A brief update:
On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 5:17 AM, Samuel Klein
The current amortized cost of making 10 nickel
discs (each with 10,000 pages in a 100x100 grid) is
around $500 each. They can also make
polymer copies for much less that are likely stable
for at least a century.
The amortized
I don't want to restart this rather long (but very interesting)
topic, but I'd like to point out / remind people that a couple of
well-placed fires could wipe out most of wikipedia et al. as we
currently know it - surely the first priority, before thinking about
the real long term, is to
2009/5/10 Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net:
I don't want to restart this rather long (but very interesting)
topic, but I'd like to point out / remind people that a couple of
well-placed fires could wipe out most of wikipedia et al. as we
currently know it - surely the first priority, before
On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 5:06 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:
2009/5/10 Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net:
I don't want to restart this rather long (but very interesting)
topic, but I'd like to point out / remind people that a couple of
well-placed fires could wipe out most of
2009/5/10 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
The private parts of the database are probably more valuable than the public
ones, though.
Why? The private parts are just deleted stuff. The deleted stuff isn't
generally very valuable, that's why it was deleted.
On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:
2009/5/10 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
The private parts of the database are probably more valuable than the
public
ones, though.
Why? The private parts are just deleted stuff. The deleted stuff isn't
generally
On 10 May 2009, at 22:06, David Gerard wrote:
2009/5/10 Michael Peel em...@mikepeel.net:
I don't want to restart this rather long (but very interesting)
topic, but I'd like to point out / remind people that a couple of
well-placed fires could wipe out most of wikipedia et al. as we
On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:
On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 5:14 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:
2009/5/10 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
The private parts of the database are probably more valuable than the
public
ones, though.
Why? The
2009/5/10 Casey Brown cbrown1023...@gmail.com:
On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:
Mostly I meant the user data (especially the passwords). The relative value
of them compared to the rest can be shown by anyone who tries to create a
fork.
In the dumps, these
On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Casey Brown cbrown1023...@gmail.comwrote:
On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:
Mostly I meant the user data (especially the passwords). The relative
value
of them compared to the rest can be shown by anyone who tries to create
The OAI updater is for incremental updates of search indexes using MWSearch.
On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 3:34 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:
On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 5:25 PM, Casey Brown cbrown1023...@gmail.com
wrote:
On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:
David Goodman wrote:
additionally, a simple lens can be ground with hand tools and no
preexisting technology except glassmaking to produce several hundred
power magnification
Not that I want to denigrate glass makers, but what is
wrong with naturally occurring clear material such as
rock
On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 12:16 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote:
I wouldn't go quite that far. The idea of doing it (or having done it)
makes people feel good, due to the collective sci-fi-like fantasy
implicitly promulgated by the project itself -- a future world of
poverty and
On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 5:17 AM, Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com wrote:
On Thu, May 7, 2009 at 12:16 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org
wrote:
I wouldn't go quite that far. The idea of doing it (or having done it)
makes people feel good, due to the collective sci-fi-like fantasy
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote:
In that futuristic approach I find it more likely that there will be no
paper / printer, but instead everthing will be stored into
computers/PDAs and transfered between them. So in the event of the
catastrophe you'd be only
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 4:19 PM, Aryeh Gregor
simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com wrote:
And assuming they still have microscopes, but not computers.
By accident or by some other reason, we have much better optics than
computers. So, it is reasonably to suppose that some future
civilization will
2009/5/6 Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com:
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 4:19 PM, Aryeh Gregor
simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com wrote:
And assuming they still have microscopes, but not computers.
By accident or by some other reason, we have much better optics than
computers. So, it is reasonably to
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:
What are you using to compare the quality of optics to the quality of
computers?
* For example, having optics for 2700 years and having computers for
somewhat more than 50 years.
* Optics is able to help humans with
additionally, a simple lens can be ground with hand tools and no
preexisting technology except glassmaking to produce several hundred
power magnification
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:DGG
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 11:01 AM, Milos Rancic mill...@gmail.com
Aryeh Gregor wrote:
Actually, there are more assumptions: you have to assume that humanity
*ever* recovers, and within a period of time when people will still
understand written English. You'd have to calibrate the magnitude of
a catastrophe *very* carefully to get a situation where
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote:
Suppose that it does happen *today*.
All electronic systems collapse but the ones at your home.
Also, you cannot produce new ones.
You have a copy of wikipedia on your hard disk. You can access it.
But your computer
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:46 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote:
Suppose that it does happen *today*.
All electronic systems collapse but the ones at your home.
Also, you cannot produce new ones.
You have a copy of
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 5:46 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Platonides platoni...@gmail.com wrote:
Suppose that it does happen *today*.
All electronic systems collapse but the ones at your home.
Also, you cannot produce new ones.
You have a copy of
On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 6:54 PM, Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com wrote:
My priority is saving my ass. :)
-Chad
Perhaps a tattoo there is the safest place for Wikipedia then!
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Aryeh Gregor wrote:
Yeah, I'm still going to say the entire idea is ridiculous.
I wouldn't go quite that far. The idea of doing it (or having done it)
makes people feel good, due to the collective sci-fi-like fantasy
implicitly promulgated by the project itself -- a future world of
poverty and
Making people feel good is ultimately the best reason for archiving the data
- I would agree. And that is synergistic with what I think is the best
strategy for long term archiving, which is giving a complete copy to every
single person in the world. If we were to invest in a class of technologies
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:02 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote:
I can tell you what the Rosetta folks would say: they would say that
they paid $125k to Norsam for 5 prototype discs, and that we are free
to do the same. Norsam have developed this technology at great cost
and
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:02 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.orgwrote:
Personally I think it would be a waste of general funds, since I don't
expect we'll see the end of civilisation any time in the next year or
two.
Umm, if civilization ends, we won't be around to see it, and the
2009/5/5 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:02 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.orgwrote:
Personally I think it would be a waste of general funds, since I don't
expect we'll see the end of civilisation any time in the next year or
two.
Umm, if civilization ends, we
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 9:17 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:
Certainly not large amounts of funds any time soon. If it could be
done for $5k, I'd recommend doing it with WMF funds.
I'm pretty sure buying another server or offering a slightly higher
salary on the next job
2009/5/5 Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com:
The utility of this project is virtually
zero from any perspective.
I disagree. The short term utility is obviously zero, but the long
term utility could be massive. The contents of Wikimedia projects
could play a vital role in rebuilding
2009/5/5 Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com:
Of course, since all of Wikimedia's data is freely available, anyone
else who'd like to store it in some durable form for any sum of money
is absolutely free to do so. Or they could give Wikimedia a directed
grant. But it would be a waste
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:
I disagree. The short term utility is obviously zero, but the long
term utility could be massive. The contents of Wikimedia projects
could play a vital role in rebuilding civilisation - I call that
useful.
Assuming
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:
2009/5/5 Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com:
The utility of this project is virtually
zero from any perspective.
I disagree. The short term utility is obviously zero, but the long
term utility could be
2009/5/5 Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com:
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com
wrote:
I disagree. The short term utility is obviously zero, but the long
term utility could be massive. The contents of Wikimedia projects
could play a vital role in
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:
But rebuilding civilisation is probably not the most likely use such
archives would be put to (it's just the most exciting, so the one I
mentioned). The historical and cultural value 1000 years from now of
knowing
2009/5/5 Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com:
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:32 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com
wrote:
But rebuilding civilisation is probably not the most likely use such
archives would be put to (it's just the most exciting, so the one I
mentioned). The
2009/5/5 Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com:
However, most information isn't lost because of disaster, it is lost
because people don't think they need it any more and delete/destroy
it. Can we trust whoever is around in the future to continue to
preserve the history dumps they've backed
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:
You make a good point, but that point applies just as well to any
other time capsule plan and people still consider them worthwhile.
I don't. I think they're fairly silly.
However, most information isn't lost
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:12 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:
2009/5/5 Aryeh Gregor
simetrical+wikil...@gmail.comsimetrical%2bwikil...@gmail.com
:
The utility of this project is virtually
zero from any perspective.
I disagree. The short term utility is obviously zero, but
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:
You make a good point, but that point applies just as well to any
other time capsule plan and people still consider them worthwhile.
If you really want to spend your time and efforts based on what people
still
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Aryeh Gregor
simetrical+wikil...@gmail.comsimetrical%2bwikil...@gmail.com
wrote:
But if you don't postulate a catastrophic event that we can't plan
for, like civilization ending due to an overnight thermonuclear war,
then we don't need to plan in advance.
If
2009/5/5 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
I would put a pretty large bet on the fact that someone is going to think
they need to keep Wikipedia long past the point where it's worth it to keep
it. Wrong decisions will be made to delete or oversight content, but
whatever isn't oversighted or deleted
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:09 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:
2009/5/5 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
I would put a pretty large bet on the fact that someone is going to think
they need to keep Wikipedia long past the point where it's worth it to keep
it. Wrong decisions will be
2009/5/5 Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com:
In 3000 years, nobody will give a rat's ass about Britney Spears'
discography (again, to pick a random example of pop culture).
That's a bet I'm willing to make.
Depends if they rediscover publish or perish. The academic rat race
is a study in
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 12:51 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:
2009/5/5 Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com:
In 3000 years, nobody will give a rat's ass about Britney Spears'
discography (again, to pick a random example of pop culture).
That's a bet I'm willing to make.
Depends if they
2009/5/5 Chad innocentkil...@gmail.com:
In 3000 years, nobody will give a rat's ass about Britney Spears'
discography (again, to pick a random example of pop culture).
That's a bet I'm willing to make.
Then why is this article so long:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Ancient_Egypt
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 7:13 AM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:
2009/5/5 Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com:
Of course, since all of Wikimedia's data is freely available, anyone
else who'd like to store it in some durable form for any sum of money
is absolutely free to do so.
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 2:24 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:
2009/5/5 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
Not true. I'm considering the historical value, but I'm recognizing the
fact that it must be heavily discounted due to the fact that it takes
place
so far in the future.
I'm
2009/5/5 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
I think economics does apply here because we are specifically asking an
economic question - how best to allocate our present resources (should the
WMF buy a server, or etch stuff on nickel plates). And I don't think values
have to be monetary in order to
That is like saying, . Why should i backup my computer now, when there
will be high capacity media in a few years, or when the next version
of the OS will do it automatically.
or, more closely,
why should a books scanning project even be bothered with now. In
future generation we might well have
If scanning involves destroying or harming the books, which it does, and
future technologies can scan the pages without actually opening the books,
then it's clear which solution I would choose. In many cases we have extra
books though.
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 3:48 PM, David Goodman
David Goodman wrote:
That is like saying, . Why should i backup my computer now, when there
will be high capacity media in a few years, or when the next version
of the OS will do it automatically.
or, more closely,
why should a books scanning project even be bothered with now. In
future
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 5:42 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:
2009/5/5 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
I think economics does apply here because we are specifically asking an
economic question - how best to allocate our present resources (should
the
WMF buy a server, or etch
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 6:28 PM, Anthony wikim...@inbox.org wrote:
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 5:42 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:
You say marginal utility rather than just utility,
but I don't pay a different amount for my first glass of water each
day than my second, even though
2009/5/5 Anthony wikim...@inbox.org:
It clearly has value (otherwise there would be no such thing as
academia), but I don't think it has a well defined monetary value.
How not? There's a certain price you'd be willing to pay for education,
isn't there? It doesn't have an *intrinsic*
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 6:35 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:
Education
has value because of scarcity - someone with a degree can earn more
than someone without a degree because there are fewer people that can
do the jobs they can do.
So if most people had a degree, people
On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 08:29, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.com wrote:
However, most information isn't lost because of disaster, it is lost
because people don't think they need it any more and delete/destroy
it. Can we trust whoever is around in the future to continue to
preserve the
I'm splitting off a separate thread about long-term archiving. The
original thread is important enough not to derail it.
This is a big topic, and also one that has been addressed in many
different bodies of planning and literature. The Long Now foundation
has considered a 10,000-year library
2009/5/5 Samuel Klein meta...@gmail.com:
I'm splitting off a separate thread about long-term archiving. The
original thread is important enough not to derail it.
This is a big topic, and also one that has been addressed in many
different bodies of planning and literature. The Long Now
They wouldn't take up proportionally more space in etching than they
do on screen. So an extra 10-20% overall. They would probably make
the process a bit more expensive, but still to this scale. an
illustrated encyclo may well be worth twice as much.
Let's see what the Rosetta folks have to
My technology/power of community inspired opinion is that we don't need to
worry about that problem right now. We could recreate all the content in
short order were all the datacenters simultaneously struck by asteroids, and
more feasible long-term storage solutions will present themselves in the
Samuel Klein wrote:
They wouldn't take up proportionally more space in etching than they
do on screen. So an extra 10-20% overall. They would probably make
the process a bit more expensive, but still to this scale. an
illustrated encyclo may well be worth twice as much.
Let's see what
Wouldn't the most cost effective solution to be to first fund research in
compression so fewer bits have to be etched out?
In that case these guys are already on the job: http://prize.hutter1.net/
On Mon, May 4, 2009 at 10:02 PM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.orgwrote:
Samuel Klein wrote:
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