On May 1, 2006, at 6:47 AM, William Robb wrote:
The very vast majority of people are not interested in this subject. They want technology that works, is simple, and doesn't require much thought or maintenance. Up intil recently, the vadt majority of pictures were stored on a hard copy, and were easily accessed, all one had to do was take the negative or print to the lab and place an order. Now that the computer industry has taken over the job of image storage, it has a defacto responsibility to the consumer to emulate the simplicity of film based image storage. This means a responsible approach to long term standards of file storage, and a long term approach to file retrieval.
To quote your expression on previous occasions, Bill: that's a load of bullshit. The "very vast majority of people" never thought about archiving and never will. Most of those people's photographs are damaged or lost over time. Are you saying that these kinds of people are representative of the PDML community of subscribers? There seems to be quite a bit of interest in the subject in this community of subscribers, given how many posts have been made on this thread.
To say that someone else has the responsibility to do the work for you indicates that you personally just don't want be bothered taking care of what you ought to.
For that 'vast majority of people' you allude to, I think the industry is busy delivering various kinds of solutions for them already. Not because of any high-falutin' "de facto responsibility" but because there's money to be made in providing storage solutions that are easy to use.
Regards the standards, well, the only thing for certain is that they're a great idea. That's why there are so many of them.
Godfrey
