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FW: Digital



Dean

As far as I know, there would be no difference if the media is storing
digital data or analog data - the medium would have the same risk of
corruption.

But...

If your music cassette contains a few errors, you probably wouldnt notice
anything was wrong if you listened to it.  However, if that same cassette
tape contained a computer program, how would the computer cope with little
bits of information being missing?  It would get confused, because it lacks
the error correction capabilities of the human supercomputer.

Taking this analogy to more modern formats like Compact Disk (which always
stores information digitally), the music CD might contain 1 error in 100,000
bits, but your brain compensates for the millisecond of dropout, or wrong
frequency.  The same magnitude of error in a CD-ROM containing your salary
data might mean a difference of millions of dollars (or around 25 cents
Australian :o)  )

John Lovejoy
johnl@naa.gov.au


-----Original Message-----
From: Dean DeBolt [mailto:ddebolt@MAIL.UWF.EDU]

While I understand digital backup, I have heard some terrible horror stories
about loss of data since digital media is more susceptible to becoming
garbled than analog.   Of course, the other problem is whether one still can
read the files (software, hardware) in five years or longer.

Dean
Dean DeBolt

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