I don't think that's the question at all.

I think that the question is, what medium will still be around and functional decades from now?

And I think the best predicable answer is Compact Disc, mainly due to the ubiquity of music CDs, which while not as popular as they once were, are still extremely common and will probably continue to be common. 12cm optical readers may eventually stop reading video formats like DVD, or Blu-ray, or other shorter-lived formats once new formats replace them, but there really hasn't been another digital music format with a physical component to it with the longevity and widespread popularity that CD has enjoyed.

OK hotshot, how sure are you that the medium those *wonderful* answers are stored on hasn't deteriorated, resulting in us looking back on bad advice?!

Assume it will, or that it already has. Which, has more or less been in all those answers which came before.

Buy 4 HDs ... back everything to all four, keep two at home, and keep backing up to them, put the other two in another physical location. Periodically rotate one of them.

If you have at least two backups of very recent vintage, and two of an slightly older vintage ... you're constantly making new backups.

Over time, assume even the ones you're still using.

In other words: Hint: The consensus recommendation was to pick at least two different media, and store them in a least two different geographical locations, then migrate to different media as technology improves.

Which is precisely what the GP said.

Don't assume you've made a static backup which will suffer from neither bitrot nor obsolescence. Plan accordingly.

This is literally a decades old strategy. The more important the data, the more discrete copies you keep, and the more regularly you do it.

Tape media may still be a good bet, and probably better than magnetic HDDs. Tapes are small, store lots of data, and are pretty resilient.

I wonder how long they require/expect the data to last for? Years? Decades? Generations?

I have DVDs that I've burned as a teenager kept in a nice, high-quality soft "archival" binder for the last 18 years. Nearly all of them, of varying quality/expense, are unreadable due to degradation.

OTOH, I've got old 500MB harddrives that read/work just fine and are just as old. I'd expect sealed HDDs to be as good as it gets - tape is nice, but maintaining a supported/working tape drive was always difficult (used to have one). But, unlike every other type of storage, harddrives are actually capable of warning you of an impending failure. (I've been *saved* by S.M.A.R.T. at least twice, over the years.) Add some rudimentary RAID, and you're probably good. The only way I can think of to go further is to use two/three, and cycle them between your PC(often/all the time), a nearby firesafe(When you are heading in that direction), and a safety-deposit box (seasonally?).

Here's an even better solution: Since this exact same question has been asked on Slashdot multiple times, and the topic has been beaten to death, just look in the archives and see what everyone recommended last time. Hint: The consensus recommendation was to pick at least two different media, and store them in a least two different geographical locations, then migrate to different media as technology improves.

The submitter is leaving out most important information: How much data? Storing terabytes is different than storing gigabytes (which will fit on a thumb drive). How long? The submitter says "backups" not "archives", which implies that long shelf life is not a priority, but many people use the terms interchangeably.

Would any wireless company enter into an agreement like this?

As a consumer I'd love to see google kill one of those fuckers off but why would they put themselves in that position?

Enterprise versions usually work differently anyway. For example the enterprise edition of XP doesn't require any sort of activation - install and go, change hardware to your hearts content, it just works (well, aside from driver issues). Like all operating systems used to do. Presumably 7 and 8 work the same way - if you've got a single customer buying and managing thousands of licenses you don't want to make them dick around with activating them individually. I suspect 10 will be basically the same, except for the automatically scheduled license audit if you fail to pay for your subscription on time.

That's not what it means. It means you have the choice to upgrade to 10 for free within 1 year. If you wait more than a year after release you have to pay. Anyone who got a free upgrade will continue to have a full 100% working and updated OS after the 1 year.

This is exactly how they did things with 8. I don't know why the article author is pulling BS out of his ass.

Update 2: A blog post from Terry Myerson clears up what "Windows as a service" means, though the duration of "the supported lifetime of the device" is still foggy. "This is more than a one-time upgrade," writes Myerson. "Once a Windows device is upgraded to Windows 10, we will continue to keep it current for the supported lifetime of the device—at no additional charge

This, and studies like it, are used to impose diversity on groups that would otherwise not have it, whether by intentional exclusion or by unintentional "doesn't fit the organizational culture." It's not surprising to me that groups which are spontaneously diverse are productive, and I'm perfectly happy to go with the 'open minds accept diverse solutions and diverse people' argument. The question that interests me is whether you can impose social diversity on a group, force them to open their minds, and subsequently become more productive.

I can certainly see where putting a person of color, or a woman, in a group of racist, misogynist bigots would disrupt their happy groupthink and break up their productivity. Regardless of whether that productivity started out a little lower than an equivalent group of non bigots.

lolwut

I'm at a loss here so I might as well ask cowardly and anonymously.

Why do we need women in tech so bad? Seriously, why? Is there something I'm missing that makes women super heroes at programming?

I'm not even trying to troll at this point, I can do that much easier on other sites and get way better reactions.

And the USPS does, in fact, have a pretty solid metadata look inside most businesses, since they know the destination of pretty much every package and letter sent or received in the USA.

I'm wondering if they'll have a "Here comes the Boss" button that suddenly pops up a spreadsheet.

The batteries thing was one reason why I like my Logitech wireless keyboard as it is powered by solar cells - no battery changing at all.

But now .. hmm .. I totally didn't think about sniffing the keyboard.