23 Mar
2013
23 Mar
'13
3:07 p.m.
On Sat, 23 Mar 2013, Mouse wrote:
I actually think clay tablets baked in a building fire
are about the
longest-lasting data storage medium we know of at this point. But,
compared to the age of the most durable storage media (like those clay
tablets), actually thinking about data storage in terms longer than a
century or two is a recent innovation; we can't really do more than
guess what various media lifetimes will be. Even if they are
relatively educated guesses in many cases....
Chiseled stone has clay well beat.
It can handle more abuse - ask Moses why 10 instead of 15.
But media life won't help without preserved info about content.
Look how long it took to decipher hieroglyphics (they got lucky
with a multi-language tablet ("Rosetta stone")
But how to read Quipos (sp?) is lost.
Stonehenge hasn't been figured out.
Microsoft doesn't even remember that GW-BASIC stood for "Gee Whiz"!
Who remembers why the .EXE file structure used "MZ" as its flag value?
If it was, indeed "Mark Zbikowski", then he did NOT succeed in
immortality.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com