Digital never dies............

[Big Shed]

.........but we do.

Ever thought about what happens to your digital legacy?

I found this article thought provoking.

Digital never dies - but it may be out of reach when we do

[jimbur]

What I found hard to believe in the article was the statement that Leonard Bernstein chose a password that no-one has been able to crack in 22 years. Can this really be true in today's world where passwords have to be constantly changed on the grounds of security. I suspect they've just not asked the right people.
Cheers,
Jim
ps perhaps the banks and the security services ought to use composers to devise their passwords.

[Master Splinter]

The Bernstein story sounds a lot more like 'we don't know how to do it and don't want to pay someone who knows how to do it for advice so we are just going to say it is too hard'.

Float a reward of a few thousand and you'd have half the hackers in Russia looking at it!

[wheelinround]

Beware Digital photos do not last even if printed or stored on any media form disc etc.

You have to constantly transfer and update to latest technology as many will understand. How many have a 3/12 disc reader now days? How many have CD's of music no longer playable due to scratches, heat distortion, chemical spills.

Or lost memory chips and damaged

One server crash even the backup can be effected, have a mate who work in media recording industry and they are constantly remastering to latest technology. Why because the old master tapes are disintegrating. Plastic breaks down also over time.

[dabbler]

Adding to wheelinround's post....

As well as transferring computer files to newer technologies, check you still have the software to read, edit and display them as well. Files stored as sets or collections, be it a digital photo album or backup set, are particularly prone to becoming un-useable as sofware and operating systems change. You might have to consider storing them in multiple formats. It's hard to future-proof yourself retrospectively.

As for Leonard's 1990 password. Nice story but either it's an untested rumour or they haven't really tried. It sounds like tye sort of thing we'd tell clients when we wanted to scare them into action. Personal computer security was in it's infancy as was file encryption. One common recommendation for passwords back in the day, was to use the first letter of each word from the first line of the lyrics of your favourite song. That could be a problem in Leonard's case.

[wheelinround]

Adding to wheelinround's post....

As well as transferring computer files to newer technologies, check you still have the software to read, edit and display them as well. Files stored as sets or collections, be it a digital photo album or backup set, are particularly prone to becoming un-useable as sofware and operating systems change. You might have to consider storing them in multiple formats. It's hard to future-proof yourself retrospectively.

As for Leonard's 1990 password. Nice story but either it's an untested rumour or they haven't really tried. It sounds like tye sort of thing we'd tell clients when we wanted to scare them into action. Personal computer security was in it's infancy as was file encryption. One common recommendation for passwords back in the day, was to use the first letter of each word from the first line of the lyrics of your favourite song. That could be a problem in Leonard's case.

Absolutely right if a vendor is bought out goes bust then your on your own in the future. The other great problem is Mr Gates keeps closing the gates to backward technology.

[Master Splinter]

Digital aging? No way - core memory turned 60 last year, and you can still connect it...

Celebrating 60th aniversary of magnetic core memory with Arduino shield | Embedded projects from around the web

[ian]

What I found hard to believe in the article was the statement that Leonard Bernstein chose a password that no-one has been able to crack in 22 years. Can this really be true in today's world where passwords have to be constantly changed on the grounds of security. I suspect they've just not asked the right people.
Cheers,
Jim
ps perhaps the banks and the security services ought to use composers to devise their passwords.

The Bernstein story sounds a lot more like 'we don't know how to do it and don't want to pay someone who knows how to do it for advice so we are just going to say it is too hard'.

Float a reward of a few thousand and you'd have half the hackers in Russia looking at it!

most likely "we don't know how to do it" there's probably no need to even offer a reward

22 years ago was 1990 -- I don't remember that well what computing was like, but it's pre-windows as we know know it, DOS folder and file names were generally limited to 8 characters, I think Mac ones were too, passwords for those that used them are all probably just a google search away.

The difficulty would be if Bernstein was using an Atari or Comodore

[swk]

I reckon years ago I heard a show on the radio where a historian was lamenting that the end of the 20th century might be the era with the fewest primary historical records in the long term due to these hardware and software change/upgrade issues.

I also can add a few anecdotes. Some years ago the place where I worked found out that the data stored on the old tape drives (you know, what you see in them 60s James Bond flicks) actually does a thing called print through where the layers of magnetic tape wound next to each other upset the next layer. The preventative is to simply unroll and roll up the tapes every once in a while. They didn't do this. Whoops!

Also I have some old Autosketch files from the early 90s I did. Not so important but unless I can find an old copy of the software, they are unreadable forevermore.

One thing I have tried to instill in my younger work colleagues is the ephemeral nature of digital stuff, but they are not old enough to understand (or even care). Sad to have people with a 2 or 3 year forward view (not just the young"uns) who are building infrastructure which might last 70.

My personal view is paper is the storage medium for real long term stability (ie a century) but I generally get howled down when I say that, as no one seems to understand the issues. and if they _must_ keep electronic documents a plain txt file is the way to go..

Anyway, those photos of mine that I want to keep I get printed properly and put in old fashioned acid free albums and am on the verge of printing out all the presonnal emails I have (which I have been collating in pdf as an interim).

Regards
SWK

[jimbur]

The difficulty would be if Bernstein was using an Atari or Comodore

Can you see the scenario - sorry Mr President the terrorists have managed to find some Ataris and we can't crack their messages. I don't think the excuse would work.
Cheers,
Jim

[ian]

most likely "we don't know how to do it" there's probably no need to even offer a reward

22 years ago was 1990 -- I don't remember that well what computing was like, but it's pre-windows as we know know it, DOS folder and file names were generally limited to 8 characters, I think Mac ones were too, passwords for those that used them are all probably just a google search away.

The difficulty would be if Bernstein was using an Atari or Comodore

Can you see the scenario - sorry Mr President the terrorists have managed to find some Ataris and we can't crack their messages. I don't think the excuse would work.

Jim, maybe I should have been a little more explicit.

About 3 or 4 years ago I recall reading that ALL possible Microsoft document passwords (those you type when you password protect a word or Excel document) had been effectively cracked. Given a password protected document, all a "hacker" had to do was find and copy the password scrambled "header", look the scrambled header up in a database, and voila, there was the password used to "secure" the document. Go me thinking about the efficacy of the supposedly uncrackable RSA encryption protocol.

If Bernstein did secure his stuff with a password, it's most likely a BIOS boot password, which 22 years ago is probably a maximum of 8 alpha numeric characters.

[jimbur]

An octave sounds right for Bernstein Ian.
Cheers,
Jim

[Handyjack]

And today Fairfax announced that 1900 jobs will go over the next few years as they will stop printing papers and go fully digital. Should be interesting to see if the news can be looked up in 5, 10, or 20 years time. Will the digital news still exist or be readable?

[dabbler]

And today Fairfax announced that 1900 jobs will go over the next few years as they will stop printing papers and go fully digital. Should be interesting to see if the news can be looked up in 5, 10, or 20 years time. Will the digital news still exist or be readable?

I wouldn't worry about accessing news files in the future because Fairfax and other outlets will be motivated to keep their digital files accessible to the paying public on whatever current technology is used at any given time. The reality is too, that we only have to worry about accessing Fairfax's servers. They'll look after the rest or they can't make a buck.

You and I on the other hand, need to conscientiously stay on top of the issue as our personal technology changes or the task of conversion may become impossible for mere mortals. It's not just an issue for digital files either, as pre-digital video and audio are just as affected. Commercially available stuff is not much of a problem but what about the personal content ? How many people still have weddings, births and other stuff on cassette, 8mm, VHS or Beta yet to be converted to use with current playback devices for instance ?