Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 10th Nov 2008 09:13 UTC, submitted by irbis
What stands a better chance of surviving 50 years from now, a framed photograph or a 10-megabyte digital photo file on your computer's hard drive? The concern for archivists and information scientists is that, with ever-shifting platforms and file formats, much of the data we produce today could eventually fall into a black hole of inaccessibility.
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Member since:
2008-06-18
you're so right kroc. Even a very recent format is unusable: an archive from WindowsXP's built-in backup tool for example can't be used in Vista. If a format from one generation can't even be used then indeed we're looking at a black hole.
Isn't this basically why the ODF project exists? AFAIK it only supports openoffice like apps but is their goal (at least) eventually to include all kinds of data like email, IM's even backup archives? Or is there perhaps another project with those goals?
Rob