Somewhere in Ptolemy's gate (I think) they (bart (I think)) mention that the apocrypha is the remains of Ptolemys Work after most of it burned.... :(

I just Wonder ^o) : Did Ptolemys cousin burn it? Did someone else do it? Was it an accident? :-/ What do you think??

I think, Ptolemy's cousin did it.... :P

Anyone??

Hm...last time I checked, if I recall correctly, the apocrypta was the remain of Ptolemy's works that survived the fire that burned down the library of Alexandria.

I might have to check on that again, though.

You are probably right (didn't have time to check the books correctly )

But still;
Who do you think burned Down the library, I still think Ptolemy's cousin could have done it.....

The exact time of the burning of the Library of Alexandria is disputed, but it wasn't until during or after the Roman invasion, so wouldn't have been Ptolemy's cousin.

Oh okay.... heh gave it a shot.... :$

I would so love to gert a peek at those ancient scrolls, all that vast knowledge that they had...burned to the ground! :(

It had the same effect like if computers suddenly would stop working, imagine that

People would Loose so much knowlegde!! :unsure: :blink:

I wonder if there still *is* any innovative information in print

Hmmmm... may be a good time for some research!

Yes, let's research printed information on the internet :P

:D

But seriously, if all the information on computers was on print, we'd have to move to the moon.

evillaugh wrote:But seriously, if all the information on computers was on print, we'd have to move to the moon.

By a rough estimate, if we printed out all information accessible to the web at this point (which is claimed to be 4 zettabytes, though I have no idea how accurate an estimate that is) in a reasonably small font on double-sided paper, it would cover the land surface of the earth to a depth of about a centimetre.

...It's scary, how you know the exact statistics...

evillaugh wrote:...It's scary, how you know the exact statistics...

I don't. I looked up the total storage estimate and the land surface area of the Earth, measured the stack of printer paper by my desk, and calculated from there.

Anddddd quite a lot of it would be entirely useless information. :P

I strongly suggest getting a hobby, sent. You know, something nice, like collecting stamps or reading an actual novel.

It took me a couple of minutes. Being able to figure out how to approach weird problems and find the data to work them out is a useful skill, and one of the reasons I have an actual job.
I read novels too. =p

How many countries can we submerge with cabbagety fanfiction? You make use Stugeon's Law as one of your assumptions but it does not apply to anything based on the works of Jonathan Stroud.

Luciene wrote:How many countries can we submerge with cabbagety fanfiction? You make use Stugeon's Law as one of your assumptions but it does not apply to anything based on the works of Jonathan Stroud.

This turns out to be extremely difficult to estimate. Accurate stats on the number of works on ff.net alone are hard to come by. This blog post finds a total of ~3.3 million stories in June 2010, and this cites 400k in November 2002. This means the count has doubled about three times in eight years, or once every ~2.7 years. Extrapolating, we can estimate maybe 8 million stories currently.

This blog post provides some much more detailed stats about a different but smaller site, with a total of about 1 million stories. This also provides word count stats, and finds the average falls very strongly into the 1000-5000 word category. Let's assume, for lack of better data, that that applies to ff.net as well.

Let's further assume that these two sites account for 50% of the total fanfics on the internet. This is a figure I entirely made up, but I can't find anything better, and it seems at least plausible that the biggest couple of sites should account for most fanfiction.

There's little point applying Sturgeon's Law at this point because our numbers are so fuzzy anyway, but let's fold that into the 50% estimate and say there are 15 million bad fanfictions on the internet at this point, averaging 4000 words each. This gives us 60 billion total words of bad fanfiction. At about 600 words per page in a reasonable font, we get 100 million pages.

These occupy a total volume of a fairly small 374 cubic metres, or about enough to cover the Vatican to a depth of about a millimetre. Not particularly impressive, although enough to keep the Pope horrified for a fairly significant length of time.