I was going to make a joke about Ram Dass, but not sure anyone would know who he is.

Anyway, I have a collection of burned CD- and DVD-ROMs that are from five to 13 years old. Remember how those things were marketed as good long-term backups?

Not so much! Of course that has been known for years.

But it’s true; of the oldest ones, about half the data is readable. A few of the disks do not work at all (though I tested them all when burned). Not the first byte can be read from them.

These are mostly photos I took on my old digital cameras, so no great loss. But still, if you have any older CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs, pull the data off them now before it’s too late.