From: riel@nl.linux.org
Date: Sat Dec 28 2002 - 11:10:37 MST
On Thu, 19 Dec 2002, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> > > us to buy ebooks that are also in the Baen Free library because we
> > > have formats Baen doesn't even support.
>
> Again the 'more is better' fallacy. It doesn't matter how many proprietary
> formats he supports, as long as he supports the basic open ones.
Indeed.
I'm amazed to see a bunch of extropians failing to think of the
future. There will be a point where the programs to read the
proprietary formats will be obsolete or even might no longer run
on any computer. Only human-readable formats will survive the
grinding of time.
Just think of the amount of information (both cultural and other)
that mankind is throwing out the window by not having it available
in a format that can be read without the help of machinery or
proprietary computer programs, both of which get outdated within
decades.
IIRC NASA has so much data on old 9-track tapes that they can't
read the data off the tapes again before the tapes disintegrate
from old age. They've rescued a few tape drives from museums and
are moving data to newer media as fast as they can, but they
have to throw away a few decades worth of meteorological observations
and other valuable scientific data, simply because they don't have
enough working drives to read the data in time.
Exactly the same thing is happening with proprietary data formats,
the programs working with those formats will get out of date, the
hardware to read the media no longer exists and humanity will have
lost a piece of potentially valuable information.
I'm afraid we'll see information disapparear like this in our own
lifetimes, mostly ebooks and movies published in DVD format.
I wonder how to counter this loss of information, maybe we'd even
need some change in copyright law to prevent this from happening ?
regards,
Rik
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