11 Oct
2005
11 Oct
'05
2:43 p.m.
At 04:16 PM 10/11/2005, der Mouse wrote:
Paper may actually not be totally out of the question.
With decent
printing technology you can get about 75dpi with fairly clear
readability.
As we've flogged many times before, "Which printing technology"?
Laser printer toner has characteristics that make it unsuitable
(such as the way it'll transfer from page to page when pressed
tightly). Ink jets are soluble. Dye sub? Wax transfer?
If you put 8x10.5 inches of data on an 8.5x11 inch
page,
that gives you 8*10.5*75*75 or 472500 bits, 59062.5 bytes, per page
(or, actually, per page side).
Or about five reams of ordinary copy paper per CD, consuming
most of an ordinary laser toner cartridge, not even counting
any overhead for error correction. Not cheap, not easy, not
even reliable - and considering you'd need to develop new
forms of paper-reading equipment and software to retrieve it.
- John