Re: A2 Trade/Swap???? site discovered - What are your thoughts on such a site?

[pausch@saafNOSPAM.se (Paul Schlyter)]

In article <20000627182954.01857.00000108@ng-da1.aol.com>,
Obsbedia2 <obsbedia2@aol.com> wrote:
 
> Are even CD Roms the way to go?  An article in Time or Newsweek a year or
> two ago stated that CD Roms have a lifespan of only 5 years.
 
Which is clearly erroneous.  My oldest CD-ROM is now 10 years old, and
it can still be read with no problem.  I also have some audio CD's which
are 15+ years old, and they too are still playable.
 
When I was a kid, in the 1960'ies, I did some tape recordings of
music I liked.  Back then there were rumors that these tape
recordings would only last some 10-15 years, and then vanish.  But
they're still on the tape.
 
> I'm using some 22 year old floppies now that still run.  Some of
> the online FTP sites stated that 5-10% of their files were corrupted.
> I don't want to go back to typing in Apple II programs, but that's
> the only way I can see that doesn't degrade in the short term.
 
Sorry, but that doesn't help in the really long run.  Most of our
books, papers, etc are printed in acid based paper, which will
disintegrate after several centuries.  Books up until about 1880
weren't printed on such paper and will therefore last much longer.
This might make future archaeologers draw the conclusion that plenty
of books were printed up to about 1880, but then bookprinting ceased
for some reason.....
 
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