National Archive File Format Time Bomb

geordie_loz writes "The BBC is reporting that the UK National Archive is warning of old formats being a 'ticking time-bomb' where data is going to be lost because of incompatibility in newer versions of software, and software not existing at all. More surprisingly, Microsoft has offered a solution via the OOXML format."

Comments

easy fix

[Anonymous Coward]

Just make a torrent.

Tagging beta...

[Rufty]

ITSATRAP!

Idiots

[suv4x4]

The BBC is reporting that the UK National Archive is warning of old formats being a 'ticking time-bomb' where data is going to be lost because of incompatibility in newer versions of software, and software not existing at all. More surprisingly, Microsoft has offered a solution via the OOXML format.

There are so many idiots in this state of the affairs:

1. the idiots which decided to build huge archive with undocumented proprietary format
2. idiots which believe they can't find even a single copy of the software they need
3. idiots who didn't store a single copy of the software that reads the format, together with the archive (not very far from obvious, is it).
4. idiots who want to convince other idiots that OOXML is an open format (versus straight XML serialization of the whatever binary DOC was in the source code base at the time in MS)

Re:Idiots

[CastrTroy]

I believe points 2 and 3 can be lumped into 1 format. It's like creating backup tapes, and then throwing out the tape reader. Who thinks these systems up?

Re:Idiots

[tolan-b]

It's not an archive of files in a single format, it's an archive of files in general, many formats, depending on which format the file was originally in.

The system wasn't thought up any more than a library thinks up all the books it contains.

Re:Idiots

[timeOday]

3. idiots who didn't store a single copy of the software that reads the format, together with the archive (not very far from obvious, is it).

That's easier said than done. You'd have to keep multiple copies of everything, including hardware, up to the point where you're confident you have a stable standard - probably the power mains - and that's if you're not worried about violating licenses. Of course, with the advent of online apps, there is no way to snapshot the entire ecosystem of servers and software that actually makes an application run (especially since you never had direct access to it in the first place). The only reasonable solution is to pick some standard, such as jpg and ODF, and consolidate on that.

Re:Idiots

[timeOday]

Just an FYI, governments don't have to worry about licensing. Especially in situations like this. They have the power of eminent domain.

Think about Valve's Steam software for protecting video games (or any software that requires network activation). Just because you're willing to bypass it doesn't mean you can.

Dumb 'solution'

[hcdejong]

I can't believe the National Archives partnered with the company that caused this mess in the first place, ie Microsoft.

Second, why on earth do they think virtualisation is a long-term solution? Sure, you can emulate Windows 95 within Windows XP today, but what happens in another ten years? Another layer gets wrapped around XP? So in 100 years, you're relying on a stack of emulators to access the old software. You better hope Moore's law holds up, because you're going to need it. Also, who will know how Word 95 worked in 10 years, let alone 100?

IMO translation of the old documents would be a better solution. Translate the documents into a well-documented, open format, and throw away all of the old formatting idiosyncrasities while you're at it. That way, you only have to maintain one way to access the documents with the software-du-jour, instead of having to prop up the entire teetering stack of virtualisation layers.

Re:Dumb 'solution'

[Professor_UNIX]

That's a silly argument. You just have to emulate Windows95 on whatever platform you're using 100 years from now, not all the intermediate platforms. For example, high speed computers today can still play old arcade games from 30+ years ago through emulation, but we're not doing it by emulating a Pentium that is emulating an Amiga that is emulating a Commodore 64 that is emulating an arcade machine, we're just emulating the arcade machine. It's not a good solution to file format issues, but virtualization doesn't have to be prohibitively CPU intensive unless you're trying to emulate the latest current-generation alternative architectures like a PowerPC G5 running MacOS X and Virtual PC trying to emulate a Pentium 4 system running Windows XP.

surprise?

[Tom]

What's surprising about that? Someone in MS Spin Control and Public Relations is worth his salary. The story could have exploded into an "avoid MS products if you want your data accessible some years down the road" fiasco (we all know that MS is the worst offender when it comes to changing the document formats, usually undocumented). Instead, it was turned into another push for their next format.

Brilliant.

"What, the shit I sold you yesterday stinks? Try this new shit, it's great and it has none of the problems of the old one."

That's what you hire PR people for.

How about some *helpful* suggestions

[FreudianNightmare]

Rather than bitching about Microsoft making an offer of 'help' which is just thinly disguised marketing (I mean, come on, par for the course no?), could we get a discussion about real solutions? I know MS bashing is fun, but come on, we do it on just about every other thread... lets have a day off.

To kick things off here's one:

Keep EVERYTHING in the simplest possible format. ASCII would seem sensible, since its the content we care about, not the formatting. (although that wouldn't help our Asiatic brethren much). Then Keep decent records of HOW you can read that format. With examples of the software and hardware. do this bit on PAPER. V. Tough Paper (or rock, or plastic or whatever). Update the explanations every other year, to put it in language the next gen will understand. Maybe also have instructions on how to translate the simple format to less simple things.

I guess, basically, its a case of KISS and then *provide a persistent and regularly updated 'Rosetta Stone'* for latecomers to work from.

As a side branch, this kind of reminds me of discussions I read about a while back of how to warn future generations about Nuclear Waste dumps (y'know, the really nasty stuff with half-lives in the thousands of years range). I don't think anyone ever came up with a decent answer....

Re:Doesn't matter.

[bheer]

Whatever is worth keeping for a long time should be on paper and translated in more than one language.

Er, even if you translate it into other languages, they'll evolve too. Try reading Old French much? And translation also leaves you with the headache of reconciling various translations and figuring out which is "more correct" (IIRC the Bible has this problem). It would be a much better idea to make redundant copies, to guard against bitrot and store them as physically apart as possible.

I doubt that the now common CD/DVD/BlueRay/HD-DVD will be available in a few centuries.

And it won't matter. The important stuff would be migrated to archival formats. For example, I keep a copy of DOS and Win3.1 ISOs (about 20MB total) and Norton Commander (3 floppy images!) on a DVDR, along with a copy of Virtual PC. This lets me recreate a Windows 3.1 virtual PC anytime I want. I wouldn't be surprised if I were copying DVDR ISOs to a holographic memory drive in the next ten years.

As for the next century, most of this material will lose value, but the important stuff will get backed up professionally and successively remastered on new media (esp with things like the UK National Archive). And amateur historians, genealogy buffs and private collectors will have their hands full in the future with stuff that you can't find in the official archives but in people's attics, just like people are fascinated with Stone Age, Roman or Victorian artifacts today.

Re:Doesn't matter.

[Bazzargh]

Hum now. completely failed to tick the posting anon box :) good job I held back from expressing opinions in there.

Re:IBM

[TheRaven64]

I have run that same version of Visicalc, in DOSBox, on a PowerPC Mac. Actually, I've run a few programs in that environment that don't run on Windows without the aid of DOSBox. To me, this says that third parties are better than Microsoft themselves for backwards compatibility with Microsoft programs. I wonder how long it will be before WINE has better support for old Windows apps. I think this is already the case for a few win16 programs...