zip (was: Re: Disk archival techniques)

I think there's a distinct lack of perspective on just what the hell "archiving" means or who it is for. Sellam's remarks on appropriate tools etc I think are all excellent. I'm certainly no expert, but no one's even talked about what the hell the job is! Here's my take on it: Fake example: "preserving ZORK". What the hell does this even mean? 10 YEARS: We have a fair chance of running 10 yr old software, today mostly because there was so little change for so long, and the underlying systems were either trivial (CP/M, MSDOS) or relatively long-lived and well-documented (mini OSs and environments) that they can be either conjured up physically or emulated. Today's software enviornments (eg. WinXPPro) will certainly not be so trivial to emulate for sure. 25 YEARS: as many people will want to run ZORK as want to view magic lanterns; it will probably (dangerous word) be no more -- or less! -- interesting. Some few will want to know how it's produced, but their eyes will glaze over reading FORTRAN. 50 YEARS: Computer games and very broadly related technolgies will be valued mainly for their cultural value, only. A full century into a world with computers, implementation details will be as intersting as the trials and tribulations of making good wooden barrels. One or two examples will suffice to illuminate the ancient technologies. 100 YEARS: the cultural underpinnings for even understanding what the hell a text-based adventure game *IS* will be as common as the proper use of chamberpots. Yuck! You do what? With what?! 1000+ YEARS: Anything old and intact is interesting! The intricacies of construction thereof will be either so glaringly obvious as to require no discussion, or so utterly meaningless and obscure no one will care, or if in between once in a great while someone will want to reconstruct an example (the Contiki, or regen mammoth DNA) for a museum or TV show, and only the direct descendents of this List will go or watch it. The past is a good guide because people live in local, organic, non-nerdly cultures, on a day by day basis. They did/do/will have full lives of their own, and will not toss all of it away to embrace our bad 70's fashions and haircuts [oops, already wrong!] and detritus. However, for today's [replicable, media-based] thing to exist in 10, 25, 50, 100 or 1000 years, probably countless bazillions of copies needs to exist; most will be discarded, decayed, lost, forgotten, misunderstood, etc and one or two examples *might* survive. For this reason, probably any and all attempts at preservation are good. Also it's clear that regardless of type, there have got to be MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS more extant human artifacts today, than there were 100, 250, 1000 years ago. There are more people; there are more skills; there is capitalist-driven monstrous manufacturing. The value of any "thing" will drown utterly in thingness. It's not hard to imagine that in 2250, there will not be the shortage of 2005-representative cultural objects, as there is in 2005 of 1805-representative objects. And just as many people will care about them. I probably have more solitary precision and persistent objects in my lab than existed in the entire British Empire in 1500. Most of them are useless and stupid of course, but 500 years from now the planet will be drowing under megatons of craptacular artifacts. It makes me very, very satisfied that all the DRM freaks like Disney will find their stuff not archived because it's all locked up in stupid encrypted timed-existence-limited proprietary media. Good riddance to them.