[Foundation-l] Long-term archiving of Wikimedia content

[Brian]

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 <tstarling at wikimedia.org>wrote:

> 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 the Rosetta folks have to say.   I can think of a lot
> > of people, not least those who have one of the early Rosetta disks,
> > who would love an  archival etched copy of Wikipedia + Commons thumbs,
> > which might cover some of the early costs of trying this out.
>
> 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 expect a commercial return, regardless of who's paying them.
>
> <
> http://www.internetnews.com/storage/article.php/3771051/Storage+That+Really+Lasts.htm
> >
>
> 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. Maybe if there was a directed grant, it would be appropriate. Or
> we could have a small investment fund aimed at paying for such an
> archive in 20 years or so, when the process will be cheaper.
>
> By the way, it's FIB etching, not laser etching, and the discs are
> nickel-coated silicon, not plain nickel.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
>
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