[geeks] I haven't gotten into this yet but I need some advice

[David Cantrell]

On Fri, Apr 12, 2002 at 03:21:03PM -0400, Joshua D Boyd wrote:

> I doubt we will ever see the day when we can't play back film.  Even if the
> playback equipment for film stops existing, it is so easy to build new 
> equipment.

Pity that the film itself won't last, and that when you duplicate from this
quarter-century's film to the next, you lose data.  Then next time round
you lose more.  Then more, and more, until at last you have a blurry smeary
mess.

> I personally think archival quality CD-Rs are going to be around for a long,
> long time.  Unlike many other things that have bit the dirt, CD-Rs have a
> huge mass acceptance.

The archivals people did some tests with CD-Rs.  They're crap.  They also
take up a great deal more cubic inches per gigabyte than hard disks.  But
I'm talking about archiving stuff for the next century, not for the next
decade.

> The thing I like about good CD-Rs is they don't fade like magnetic media does.

Errm, just leave one out in the light.  It fades, quite literally :-)  But
yeah, I know what you mean.  That's because CD-R is digital.  A spot is
either burnt or not.  Mag-tape is analogue, even if you've superimposed a
digital data format on it.

> If you are going to use harddrives, you really should make sure the data gets
> refreshed periodically, like every other year or so.

Of course.

-- 
David Cantrell    |    Reprobate    |    http://www.cantrell.org.uk/david

   It doesn't matter to me if someone else's computer is faster because
   I know my system could smash theirs flat if it fell over on it.
        -- (with apologies to Brian Chase)