On 2019-07-20 05:44, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > > good friend of mine is starting a research project, looking into > what i will call "digital transience" ... she is using a slightly > different term and would prefer i not use it for the time being. > > the idea is fairly obvious ... the danger of digital content > vanishing for any of a number of reasons: dropping support for > proprietary data formats, physical media (5 1/4" floppy drives, Zip > drives(?)) vanishing, link rot, entire site rot, and so on. so she's > interested in a couple things. > > first, just *general* contributors to the unexpected loss of what > might be important corporate digital data. but also, real-life > examples of things like this -- the one that leaps to mind is the > recent microsoft debacle involving ebooks protected by DRM: > > https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-ebook-apocalypse-drm/ > > i think that, of the two topics above, she's more interested in > actual examples of significant loss of digital data, not through any > sort of malice, but by accident or unforeseen developments in hardware > or data formats that suddenly cause a catastrophic loss of > information. > > i've already started a list, but i'm open to as many examples as i > can collect. thoughts? This is a pretty interesting topic. This has happenned with every sort of media in the past... Though stone tablets are a bit more durable than 8-tracks and don't burn at 451 degrees farenheiht... This sounds like the kind of stuff that Russell McOrmond and Joseph Potvin would be interested in. I'm sure you would start a lively discussion over on ottawa-gosling [ at ] list [ dot ] goslingcommunity [ dot ] org > rday slainte mhath, RGB -- Richard Guy Briggs -- ~\ -- ~\ <hpv.tricolour.ca> <www.TriColour.ca> -- \___ o \@ @ Ride yer bike! Ottawa, ON, CANADA -- Lo_>__M__\\/\%__\\/\% Vote! -- <greenparty.ca>_____GTVS6#790__(*)__(*)________(*)(*)_________________ To unsubscribe send a blank message to linux+unsubscribe [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org To get help send a blank message to linux+help [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org To visit the archives: https://lists.linux-ottawa.org