Article on data rot on CD's

From: Teo Zenios <teoz_at_neo.rr.com>
Date: Sat Jul 31 22:47:31 2004

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe R." <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 31, 2004 10:49 PM
Subject: Re: Article on data rot on CD's


> At 12:02 AM 7/29/04 +0100, you wrote:
> >it frustrates me to see the company i work for still reliant on nightly
> >backups (about 1.5gb) of sales data on obsolite drives and tapes (last
> >mass made around 15yrs ago!) and refusing to change type to a newer
> >reliable medium because of cost, dispite the cost of replacing them is
> >less than the cost of one call out for each crash caused by fault
> >hardware - this amounts to several hundreds ??? each time due to lost
> >data, and the cost of lost sales while engineers (contracted only)
> >arrive to reboot and verify data on each tape, this system is over 25
> >yrs old and it's been patched up so many times it starting to look like
> >a microshafting took place. it's so old one of the terminals in one
> >store was opened to find some document dated 1980 slid inside and was
> >the cause of the extra heat as it had stopped the fan from working and
> >the extra dust had just caused it give up!
> >
> >we have major crashes on average once every 3 or 4 months and minor ones
> >every 2 or 3 weeks. it's a sorry state when the accountant with his
> >abacus can run EVERY part of the company!
>
> Welcome to big business in the 1990s! That's the reason that Martin
> Marietta, IBM, HP, Tektronix (just to name a few) are all going to hell!
>
> Joe
>
>

Those companies always had bean counters, but they were held in check by
management that was made up of engineers/sales/qc people who went up the
ladder. Today these companies are run by MBA's who never worked the line and
don't know the products or the customers very well. It also has to do with
the greed these people have that allows them to plunder the company in the
short term and leave, CEO's don't stick around long these days and don't
care about long term growth.
Received on Sat Jul 31 2004 - 22:47:31 BST