On Tue, Dec 19, 2000 at 11:18:10AM +0000, Alasdair Mackintosh wrote:
> "John A. Lind" <jlind@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> Digital information has the potential to last forever. Analogue media will
> fade or distort with the passage of time, and any attempt to copy them
> always introduces distortions and noise. By contrast, a zero and a one can
> be copied perfectly.
>
Now,IMHO is this the theory of storing Bits and Bytes, as announced by
e.g. Andy Groove and other computer representaives (*1).
Now my already here quoted favourite computer magazine just
publlished a review of the durability of digital archivated data two issues ago.
The occasion was, that the University of York, noticed that already 50f their
disks
with archeological data from 1991~98 was lost. The NASA also already lost
10~200f the
data from the Vikin mission to mars from 1976. They wrote, that the historians
expect
a gap of information from the begining of the digital ara until the development
of realiable
long time storage for digital data. They are very concerned, that the period
for
first generation of digital data is running. Their conclusion is that the
technology for save
data storage would be developable today, but there is not enough awareness for
the problem.
There are different problems for the live of Bits & Bytes:
* Aging of the data-carrier (wear, hydrolysis, corrosion, UV,...
....environment impact, magnetic concerns)
* Readability of ancient data-format (Encoding, availability of devices)
* Readability of ancient file Format !
* Errors caused by the necessary copying to a fresh carrier.
* Problem of selecting the worthwile data.
Historians are concerned when they compare their time horizoon for keeping data
to the experience with digital storage. Another problem is that you need active
work to preseve your digital data, forgotten data is lost data. No chance for
your
grandchildren to find your ancient forgotten letters, telling them about your
fascinating
correspondence about OM-stuff, the first meaningful usage of the Internet <G>.
Adspects of archiving data are:
* Selection of material
* Carefully select the format for saving.
The more widly the storage is used, the better the chance for future, take
standarts!
* No compression, no encryption
* Take care for storage environment, no humitity, take care of chemicals
* It is necessary to copy the data on fresh material from time to time.
The article gave some values for live time of data-carriers:
CD-ROM 5 ~ 200 year`s
Newspaper 10 ~ 20 y.
VHS-Tape 10 ~ 30 y.
digital tape 10 ~ 30 y.
magnetic tape 10 ~30 y.
microfilm 10 ~500 y.
Kodacrome slides 100 y.
acid free paper 100 ~500 y.
HD-Rosetta ???? 1000+ y.
egypt-stone-scripture 2000+ y.
Hmmm, I´ve to write them: The datas for MO-disc`s are missing
(Olympus-content!).
IMHO they are one of the better chioices for long term storage, But you
nothing for sure until now...
sorry for the long post,
Links that came with the article:
www.longnow.org
info.wgbh.org/upf
www.archive.org
regards,
Frieder Faig
(*1) Annotation:
This reminds me to a TV report about the PHOTOKINA 2000 in German TV:
After a lot of praise of advantage of digital photography, the reporter asked
about
disadvantages of this new technology. All three repesentative answered with the
same
words(!): "Mir fallen keine ein". = "I can`t remember anone"
Tss, Tss....
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