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

[wbdesnoy@acs2.acs.ucalgary.ca (Byron Desnoyers Winmill)]

Paul Schlyter (pausch@saafNOSPAM.se) wrote:
: 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.

Rather than dismissing the idea, you could ask a few questions.  :-)

Was this refering to CD-ROM's, CD-R's or CD-RW's?  If the media is differnt,
then one could outlive the other by decades.  CD-R's and CD-RW's would also
make sense from the user's context (since people tend to be more concerned
with saving data than with saving pre-packaged programs).

What are the conditions which make the media last longer, or degrade faster?
Are CD's sensitive to broad spectrum light?  Are certain temperatures ideal
for storing the CD.  Can humidity or biological factors influence the life of
the media.  Humidity may be an issue for somebody living in Vancover, but
not an issue for somebody living in Red Deer.

How much data is lost after the given time span?  Loosing a couple of bits
on a partially filled CD would not make much of a difference.  Loosing a
couple of bits in uncompressed data may not be noticable.  If the CD is
stuffed with large, compressed files with no error correction mechanism,
a few bits may destroy a lot of data.

Five years may not be unrealistic, depending on what you use, where you
store it, and how you use it.  Archives of old manuscripts do not, after
all, maintain special environmental conditions simply because it makes
the maintainers feel more important.

Byron.