Subj : Resurgence of non-mainstr
To   : Kaelon
From : Boraxman
Date : Wed May 04 2022 20:41:00

-=> Kaelon wrote to Boraxman <=-

 Ka> @MSGID: <627142DE.8494.dove-int@vert.synchro.net>
 Ka> @REPLY: <6270F7AE.5359.dove-int@bbs.mozysswamp.org>
 Ka>   Re: Resurgence of non-mainstr
 Ka>   By: Boraxman to Kaelon on
 Ka> Tue May 03 2022 06:34 pm

 > I still have some data from the 90s and 2000's, but most people I would
 > wager, don't, and if they do, it is lost, obscure, opaque.  Look at all the
 > BBS's that existed in the 80's and 90's, how many of those are now lost
 > forever?

 Ka> Very well stated. And this is the tragedy, really, of our current
 Ka> digital ecosystem. In the late 1980s, my dad interviewed the entire
 Ka> family and built a comprehensive family tree stretching back into the
 Ka> 1400s -- which he then reconciled with Church records in Spain to go
 Ka> back even further! -- but he stored it on tape backup.

 Ka> Two problems:

 Ka> 1. The tape backup, which for all you know may still be readable,
 Ka> depends upon hardware that is no longer produced.

 Ka> 2. The family tree software, which was legacy DOS and never ported or
 Ka> migrated, is impossible to find now and it's a relic. He may have it in
 Ka> disks somewhere, but it's probably 5 1/4" disks rather than the
 Ka> somewhat-more-manageable 3 1/2", which also poses other media problems.

 Ka> Between the loss of media inter-operability and format / software
 Ka> conversion, that entire labor - and the wealth of family knowledge from
 Ka> relatives who have since passed on - is, as far as the rest of the
 Ka> family is concerned, totally lost.

 Ka> How do we even begin to solve problems as large as human history's
 Ka> recorded deficit, when we can't even deal with the BBS'es from the
 Ka> 1990s or family trees from the 1980s? _____

That is such a shame...  I've moved away from proprietary software and
propreitary formats, to storing important data in as an accessible format as
you can.  Plain text, or markup, or some schema that is still plain text (ie,
XML or even an Emacs ORG mode file).

You may lose the software which manages it, but a text editor can still reveal
the data.

 
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