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The Network Before the Internet
There's No Great Solution for Data Rot

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OMG! Ponies!
07/20/09

In reply to The Network Before the Internet
Yeah.

Big ominous cable with a label that says "LOOK BUT DON'T TOUCH". That will keep prying fingers away from the geeks.
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strider_mt2k
07/19/09

In reply to The Network Before the Internet
HEEEY, has anyone seen my N-to-BNC adapter?

Anyone?
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David Vong
07/19/09

In reply to The Network Before the Internet
I swear I've seen this article before, is this a rerun or stolen from someone else?
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NurseDave
07/19/09

@David Vong: Writing for Giz and copying your own site's work. Easiest. Job. Ever.
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Purple Dave
03/27/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
If your DVDs are going bad in a little over five years, then perhaps you should stop filing them in the sandbox.
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Jesse in Japan
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
For the really important data, you've got to get it tattooed all over your body.
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fuchikoma
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
I've known about this for a while, and I have ten year old CDs that have gone south (and a surprising number that are still ok...) but sadly the technology isn't there to make this feasible yet. I have spools upon spools of DVDs, and I simply can't afford to back them all up and reburn them - financially or time-wise.

Sad, but at least my interests change enough in ten years that MOST of them won't matter that much. Still, it would suck to pull one from the library and find it unreadable!
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Jonny Morris
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
This is a huge problem for government too. Back in the day, to comply with various regulations for achiving govt. publications, it was easy enough to have the GPO print off a few extra copies of any given publication and send it over to the Lib of Congress or the Nat'l Archives (depending on what it was). Now, so many agencies product papers, reports, etc. exclusively in electronic format, it's hard for them to know what exactly to save and how to save it.

I wrote a paper a couple years ago on this. Talking to library scientists and archivists (two of the most action-packed jobs in the world, I imagine), the general consensus is that in 100 years, we'll know more about govt records in the 19th and 20th centuries than our current period.

That isn't stopping the govt, however, from paying millions to contractors like Lockheed from developing proprietary storage for electronic records, along with crawlers to ensure electornic publications from govt website get stored.
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Sora57 is rendering
03/26/09

@Jonny Morris: And don't forget microfilm and microfiche back in the day.
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Sora57 is rendering
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
I archived my home movies shot on 8mm/16mm/and videotape to DVD and keep the original source material in a cool, dry dark place. In a few years, I'll copy the DVDs again and/or archive them to whatever format is current at the time. Same with a small selection of photos.

The other stuff is not worth saving. Archive only what matters, or everything gets lost in sea of crap.
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nutbastard
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
nah you gotta carve it all into stone.

10010110101001010101010000010100^999999999999999999999999999
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Sora57 is rendering
03/26/09

@nutbastard (Everyone come to snowmodo!!!): 01110111 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00111111
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Kaiser-Machead
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
Well, I also consider that any truly important documents will either be part of public record that I can retrieve, or eventually lose relevance as their purpose is outlived. Photos can pass between thumb drives. As gigabytes get cheaper by the bit, swapping and exchanging will be a breeze. As system buses get faster, transfer times will become a snap. Movies I loved on my hard drive will either lose my interest or can be repurchased or rented years later on whatever new-fangled format is out.

My porn?

Well, I could always get married, and make my own.
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bjarnia
03/26/09

@Kaiser-Machead: "As gigabytes get cheaper by the bit, swapping and exchanging will be a breeze."

You fail to realize that at the same time, the size of the data you are backing up will increase as well.
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Kaiser-Machead
03/26/09

@bjarnia: As will the size of the new external volume.
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nachobel
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
bring back the scribes!
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GitEmSteveDave_HurtHisKnee
03/26/09

@nachobel: Would you settle for Mormons? Or at least Narns?
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Brazell
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
The vast majority of stuff saved on your computer is complete trash that should fade away and degrade with the medium that's holding it.

Anything truely important -- public records of land deeds, titles, wills, etc., -- are almost all stored on mediums and through solutions where a party is interested in keeping that material working and relevant.

Your Bachelor degree thesis on Crime & Punishment, saved in WordPerfect 2 format on a floppy disk somewhere in the annals of your attick? Not important, and it's better left lost and gone forever.
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Kaiser-Machead
03/26/09

@MichaelBrazell: Dang I was saying the same thing you were saying. GET OUT OF MY HEAD!
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Monty
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
The alternative is that our information will live on forever, and at the rate we are accumulating this data, that would probably be as bad as the concept that eventually it will rot. Converting it to different formats once a decade or so (which technology forces us to do anyway) is probably fine, and then when our bodies rot, chances are our descendants will conveniently forget to do this.
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Hello Mister Walrus
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
My pron! Oh noes!!
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GitEmSteveDave_HurtHisKnee
03/26/09

In reply to There's No Great Solution for Data Rot
I always wonder if there is a Rosetta Room somewhere. Meaning a room filled with a variety of different media readers/displays and a way to power them.

The only thing I don't worry about is Macs. B/c real Mac users have at least three Macs in various forms chipmunked away under some stairs or in a display case that will still fire up and can be used.
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bosskev
03/26/09

@KingBananaHammock_GitEmSteveDave: "B/c real Mac users have at least three Macs in various forms chipmunked away..."

* scoffs *

...at least three? Three?

* scoffs again *

Try rephrasing that with double digits and get back to me.

* heads to kitchen for sandwich *

* trips over Quadra 840AV *

* landing face first into "Flower Power" iMac *
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GitEmSteveDave_HurtHisKnee
03/26/09

@bosskev: This the word "least". I was also referring to "Real Mac Users". Not "True Mac Fanatics", "Mac Diehards", "Apple Fanbois", etc... Those will have more. Rememeber, a Apple Fanboi is a Real Mac User, but a Real Mac User isn't a Apple Fanboi.

I need to listen to some Avril now...
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crackblind
03/26/09

@KingBananaHammock_GitEmSteveDave: You know, I've been meaning to do something with that IIe in the corner.
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RobotVampire
03/26/09

@crackblind: "that's IIe in the corner, that's IIe in the spot-light losing my data retention..."

;)
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bosskev
03/26/09

@RobotVampire: +1
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