can the internet ever become full?

cells

Generali wrote: »

In the early 60s, 1TB of memory would have cost the GDP of the entire world.

if you mean storage rather than computer memory a piece of paper is an ok form of storage (which is why its still used quite extensively)

One page of text. eg a typewritten document can hold ~10 KB of data (that is to say ~10,000 characters). So 100 million pages of paper is ~ 1TB of storage.

At a penny a page it would cost £1 million to store as much info on paper as it would on a 1 TB hard drive.

Mistermeaner

It really annoys me at work when people create unnecessarily big word documents. Eg they copy and paste a big image into word then drag the corner to make it smaller, but dont then recapture and repaste the image in its smaller size (but retaining the full resolution I suppose).

I deal with engineering and construction contracts so get alot of this and because they are contracts need to keep everything for at least 7 years usually longer. When you get these docs pinging back and forth on multiple emails with slight tweaks and comments and everything must be retained project folders grow and grow.

Kendall80

Jonbvn wrote: »

Hardly "free" given that you have to purchase MS Office....;)

I've got 15Gb free on my onedrive. Its not much but its sufficient for most non-video related file sizes.

BobQ

cells wrote: »

if you mean storage rather than computer memory a piece of paper is an ok form of storage (which is why its still used quite extensively)

One page of text. eg a typewritten document can hold ~10 KB of data (that is to say ~10,000 characters). So 100 million pages of paper is ~ 1TB of storage.

At a penny a page it would cost £1 million to store as much info on paper as it would on a 1 TB hard drive.

The OP was about computer storage not computer memory

boo_star

BobQ wrote: »

50 years ago capacity was limited to hard disks of about 4MB, 30 years ago it was about 100 Mb, in 2000 500Mb was state of the art, by 2005 it was 500GB and today it is about 10 Tb. Why assume that technology will limit storage in the foreseeable future?

We won't run out of Silicon, it just won't be as easily mined. But we always have sand.

Mistermeaner

boo_star wrote: »

We won't run out of Silicon, it just won't be as easily mined. But we always have sand.

Not always. There's alot but not infinite

chris_m

BobQ wrote: »

50 years ago capacity was limited to hard disks of about 4MB, 30 years ago it was about 100 Mb, in 2000 500Mb was state of the art, by 2005 it was 500GB and today it is about 10 Tb. Why assume that technology will limit storage in the foreseeable future?

I remember when I bought my first hard drive, somewhen around 1991. It cost a shade over £200 and was a 40Mb drive - which I had to partition because DOS could only handle 32Mb maximum partiton size. I loaded all my software and thought, "Ooh, I'll never fill all that up". Famous last words

Nowadays, you can't even get a computer to run on such little memory let alone storage. You can buy drives 25,000 times larger for around 1/6 the price of that 40Mb drive, or larger still for an even smaller proportional price. Good job too, the amount I have stored now

kinger101

Mistermeaner wrote: »

Not always. There's alot but not infinite

The Earth's crust contains about 28% silicon. It's the second most abundant element after oxygen. OK, there are different grades of the starting material (silicon dioxide, aka sand). But the technology already exists to get it to sufficient purity for semiconducters.

Siloxane (aka silicone) can also be converted to silica. I wonder how many TB are potentially located in Pamela Anderson's chest?

BobQ

Mistermeaner wrote: »

Not always. There's alot but not infinite

But that assumes we will use Silicon to store data for evermore! In the future the costs of using DNA to store data will fall and it may be that Silicon is not required at all.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/02/25/tech/make-create-innovate-fossil-dna-data-storage/

How many Exabytes do you think we will need?

Kendall80

kinger101 wrote: »

The Earth's crust contains about 28% silicon. It's the second most abundant element after oxygen. OK, there are different grades of the starting material (silicon dioxide, aka sand). But the technology already exists to get it to sufficient purity for semiconducters.

Siloxane (aka silicone) can also be converted to silica. I wonder how many TB are potentially located in Pamela Anderson's chest?

That last point might require further detailed research.