if it ever happens i’ll be buying a copy . and if anyone from Kalmbach is listening i’ll gladly pay $100 - $150 for it . i love getting some idea in my head and looking it up in the magazine index here to see how i’ts been done in the past , and finding that i actually have the article in my collection . not having the article is a pain . hehe
My favorite music magazine has done this - released the entire history of the magazine - back to 1970-something on DVD.
Once the DVD came out, I took all my issues (about 17 years worth), sliced and diced, cutting out only the issues I “couldn’t live without”, and scanned them into my computer. I know if I ever absolutely have to have some old issue, I could always find it on ebay, or just buy the archive DVD for $200. Small price to pay for freeing up 17 years of shelf space!
This motivated me to do the same with my MR’s. Sliced & Diced, and now I have a beautifully organized group of articles that I “couldn’t live without”. As someone said above, if I realize there’s some article that I tossed that I can’t live without, I could always buy a back issue from MR, or on ebay.
Meanwhile, I keep ZERO magazines longer than a couple weeks, but still have all the articles I can’t live withou. Sweeeeet!!!
This would certainly be great!
This would probably mean that the material could be searched by machine making things easier to find.
If possible, the drawing should be in a format that would allow the user to alter them to his scale.
The Old Dog has to wonder if copyright issues might be a problem.
Have fun
I stopped buying MR and the model magazines because it would have grown my paper collection way high.
I have back issues going to the 40’s including RMS, RR, Trains. It kills room.
I actually want to thumb thru the mags electronically and not muddle up the paper which could crumble the really old copies.
Some modern magazines are on CD only on the store shelves.
I want to scan all my mags for archiving purposes, it is a wealth of info.
I can only think of if MR/RMC whomever other mags might think about doing a classic mag reprint in some form and have new ADs in it to help support it.
I wi***hey could do something.
The Old Dog just realized that I have to rain on this parade.
Putting the older volumes of MR might be a great way the make this material available to newer models.
But it may NOT be the best way to insure that this material remains available long term.
Any storage media has a limited life. The Old Dog has heard the value of 15 years for CD’s. If you think that you can a CD, store for twenty years and still have the material, you may be in for ann unpleasant surprise.
An note that even if the media is “good”, you need the hardware to read it. Anybody still have a 5 1/4 foppy drive?
Have fun
exPalaceDog,
I don’t agree. The beauty of digital is that the Data itself doesn’t age one bit. Sure, the medium might. So you replace the medium.
I backup my Data on my business computer all the time. I don’t care if a recordable DVD or CD only lasts a month - I’ve already re-backed up by then.
As for the 5-1/4 floppy drive - I could care less that it’s gone. Any data I used to have on a 5-1/4 drive that I still need is now being happily backed up onto DVD’s. No big deal. In 10 years, I’m sure it will be backed up onto a chip of some sort.
With storage space getting bigger and bigger, and cheaper and cheaper, saving printed material in the future will be a total piece of cake. Now you’ve got people working on figuring out how to store music and video. Music is becoming cheap and easy - video is the next frontier.
Saving magazines forever will not be a problem. It is as easy as any other form of digital records that have to be kept for decades. Easy!!!
I don’t see MR doing this because they’ve said they don’t see it anytime in the near future. But it is certainly possible.
There are A LOT of ads in the magazine. Strip out the ads, and there’s not a ton of material in there.
Someone should sit down with a magazine and figure out how many pages of solid stuff are in there, and how much is ads.
The Old Dog would suggest you consuilt your Accountant in the near future.
It sounds like you are doing a good job of during frequent back ups. They will be worth their weigh in gold if your hard disk crashes.
But what about longer term problems? What if you find that someone mis-entered the FICA withholding tables for this year in payroll and you need to rerun all the payrolls since the beginning of the year? The Old Dog has actually seen that happen!
Oh no! The IRS just called. They want to see the detailed data to back up some entries on your 1999 tax return. If the Old Dog remembers correctly they have seven years to audit your return. And if they turn problems in one return, they can go back another seven beyond that.
The CFO just called, he needs a report from the 4th qtr of 2003 reprinted.
Besides the daily back ups, you probabl;y need a set of backs up say for the end of each accounting period for PERMANENT retention.
And that means you need to plan to copy those tapes forward to new media when the old media gets say five years old. And you had better make sure that any files on an old type of media are transferred to new media, before you eliminate the hardware need to read the old media.
Then there is the matter of off site storage. <
This is really a touchy and troubling subject with regard to the future survival of information/data. I started out in the punchcard era and have passed through all the subsequent recording methodologies and I am very unhappy to see how things are evolving. Yes, some of us do completely backup all our data but I think you’d be surprised how many don’t and the crash of a machine or a total change in reading medium causes these data to be lost forever. Not all that long ago NASA encountered such a problem when they wanted to read data “tapes” from space missions dating from the 1960’s and early 70’s. They had no machines capable of handing them!
Belonging to some photography clubs, the other members and I often lament the probability that 50 years hence we are going to find that very little layperson image records exist from the first half of the 21st century. Digital cameras, as we know them today, are likely to be a highly transient form of image making. Unlike film imaging, which prevailed in one form or another for almost 150 years and can still easily be viewed today, little in the way of current historical imaging (in the sense of images of people, places, and things taken by common people) is likely to survive and still be viewable in the future. All that will remain referencing common, everyday life, will be commercial recor
The myth of the short usable life of CDs is pernicious. From testing done by a number of standards bodies and labs, the key issue appears to be the conditions under which the media are stored. In conditions that are typical of homes (and of magazine storage), the life expectancy is from 57 to over 500 years, depending primarily on heat and humidity extremes. A very brief summary of testing results from the Defense Technical Information Center at Ft. Belvoir, VA is online at:
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/digest/digest2001-1/Nonprintmed.html
The above report cites National Institute of Standards and Technology and Eastman Kodak sources. A simple Google search on the topic will result in many other links with useful information.
It’s likely that the more pertinent concern three or more decades hence will be the ability of operating systems to decipher materials encoded today. But given the ever-increasing computing power of processors and the steadily declining cost of memory (of all types), it’s more than likely that solutions will be found for this problem.
By all means, back up your data often, and this includes personal copies of archival material such as magazines on CD. But hand-wringing over the possibility of a CD of MR issues deteriorating seems a waste of electrons.
The Old Dog suspicts that one could add most of the 20th to this “black hole”
The “Don’t worry, it’s on micro file” crowd may be in for some surprises of the unpleasant type. Film stock doesn’t last for ever.
On top of that, much material is endanged by inproper store. The Old Dog is waiting to see the next “that note book page material” ate my slides story in trains.
On top of that, it is likily many of the negatives and prints for some big chucks of our are sitting in files cabinets being damaged by acid from the file folders and other papers in the files.
As for materials that were published, a good deal is being lost due to “acid paper”.
Agreed! But please note the Old Dog has seen reports of “acid paper” problems with volumes of RMC just in the last week or two in this forum. People don’t know what it is, all they know is the magazines breaking apart like old leaves.
Good luck
Oh yes, let’s not forgot the historian’s nightmare, the delete key.
I would love to see it! Even if they only went as far back as they have in electronic format, it would be much more than we have now. Say 30 or 40 years, on a few CD’s indexed would be a great help to me. I too am not going to pay what they are asking for the pdf files for a single article-just too much for the return. But I would be willing to invest some hard earned money in the files of several years worth. As far as copyright, that is always a danger with any form of media. Nothing stops someone from taking a print copy of MR to a photocopier and making several copies of it-even though that is illegal. Part of business is recognizing this and trying to limit the losses, while reminding consumers that they have a moral obligation not to give away “property” that does not belong to them. Editors, if you are out there, think about this idea I love it!
Randy Johnson
[#ditto][#ditto][#ditto][#ditto][#ditto][#ditto][#ditto][#ditto][#ditto][#ditto][#ditto][#ditto][#ditto]
I think that would be great, if I had a computer. As is, I don’t especially care. I think it’s a good idea, though.
Matthew