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The Tuesday 2007-02-20 at 18:07 -0500, Doug McGarrett wrote:
> Someone else sort of indicated, and I agree, that it is extremely unlikely
> that any device which can read any digital recording media of today will
> exist in 100 years. I would put that number at 25 years, myself, but it's
> unlikely that _I_ will exist in 25 years, so I won't know. The problem with
> data is that it is so massive. A phonograph record could easily last for 100
> years (and some have) and the mechanism for playing one is not difficult to
> create, even if all of the existing machines are shredded in some horrible
> war, but there's no way to put enough useful data on a phonograph record.
I think there would ;-)
> And in what format would it be? Is it expected that Unix/Linux will exist in
> the (quite distant for us) future? Or Fortran? Or even C++? Or M/S Word?
No, the language wouldn't be much of a problem, data is data. The main
problem would be the hardware: having a dvd reader that still worked. I
heard the NASA has problems reading their old tapes, and the main reason
is that there are no readers and computers of that type.
> I wonder if anyone is seriously considering these problems. or if anybody
> actually cares. I would think that scientists care, but what, if anything,
> is anyone actually doing about it?
Oh yes, absolutely. There are serious projects for that. I think there is
an OS project that stores data in several formats and the software needed
to read it. If the software dissapears, the data is translated, or a
reader maintained. I can't remember the name.
- --
Cheers,
Carlos E. R.
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