World's Crappiest Drives (was Re: A&J Microdrive)

From: Eric Smith <eric_at_brouhaha.com>
Date: Wed Dec 6 16:33:34 2000

Chuck McManis <cmcmanis_at_mcmanis.com> wrote:
> The life of Al CD's is conservatively 25
> years, gold 100 years. I read the National Archive report but a recent
> Google search didn't turn it up again. I only use "gold" CD-R disks :-)

I'll have to look for that report.

I've been really worried that gold media would completely disappear
(or become insanely expensive), as a triumph of crapitalism [1].
I feel that it's important to educate people about this, in an attempt
to prevent this outcome.

Some people don't think it matters if their discs last that long.
But I've talked to people who use CD-R for storing their photographs,
and I think they'll be very disappointed someday if the discs become
unreadable. Just like the people who transferred their 8mm home movies
to VHS in the 1980s and threw away the film.



[*] crapitalism: the tendency for a "barely adequate" product to
be sold in such high volumes that it becomes economically unviable
for competitors to offer a higher quality product at any price.
Received on Wed Dec 06 2000 - 16:33:34 GMT