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> 99. Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size I absolutely love this one, if for no other reason than it has no practical parallel

> 99. Any data file of crucial importance will be padded to 1.45Mb in size I absolutely love this one, if for no other reason than it has no practical parallels today. (In case anyone is unfamiliar, 1.44Mb was the size of a standard floppy disk, so 1.45Mb would have been more difficult to copy to disk and run away with.)

arethuza 8y ago
What about having files in a 10GB TrueCrypt file - with the documentation for hidden volumes also being in the same place?
- sbr464 8y ago
  and when found, the 200+ character encryption keys are screenshots, forcing you to type them in.
  - arthurcolle 8y ago
    Thankfully OCR was researched in our timeline's tech tree
jcranmer 8y ago
For extra fun, the "standard" 3½" floppy disk (the last major floppy disk) does not contain 1,440,000 bytes or 1,509,949 (i.e., 1.44MiB). It contains 1,474,560 bytes, or 2,880 512-byte sectors. So a 1.45MB file would actually fit on a floppy, since disk utility programs invariably use the decimal-based number for K,M,G,T sizing.
- 0x0 8y ago
  If I remember correctly, an MS-DOS formatted 1.44mb 3.5" floppy usually has 1,457,664 free bytes for user files?
  - userbinator 8y ago
    You remember well. Probably like me, you spent countless hours splitting files across disks. ;-)
- derefr 8y ago
  To be even more pedantic, floppy disks as a medium don’t technically contain any particular number of bytes. You can low-level format them to different compromises between flux density and error rate, which can be fine if the file type you’re recording has inbuilt error-correction. Even without doing that, though, different low-level formats can also have more or less overhead. Some might use sector headers and sector trailers, while others might only use one or the other. Some might leave a decent gap between sectors, while others pack them as tightly as possible and expect the hardware to “miss” and have to “go back” to find the new sector header whenever it passes a sector boundary. And all this type of stuff can be entirely software-controlled, in older machines. Much of the DRM of the 80s was about rewriting the floppy-disk “driver” built into the DOS of a floppy disk such that the disk was formatted normally for just enough of the disk to load that driver, and then the rest of the disk switched to a special proprietary low-level format that disk copiers couldn’t read, but the disk’s loaded DOS RWTS could. In essence, a floppy disk is an analogue format with an analogue read/write head, that just happens to present a digital signalling protocol to the rest of the machine. (But the timing at which you start/stop movements of the disk read/write head is analogue; and you can repeatedly “sample” the same sector to probabilistically read it; so you can still get away with a lot despite the inability to just read the actual flux amplitudes off the disk.)
- dschuler 8y ago
  Any disk older than 2003 or so was measured in MiB, even though it was labeled as MB. The point of a 1.45MiB file was that it would not fit on a "1.44MB" floppy. RAM is still labeled in 2^30 byte sizes instead of 10^9, because address lines are more important than hard drive manufacturers gaming their specs.
rangibaby 8y ago
Foiled again! http://www.trevormarshall.com/byte_articles/byte19.htm http://www.trevormarshall.com/byte_articles/byte19.htm
- undecisive 8y ago
  Thus the "more difficult". Superformatting the disk before copying would probably be outside your average Hero's skillset and increase chance of the disk drive failing to write the disk. At least, I assume that's why it's on the list.
ovi256 8y ago
20.1 MB will prevent most email providers from attaching it to an email today. At least some of them offer you to upload it to their file hosting service and share the link.

arethuza 8y ago

What about having files in a 10GB TrueCrypt file - with the documentation for hidden volumes also being in the same place?

sbr464 8y ago
and when found, the 200+ character encryption keys are screenshots, forcing you to type them in.
- arthurcolle 8y ago
  Thankfully OCR was researched in our timeline's tech tree

jcranmer 8y ago

For extra fun, the "standard" 3½" floppy disk (the last major floppy disk) does not contain 1,440,000 bytes or 1,509,949 (i.e., 1.44MiB). It contains 1,474,560 bytes, or 2,880 512-byte sectors. So a 1.45MB file would actually fit on a floppy, since disk utility programs invariably use the decimal-based number for K,M,G,T sizing.

0x0 8y ago
If I remember correctly, an MS-DOS formatted 1.44mb 3.5" floppy usually has 1,457,664 free bytes for user files?
- userbinator 8y ago
  You remember well. Probably like me, you spent countless hours splitting files across disks. ;-)
derefr 8y ago
To be even more pedantic, floppy disks as a medium don’t technically contain any particular number of bytes. You can low-level format them to different compromises between flux density and error rate, which can be fine if the file type you’re recording has inbuilt error-correction. Even without doing that, though, different low-level formats can also have more or less overhead. Some might use sector headers and sector trailers, while others might only use one or the other. Some might leave a decent gap between sectors, while others pack them as tightly as possible and expect the hardware to “miss” and have to “go back” to find the new sector header whenever it passes a sector boundary. And all this type of stuff can be entirely software-controlled, in older machines. Much of the DRM of the 80s was about rewriting the floppy-disk “driver” built into the DOS of a floppy disk such that the disk was formatted normally for just enough of the disk to load that driver, and then the rest of the disk switched to a special proprietary low-level format that disk copiers couldn’t read, but the disk’s loaded DOS RWTS could. In essence, a floppy disk is an analogue format with an analogue read/write head, that just happens to present a digital signalling protocol to the rest of the machine. (But the timing at which you start/stop movements of the disk read/write head is analogue; and you can repeatedly “sample” the same sector to probabilistically read it; so you can still get away with a lot despite the inability to just read the actual flux amplitudes off the disk.)
dschuler 8y ago
Any disk older than 2003 or so was measured in MiB, even though it was labeled as MB. The point of a 1.45MiB file was that it would not fit on a "1.44MB" floppy. RAM is still labeled in 2^30 byte sizes instead of 10^9, because address lines are more important than hard drive manufacturers gaming their specs.

rangibaby 8y ago

Foiled again! http://www.trevormarshall.com/byte_articles/byte19.htm http://www.trevormarshall.com/byte_articles/byte19.htm

undecisive 8y ago
Thus the "more difficult". Superformatting the disk before copying would probably be outside your average Hero's skillset and increase chance of the disk drive failing to write the disk. At least, I assume that's why it's on the list.

ovi256 8y ago

20.1 MB will prevent most email providers from attaching it to an email today. At least some of them offer you to upload it to their file hosting service and share the link.