<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://www.clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/86a99682-2986-4719-91a3-afcca9d7fa7c/4334400A-6B39-42AA-AE48-778F7FA5BD12/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39286796,00.htm" href="http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39286796,00.htm" style="font-size: 11px;">resources.zdnet.co.uk</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39286796,00.htm"><div align="center"><img src="http://content6.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/resources.zdnet.co.uk/img/C83BB5EC-CFD0-41BF-B74E-1E44C5E715DE" alt="It's the end of your data as you know it" /></div></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39286796,00.htm">Despite the fact that digital information has been around for decades, there is still no tried-and-tested way of keeping data intact beyond the next time a medium or file format becomes obsolete — much less of dealing with the surprisingly short physical lifespan of the media.</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39286796,00.htm"><P>The design life of a low-cost hard drive is five years, while the usable lifespan for magnetic tape could be as short as 10 years, and optical media such as CDs and DVDs may become unusable in just 20 years.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39286796,00.htm"><P>Where digital information is concerned, physical degradation is the least of the conservation problems. The more pressing issues are to do with obsolescence at all levels, including the media, the file formats and the software used to read the files.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/features/0,1000002000,39286796,00.htm">"Until 2002 or 2003, a lot of our digital material was digitised — you could always go back to the original. Now we've reached a critical mass of material that exists only in digital form."</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/4334400A-6B39-42AA-AE48-778F7FA5BD12/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content7.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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