Re: Do Burned CDs Have a Short Life Span?

[John Garison <john -at- garisons -dot- com>]

Rick Stone wrote:

        Seriously, it's my opinion that if we were truly advancing, 
whatever we
        devised would no longer render the former technology of the day 
obsolete.
        Instead, the newer format or version would be inclusive of the 
former medium.


There's one problem with Rick's proposal - the medium itself.

For example, old as I am (not quite as old as Dick) I have some media 
that goes back a long ways. I still have a bunch of 5.25" floppy disks, 
and one really old 8" SSDD floppy (both back from the days when floppy 
disks really were floppy). The thing that makes them obsolete is not the 
recorded data - since it's essentially magnetic tape laid out flat 
rather than rolled up, I assume it still contains the data with 
sufficient integrity - it's the device needed to read the old medium. 
While the 8" floppy is useful only as a curiosity, I still have an 
ancient old 486 in the basement that has a 5.25" floppy drive ... if I 
really needed to, I could get at the data by firing it up, reading the 
5.25" disk, copying it only a 3.5" disk, find the other old monstrosity 
that has both 3.5 and a modem, and email it to myself from that one.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

Since making a universal input drive is really a pipe dream - insert 
data storage device here; read data there - it appears that storing 
information online someplace out on the Web is the real solution ... for 
now.

My 2¢,

John