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Old 02-21-2010, 05:28 PM   #11
Ben Thornton
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan View Post
You're not being thick... Epstein just doesn't believe digital files have any resilience. We are still relatively early in the data archiving and backup process, and it's something we need to get a handle on soon, before some event or stupid move does manage to delete a load of valuable files. But it is a solvable problem, and no reason to assume it can't be done just because it hasn't been done yet.
Early in the process? Huge amounts of information are already held exclusively in a digital format - including financial data, for example - for which prevention of corruption (e.g. storage with non-repudiation features), disaster tolerance and recovery, archiving and back-up of many flavours &c. &c. are a well understood science.

Information that is published digitally is particularly unlikely to be lost (because it is held in so many places in such a variety of formats).

I can only think that his concern over the fragility of information is down to ignorance of IT.
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