On Sun, 17 Jan 1999, Doug wrote:
> > Paper will last longer than anything we've been discussing so far (save
>
> Where did you get that idea? Paper will disolve in just about any
> solvent, including water, and is subject to tearing. Again, if we're
> talking about preservation in controlled environments, a CD-ROM kicks
> paper's butt.
What are you talking about? The whole aversion to using CD's was the fact
that they have a theoretical shelf life of only 50-100 years. Like I
said, the Dead Sea scrolls lasted more than two millenia without much
thought going into how to preserve them. And here you are talking about
going thru the trouble of filling a chamber with inert gasses to promote
preservation. Unless your line of thinking is to fill the chamber with
water just to give paper a challenge.
Paper has passed the test of time. You can go into antique book shops and
find volumes hundreds of years old that are still very readable and very
intact.
CDs, on the other hand, have only been with us a couple decades.
> What makes some of today's technology fragile is simply the density, or
> equivalenty, the lack of redundancy in a given area. A plain old EPROM
> should be fine for 100 years if you include 100 copies of the information
> within it.
100 copies on what? 100 other EPROMs? On CD? Or encoded on paper?
Sellam Alternate e-mail: dastar_at_siconic.com
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Received on Sun Jan 17 1999 - 21:57:42 GMT