I remember a time not too long ago when 16 registers on a CPU were a big deal, and DOS apps couldn't read Mac files (even the 'simple' ASCII txt files) and there were different file-system structures 7bit vs 8bit vs *. We think that .txt is the safest solution for portability and longevity but IBM used to think the same thing about punch-cards!

Things have changed. When IBM was making punchcards, how many computers were there in the world? Let's be generous and say a couple hundred thousand. To compare, there are over 13 million iPhones in the world alone, to say nothing of Macs, PCs, or any of the other gazillion devices that can all read Unicode text. Certain digital formats are too big to ever really die, and Unicode is one of them. Similarly, JPEGs will never die. Why? Because people will always want to open pictures, and as long as we have software that can open pictures, it's trivial to make it so that it can open grandma's old family JPEGs in addition to whatever the standard format of 2050 is.

Now, hardware specs *can* die. For example, Apple is phasing out Firewire 400 right now. We can imagine in 10 years, maybe USB will be replaced by something wireless. But digital file formats are always going to be forward compatible, since it's trivial to make sure you can convert them to the new format. I can't use my mouse from 1995, but I can open a Word file in Office 95 format with TextEdit.

So, the key to keeping your data forever is pretty simple: Make multiple copies of it and store them in physically different locations (to prevent lost by disaster), and every couple years take a couple hours out to copy it onto a new physical device (to prevent loss by bit rot or physical format changes).

It looks like another input manager though. You can't really trust "plugins" (they're not really plugins but elaborate memory hacks) like those to work when a new version of Safari comes out. The simple solution is just to use a custom CSS file that blocks ads, like the one on http://www.floppymoose.com/.

Most of those are 2600-era arcade games, not 2600 games. Or if they were also 2600 games, the home version sucked balls.

I will give you Pitfall though, that was cool.

There's nothing special about the NES era, as the article insinuates.

Not so. The NES was the first game console with a significant library of non-sucky titles. I tried playing my old Atari 2600 a few years ago and gave up, because it's all crap except for maybe a couple of games (Adventure, Outlaw, ... I can't think of a third title, and I had dozens and dozens of games). On the other hand, there are a ton of great NES game. Tetris had an NES version, and it's still gold. (OK, so the NES version was crap compared to the Game Boy version. But still...) Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best game of all time. MegaMan is still popular as are a number of different platformers from back then. BattleToads and Ninja Turtles were popular beat 'em ups. Bomberman introduced a formula that's still around. The RPGs from the NES were generally crappy, but they laid the groundwork for future games and are decent as the basis for a remake. Most of the game ideas that we like now were previewed in a basically decent form on the NES.

That said, the SNES is still a better console overall because it had the good play mechanics of the NES and combined it with non-ugly graphics. Zelda 3, for example, is great and will never go out of style. The RPGs of the SNES don't need to be remade to be playable.