On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 11:02 AM, Gregory Ewing <greg.ew...@canterbury.ac.nz> wrote: > Chris Angelico wrote: >> >> On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 5:32 AM, Dennis Lee Bieber >> <wlfr...@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > > >>> The coordinates of each particle storing the information in that >>> teaspoon of matter. >> >> >> Which is probably more data than any of us will keyboard in a >> lifetime. Hence my point. > > > My 1TB hard disk *already* contains more information than > I could keyboard in my lifetime. > > The fact that it all got there is due to two things: (1) > I didn't have to enter it all myself, and (2) most of it > was auto-generated from other information, using compilers > and other such tools.
I would like to differentiate between information and data, here. Point 1 is correct, but point 2 is not; auto-generated data is not more information, and basic data compression can improve that. (Simple form of compression there: `rm *.o` - you've lost nothing.) > Our disk capacities are increasing exponentially, but > so is the rate at which we have the ability to create > information. I wouldn't be surprised if, at some point > before the human race becomes extinct, we build > computers whose operating system requires more than > a teaspoonful of atoms to store. Especially if > Microsoft still exists by then. :-) That's possible. But that would be data bloat, not true information. It's certainly possible to conceive more data than can be stored. Microsoft, as you cite, are experts at this :) ChrisA -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
