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Researcher Warns of "Digital Dark Age"
alphadogg writes "A assistant professor from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is sounding a warning that companies, the government and researchers need to come up with a plan for preserving our increasingly digitized data in light of shifting document management and other software platforms (think WordPerfect and floppy disks). Jerome P. McDonough, who teaches at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says there exists about 369 exabytes worth of data, and that includes some pretty hard to replace stuff, including tax files, email and photos. Open standards could play a key role in any preservation effort, he says. 'If we can't keep today's information alive for future generations, we will lose a lot of our culture,' McDonough said. Even over the course of 10 years, you can have a rapid enough evolution in the ways people store digital information and the programs they use to access it that file formats can fall out of date.'"
I think so.
nt
I was browsing the library downtown and walked into the toilet and ate some turds out of a toilet bowl.
I'm more concerned about the freedom of the wires than preservation of data at this point.
expandfairuse.org
Kudos for stating your position on prop 8. I hardly thought that opinion of yours (and mine) was allowed these days.
Just mandate that all physical media has to contain an extra partition with schematics of a drive to read the media (the schematics themselves can be saved as a .DWG). Likewise, mandate that all file contain a binary blob which defines the file format's specifications. That way all media and all files have within them the key to read them.
Problem solved!
The English word fart is one of the oldest words in the English vocabulary.
...industrial document management system that is GNU or BSD?
I have binary only test programs for a PLC, I have test procedures, I have C source code, I have binaries, I have customer manuals and I need to manage them better.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
He consorted with the Devil so he could make that posts.
Confess sinner or be condemned to eternal Dial-up speeds.
oh, and I hear he weights as much as a Duck.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Is that an African duck?
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Yes on CA Prop 8
I'm not gay, I don't personally know anyone who is gay, and I really don't give a good god damn what gay people do with themselves.
I do, however, get my panties in a knot when people like yourself start trying to write discrimination into the constitution, because I could be next.
So whatever your arguments are, stuff them. They don't matter. Keep your judgements of other people's fully competent personal decisions out of our constitution.
Avoidance of tyranny of the majority is why we have an independent (often appointed) judiciary. It's a mighty shame that it only takes a simple majority to overrule them on this.