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:
2005-11-12
For text based data I always keep in mind RTF files. I have some papers from 20 years ago that I can open in OpenOffice. I like XML files for data also since you can always create a script to parse XML elements regardless of whether a utility exists. Binary data is where you can get in trouble. I have an old, old photoshop version 1 file that has trouble opening. Using open standards like PNG or ODF at least allows you to write an application to read your files. MS Word 97 format is so convoluted and difficult to read that its only benefit is that Office is still around to read it.