Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/08/18
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>People making this argument tend to forget that CD's and 8 inch floppies >are very different, because very, very few 8 inch floppies were made. Even >so, one can still find businesses that will recover data from 8 inch >floppies for a price. 5 1/4 inch floppies were tremendously more rare than >CD's, but I have a working 5 1/4 inch drive and so do lots of other people. 5 & 1/4 " floppies were hip and cool as little as 5 years ago. A better analogy would be 78rpm records. It's extremely hard to get hold of a record player that will play them. It can be done of course, but.... The technology to play a '78 is as simple as it comes. You turn it round and round and stick a needle in the groove. Not the same for CDs. Ever try getting some equipment to play those 8 track music cartridges? Or even small reel to reel tapes. Even film projectors are getting out of vogue. As long as a negative exists you'll be able to stick a lens under it, shine light through it and make an image. > As for CD's, barring some sort of catastrophe, I fully expect them to be >readable 200 years from now. Hmm. Think about some popular technology from 200 years ago. Think about getting parts for a model T Ford. You can have them custom made because they are really low-tech, but I wouldn't say the same for something like a CD. Even if they can read the bits, will they have the software to decipher it? Ever try to deciper a Wordperfect 1.0 file? >Billions of CDs have been made. It's likely >that people will still be interested in things recorded on them in 200 >years and will be willing to pay to read them. Therefore, barring some >catastrophe, a means of reading them will still exist. But will someone in 200 years who finds a box full of them in the attic be bothered paying equiv. $20,000 to read a box full of them? Will they be throwing sticks and stones? >In any case, Michael only needs to be able to read his CD's until the next >form of archival storage comes along -- by then he'll probably be able to >transfer hundreds of them to a single device. If you are expecting new storage forms to keep coming along then it doesn't bode well for any one of them.