Bit Rot Stalks Your Digital Keepsakes

axlrosen writes "The NYTimes has an article about the problems of digital archiving. How many of your digital memories will still be around 50 years from now, considering lost disks, incompatible formats, hard drive crashes, fading CD-Rs, etc.? Unfortunately Peter Briggs' solution won't work for most of us. The only real way to make sure that your grandkids get to see your digital photos is to make real photographic prints from them. (When I bought my Mom a digital camera I installed Picasa for her, and made sure she knows to order real prints of all the pictures she wants to survive through the ages...)"

Tell me about it

[Anonymous Coward]

Half of my 5.25" floppies don't work anymore!

Permanent

[RandoX]

That's why I still use punchcards.

rsync

[kjamez]

use elite [kiddie] scripts to hack hundreds of co-lo servers, mount an encrypted drive, rsync all the stuff there (distributed). maintain. global distributed backups. i think you can ever buy lists of already compromised computers, too. that'd make that just a little easier.

WWLD?

[chris mazuc]

"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it."

--Linus Torvalds

No problem...

[rackhamh]

I use Microsoft Word to print out all my MP3s, which I then store in a 3-ring binder. If I ever lose my digital copy, I can use text recognition to restore my MP3s from the paper backup.

Let's just hope there isn't a fire or a flood.

Re:Boingboing.net article contents

[bstanton0101]

There was a script for that movie? Next you'll be telling me professional wrestling is real.

Meaningless

[HarveyBirdman]

How many of your digital memories will still be around 50 years from now/

Who gives a shit? I'm 39, and too mentally ill to attract a wife, so no kids. What am I going to leave behind? A collection of snotty and angry online postings? I just want to retire early and pursue my long denied hobby of global agitation.

And why doesn't the posting preview here work reliably with Firefox?

Re:Boingboing.net article contents

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, hell, that's as good an argument against piracy as you're likely to hear on slashdot.

Don't redistribute movie scripts! You might be partially responsible for 90 minutes of utter shite.

Re:WWLD?

[PhrostyMcByte]

Very simple solution:

• Zip up all your files
• Encrypt with GPG/PGP
• Rename to "Olsen Twins Nude - XXX.zip"
• Upload on Kazaa

I dunno

[paranode]

I don't think the basement really qualifies as being a separate house. I mean, what if the whole place goes up in flames?

Re:Perpetual backups

[Anonymous Coward]

you are simply going to have to keep backing up and backing up

Not true, you can do like I do and post it to the internet. Its like a great big distributed archive. I keep all my music and movies there...

Re:Quit whining

[lightspawn]

Posting links that require login isn't particularly new. Do you complain about them EVERY time they're posted?

Complaining about posted links that require login isn't particularly new. Do you complain about comments like this EVERY time they're posted?

Re:Umm

[Anonymous Coward]

No, use bitmaps. They have more bits and are therefore more resistant to bit-rot.

Re:I dunno

[doctormetal]

I don't think the basement really qualifies as being a separate house. I mean, what if the whole place goes up in flames?

Just protect your computer by placing a firewall around it ;)

Re:Every 2-3 years

[mikael]

I've archived some of important documents onto clay tablets using Sanskrit, but I'm starting to run out of storage space. Even worse, the neighbours are starting to complain about the smoke from my kiln drifting across into their garden.

Re:Permanent

[Tenebrious1]

Punchcards? Hah, I have my pictures mime-encoded and fired on clay tablets.

an easy solution to the problem

[RoufTop]

1) Put a picture of a naked chick in the background of all your photos.
2) Put photos on the internet.

In a few days, your photos will be archived on and available on digital and print media throughout the globe, and will never disappear until mankind goes the way of the dodo.

- rouftop

Re:Umm

[ivan256]

it is not exposed to sunlight directly and is behind UV protective glass in a frame and the yellow and cyan are already fading. this was on "archival" quality printer from a "archival" quality printer with "archival" quality inks.


"Archival" is probably code for "great for sticking in a lead box in a nitrogen bath in a sub basement for 1000 years without fading", but if you want the picture to be visible, well... You're not really archiving it now, are you? ;)

Re:WWLD?

[Tenebrious1]

Zip up all your files
Encrypt with GPG/PGP
Rename to "Olsen Twins Nude - XXX.zip"
Upload on Kazaa

What if all my files are pics of the Olsen Twins Nude? Do I have to upload them as "Linux Kernel 2.8 (preview)"?

Re:Every 2-3 years

[L. VeGas]

Even worse, the neighbours are starting to complain about the smoke from my kiln drifting across into their garden.

Just tell them not to worry, it's awl write.

The ultimate storage meidum

[TiggertheMad]

For those of you who really need permant storage, drop whatever you want preserved into a black hole. The gravational waves produced will carry information (heavily encrypted!) into eternity...

Retrival may be a challenge.

Re:Umm

[geoffspear]

Sure, and Kodak hasn't made any improvements to their paper in the past 50 years. They actually spend their entire R&D budget on pizza.

Re:gee, nice ads on that link to Peter Briggs ...

[Minwee]

What, you mean the link to Wired is really porn?

Or did you mean there was a tiny, discrete ad for suicidegirls.com in the bottom right corner of the page? It's a good thing that slashdot would never do that [slashdot.org].

Re:No problem...

[erlenic]

Or even better, have the voice rendering software read it straight into an MP3 so you don't need all those tapes. Then you just need to find a way to backup ... oh, wait. Nevermind.

Re:Tell me about it

[AWhistler]

...and you certainly WOULD drop a photo album if it had ten thousand pictures in it! If you could lift it in the first place!

Also, if you carry your ten thousand pictures around in a shoe box (a BIG shoebox), you will scratch a lot more pictures that way, even if you don't drop it. The shoebox is a better analogy than an album than dropping a bare DVD. If the DVD was inserted in a jewel case before it was dropped, it probably wouldn't scratch the DVD. A DVD in a jewel case is a better analogy to pictures in an album.

Yeah, I'm done picking nits now.

Re:Tell me about it

[MikeXpop]

And people will still insist on running on 800 x 600.

Thats it.

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Yes, yes. There the insane ones.. Why wouldn't women date guys like us? High IQ's, steady paychecks, dashingly good looks from 200 yards, No noticable odors from 300 yards, ego's the size of large cities. Man I tell you, I am this close to cloning myself , but switching the sex to female. Yeah, that would show them. That would show them All.

Thanks for the tip!

[Anonymous Coward]

The link ...has porn ads, for those to whom it matters.

Actually, I found the ads to be refreshing. At least, they kept refreshing while I repeatedly hit CTRL-R to cycle through them all.

Re:Perpetual backups

[multimed]

Great--people 10,000 years from now will think we're all loonie toons. Then again, by that time, maybe we'll have evolved out of our bodies and just be clear Thetans floating around watching John Travolta movies.

Anyone know if Kirstie Alley is still a Scientologist? Considering they believe body fat stores toxins and radiation and bad thetans (oh my), she must not be a very good Scientologist. Maybe she didn't get zapped enough. (Not meant as a slam on overweight people, but on L.Ron).

I have news for you

[shokk]

In a billion years everything you observe around you is going to be blown away when our Sun becomes a red giant and engulfs our planet, making Mars the new Mercury. If I were you I would take all my CDs and DVDs of family photos and have them launched into orbit around Neptune. There they will chill for a huge period of time until the Arturians finally reach the source of all that bad programming that was radiated into space, our Solaris system, just in time to watch the fireworks. There they will find the pathetic works of a now extinct civilization that looked up the stars but kept getting distracted by his boot on his fellow human's head. The few remaining trinkets and images they discover will be taken back to a museum on their world along with various Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft, only to be lost in a freak warehouse fire a month later due to faulty wiring. A hearty laugh they will give as they note to each other, "see, their little image makers stole their souls after all."

Re:Tell me about it

[Gentlewhisper]

I think that at some point home users will have enough storage capacity to store more than the entire sum of recorded human history...

I believe you forgot pr0n