18 Jan
2011
18 Jan
'11
3:07 p.m.
On Tue, 18 Jan 2011 cctech at vax-11.org wrote:
For a while now I have been pondering Usenet as a long
term, offsite,
distributed backup facility. Most of the premium servers are over two
years of archive, with pretty decent reliability. Spot checks of
files posted over two years ago still indicate 100% article availability.
TWO YEARS is NOT what we would consider to be "long term"!
That is SHORT term.
Basically, I propose we select a low-traffic group
which is available on
most premium servers, and start posting software/documentation to it in a
standard rar/par2 format. And somewhat standardized naming conventions.
START your own group. Do NOT hijack and flood somebody else's group!
The few people using the low-traffic group might not enjoy having massive
amounts of off-topic stuff raining down on them. It is still SPAM, even
if it is not "commercial".
If a file was posted two or three times over the span
of a month, then
reposted every year we can be almost assured the files would be available
to enthusiasts for many years to come.
Reposting annually would, indeed, be needed. But, the current problem is
already that people don't follow up and maintain their data files years
later.
If you have people willing to make that kind of commitment, then a few
websites, plus distribution of CDs, DVDs, and whatever comes next would
accomplish the same thing, and would survive the total loss of any one
collection. Think Don Maslin (R.I.P.)
Usenet is not as readily available as it once was. Will that trend
continue? Do you really think that it will be publicly and commonly
available in 10 or 20 years? Look at gopher!
Other than those, it would at least be a start.
Howzbout: steganography within certain pictures, glurge, and urban
legends
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com