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Right now, CD-shaped media seems to hold fair promise, perhaps the way
albums of various speeds and materials managed to survive for the century,
and record players support essentially antique settings. It remains to be
seen what DVD, and especially its recordable formats, become. I understand
that IBM offers its manual library on one DVD, for a price that seems
reasonable enough. Microsoft offers Encarta on DVD, although, unlike the IBM
library, I'm not sure how much of the storage they actually use. And I
vaguely remember reading (on this list?) that someone announced a 140BG
disc. I would expect economies of scale to allow one format to overtake
another in manufacturing, the way most PC software now comes on CDs only,
and not on 3½ diskette. If that doesn't happen, and the music industry or
others continue to use the current incarnation of the CD format, then drives
should continue to read that. And even if everyone goes on to some other
format of disc, I wouldn't be surprised if drives continue to be able to
read the CD format, unless there is some constraint of physics or circuitry
that would compel abandoning it. 

Greg Stigers 
http://www.cgiusa.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Emerson, Tom # El Monte [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, April 07, 2000 4:54 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Converting tapes to CD rom?

Now there's your "friday humor turned sour" when, in 45 years, "something
critical" is needed and "heaven forbid" 3m ain't around to back up their
50-year claim!  Then again, "we as consumers" seem to be perfectly willing
to allow vendors to make claims such as this -- that the product they sell
will outlast it's lifetime-so-far -- because we know deep down that in less
than half that lifetime, that "solution" would be technically obsolete
anyway...