patrick.net

Buy old paper dictionaries - they are much more durable than any CD.

Paper books are nice for a lot of reasons:

- they don't need batteries
- server censorship does not affect them
- they last for a thousand years if stored reasonably well

Anything you really want to keep should be on paper. Everything else is ephemeral.

FuckCCP89 says

Buy old paper dictionaries - they are much more durable than any CD.

Paper books won't be created in 20 years. I want a digital copy.

The advantage of a digital copy is that I can send you a copy easily. Worried it may be adulterated? That's what a digital signature is for. We do, believe it or not, think ahead.

In 2000 years, if civilization doesn't collapse, the people living then, will be able to see PRECISELY what life was like now.

Good luck getting a computer with a CD drive in 20 years.

When in doubt, go with belts and suspenders. Hard copy plus digital.

And no, I do not have a CD copy. But my old man still uses his old school dictionary for his crossword puzzles.

I would think everyone should have paper books. I still even have my scientific encyclopedia set my mom bought me when I was ten, it may weigh 70lbs but I could probably rebuild society with it and all technology before 1985 is still relevant.

richwicks says

Paper books won't be created in 20 years. I want a digital copy.

I though you were interested in preserving the existing language, not following latest and greatest newspeak being created over the next 20 years.

richwicks says

The advantage of a digital copy is that I can send you a copy easily.

I'm not saying digital data isn't useful, only that it's ephemeral.

Anything really important should be printed in a physical paper book.

Public library?

GreaterNYCDude says

Good luck getting a computer with a CD drive in 20 years.

You rip an ISO image. It's a duplicate of the CD at the bit level. With linux (and I believe Windows now), you can mount the image as a read only hard disk.

Pdfdrive.com

https://www.pdfdrive.com/oxford-english-dictionary-e195222413.html

It's pdf, but likely searchable. And it would be wise to spot check some words to make sure it's not tampered with. Likely other, older dictionaries hosted there as well.

FuckCCP89 says

richwicks says

Paper books won't be created in 20 years. I want a digital copy.

I though you were interested in preserving the existing language, not following latest and greatest newspeak being created over the next 20 years.

I am interested in preserving the existing language. Digital copies can be created effortlessly - paper books degrade and can easily be damaged, duplicating them is difficult and expensive and time consuming to do.

Patrick says

Anything really important should be printed in a physical paper book.

At minimum, I'd say both. I can easily hide a book that's digital. Let me give you an example:

I can take a music soundtrack, and encode something else in it at the higher frequencies. Because we use Fourier transforms (or wavelets or other similar stuff) to encode audio and video, the higher frequencies can contain encoded messages in them because those bits, really don't matter. Sure, it will SLIGHTLY effect the sound and video picture, but not noticeably.

I have mentioned here before since Trump won in 2016, Google screwed up the spell check. And it also exposed that I don't care what the developers all say, about their browsers not being part of Google and has nothing to do with them. If they use Cromium, which they ALL do. Then they are still Google Chrome with a nicer skin.
Every browser exhibits the same spell check anomalies. Mostly words that Republican would use to describe Democrats or Trump and the Republicans in given contexts.
When I get flinger flubs on Republican the spell checks all provide Republican's or Republicans' as an option. They put an 's on words don't have ownership context to them. And if you have words you have added to the Dictionary before they fucked it up, your local dictionary stash was blown out and you have to add them again.

I must say it has been beneficial as I now will slow down when I feel like my fingers are starting to do the river dace on the keyboard, and I get more prone to stepping on the wrong key. I'm getting far less red squiggly lines.