On Wed, 31 May 2000 allisonp_at_world.std.com wrote:
> > Maybe photographic film quality "paper tape" is the answer. The other
> > solution may be photographic film floppy disks. I'd better get right off to
> > my patent attorney and file.
>
> Mylar punched paper tape has a VERY long lifetime and is even human
> readable (well sorta ;)).
Everytime this talk of using punched mylar cards to archive data comes up
I have to laugh. First of all, do we all realize how many cards it would
take to store even one floppy disk? And then, where are all these cards
going to go? Where does one store millions of punched cards? Who's going
to pay for this?
The trick is to apply the solution that makes most sense for today and
keep looking for new mediums to transfer the archive to. The best medium
I see now is redudndant living systems, and what I mean by that is having
the archives stored on a hard drive somewhere (connected to the internet),
preferably with RAID, and have mirrors of that site in multiple places.
This will allow for universal and immediate access. As systems die, the
archive is simply moved on to the next host.
Of course the archives could also be dumped to CD ROM every N years.
Then, when something comes along to imrpove on CD technology, we move to
that.
Anyway, it's a matter of feasibility and practicality. Suggesting
solutions like punched cards makes no sense when you're dealing with
gigabytes of data.
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
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Received on Wed May 31 2000 - 11:34:32 BST