[cctalk] Re: long lived media (Was: Damage to CD-R from CD Sleeve

Old stuff being preserved is often a matter of chance or luck rather than planning. Consider the Linear B clay tablets; those were preserved because they were accidentally baked, in the fires that were set when the city was sacked. Papyrus documents were preserved in Egypt because it's desert, but not in other places that aren't quite so dry. As some civil engineer put it, it's not that the old timers built so much better allowing us to see the buildings they put up centuries ago -- rather, the buildings that are still there for us to see are the ones that happened to be strong enough. Sometimes just barely so, like the cathedral in Utrecht (the Netherlands) -- part of it blew down in a storm centures ago, but about 3/4 of it didn't and is still good today.