Funny enough while listening to the BBC today I caught a story about how Google is digitizing a quarter million books dating from the mid 1700's to the mid 1800's. At the time I had to ponder about the fact that there are actual books still in existence that are 400-500 years old, yet all books published from the early 1900's are basically falling apart due to the introduction of sulfuric acid into the pulp process. Now we are going digital, a process that depending on the storage media can last anywhere from seconds to decades. To my knowledge no one has yet developed a hard drive that is not subject to failure at some point.
Slashdot Mirror
Funny enough while listening to the BBC today I caught a story about how Google is digitizing a quarter million books dating from the mid 1700's to the mid 1800's. At the time I had to ponder about the fact that there are actual books still in existence that are 400-500 years old, yet all books published from the early 1900's are basically falling apart due to the introduction of sulfuric acid into the pulp process. Now we are going digital, a process that depending on the storage media can last anywhere from seconds to decades. To my knowledge no one has yet developed a hard drive that is not subject to failure at some point.