half-dozen e-mail interviews, a couple pieces of hardware need mailing, I promised I’d get back with ideas about someone’s new business or to answer a tough question about the proliferation of various types of media in backup processes…. a bunch of stuff.

Some of this is just me wanting to get stuff right, and some of it is just some minor aspect, my saying “well, I can’t just leave it at that“, and then weeks go by.

Somewhere a ways back, I had a bunch of people involved in the Geocities Torrent, where Archive Team had generated this 647gb collection that uncompresses to about 900gb, and which basically requires a hard drive of its own to really keep a copy of. Some people started torrenting it, and we also ran into some hilarious case sensitivity issue.. and, well.. anyway, so all of it is now up on archive.org if you want a copy. (Hint, it’s huge.)

A number of people mailed me hard drives, about 10. I put a copy on their hard drives, and then mailed them back. Except one.

He was supposed to mail it in February, according to my records.

Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2011 13:55:46 -0600
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

sounds good... give me a mailing address, I'm headed to the post office
shortly anyway...  I'll drop in a label and money for return postage, much
appreciated.  I'd be mailing a 1gig external usb... I'll delete any data,
but the only data is from your torrent download anyway...

But things being what they are, he ended up not mailing it until a month later. These things happen.

Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2011 15:58:00 -0600
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

Jason:

Hi.. I completely forgot to ship this, put it in my trunk, then forgot it.
Anyway, shipped now (see attached).  However in my haste I forgot to put in
a return label/postage/and something for your time.

Have you got a paypal addy?  If so I'll send some cash there.  If not, I'll
send out a money order, let me know.  Have a good weekend.

Best, Tim

The drive arrived on March 7th.

This drive was in a slightly different form factor than the others, and at the time I didn’t have a dock to put it into, so no way to really read it. I did eventually buy a dock, but only recently. Money was pretty tight for a while (I was unemployed) so I couldn’t really put anything towards a dock and the rest, so the project kind of laid dormant.

The hard drive owner, Tim, mailed me about it, a couple times. I’m sure if I looked at that whole mail spool at the time, I was doing literally dozens of other things.

Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 18:24:45 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

so what's the status of things?

Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 18:35:49 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

no word?  This is surprising, thought all was cool... Am I going to get the
stuff or not?  Offered to send you some paypal... what's up?

Long time now since the HD arrived.  I'd appreciate letting me know what the
status is.

Tim

“Long time” in this case was 11 days. Not long for me, and as I guess I indicate next, I was also travelling at this time – I had just spent a week at GDC 2011, and was about to go spend another week down in Austin, TX for SXSW, and had spent no time at home between them. So things were now out of sync.

Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 19:50:51 -0400
From: Jason Scott 
To: Tim

Traveling, back Sunday.

Here was my first mistake, because even if I was back Sunday, I was then stuck not only catching up with a pile of things needing my attention, but I was now going to start employment, and dealing with more travel and projects coming up. I’ve gone from being able to get things working on something like a hard drive, and doing the transfer of material, to heading down a path of more and more complicated projects. I am, in other words, fantastically busy.

Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2011 18:00:30 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

Assume you're back and have been back.  What appreciate the status please?
Tim

Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2011 23:31:28 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

this going to happen, or I shall chalk it up to life experience?

Here is, looking back, where it goes off the rails. Something about the tone, combined with the work I’m doing, and the whole situation, means that the priority this whole thing has, to go out and get the dock and find the hard drive with my copy of the torrent on it, and then to do the copy, and all the rest, drops noticeably. I’m focused on a lot of things, and something about “chalk it up to life experience” just makes my face scrunch. My mistake was then not just sending the drive back, saying “ah, look, it’s just taking forever”, and then knowing it would be up on archive.org soon anyway.

No, instead of that, I end up doing a non-committal “mmmmm”, e-mail style, which means “Look, yeah, I’m going to get to it, but I’m in the middle of a lot of stuff and I can’t set aside the day to set this all up, OK, just relax.” but probably comes off as “yeah, yeah”.

Date: Mon, 4 Apr 2011 00:40:48 -0400
From: Jason Scott 
To: Tim

It'll happen.

Now in the low priority bin, Tim is left to flail. Again, my fault. And here, well, here you can watch what happens.

Date: Tue, 3 May 2011 16:04:12 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

my 30 day check in... any updates? T

Date: Sun, 8 May 2011 20:19:40 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

so now I don't even get a reply?  If it's not going to happen, then
please return the HD so I can put it to use.  I'm not certain at this
point if you're simply too busy, have forgotten me, or it's something
else.  You are the one that suggested your doing this, I have not
asked otherwise.

I need the files, my HD or pay me a fair price for the HD and keep it.
 Any of the three, but c'mon man, no word is just not right.

T

Date: Wed, 11 May 2011 17:41:50 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

Jason:

I won't bother you again then... IF (and I doubt it) you want to do the
right thing, get in touch.  I've lost faith in you and this, so keep the HD
and the files, I'll find a Unix guy and get the torrent myself.  I really
thought you were honorable (doing the torrent and all) but WAY too much time
has past, this is a very sour deal.

Enjoy the HD (life lesson for me).

Tim

Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:29:01 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

Happy July 4th... As the fireworks explode... think of all the honest, good,
hard working Americans who lived and died for this country.

Then think of those who NEVER follow through, who make promises they never
keep or intended to keep, who take merchandise under false pretense, who
ruin the integrity and spirit of the net...

Have a good weekend.

Tim

Date: Tue, 13 Sep 2011 00:48:02 -0500
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

just thought I say hi and let you know I haven't forgotten you.  One day...
in some way... you will be repaid.  Dishonesty is too nice a word for
you...  Have a happy holiday season... NOT.

Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 01:03:47 -0600
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

Happy holidays thief.  Hope Santa chokes on your cookies.

Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 01:10:43 -0600
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

see you on kickstarter, I'll be sure to follow you  CLOSELY.. and help
out with comments whenever I see your name online.  $100k... yet you
rip me off, hard to believe.  .

Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 01:14:44 -0600
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

ah ha... I see Kickstarter has a link for "reporting projects"..
wonder what I can stir up by pasting our long thread... we'll see if
you respond or not. Sweet dreams. Tim

Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 01:16:46 -0600
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

even better.... think I'll donate $10 so I can comment about the
project... social media... love it.

Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:39:13 -0600
Subject: kickstarter project
From: Tim
To: Jason Scott 

Jason:

This is Tim, the guy whom you do not answer at my main email (
XXXXXX).  Here are two options.

*1.* Return my money via paypal (it seems you have PLENTY of money now).
The money I speak of is the cost of the hard drive I purchased and mailed
to you (at your request).  The cost of my postage to send it.  The
frustration you have caused over a LONG period of time.  We'll call it $200

or

*2.*  I will do my utmost to share our complete and long thread with
(including many quotes from you saying you would fulfill your promises)
with the Kickstarter administration as well as becoming a small partner and
sharing my comments (and links to the full thread) in your section.

Your choice, all I want is to resolve this

To be clear... at this point I am ONLY interested in the return of cash,
the hard should remain in your possession.

You may use XXXXXXX as the Paypal email and IF the funds are
received promptly, this will bring this matter and our communications to an
end.  If not, then (see #2 above).

Best,

Tim

It’s an interesting study, to say the least. I’m hardly blameless, and the whole thing going off the rails as far as it did is definitely my fault. But the gentle traipsing into blackmail and sinister threats are also prime demotivators to following through, so I decided to split the difference. Post it all here, let you see how not every person who deals with me is 100% satisfied, and then, when I get back to my home office later this week after Thanksgiving, find the drive, mail it back, and never think about it again. Perhaps not the best solution, but about what I’m into doing, all things considered.

And to my other friends who I owe a few things for, I’m sorry for the delay. It happens.

I’ll do my best to improve.

Archive Team Talk Post-Mortem

Jason Scott — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 08:33:49 +0000

There’s enough going on both behind the scenes and onstage with the Archive Team talk at DEFCON, I think it functions on multiple levels as an explanation of speaking techniques, how I design presentations, and what the approach was for it. You really should have watched the speech before reading this entry – here’s the entry on this weblog about seeing the video. I’ll assume you have, and move on.

General Hardware/Software/Stage

The hardware was an HP laptop that’s pretty much on the outs, but can handle flipping through images well enough. (I’ve had it for 4 years or something.) The tux was rented in Las Vegas from Tuxedo Junction, a firm just off the strip that will suit you up in under half an hour, and will often just send you out with your outfit (and top hat, which I also rented), and even has a service where they’ll send someone to pick the tux up from your hotel concierge. A tuxedo just brightens up the whole room – check out me and Schuyler Towne:

I mostly wanted to have formal wear for my presentation because I’d asked for, and gotten, the Penn and Teller Theater, which I imagined would be a fantastic venue and was not disappointed. The video doesn’t have establishing shots or anything, but it just looks and feels fantastic in there, as great as many Broadway theaters I’ve been in as a patron, so being on stage was just stellar.

I use OpenOffice Impress for my presentation software. I’ve switched to LibreOffice on my new laptops, but it’s essentially the same thing. It has everything I need, and I can work with it really quickly. It used to crash a lot, but now it rarely crashes, and I’ve never had a crash during a presentation.

DEFCON handled the recording, the sound setup, the video setup. I wore a lav mic that had a wire coming from it (the organizers of DEFCON have apparently sworn off wireless microphones in this environment), and there was also a microphone on the podium, which picked me up occasionally. I thought it all went off smoothly.

All my favorite speeches have me standing next to a massive screen that dwarfs me, and this was a good example of that – I could stand near it and point to things or just dance next to the image, and you got to see both in action. Here’s a shot of that:

If I had to come up with anything I didn’t like of how the speech went off, it’s that I drink a lot of water – maybe it was the combination of the Las Vegas heat and wearing such an elaborate outfit, but I had to keep drinking water, which took up one of my hands. But I can live with this.

Content/Arc

Okay, I do not recommend this for most speakers, and it’s not the way that should work for most people, but if it’s not obvious from the video, I have absolutely no speaking notes. No cue cards, no prompter, no notepad with words, nothing. Everything is being said from memory, or made up on the spot, or being prompted by the slides.

There’s two talks I do, primarily: One where I am acquainted with the subject, and one where I am aware of the subject. The first talks are much more fact filled – the second talks are much more ranty, riffy, and sometimes are lost completely in a flood of interconnected but ultimately non-cohesive thoughts. I try and give the first one whenever possible.

In some cases, I know the subject so well, am pulling directly from memory, that I can construct what I am saying on the spot from memory, and I think this contributes to a much more flowing and organic speech, one that feels like you’re being conversationally told a story. Obviously, this is not for everyone – if your talk is about this new exploit or the construction of an item, you want all the little points in a row and to bring them to the audience exactly. My talks are about ideas and people, so that’s not so important.

Improvisation is a big part of what I do. Some of my bigger laugh lines in there are made up on the spot. “I have plans for your car”, “Getting fucked for shipping costs”, “Probably not going to be flown to America”, “Bulgy McFishHat” … I heard these the same time the audience did. “Food Museum”, “Yahoo! is a clown car”, “Keep Backups”… those were thought of beforehand. So there’s no rhyme or reason to it.

I pay a lot of attention to the audience reaction, probably more than is reasonable. I’m fast thinking with regards to moving the speech in general directions, zipping to the next idea, slowing down to regard an item or concept for the sake of the group. Obviously I can do nothing for the majority of people who will be watching this on a recording, but feeling things out with the audience works for me.

So the outline, which came from the slides, is basically:

Introduction
Dedication to Tim Recher
Soy Sauce Story
The Importance of Physical Artifacts
The Importance, therefore, of Digital Artifacts
Everybody is shutting down
Archive Team is Formed
Geocities Project
Why Geocities has Meaning
Yahoo! Sucks
Various Site Saves: Friendster, Lulu Poetry, Google Video
Outside Projects: OLDUSE.NET, TELEHACK.COM
Inside Projects: Wikiteam, URL Team, Away from Keyboard
Conclusion

Throughout this talk, if I find I’m going fast or I’m getting behind (and I use an internal clock, mostly dating back to my film/mass media degree and pro experience), I will add little sidepaths, like how I go off on Google Video for a while, or skip over the “Jason Meme” thing because I want to get to some more good stuff.

What I intentionally did was flip between highly emotional, highly intense stories and moments of hilarity and lightness, tripping along giving the finger as I go. I don’t think it’s good to make the speech into a maudlin tale of lost history, but an endless drunk-sounding riff on Keeping Shit Around wouldn’t impart the seriousness ever. So I swapped between them.

Timing myself, the Soy Sauce story goes for the first five minutes. That’s quite a risk – but in this case it paid off.

And yes, that is really some of Tim Recher’s ashes I hold up at the end. I figured that was the first time someone’s had human ashes at a DEFCON talk, and he was getting spread around the strip by his family anyway – so why not spend some time on stage first?

Presentation Style

I really, really wanted to be out on stage, and not behind a podium. Note how this makes me a pacing weirdo as I go over to hit the arrow key to do slides, but this pause also gives me time to think, which you might see if you watch me carefully. Notice how I make extra effort to use my hands, to use my body, to smile or frown. I am not afraid to turn away from the audience or turn to the screen, because I am mic’d very well. I turn to the screen for moments of incredulity. I turn to the audience for moments of anger. The sense, I hope, is of someone very passionate about their subject, very knowledgeable of what they speak, who is sharing something meaningful to them, not just a boring pitch.

I can ratchet profanity up and down as needed – I wanted this talk to show the rough and tumble way Archive Team operates and the extreme approach I can take as a participant. It means that everyone linking to the video has to add a profanity warning, or just hope for the best. I could have given this talk with no profanity, but I liked peppering it in for a DEFCON speech, because DEFCON has to walk this fine line of being a hacking convention and being a respectable dissemination of information. I wanted to keep the spice in. It’s not for everyone; I do get complaints. Fuck those guys.

I don’t get nervous in front of crowds. I am facing something like 1,000 people here, and there’s just no effect on me – it might as well be 2. I don’t know why this is the case, but obviously I make the most of it to be able to focus on other aspects of the presentation other than fear of crowds.

For talks like this, I never respond to the audience shouting out – I will not slow the train to pick up one passenger. That’s a personal choice – if the talk required more collaboration that moment, I might be inclined to respond, but not here.

Conclusion and Future

My hope is that this talk, along with other ones I’ve given, could hold up as resume pieces for doing more public speaking. I’ve got some keynotes and presentations in the works for the next year, depending on the choice of committees and stuff out of my hands, and people advocating for me can point to this video and others and say “This is what he’s like.” And it stands as an accurate portrayal. I can’t be something I’m not, and I’m very, very happy with how things come across on this one.

So there you go. I’ll answer further questions as they come.

Keep speaking!

Archive Team: A Distributed Preservation of Service Attack

Jason Scott — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 22:45:42 +0000

I asked for the nicest presentation space at DEFCON, I got a nice rented tux, and I steeled myself up to give my all onstage. And it paid off! May I proudly present my DEFCON 19 talk: Archive Team: A Distributed Preservation of Service Attack.

Here’s the full talk on YouTube:

And here’s the full talk on Vimeo:

I’m really happy with how this came out. Issues with anything I have to say will come from content, not form. I’m sure I’ll get the usual “woah, profanity” complaints, but fuck those guys. The core messages, I think, come off really well: the importance and relevance of user-generated content, the mission of Archive Team in this time of great data destruction, and how at the end of the day, computer data is a human story, worthwhile of preservation. It may be the most energetic preaching of data preservation in modern times. I hope it spreads far and wide.