OT: Is there a physical storage limit to these kind of websi

amar · Post by **amar** » Sun Dec 22, 2002 5:09 am

A question to the computer-knowledgeables out there. This page expands daily, is there a limit, physically, metaphysically?

Zubivka · Post by **Zubivka** » Sun Dec 22, 2002 7:48 am

Since you aske me

I'll condescend and answer.
The answer is yes.

Since you ask why? and I have to explain it ALL (sheesh!) here's the answer to 1st answer. It's how much turkey and yams it can ingest. See what happened on last opportunity...

Cryptic ? Here's a sketch

More seriously : this page is not one page. It's a link to other pages. Even long threads are subsdivised. Now there may be limitations to the database in/from which the data is stored. And this is beyond my knowledge.

To answer your question, then we need to build a bigger server and database than these. It's based on an analog computer, and the data is fed through sound files. Let's call it Deep Thought...

[ This Message was edited by: Zubivka on 2002-12-22 18:26 ]

Tony · Post by **Tony** » Sun Dec 22, 2002 2:23 pm

Huh ??

Zubivka · Post by **Zubivka** » Sun Dec 22, 2002 4:36 pm

Tony... Read back : Amar asked also for the metaphysical answers. I took care of that part.

Now, if someone tackles an HTML explanation, I'll read it eagerly.

[ This Message was edited by: Zubivka on 2002-12-22 17:37 ]

Tony · Post by **Tony** » Sun Dec 22, 2002 4:48 pm

amar,
This is a question best answered by Rich, but our messages are stored on a hard drive of one of his computers.
Simply put... At some point, the drive will become full and a larger drive (or second drive) would need to be added.

AnnaDMartinez · Post by **AnnaDMartinez** » Sun Dec 22, 2002 4:58 pm

That must be one mother of a hard drive!

avanutria · Post by **avanutria** » Sun Dec 22, 2002 9:09 pm

It's mostly text, though, and text isn't that big. As an indication of how much space text takes, if anyone knows the size of the fourth Harry Potter book, which is like 800 pages or something, a text file of that book is roughly one megabyte in size. Not very big in today's hard drive scales, which can be 120 gigabytes. (a gigabyte is 1,000 megabytes.)

(Don't ask how I know about the Potter text file. I'm not answering.

)

Cees · Post by **Cees** » Mon Dec 23, 2002 9:46 am

On 2002-12-22 22:09, avanutria wrote:
As an indication of how much space text takes, if anyone knows the size of the fourth Harry Potter book [...]

It's either 734 or 737 pages, something like that, can't remember which

TelegramSam · Post by **TelegramSam** » Mon Dec 23, 2002 12:01 pm

let's just say that it's only a few scant pages short of James Joyce's Ulysses...

Aodhan · Post by **Aodhan** » Mon Dec 23, 2002 12:39 pm

On 2002-12-22 06:09, amar wrote:
A question to the computer-knowledgeables out there. This page expands daily, is there a limit, physically, metaphysically?

Only to the size of the hard drive.

Basically, the page itself is the same size. All messages are stored in a database, and retrieved by the use of reference numbers. (When you look at a URL while reading a post, you'll see the topic, forum numbers etc contained in it.)

As far as what size is relative to computers, this is about the best progression I've come up with to describe it.

1 byte = 1 letter (Such as A)
1 kilobyte (1k) = about 1 printed page (1000 letters/blank spaces, about 200 average words).
1 megabyte (1000 kilobytes, 1M) = 1000 pages of typewritten text (Although files get larger than this due to formatting, etc)

A floppy disk is 1.44M, or about 1,440 pages.

1 Gigabyte (1G) = 1000 Megabytes.

And, you can keep on going up into Terabytes, etc. but that's a little farther than we need...

Aodhan

amar · Post by **amar** » Mon Dec 23, 2002 6:53 pm

thank you for all your clear and not so clear answers.