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Digital Big Bang — 161 Exabytes In 2006
An anonymous reader tips us to an AP story on a recent study of how much data we are producing. IDC estimates that in 2006 we created, captured, and replicated 161 exabytes of digital information. The last time anyone tried to estimate global information volume, in 2003, researchers at UC Berkeley came up with 5 exabytes. (The current study tries to account for duplicating data — on the same assumptions as the 2003 study it would have come out at 40 exabytes.) By 2010, according to IDC, we will be producing far more data than we will have room to store, closing in on a zettabyte.
And half of that is porn...
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
Without Slashdot dupes.
I am a believer of momentum and curves.
The furry porn gets deleted first.
... times does the Library of Congress fit in that? Exabytes simply don't speak to me.
Alternatively, you can also answer in anime episodes, or mp3 files.
I left cat /dev/urandom
running
"You mortals are so obtuse." -Q
So the sum total of data has increased by a factor of more than 30 since 2003? I knew Brent Spiner was putting on weight, but damn.
Is that the size of the next MS OS?
Data that cannot be stored will not be produced because all data that is produced must be stored. Data that is not stored (for however short a time) is not really produced.
Then again the past no longer exists anyway, the future doesn't exist yet and the present has no duration- so maybe the data never existed anyway. Maybe you don't exist?!?! Awe man maybe I *~/ disappears in a puff of logic*
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Kudos to Augustine and Adams
Will my ISP rates increase to pay for all of that disk space?
No, of course not. Any law or regulation that the government comes up with doesn't have any hidden costs.
Costs be damned when you're The Decider and, much to the dismay of IT budgets everywhere, can change time itself on a whim!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So at this rate it won't be long before we will need real Exabyte tapes. I always thought the original ones should qualify for the award of world's most misleading name since their capacity was 500 million times less what their name suggested.
So DR Evil, after emerging from his suspended animation, would demand a computer big enough to store 100 Megabytes of evil data.
Exactly. My company is developing a new storage medium based on penistechnology. If you don't have enough space, just play with it and it gets bigger. We're close to commercial release, just one more critical bug to iron out: it tends to burst out data if you try to enlarge it for too long.