Seen on RISKS-L

From: Andy Holt <andyh_at_andyh-rayleigh.freeserve.co.uk>
Date: Fri Mar 8 01:21:10 2002

> On Thu, 7 Mar 2002, Eric J. Korpela wrote:
>
> > >From: "LEESON, Chris" <CHRIS.LEESON_at_london.sema.slb.com>
> > >
> > >The BBC's 1986 Domesday Project (a time capsule containing
> sound, images,
> > >video and data defining life in Britain) is now unreadable.
> The data was
> > >stored on 12-inch video discs that were only readable by the
> BBC Micro, of
> > >which only a handful still exist. The time capsule contains
> "250,000 place
>
> It's pretty silly when folks write articles like this and don't bother to
> do even the minimum of research, which would have revealed that there are
> plenty of BBC Micros still in existence. If the writer is referring to
> the video disc player (which would make more sense) then I can believe
> that there may only be a "handful" of complete systems left in existence,
> but this begs the question of why, inspite of them, this makes the
> videodiscs "unreadable".
>
I suspect the practicality is that, although technically feasable to convert
to a DVD, _copyright_ issues prevent any commercial project from
doing so (starting with the arm and a leg than ordnance survey would charge
for the map data, and following with the impossibility of contacting all the
other copyright holders) and the amount of work required (and legal
minefield) being too much for a hobby project.

Andy
Received on Fri Mar 08 2002 - 01:21:10 GMT