Let's develop an open-source media archive standard

From: John Lawson <jpl15_at_panix.com>
Date: Fri Aug 13 13:55:40 2004

On Thu, 12 Aug 2004, Stan Barr wrote:

> Hi,
>
> ben franchuk <bfranchuk_at_jetnet.ab.ca> said:
>> Stan Barr wrote:
>>
>>> Work is still in progress. Shizuka University in Japan recently demoed

[snippage]

>>
>> What is too slow. Paper Tape is slow. :)
>>
>>
> They don't say how fast, but imagine how long it would take to read
> 2000Gb at paper tape speeds :-)

   No need to imagine - Calculate:

   Lets say that the Paper Tape is in ASCII format, then each character is
a Byte - and that the Reader is a fairly advanced optical device running
at a conservative 1200 bytes per minute.

  2000 GB (2 TB) is 2*10^12

so (2*10^12)/1200 = 1.66666667*10^9 minutes to read 2 TB

              /60 = 27,777,777.8 hours

              /24 = 1,157,407.41 days

             /365 = 3171 years

  presupposing a Really Good reader that could operate that long w/out any
maintenance or downtime.... probably Sellam has a couple of these on his
Shelves.

   NOW: 10 KB of 5-mil thick punched paper tape on a 3/4-inch hub with a
punch width of .060 and an inter-character width of .060 makes a diameter
of.... oops my brain just exploded - sorry.

   But damn! that would be an impressive wheel of paper!!!!


   Cheers

John
Received on Fri Aug 13 2004 - 13:55:40 BST