LogFAQs > #905263920

rogerskg1979 posted...

20-200 year lifespan is so laughably broad. It's like saying the human lifespan is 10-100 years.

Given that natural failures are absurdly unlikely early on -- the same as human deaths -- it's probably not the worst of parallels although natural DVD failures are probably rarer than natural human deaths during the earlier portion of the time-frame. A lot of the failures are more likely just care issues.

rogerskg1979 posted...

I don't even know how they could come up with a 200 lifespan since DVDs haven't been around anywhere close to that. The oldest DVDs are like 30 years old, so how could you possibly know that they may last another 170 years? Do they have a time machine that allows them to go 200 years in the future to confirm that there will still be working DVDs 200 years from now?

Projections, mostly. They could last even longer under optimal conditions. You don't need to wait for a thing to finish to get a good idea of how long it might last, tbh. You've got knowledge of the composition materials, various kinds of stress tests, and so on.

rogerskg1979 posted...

Thinking about this in reverse, 200 years ago was the year 1818. Is there anything built in 1818 that still works today?

Kind of an insincere comparison, given that the technology itself has changed in that time so something that made a lot of sense in 1818 has no purpose today. However, cannons, pistols, etc, still work assuming that they've been maintained. And, if you go really basic, there are swords from a thousand years ago which are still in usable condition since they've been upkept.
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