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The Digital Dark Age
zygan wrote to mention a Fairfax Digital article about the possibility of a digital dark age, as a result of the increasingly short-term lifespan of digital storage. From the article: "It is 2045, he suggests, and his grandchildren are exploring the attic of his old house when they come across a CD-ROM and a letter, which explains that the disk contains a document that provides directions to obtaining the family fortune. The children are excited. 'But they've never seen a CD before - except in old movies - and, even if they found a suitable disk drive, how will they run the software necessary to interpret the information on the disk? How can they read my obsolete digital document?'"
this should be soluble
That could be a problem. At least a CD won't get damaged by water.
They'll take it to that crazy old guy in the corner house with uncut grass in his lawn, for he was once a great programming guru and has a ton of still functioning archaic equipment that requires insanely large amounts of power.
Linux is to the internet as Duct Tape is to the Universe.
\/\/H47'$ 4 L3773r?
Hell no!
Zip discs are the *only* reliable way to archive digital data indefinitely
Yeah, I can just imagine ...
You find the CD buried in a box in the garden.
You see the Microsoft logo. An old, long-dead company.
You scrape some dust off the CD.
You read through the logos and fine print on the CD.
You see the logo 'PlaysForSure' (tm)
You groan and throw the CD in the trash.
-- "It's not stalking if you're married!" My Wife.
"Not to be rude, but for the love of God, don't you have something to do besides write 1-bit bitmaps by hand?"... said the guy being needlessly critical on Slashdot.
"Derp de derp."