Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

If someone is going to make the effort to decode the information from the original computer media into the archive standard then if the data is 10 or 100 times larger than the original should not be an issue. The same is true for costs. I have seen too many systems where there was a perceived decision that it would be too costly to "do it right". The idea is to take a copy of a program or data and convert it/archive it once and know that it is then saved. Think of the following; Stone once was expensive so clay tablets were used. Papyrus was expensive so wax tablets were used At one time paper was too expensive so it was not used chalk on a board was used instead. Later pulp paper was cheaper and acid free paper was expensive. Punch cards once were cheap Mark Sense forms Magnetic tape Magnetic disk Optical disk CD-ROM DVD The "best" real long-term media that I can think of is "eye ball" readable. Think Rosetta stone. Do you want to use Big-Indian, Little-Indian, Intel, Motorola, Cyrillic, cuneiform, hieroglyphs, binary, hex, octal RAD50, left-to-right, right-to-left, Chinese, Japanese, English, Pig Latin, Latin, Spanish, Old English, Old Latin, Norse, Mayan or Esperanto? I have heard that the Mormon Church is using iridium disks inscribed with an ion writer, it may take a magnifying glass but it's readable. It's supposed to last 1,000 years. This may be slightly sacrilegious. We will then need a "priesthood" of fanatical zealots to protect the archived data for posterity. I nominate Sellam to be the patron saint of data retention. Tony can be the patron saint of hardware restoration. I'll be friar Mike hunched over a lectern transcribing data with an ion writer. Mike