-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 The Tuesday 2007-02-20 at 18:07 -0500, Doug McGarrett wrote:
Someone else sort of indicated, and I agree, that it is extremely unlikely that any device which can read any digital recording media of today will exist in 100 years. I would put that number at 25 years, myself, but it's unlikely that _I_ will exist in 25 years, so I won't know. The problem with data is that it is so massive. A phonograph record could easily last for 100 years (and some have) and the mechanism for playing one is not difficult to create, even if all of the existing machines are shredded in some horrible war, but there's no way to put enough useful data on a phonograph record.
I think there would ;-)
And in what format would it be? Is it expected that Unix/Linux will exist in the (quite distant for us) future? Or Fortran? Or even C++? Or M/S Word?
No, the language wouldn't be much of a problem, data is data. The main problem would be the hardware: having a dvd reader that still worked. I heard the NASA has problems reading their old tapes, and the main reason is that there are no readers and computers of that type.
I wonder if anyone is seriously considering these problems. or if anybody actually cares. I would think that scientists care, but what, if anything, is anyone actually doing about it?
Oh yes, absolutely. There are serious projects for that. I think there is an OS project that stores data in several formats and the software needed to read it. If the software dissapears, the data is translated, or a reader maintained. I can't remember the name. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Made with pgp4pine 1.76 iD8DBQFF24yBtTMYHG2NR9URAm+AAJ9Rrs6G/y2vGp+l6q9opH9z4IHP9QCfYNbQ 4m9R4QBcuuzL/MR6sShXV30= =BSDE -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org