The Time Factor Traces are the âmetadataâ of an act, a course of action, a communication or even a presence or having been there. They show us that something happened, but often also how something happened. We consider traces always in retrospect, because they have to be there first in order to be considered. The time interval between the emergence of traces and their observation can vary. In 2017, for example, researchers investigated how Ătzi, a mummy from the ice of the Ătztal Alps, came to his death about 5,300 years ago and thus solved a murder with a slight time delay. (https://www.wissenschaft.de/geschichte-archaeologie/oetzi-es-war-heimtueckischer-mord/) But some traces also disappear. Not only the well-known traces in the sand ⊠Also we canât detect e.g. knockout drops in the victimâs blood already 24 hours after they drank them. There are also traces that are not recognized as âdisturbing factorsâ. They fit into the picture and do not cause any frowning by trained observers. A classic âlooks like an accidentâ. Or the death of aged persons, which surprises no one but delights heirs. And then there are the traces that online crimes leave behind. âIP addressesâ and âlog dataâ may sound more cryptic than footprints, cardiac arrhythmias or âdirection from which the arrow cameâ, but they are just as revealing. Time is ubiquitous not only in crime or physics. Computers depend on clocks. Thus, de facto clocks and looking at them are constant companions in the digital world. Pretty much all tools used for programming allow a simple view of the current time. Times or timestamps, as we call them, are an excellent Ariadneâs thread digitally. You can always orient yourself by this. A Harmless Beginning Leon is a student and has a tight wallet. His computer is broken, and he urgently needs a new one. So he goes to a computer store that also offers refurbished devices. He buys a refurbished laptop and trades in his defective device as a spare part. Data Carrier Eventually, something has to be stored permanently. By permanent, computer science understands the so-called non-volatile memory, which can store bits and bytes for a certain time even without a power supply. The digital clay tablets can take various forms. Storage began with magnetic data carriers such as tapes, floppy disks and rotating metal discs. Optical data carriers (CD, DVD, BluRay) accompanied this. Modern media use computer chips that memorize, [âŠ]
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