On Mon, February 28, 2011 3:20 pm, Gerhard Torges wrote: > And that's a pretty long time in the future, I'd > estimate 3 years minimum.
I have a lot of things to do, but I simply can't get what you wrote out of my mind. Three years? I've been using Finale for 18 years, others for longer. And that's just the start of the conversation! The rapid obsolescence of technology is devastating to those of us who use it and who have been using it their whole working lives. This article in the CEC just begins to touch on it (and the article itself is already obsolete): <http://cec.concordia.ca/education/archive/10_x/bathorykitsz_preservation.html> I guess when you wrote "3 years" it just made me mentally stagger. My own earliest electroacoustic pieces are 42 years old, and their recording formats are gone. Old equipment still exists and can be tweaked. But software is even worse. In the mid-1980s I created an interactive electroacoustic environment in the Billings Arts Center. That entire creation is gone. All that remains are computers that no longer function and printed pages of source code. And that for *untethered* software. Try to get keys and validations and authorizations for software for companies that are gone. Microsoft, Apple, Makemusic, Sibelius, Adobe and the rest will be gone, and work will be entombed in operating systems and software unless the process of emulation is strong and chained backwards and forward. As I struggle with updating the archives of the Vermont Composers (as well as my own work), I wonder: Who will do this? Will the work of an entire generation be lost? Dennis _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
