Submission + - National Archive File Format Time Bomb (bbc.co.uk)
geordie_loz writes: "The BBC is reporting on the UK National Archive warning of old formats being a "ticking time-bomb" where data is going to be lost because of incompatability in newer versions of software, and software not existing at all.
More surprisingly, in a cheeky move Microsoft have offered a solution.. Buy some more software from us in the form of virtualisation so you can read these files.
So microsoft software was responsible for this tie in an dependence on them to read the data which is in essence the crux of the problem. Now the solution is to further enter into that dependence and make matters worse.
For a national archive they sure do seem to have short memories."
More surprisingly, in a cheeky move Microsoft have offered a solution.. Buy some more software from us in the form of virtualisation so you can read these files.
So microsoft software was responsible for this tie in an dependence on them to read the data which is in essence the crux of the problem. Now the solution is to further enter into that dependence and make matters worse.
For a national archive they sure do seem to have short memories."
