11 Aug
2004
11 Aug
'04
6:46 a.m.
On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Doc Shipley wrote:
Provisions for changing technology and loss of
continuity are good,
but we still need to draw the line at some point, especially concerning
"external" archival of the archived data, i.e. zipped arcives and
storage media. To go to an extreme example, even printed ASCII on paper
or mylar isn't reliable. Paper may be just as archaic as hieroglyphics
when the data is wanted.
We have to depend on ongoing maintenance of these archives. If they
are not periodically migrated to current media, and if the
attached/imbedded documentation is not augmented to account for social
and technical "loss of memory", future retrieval will be difficult, if
not impossible, no matter what we do now.
That's where the Longnow Foundation may be able to play a rather
significant part in the development of this specification.
--
Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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