25 May
2005
25 May
'05
10:12 p.m.
On Wed, 2005-05-25 at 13:34 -0600, Kevin Handy wrote:
I don't care how "simple" you think a
storage format is, it won't help it
in the long run.
Ahh, but doesn't that simplicity minimise the chances of someone being
unable to understand the format in x years? Presumably, for every
example of a language that we can no longer decipher, there are far more
that we can? (whether through simplicity or a consistant design)
The archive should be for our own use, not some
theoretical
idiot 2000 years from now trying to boot a Kaypro. He's
probably going to have a whole different set of problems
with an archive than we could conceive; like locating
the "any" key.
I would expect that in a few thousand years, the interest is going to be
in the data that is archived, not the content that is binary
(executable) in nature. Funnily enough, it's almost going to be the
other way around for the next 50-100 years; it's the binaries that
people are interested in preserving, whilst the backups of Fred Foo's
accounts get deleted!
cheers
Jules