A thought about how film fits in our world.

SilverGlow · May 18, 2010

Van Camper said:
"If a person uses best practices to archive their digital data, it will far, far out last film negatives."

Well, what do you think these guys were doing, monkey business. These were experts, and 15 years later the data was Goooone! Please read, or wake up. And further down the same article was mentioned.... "The space agency Nasa has already lost digital records sent back by its early probes (I'd say these were important enough to protect), and in 1995 the US government come close to losing a vast chunk of national census data, thanks to the obsolescence of its data retrieval technology. "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2002/mar/03/research.elearning

I am a digital content expert in archival, with 33 years experience.

I know much more about this issue then those that wrote that article, and those the article was written about.

In fact, those people that lost their data are stupid.

Don't be so quick to believe anything you read, that jabs digital....often people WANT to find bad about digital archival and the milli-second after they find "proof" in on the internet, they scream with glee "see, ah told ya so".

You assume wrongly that agencies with famous acrinyms like NASA, and the CIA, are experts and know what they're doing. Well, surprise, surprise, often they don't.

Don't be so gullible.

clayne · May 19, 2010

Jesus dude, you're really something else.

Alex1994 · May 20, 2010

I know someone who works in a high-performance supercomputer facility, the largest, most powerful computer dedicated to medium-range weather forecasting in the world. Every day they get GB worth of data sent from satellites, which are crunched by the computer's weather model to make a workable weather forecast. All the data before and after has to be stored archivally. What they use is not some fancy solid-state drive, whose reliability is often trumpeted in tech press. Instead, they use huge analogue tapes, about as big as a VHS (a little wider), each carrying 1TB of data. These are kept in a robot which can access anything on there, anytime.

Goes to show that analogue technologies are still the most reliable in our world. Perhaps one day solid-states drives will catch up, but that day hasn't come yet.

BetterSense · May 20, 2010

Those aren't analog tapes. They are storing digital information on them just like they were hard drives.

Alex1994 · May 22, 2010

The point is not the type of data stored on there but the medium - an age-old one rather than the brand new hard drives used to back up digital files, including pictures.

Van Camper · May 23, 2010

SilverGlow said:
I am a digital content expert in archival, with 33 years experience.

I know much more about this issue then those that wrote that article, and those the article was written about.

In fact, those people that lost their data are stupid.

Don't be so quick to believe anything you read, that jabs digital....often people WANT to find bad about digital archival and the milli-second after they find "proof" in on the internet, they scream with glee "see, ah told ya so".

You assume wrongly that agencies with famous acrinyms like NASA, and the CIA, are experts and know what they're doing. Well, surprise, surprise, often they don't.

Don't be so gullible.

Yeah, we're all experts like yourself. Stupid is listening to your nonsense. Stupid is believing in one technology, when it is safer in the long term to have a film and digital backup (scan). Stupid is not accepting I already lost files in WORD, BASICA. Stupid is believing that technology, file formats, will never change. Sorry, I'll trust my own instincts. Stupid is promoting the benefits of digital, when digital has no affordable options to match the quality of large format film. Do you have a P65 digital back?

SilverGlow · May 25, 2010

Van Camper said:
Yeah, we're all experts like yourself. Stupid is listening to your nonsense. Stupid is believing in one technology, when it is safer in the long term to have a film and digital backup (scan). Stupid is not accepting I already lost files in WORD, BASICA. Stupid is believing that technology, file formats, will never change. Sorry, I'll trust my own instincts. Stupid is promoting the benefits of digital, when digital has no affordable options to match the quality of large format film. Do you have a P65 digital back?

Van Camper, you used the word "stupid" four times!

And do you use your large format at a sporting event such as basketball, soccor, baseball? Weddings? How stupid!

You lost WORD files so digital sucks? God forbid you take any blame, right? How stupid. You think it bad if file formats change? How stupid. You trust your own instincts? I prefer to go with science, reality, fact, objectivity, ....to go otherwise is stupid.

Film is great....and so are other mediums, and there is proof of this all over our world, in museums, millions of photo albums...to disrespect any other meduim is plain stupid.

SuzanneR · May 26, 2010

Closed per OP request.

A thought about how film fits in our world.

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