3 ms·

"May his software immortalise him." I wish this was true just a bit. Software goes away with the time almost like no other human artifact.

rob74 5y ago
Sad but true, that was also my first thought when reading this sentence. Especially since he is best known for writing CD/DVD recording software. Small anecdote: this March, I have upgraded my desktop PC, and the new motherboard doesn't have a PATA port, so I haven't been able to use my Plextor CD/DVD recorder anymore for a few months. But I haven't really missed it enough to get me to buy a PATA interface card. And even before, I was only using it to rip audio CDs - I can't really remember when I burned my last CD (or was it a DVD?)...
- alias_neo 5y ago
  I mean, unless it's a particularly special PATA drive, why not get a SATA BD-Writer? I have a USB-3.1 BluRay writer I use for burning 50GB-100GB BDs with family photos/videos (alongside other media). The downside is that buying a portable HDD is significantly cheaper TB for TB but I feel they'll fail quicker, who knows, so I keep copies on both.
  - toyg 5y ago
    > buying a portable HDD is significantly cheaper TB for TB but I feel they'll fail quicker It depends on your usage model. If you "burn" a HDD and store it in a drawer, then pull it back after 15 years, chances are it will work fine - whereas the CD might well have lost a lot of data. It might not be cheaper per TB, though.
    - hulitu 5y ago
      It depends very much on the materials used and the development quality.
    - strenholme 5y ago
      I think flash drives and SSDs decay a lot more quickly than traditional magnetic HDDs, and may decay more quickly than CDRs. As a practical matter, I can generally read 20-year-old CDRs I burned just fine (I have only had issues with cheap CDR blanks, such as Fry’s old house brand); for things I want to last long-term, I use archival grade CDR blanks.
      - alias_neo 5y ago
        I've been burning to Blu-ray and putting a sha256sum file on the disc with the contents so that in theory, I can check the sums every so often and re-burn them to increase the longevity. Granted I have not been using archival grade Blu-ray's because the cost to store terabytes is prohibitive.
        strenholme 5y ago
        As an aside, as a favor to your loved ones, I would put only really really important files on a single archival grade CD-R or, at most, DVD-R. This should be a really concise “here is the stuff worth remembering after I pass away” collection of files. As someone who lost three close family members in the last five years, the last thing your relatives will want to do after you die is go through multiple terabytes of unorganized files to try and find relevant pictures and other heirlooms worth keeping (one relative had a nicely organized folder with relatively few important pictures on his hard disk, so I was able to fairly easily make a DVD of his photography for the family). My “after my pass away” CD-R has one picture I took per month, starting in the mid-2000s decade when digital cameras started being widely available. There are notes about who is in each picture, where each picture is taken, and other relevant details about the pictures. I also have 320k MP3 files of the better music I have composed over the years, since I am also an electronic musician. In terms of open source software, it’s more likely than not that one of GitHub/GitLab/Sourceforge/Bitbucket or even Sourcehut will outlive me; my important projects are on multiple Git hosting services. Even if all of today’s Git repos go down, important software will be uploaded by others to what passes as Git to whatever repos exist in the future (See: The number of open source projects when never used Git mirrored on GitHub)
    - alias_neo 5y ago
      It's an interesting problem, but obviously not one in willing to guess at. I guess I'll find out in 20 years or so which lasted longer. The video cassettes my parents recorded my childhood on in the 80s and 90s are still going strong, I don't know if modern media will last as well. The pen drive my wedding photographer gave us our photographs on was used exactly once, I tried it ~5 years later and it's was dead. I suppose each form of media has its issues so I'm simply trying not to rely on any single technology.
tannhaeuser 5y ago
But we know who he was, in the nerd-sphere.
jacquesm 5y ago
Bad software sticks around forever though.
TMWNN 5y ago
>I wish this was true just a bit. Software goes away with the time almost like no other human artifact. You might be surprised. Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky (recently discussed here) describes in some detail the job position of programmer archaeologist (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_archaeology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_archaeology>).

rob74 5y ago

Sad but true, that was also my first thought when reading this sentence. Especially since he is best known for writing CD/DVD recording software. Small anecdote: this March, I have upgraded my desktop PC, and the new motherboard doesn't have a PATA port, so I haven't been able to use my Plextor CD/DVD recorder anymore for a few months. But I haven't really missed it enough to get me to buy a PATA interface card. And even before, I was only using it to rip audio CDs - I can't really remember when I burned my last CD (or was it a DVD?)...

alias_neo 5y ago
I mean, unless it's a particularly special PATA drive, why not get a SATA BD-Writer? I have a USB-3.1 BluRay writer I use for burning 50GB-100GB BDs with family photos/videos (alongside other media). The downside is that buying a portable HDD is significantly cheaper TB for TB but I feel they'll fail quicker, who knows, so I keep copies on both.
- toyg 5y ago
  > buying a portable HDD is significantly cheaper TB for TB but I feel they'll fail quicker It depends on your usage model. If you "burn" a HDD and store it in a drawer, then pull it back after 15 years, chances are it will work fine - whereas the CD might well have lost a lot of data. It might not be cheaper per TB, though.
  - hulitu 5y ago
    It depends very much on the materials used and the development quality.
  - strenholme 5y ago
    I think flash drives and SSDs decay a lot more quickly than traditional magnetic HDDs, and may decay more quickly than CDRs. As a practical matter, I can generally read 20-year-old CDRs I burned just fine (I have only had issues with cheap CDR blanks, such as Fry’s old house brand); for things I want to last long-term, I use archival grade CDR blanks.
    - alias_neo 5y ago
      I've been burning to Blu-ray and putting a sha256sum file on the disc with the contents so that in theory, I can check the sums every so often and re-burn them to increase the longevity. Granted I have not been using archival grade Blu-ray's because the cost to store terabytes is prohibitive.
      - strenholme 5y ago
        As an aside, as a favor to your loved ones, I would put only really really important files on a single archival grade CD-R or, at most, DVD-R. This should be a really concise “here is the stuff worth remembering after I pass away” collection of files. As someone who lost three close family members in the last five years, the last thing your relatives will want to do after you die is go through multiple terabytes of unorganized files to try and find relevant pictures and other heirlooms worth keeping (one relative had a nicely organized folder with relatively few important pictures on his hard disk, so I was able to fairly easily make a DVD of his photography for the family). My “after my pass away” CD-R has one picture I took per month, starting in the mid-2000s decade when digital cameras started being widely available. There are notes about who is in each picture, where each picture is taken, and other relevant details about the pictures. I also have 320k MP3 files of the better music I have composed over the years, since I am also an electronic musician. In terms of open source software, it’s more likely than not that one of GitHub/GitLab/Sourceforge/Bitbucket or even Sourcehut will outlive me; my important projects are on multiple Git hosting services. Even if all of today’s Git repos go down, important software will be uploaded by others to what passes as Git to whatever repos exist in the future (See: The number of open source projects when never used Git mirrored on GitHub)
  - alias_neo 5y ago
    It's an interesting problem, but obviously not one in willing to guess at. I guess I'll find out in 20 years or so which lasted longer. The video cassettes my parents recorded my childhood on in the 80s and 90s are still going strong, I don't know if modern media will last as well. The pen drive my wedding photographer gave us our photographs on was used exactly once, I tried it ~5 years later and it's was dead. I suppose each form of media has its issues so I'm simply trying not to rely on any single technology.

tannhaeuser 5y ago

But we know who he was, in the nerd-sphere.

jacquesm 5y ago

Bad software sticks around forever though.

TMWNN 5y ago

>I wish this was true just a bit. Software goes away with the time almost like no other human artifact. You might be surprised. Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky (recently discussed here) describes in some detail the job position of programmer archaeologist (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_archaeology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_archaeology>).