Archive.org Deploys Macromedia Software Titles

Jon-Erik Hexum writes "Now at the internet archive, the new software section contains over 10,000 CD-ROM titles donated by Macromedia. In an interesting discussion, the Software Archive is struggling with deciding on the best method for preserving CD-ROM images for the long term."

Comments

wow, already?

[ceejayoz]

Slashdotted already? Goodness... that didn't last long!

Of course, when offering 10,000 CDs for download... a little extra bandwidth would probably be prudent.

Preserving CD-ROMs

[Wee]

I was looking for ROM to old games (MOO, MOO2, Starflight) a while back, and recalled that I had a box of floppies that also had some old games on them. Hardly any of the 3 1/2 floppies were any good and I couldn't even read the 5 1/4 inch ones I found. That got me curious about what will happen to my meticulously ordered and cataloged CD-R/ROM collection.

While I was indulging my data storage daydreams, I came across a discussion board thread which talks about the various issues surround storing digital media (pictures, in this case). It was pretty intersting reading. I hadn't thought about gold-plated CDs before, and that sounds like a great idea as long as the hardware to read them exists for the duration of the media's shelf life. Even NASA has been having trouble in that area.

At first blush, I'd say the way to save all the images would be some sort of distrubuted filesystem, a la Freenet. Package an ASCII metafile with the ROMs file format info along with the actual image file and that should do it. Some sort of centralized system of making sure that at least N copies exist in "the wild" and the data could be reasonably safe. I'm oversimplifying, of course, but it occurred to me that data integrity and file formats might not be the only barriers to long-term data storage. Governments aren't especially data-friendly 100% of the time, either. If you really want to save data for all posterity, you have to protect it from yourself as well.

-B

Preserving CD-ROM Images!

[Anonymous Coward]

deciding on the best method for preserving CD-ROM images for the long term

Keep them in the standard .iso format. It's only physical media that will change, but with virtual drives, the iso format won't be unreadable!

Great post... NOT

[Anonymous Coward]

When will the /. editors learn that we can't read their frickin' minds??? Would the editor's private parts have stopped working and fallen off if he had actually given us a hint what was on these now-legendary 10,000 disks???

As the article stands, we have no idea if this story is a genuine big deal or something we can all ignore.

Re:Use the Public

[InfiniteWisdom]

Except that when the software is no longer "hot" or people need that extra terabyte of space to install Windows XXXPP++.Net or whatever copies will quickly disappear.

Not much archival value left then. P2P networks are great distribution mechanisms... they suck as archival systems. Public P2P networks at least.

Is it worth preserving in the first place?

[Proc6]

I havent seen the list of 10,000 titles as the site is /.'ed But, um, is it crap we really want to keep anyway? I mean, history and time has a way of filtering crap out that isnt worth much and preserving that which is. The worthy will stay, the unworth won't. It may seem noble to try to preserve EVERYTHING, but whats really the point? When was the last time you REALLY needed AutoDesk Animator Pro v1.0 for DOS? Im sure some jackass will try to prove me wrong with an anecdote of how his lucky copy of OS/2 2.1 on 5.25" floppies saved a business, but generally speaking, maybe they should work to preseve 50 of the titles, rather than 10,000. There will be some loss, but we'll get over it.