256GB Geometrically Encoded Paper Storage Device

jrieth50 noted that a method of using geometric shapes combined with color to store up to 256GB of data on a sheet of paper or plastic. The article says "Files such as text, images, sounds and video clips are encoded in 'rainbow format' as colored circles, triangles, squares and so on, and printed as dense graphics on paper at a density of 2.7GB per square inch. The paper can then be read through a specially developed scanner and the contents decoded into their original digital format and viewed or played."

Robustness & Feasibility

[eldavojohn]

The Rainbow technology is feasible because printed text, readable by the human eye is a very wasteful use of the potential capacity of paper to store data.

And I'm sure this "Rainbow Technology" is also very wasteful if you would devise a way to encode data on electrons & lay them on the sheet of paper and then read them. The obvious problem being that just exposing the paper to the natural elements would probably render some of the data useless. Now I know that compact disc drives in computers use a form of error correcting codes (I can't recall if it's cyclic redundancy checks or some other form of parity) and I assume that the scheme of this paper technology uses the same (most likely at the cost of a fraction of space). Judging by the word 'rainbow' I'm guessing it uses colorized shapes to encode the data which is a novel idea but what quality must the paper & ink be? Can the paper in my printer be used to encode this data?

My question would be how much wear & tear can a sample of this medium stand before it is rendered unreadable? I would highly doubt one would be able to fold it--however it would be interesting to see whether creating a diagonal read/write scheme would protect from vertical & horizontal folds with the proper ECC. I think the plastic sheets could potentially be as robust as discs but would you be able to bend them? I doubt it though if they allowed it, it'd probably end up being more expensive than a disc.

Interesting technology but I'd sure like to hear a lot more of the details of how it works & how it performs before I make a solid judgment on its feasibility.

Re:Robustness & Feasibility

[Zadaz]

QR Codes [wikipedia.org] are not as sophisticated, but can reconstruct the original data when 30% image is missing or distorted. Since these guys are obviously pretty clever, I can't imagine this feature would be overlooked.

Related prior art

[msobkow]

I believe it was "Dr. Dobb's Journal" that used to publish code that could be scanned, sort of a variant on barcodes.

Printed at the higher resolutions available to printers and scanners 15-20 years later, how much data could you store using that encoding format on paper? We've gone from about 100dpi to 600-1200, which actually means at least 36 times the data storage per square inch.

I fail to see how a binary pixel can fail to take less space than a printed geometric shape. You can squirt an ink dot

Re:

[iocat]

You're thinking of the Cauzin Softstrip [tripod.com]. It was basically just 2D barcodes. It totally worked though; my computer teacher in middle school had one and it worked well.

If you assume an 8.5 x 10 inch sheet of paper (85 square inches), 300 x 300 dpi x 256 colors, you end up with 1.95 billion bits of info you can put on a page. Divided by 8 (to get bytes), you end up with something like 244GB of potential info. But you'll need to have some good error correction and registration. if you look at the original link

Re:

[watercanhydrate]

Rather than multiplying by 256 colors/dot, I think you should be multiplying by 8 bits/dot (same as 256 colors). Also, 1,800,000 bytes is a MB, not a GB. So it really should look something like this: 300 dot/in * 300 dot/in * 8 bits/dot * 8.5 in * 11 in = 67,320,000 bits per page = 8,415,000 MB

Re:

[pe1chl]

You cannot encode 256 bits in a single dot, and then reliably read back the result from the paper.
You would need 2^256 different colors, reliably detectable. This is impossible.

Re:

[mysticgoat]

Thanks for the link to weierstrass' Implicity blog [blogspot.com]. His diagram of the 102 unique two-color patterns is very useful in this context.

So 102 patterns using 2 colors multiplied by the number of combinations of two colors that can be drawn without replacement from a palette of 256 colors... it has been a while since I've worked combinations but I know how to use Google as a brain prosthesis:

Google this, guys: "256 choose 2" yields 32,640 unique two-color schemes.

So 32,640 * 102 patterns = 3,329,280 possib

Re:Robustness & Feasibility

[Yvanhoe]

We can imagine to protect the paper in some way. After all, hard drives have to be stored in a metallic case to work correctly. That brings me to another question : Considering a feasible protection, how long do the data stay on the medium ? How many read errors per Gb ? how many write errors ? That is the real problem with data storage.

Re:Robustness & Feasibility

[LindseyJ]

People have been using paper to store their porn long before the web was here.

Re:Robustness & Feasibility

[JazzLad]

You think a /. reader's 5 year collection of porn would fit on 256GB?

You must be new here.

Re:

[kimvette]

Resolving 16 bits of color for a typical four-color (CMYK) laser printer or even a digital press won't improve things, because you always have exactly four colors plus the medium color (most typically white). Increasing color depth can improve with dye sublimation and similar technologies, but the ink and paper quality (especially absorption rate) need to be strictly controlled.

for completeness

[weierstrass]

and to save you from having to read the whole discussion, all estimates from below at the time of posting as to the maximum amount of information that can be stored on a sheet of either A4 or 8.5"x11" paper in this way:

2 GB, 244 GB, 7.6MB, 22MB,03GB, 765KB, 1.360006 million bits, 244,800,000 bytes, 8,415,000 MB, 15,000,000 bytes, 578MB, 1540.83 MB, 403MB, 9GB, 140MB, 280MB, 87,925,612 bytes, 256 MByte, 1.7 trillion bytes, 26 Megabytes, 20196 Mbit, 3 Million Gigabytes, 68 megabytes, 64K, 30 Mb, 32Mb, 8.2Gb,

Cool...

[tinrobot]

Now it's possible to fold up 256MB worth of data and fly it across the room.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

This could be the dawn of a new era in wireless networking...

Re:

[ScrewMaster]

Nah ... just an improvement in the paperairplanenet.

Re:

[stunt_penguin]

More of a seekernet than a sneakernet, then.

Re:

[h4rm0ny]

Safer, yes. Funnier... depends on your colleagues, I guess. ;)

Must be a very good scanner.

[Utopia]

I would love to know which scanner has the ability to scan with such high fidelity.

Re:

[aplusjimages]

It's the $10,000 scanner not available to consumers yet.

Not a big deal

[ImaLamer]

It's just Hollerith cards all over again.

Scam...

[Anonymous Coward]

according to this Indian blogger [blogspot.com].

Re:Scam...

[An Onerous Coward]

Okay, time to throw out my calculation. As someone else pointed out [slashdot.org]:

Each dot is going to be either cyan, magenta, yellow, or black. Laser and injket printers produce multicolour output by dithering, not by mixing inks, and the "dpi" rating of the printer refers to the dots used when dithering, not to the equivalent of screen pixels.

So instead of multiplying by 256, you have to multiply by 4. Result: about 140MB.

Another approach to analyzing the claim: For a given dpi resolution, how many variations of a single dot must your system be able to produce and distinguish? I get 256 GB / 302940000 dots, or 907 gradiations. Instead, we have four available.

I'm split between "scam" and "incompetent." But believing he may have actually done what he claimed is no longer an option for me.

Re:

[Jott42]

You mess up in more than one way: 16 million colours is by 24 bits, or 3*8, not 256^3. The same mistake goes for a lot of the calculations in the replies on this page. If we have a paper of size 8.5 x 11 inch, a resolution of 300 dpi, and a colour depth of 24 bts (giving 16.8 million colours, we get a total information content of: 8.5 x 11 x 300 x 300 x 24 = 20196Mbit. Nothing more, nothing less. Shapes etc. is forms of redundancy, or error correcing codes, and reduces the amount of information carried, as

Scam?

[anandpur]

http://itsoup.blogspot.com/2006/11/scam-of-indian- student-developing.html [blogspot.com]
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Scam_of_Indian_stude nt_developing_technology_to_store_450_GB_on_paper [digg.com]

maybe not scam?

[goombah99]

The blogs proclaiming this to be a scam seem pretty feeble reasoning. But it's not too hard to see if the numbers add up themselves. First let's suppose we have a very fine color printer and a very fine color scanner that can print at say 4096 DPI in RGB with 24 bits of color. And we'll consider an 8x11 sheet of paper:
4096*4096*256*256*256*8*11

this is 24 Million Giga Bits, or 3 Million Gigabytes.
Now he's going to have to redundantly encode this in some error correcting way since paper and color resolution

Re:

[SQL Error]

Sorry, but you have combinatorial math in there where it doesn't apply. Yes, 24 bits gives you 256*256*256 colours, but it's still 24 bits.

The appropriate calculation is 4096*4096*24*8*11, so you over-estimated the capacity by a factor of 700,000 or so.

Re:

[goombah99]

oopsie you're right! but that's still multi-gigabyte capacity. As for the other comments about it taking more than one dot to make an image pixel, they don't understand that I'm computing the maximum data capacity not the image reproduction capacity. And the calculation was supposed to be the ideal one not one considering imperfections.

Now if we were to assume that he could get an extra factor of 256 somewhere, like for example he had 48 Bit color depth, used 6 color inks, and could get 4 times as many p

Re:maybe not scam?

[Yartrebo]

Can you really print 4,096 dots per linear inch on paper and still be able to read each individual dot? My guess is that beyond 300 dpi or so bleeding becomes a major issue and somewhere beyond that the grain size of paper becomes an issue.

Also, can you really have 256 distinguishable color levels on a piece of paper - especially considering that paper is not a uniform color on the micro-scale (it's made up of short strands of cellulose)?

Even if all these problems can be overcome, there is the limiting factor of diffraction, which will limit any optical system (paper or otherwise) to a data density of about 1/wavelength^2, which is roughly the density of a DVD.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

let's suppose we have a very fine color printer and a very fine color scanner that can print at say 4096 DPI in RGB with 24 bits of color. And we'll consider an 8x11 sheet of paper:
4096*4096*256*256*256*8*11

Please, at least try to understand the technology involved. 4096 dpi means 4096 individual dots. Each of those dots is a single ink colour (typically one of cyan, magenta, yellow, or black), and it is the combination of those dots in dithering patterns which produces multicoloured output.

Your "4096 * 4

Re:

[gutnor]

He claims a density of 2.7 GB per square inch.

Professional printer can realiabily print with 300 dpi resolution. The extra dot in 4096 dpi are used only because more than one dot is required to create 1 visual dot : example you need at least 2 dots to create a pure red dot. Also there is diffusion and splatter, ...

Now with 300 "realiable" dpi, it still needs to encode (2700*1024*1024*8)/(300*300) values ( ie colors ) = 250 000 colors.
I suppose without using ultra calibrated hardware on highly consistent set

Re:

[SQL Error]

Sorry, you've fallen into the same trap. Not 250,000 colours (which sounds vaguely feasible), but 250,000 bits of colour resolution, which is of course impossible.

As you say, the true colour resolution of good printers is around 300dpi, so the caculation is really off by a factor of 100,000,000 or so.

Re:

[Bender_]

Yeah, and now lets assume realistic numbers.

Lets assume paper resolution is limited to 600dpi. The color fidelity that can be recognized accurately is probably less than 18bit.

So, somehow we end up with 600*600*18*8*11=570240000bits which is 68 megabytes. Subtracting 50% for error correction (probably still way too conservative) we end up with 35 megabytes of usable data.

Not impressive anymore? Well, add to that that an extremely expensive scanner is required to read the data.
Suddenly USB sticks look like a

So one picture says more

[Anonymous Coward]

than 6800000000 dwords?

This is brilliant

[TubeSteak]

The ultimate backup solution. With acid free paper & some stable color inks, you can back up your entire hard drive on a regular basis.

I wonder how... low the data density can go in terms of DPI & resolution and how that would compare to 2D barcodes.

BTW - TFA is really just a summary of this article
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4&section=0&article= 88962&d=18&m=11&y=2006 [arabnews.com]

Re:This is brilliant

[An Onerous Coward]

How much do you love the story's title? "Data can now be stored on paper!"

We truly live in the golden age of technology.

C'mon Slashdot

[jokell82]

I expect to see a story like this on Digg, but I thought Slashdot was better than this.

It's a scam [blogspot.com].

Re:

[Kuscheltier]

quote:I expect to see a story like this on Digg, but I thought Slashdot was better than this.

You must be new here!

Re:

[gutnor]

A 600 dpi printer is actually a 600 dpi vertical and 600 dpi horizontal
So it is (8.5 * 600) * ( 11 * 600) = 33 660 000.

So that's 30 Mb.

However to be able to store 250.000 Mb, it still need to be able to encode (and decode) something like 8000 variations on a single dot. A bit optimist I suppose.

Re:

[Metasquares]

"." is used as a thousands-separator in parts of Europe (confusingly, "," is also used as a decimal point!)

Re:

[BeerCat]

Let's see, a piece of "letter" paper is 8.5 x 11 inches. Let's see at 600 dpis inch that are 8.5 x 600 = 5100 dots
per line or 5100 x 11 = 56100 dots per page.

5100 dots per line is 5100 x 11 x 600 dots per page, which is 33,660,000 dots, or about 32Mb when done monochrome, or 8.2Gb when done in only 8 bit (256 shade) colour.

Re:

[Tim Browse]

5100 dots per line is 5100 x 11 x 600 dots per page, which is 33,660,000 dots, or about 32Mb when done monochrome, or 8.2Gb when done in only 8 bit (256 shade) colour.

Er... [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[ip_fired]

Your reasoning is not correct by a few orders of magnitude. 600 x 8.5 = 5100 600 x 11 = 6600 6600 x 5100 = 33660000 dots per page

Re:

[imroy]

AFAIK, a CMYK printer can still squirt multiple colours onto one point. Since it's pointless to mix with black, and mixing all three gives you a dark brown that's pretty close to black, that leaves eight reliable colours: white (no ink), cyan, magenta, yellow, red, green, blue, black. So that's basically three bits per dot. For a piece of 8.5x11" paper at 1440dpi, I figure only about 69MiB of storage. Not looking very plausible...

I tried this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wiped my ass on a blank sheet, scanned it in and was greeted with the Windows Vista login screen.

Re:

[sillybilly]

I was just looking for the toilet paper reference! One use is an awesome random seed generator for security applications! Everytime you wipe, first scan and read contents to update the seed, before you toss!

This looks like a lie

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

What does this bring that normal scanners can't ?

Let's see A4 - 256Gig. Let's say n different colors.

He'd need to store 256*1024*1024*1024*8 = 2199023255552 bits
on A4 = 210 mm x 297 mm = 62370 mm^2 = 2456 inch

That makes 895 367 775 bits per inch. To encode that you'd need 895 367 775 / log2(n) dots. Increasing the number of colors can buy you some leeway, but not that much.

The surface area of such a dot would be 1/30 000 000 th of a millimeter.

Where will you find paper that has surface flaws significantly smaller than that ? No matter what the encoding, you're still going to need it. So this is a scam, plain and simple.

Re:

[owlstead]

You guys don't get it, this storage facility is write-only, so there is no need for a scanner.

Re:

[BeerCat]

I think you are mostly there.

He'd need to store 256*1024*1024*1024*8 = 2199023255552 bits

A4 is, as you say 210mm x 297mm, which is 96.67 inch^2 (you forgot to divide by another 25.4)

So, 22,747,732,032 bits per inch^2 are needed. Now, even a lowly 300 dpi scanner would only need to differentiate 252,752 colours, which is achievable with 6 bits each for R,G and B.

Alternatively, a 600dpi scanner could do it with 63188 colours, which is less than 2^16.

In other words, I think it is physically possible, but the s

Flaw in your math

[benhocking]

You seem to have confused numbers with the bits required to store them.

So, 22,747,732,032 bits per inch^2 are needed. Now, even a lowly 300 dpi scanner would only need to differentiate 252,752 colours, which is achievable with 6 bits each for R,G and B.

A 300 dpi scanner with 6 bits each for R,G,B can only encode 300*300*(6+6+6)=1,620,000 bits per inch. At 600 dpi, you get 4 times as many bits. Also, keep in mind that (a) not all paper is created equally "white" which will diminish the required accurac

Re:This is a lie

[Panaqqa]

Okay, let's look at some math. First, calculate the number of bits that must be stored to reliably archive 256GB:

256*1024*1024*1024*8*(10/8) = 2.749 * 10^12 [allowing for 25% extra - error detection/correction]

Now, the area of a sheet of paper in mm^2:

210 mm * 297 mm = 6.237 * 10^4

Let's make an assumption: it would be tough for a scanner to correctly identify more than 256 colors (blues especially are problematic). So, going by a pixel based method, we can store 8 bits per pixel, so the number of pixels needed is:

2.749 * 10^12 / 8 = 3.436 * 10^11

Pixels per mm^2 will therefore be:

3.436 * 10^11 / 6.237 * 10^4 = 5.509 * 10^6

Taking the square root of this figure and inverting will give us the size of one side of a pixel in mm, so:

1 / (5.509 * 10^6)^.5 = 4.260 * 10^-4 mm = .426 micro meters = 426 nm

This is smaller than the wavelengths of some frequencies of visible light, therefore a large portion of the spectrum is gone in terms of colors that can be used. Eliminate these colors and you increase density yet again, requiring you eliminate more colours. By the time you get to monochromatic (black white), which you will, the size is smaller than the wavelength of ANY visible light.

So, for this storage density, either you are scanning in ultraviolet light (and printing using an appropriate ink) to get a small enough wavelength, or you have thrown out light all together and you are using an electron microscope as your scanner. (Note - ever see electron microscope images in color? Can't exist unless colorized).

Fairly clever hoax though - if they had stuck with, say, 16GB then it would not have edged into the impossible.

Re:

[ThePhilips]

No matter what the encoding, you're still going to need it. So this is a scam, plain and simple.

You forgot the one important component which embedded in the name of the RTFA's method: colors. The method uses colors and thus called "Rainbow format". Also it specifically used geometrical shapes - which introduce another angle to data representations. It's not about dots anymore - it's about shapes and colors.

Besides, somehow encodings used to reach megabyte wireless speeds are not surprising to you. (

Re:

[fatphil]

The entropy rate of arbitrary pixel values is higher than the entropy rate of related pixel values (such as shapes).

Therefore the obvious way gives a better information density.
Therefore comparing against the obvious way is *not* necessarily the behaviour of a jackass, but quite possibly the behaviour of someone who has a grasp of Information Theory.

Time for everyone to borrow Cover and Thomas from their local library, methinks.

FatPhil

Re:RTFA

[SQL Error]

You are an idiot because: You ignored the one and only thing he /did/ say, which was that he was doing something differently.

Bzzt.

Encoding data using dots is the most efficient method possible. He has to print the image somehow, and scan it back in again. No combination of triangles and circles can circumvent the resolution limit, which is what is being calculated here.

By showing that the claim exceeds all practical limits of optical resolution (and probably the absolute physical limits), we show that what we have is just another magical compression scam.

He says that he's "doing something differently"; we've proved that what he claims to be doing is impossible. End of story.

Re:RTFA

[Dun Malg]

You are an idiot because: You ignored the one and only thing he /did/ say, which was that he was doing something differently.

Bzzt.

Encoding data using dots is the most efficient method possible. He has to print the image somehow, and scan it back in again. No combination of triangles and circles can circumvent the resolution limit, which is what is being calculated here.

By showing that the claim exceeds all practical limits of optical resolution (and probably the absolute physical limits), we show that what we have is just another magical compression scam.

He says that he's "doing something differently"; we've proved that what he claims to be doing is impossible. End of story.

Indeed. For those not inclined to simple mathematics, here it is in a nutshell-
Assumptions (none of them unreasonable, all of them quite generous even):
1440dpi
8 bit color
8" x 10.5" printing area

Even assuming perfect readability, this resolution yields only 1.4GB per page. Talk of "shapes" is smoke and mirrors to obfuscate one of the cold hard facts of information theory: you cannot accurately represent all permutations of 8 bits of information if you've budgeted less than 8 bits. Compression schemes allow you to compress repetitive patterns is you know they're going to be there beforehand (e.g. an almost arbitrarily large number of only 1's or only 0's can be represented with run length encoding), but X bits of random data requires X bits of allocated space.

Re:

[Compuser]

Strictly speaking he could use many colors. The resonable width of color spectrum is around
1000 nm and good optical filters will give you a window of 2 nm bandpass, so assuming he used
500 wavelengths/colors he could store 700 Gb per page. Also, I am aware of prototype, in the lab
printers (by Canon) which do 9600 dpi (Google it), so pushing technology to its limits and
cost notwithstanding you could write 31 Tb on an A4 sheet. And I am pretty sure one can make
this work for not much more than a yearly budget o

Good flame, but bad argument.

[MrBoombasticfantasti]

Your parent poster made clear that the *theoretical* limits on pixel density prevent *any* encoding from storing this much data on a piece of paper. To me, that is a sound rebuttal of any claims of "new encoding" and such.

No matter *how* he does things differently, it is just not possible to get the required density.

But hey, you got to show your ignorance, that's not bad, eh?

Re:This looks like a lie

[kubalaa]

Your scheme doesn't work because triangles are not atomic; they are made out of lines, which are described in terms of endpoints, which have a finite resolution. For example, an inkjet printer would make a triangle by printing dots at some fixed resolution. A drafting machine or laser printer might be able to draw the triangle without resorting to dots, but the elements of the triangle can still only be positioned with finite accuracy.

Let's say that we're drawing very tiny triangles as close to our resolution limit as possible (which we must do if we want to fit a lot of them). Such a triangle might be, say, 3 x 3 resolution units, so a hollow, up-triangle might look like this:

010
101
111

But look: there are 2^9 (or 512) possible shapes that can be made in this grid -- so by using only 64 different triangles, we are actually underutilising our medium. It doesn't matter what technology you use, any shape other than a "dot" is itself made out of smaller units like "dots", so restricting our vocabulary to certain shapes (rather than arbitrary sequences of dots) will waste space.

Re:

[scribblej]

Oh, to have modpoints. As I was reading the gp post I was wondering what words I would use to explain his error. You've done a far better job than I would have - though I probably would I have begun along the lines of, "Listen, fool!" which usually just hurts my case. But is fun.

Okay, I'm probably past 20 seconds now. Someone with mod points, save the parent poster from obscurity, please!

Re:

[Dun Malg]

The way I understand it, a triangle can store 4 bits (pointing up, down, left, right). Then add colors (ROYGBIVK) to the equation, that's 8 bits. Now the triangle can hold a total of 32 bits (4x8)of info. What if the triangle is hollow/solid? That's now 32x2 =64 bits!. Squares are 2x8x2, circles are 1x8x2, line holds 32 (vert, horiz, slash, bkslash). See where this is going. This isn't something new. I look forward to seeing if they can make it practical.

No, it's a scam. You're missing the greater point. E

Archive format

[BeerCat]

If they can pull it off, it might be a good "Medium term" archive format (in other words, about 100 - 500 years), as there are many many books of those ages.

Given that the BBC's Domesday project [wikipedia.org] (data gathered in 1986) needed to be "rescued" by 2002 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2534391.stm ), then there are currently no reliable digital archive systems for long term storage.

On the other hand, the Rosetta Project look like they could get it licked for really long term storage (Example http:// [rosettaproject.org]

Re:

[Dunbal]

If they can pull it off, it might be a good "Medium term" archive format (in other words, about 100 - 500 years), as there are many many books of those ages.

      Plus you could always take some LSD (if you're into that sort of thing) and stare at your data for a few hours. Like, wow - man. Try doing THAT with a hard drive...

Re:

[Znork]

"then there are currently no reliable digital archive systems for long term storage."

Actually, there are reliable digital archive systems, you just need to get rid of the conceptual fallacy that 'archive' means some 'special' form of storage.

Consider the data you want 'archived' the same as stored live data and dont have that particular problem anymore. The problem for long term live data storage in that case merely becomes issues of migration, redundancy and maintenance (the issues one tries to ignore or d

Re:

[BeerCat]

OK, my bad on using a bit too much verbal shorthand.

The data medium matters for "store and forget about it", whereas "install new and copy old" means that every time the hardware is upgraded, the archived data is re-copied (which is presumably why there is still the oldest web page accessible, created back in 1996)

Spot on with the DRM comment, though. I wonder how long it will take people to realise that it turns data into random junk.

Re:

[Rallion]

If they can pull it off, it might be a good "Medium term" archive format (in other words, about 100 - 500 years), as there are many many books of those ages.

Except that in a book, if the color fades a little, we can still read it. If the paper gets folded, we can still read it. And so on.

So in our digital age...

[n1hilist]

Can we now say again, "Sorry, my dog ate my homework!" ?

Bullshit, complete bullshit

[terrencefw]

2.7GB per square inch would would require a linear data density of 152292 dpi. Neither my scanner nor my printer come within a hundredth of this. The main problem with the printer at such resolutions is bleeding of the inks into the paper. To form the different shapes several dots would be necessary, which would further decrease the effective resolution by an order of magnitude. For example, suppose a 3x3 grid was used to form each character, the article states that there are four different shapes used, yet that 3x3 grid could encode 512 different patterns. Realistically, at 600dpi (giving 360000 dots per square inch), with 3 ink colours (yielding 8 different colours) you would get 360000 bytes per square inch, or 33MB per A4 page - somewhat short of the 256GB promised. You'd also need to dedicate around 25% of the capacity for error correction. This is complete and utter bollocks.

Do The Numbers

[SQL Error]

2.7GB per square inch, eh?

Alright, that's 21.6 gigabits per square inch.

For the sake of argument, let's say that the printer and scanner can reliably print and scan colour at 24-bit fidelity (which is nonsense, but makes the numbers nice and tidy): 900 million pixels per square inch.

That's 30,000 dpi.

That means you'd have to print and scan pixels less than a micron across. In full colour.

I don't think so.

Re:Do The Numbers --- But do them right

[RhettLivingston]

24-bit fidelity would allow over 16 million colors. In fact, it appears to me that they are allowing for much less fidelity than that. Assuming a 1200dpi print capability (most modern dot matrix can do better than that, especially on the horizontal) and a 3x3 matrix for the shapes we get the following:

(1200 * 1200)/(3 * 3) = 160,000

160,000 * 4 shapes = 640,000

640,000 * (32 shades (6 bits) ** 3) = 20,971,520,000

Using some of the other print resolutions commonly available such as 1440 DPI or 2880 DPI could

Re:

[SQL Error]

No. You've made the same mistake as everyone else. Well, and a couple of other minor ones.

If you have 6 bits per colour (RGB), that's 18 bits per pixel. Not, as you calculated, 32,768. You would have us encode 4Kbytes per pixel.

YOU CANNOT COUNT THE COLOURS. YOU CAN ONLY COUNT THE BITS USED ENCODED THEREIN.

Re:

[SQL Error]

YOU CAN ONLY COUNT THE BITS USED ENCODED THEREIN.

Note: Some bits may be redundant...

(Darn that lameness filter!)

Re:

[RhettLivingston]

6 bits of color control per color allows for 32 shades of that color to be created. A 24 bit color printer produces 256 shades for each of 3 colors giving over 16 million colors.

Re:

[rmstar]

Yes, I wouldn't discount the idea in principle, even though I am quite confident that much of this story is a fake. Playing a movie from a self-built prototype implies quite a bit of bandwidth.

Re:

[SQL Error]

No.

I divided it by 24, because the entire calculation is in terms of bits. We have 24 bits per pixel. 2^24 possible colours, encoded as 24 bits. 24 colours would encode less than 5 bits.

What your calculation assumes is that we are storing two megabytes per pixel. I think you can see why this is impractical.

Re:

[SQL Error]

Please ignore my correction too. Though it does seem to be a common confusion.

hmmm...

[leehwtsohg]

600dpi times 8*11 inches makes 32M dots. To get 26GB you need 6500 bits per dot. This gives either an amazing resolution in color separation (as opposed to, say, 32 bits on a screen - maybe 700 different frequencies, each with 10bit separation), or much higher dot density - something like 50000dpi!

Full costs

[Captain Perspicuous]

From the linked article [arabnews.com] in the article:

Sainul says a CD or DVD consumes 16 grams of polycarbonate, a petroleum by-product. While a CD costs Rs.15 (SR1.25), his paper or plastic-made RVD will cost just about Rs.1.50 and has 131 times more storage capacity.

So, the paper is cheap - but how exactly do you print on it? Using dyes? Which costs how much? And are created from what?

Exactly.

Here's my guess:

[KokorHekkus]

I think they've introduced some kind of compression into their encoding.

Enter the usual mode of operations for people coming up with new "fantastic" compression algorithms. First the present what they've done. Then they're asked to do a demonstration on actual data supplied by someone else. After that they either disappear straight away or say it has a few glitches to iron out and they will be back soon with the sharp version and disappear.

Re:

[Zeinfeld]

There is an old saw in cryptography that anyone can create an encryption algorithm that they themselves cannot break. The point being that the value lies in creating an encryption algorithm that somebody else cannot break. The same excuse does not exist for compression algorithms. Just choose a random sample of wikipedia and see how well the scheme works.

I once heard

[cucucu]

I once heard that Linus has a the complete source code of the 2.6.0 kernel codified in a tattoo in his left buttock.
To distribute a copy he sits on a copying machine and presses the green button. Otherwise this would violate the GPL (or perhaps no, since he is the copyright owner?).

Stop posting stupid stories!

Ultimate compression?

[Flain]

This story is a hoax.

Lets just imagine for one second that its true.

Instead of printing this data onto paper, why not just store it loslessly in a bitmap file? After all, printers only have a certain DPI and a certain amount of colours. If you could take this bitmap file and somehow extract 256GB of data from it, that sure would be some cool magic.

Re:

[Loconut1389]

bingo- there's the real proof that this is a scam. most of the other arguments don't take into account a sort of compression that could be possible by using the shapes and whatnot to encode the data- so think of it on a bitmap- he claims you can store 256gb of data in a bitmap of only a few mb?

I wanted to be the first to post this, but you beat me to it, and I wanted to make sure someone saw your post which was at zero for some reason.

Bullshit ... here's why

[Dr. Zowie]

I don't know the exact dimensions of A4, but it's similar to 8.5"x11" (at . Suppose each spot of color stores 24 bits of information -- this is really a stretch, for reasons I'll get to below. Normal Xerox paper supports something like 300 dpi of resolution (that is the scale of the fibers of the paper). Then you can store at most 3*8.5*11*300*300 bytes of information on a piece of paper with color coding. That is just 0.025 GB.

Now, one might argue that nice photo paper could do better -- but it couldn'

Extraordinary claims

[NorbrookC]

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Carl Sagan

Someone should send this quote to all the people who bought into this claim, and reported it. Someone makes a claim, does a "demonstration", and it gets reported as an advance. Didn't anyone in the media (including Techworld), bother to do some background checks? Standard things like checking the credentials of the person making the claim, checking with experts in the field? Apparently not. That would be standard journalism practice, and

Good idea (for a scam)

[gone.fishing]

While I agree that 256GB on a sheet of paper is probably a scam, I find parts of the story to be an interesting idea. The barcode is ubiquitious but it stores a limited amount of information. Some specialty codes can store a great deal more information in a much smaller area in black and white (like the UPS scatter code). Adding color and using geometric shapes seems like it could increase density by a factor of three or better (just considering color).

This kind of encoding and scanning probably isn't for

I find the comments amusing.

[Khyber]

Hey guys, remember back in the day when we stored data on paper using HOLES?

I wouldn't be so quick to say this is a scam.

I've always defended Slashdot, but..

[Peter Cooper]

In this Digg generation, I've still kept reading Slashdot. The community here feels a lot nicer (surprising, I know!) and a lot more clued up. It's just a shame, then, that idiotic stories like this get posted. Usually I wouldn't whine about a bad story, but it was an hour or two before this story hit that I read the whole "why it's a scam" story on Digg.. so I read how stupid something is on Digg, only for it to be posted seriously here at Slashdot.

It's time for some sort of shakeup with editorial at Slashdot. Digg is imperfect and a lot of the users are idiots (I'd certainly say the average Slashdotter is significantly more intelligent and clued-up) but Slashdot is slow and has a poor editorial process. Could we, perhaps, strive to produce something with the perfect mix of the two? Fast news, the ability to vote, etc, but coupled with the superb Slashdot audience? It's all false hope, I'm sure, but I have more hope in people than technology.. so Slashdot is just the place to bring this up IMHO.

Re:

[Lord_Dweomer]

While I agree that Digg's quicker updates make it more "relevant", and that Slashdot indeed needs a shakeup with its editors there is a reason Slashdot is still superior. In the Digg comments for that story, most of the people quite obviously have no science to back up their responses. On Slashdot you will find some of the most thorough scientific debunking on the net. You see, not only do the intelligent people on Slashdot hate to see crap like this posted, but they also hate for people to read it and g

Re:

[jonbryce]

We can, if it is originally printed with OCR in mind. Bar codes are pretty reliable, and the bank's computers can read the numbers at the bottom of a cheque pretty reliably.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Bank's computers don't use OCR, they use MICR [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[jafiwam]

Unless he is doing something really novel, like relying on computational power elsewhere to do the compression.

I have seen articles about algorithms that allow you to calculate the value of any decimal place in Pi.

Plus, additional ones that allow you to prove (in a mathematical way) that any given string of characters you care to wish for are present in some location somewhere in the Pi decimal string.

SO the first point allows you to decompress knowing the beginning and ending values, and the second point a

Re:

[SQL Error]

Unless he is doing something really novel, like relying on computational power elsewhere to do the compression.

I have seen articles about algorithms that allow you to calculate the value of any decimal place in Pi.

Plus, additional ones that allow you to prove (in a mathematical way) that any given string of characters you care to wish for are present in some location somewhere in the Pi decimal string.

SO the first point allows you to decompress knowing the beginning and ending values, and the second point a

Re:

[AK Marc]

In other word, this person is claiming a way to compress arbitrary 250GB into 5GB, losslessly. That is impossible theoretically.

No, the person made no such claims. You have created a strawman. In a computer, when you read a "1" what is the chance that the following bit will be a "1"? I'm not sure what the real probablility is, but I'm guessing somewhere around 50%. Why? Because the bits are not dependent on the previous bits. However, this guy is using shapes and patterns. Perhaps there is some man

Re:

[Dcnjoe60]

On the other hand, wouldn't we also be able use the same magical trick also without the paper? I.e. digitally code all information not as bits but as the digital representation of the shapes? (i.e. achiving the Y/(Z*log2(x)) compression ratio without needing new printer/scanner devices)

Except that once you go digital, all of that information needs to be transfered into binary 0s and 1s. Now, if they every come up with computers that use something other than binary, it might work.

Re:

[joshtimmons]

The proofs are not meaningless. Remember that all of geometric shapes that they are using must be rendered to dots on the printer because that is what the printer prints and what the scanner scans. Calculating the number of dots available is a straightforward way to approach the problem because the number of dots that can be printed directly corresponds to the number of distinct states that the paper can have. It's a basic fact that you can't store more information in a medium than can be represented by

Re:Not Dots

[Dun Malg]

All the "proofs" in the comments that show this is a scam so far calculates how many dots can be printed/read from a piece of paper, and then corresponds each dot to a bit of data. Well, guess what. The whole point of this thing is he's NOT USING DOTS. This may very well be bullshit, but the "proofs" against it are meaningless.

No, you simply don't understand very basic information theory. Printers print with dots. Any shapes you make on the paper are made up of dots. A 3x3 grid of dots (9 bits) can be marked in 512 different combinations, only 10 of which make a squares(2), triangles(4), or lines(4) that can be easily differentiated. Using shapes does not increase the resolution, it limits it. You cannot represent 8 arbitrarily chosen bits of information if you've budgeted 7 bits of storage. At 1440dpi, 8 bit color, even assuming perfect readability, you cannot record more than 1.4GB of information, no matter what "shapes" you arrange for the dots to make.

Re:

[jesdynf]

You're right, to a point -- but if he's not using pixels, then what we're actually looking at is a Novel Compression Scheme.

This Novel Compression Scheme can apparently compress data equivalent to (I'm taking an answer from above, this isn't my math) 30000 dpi and render it in the space of 300 dpi. Were this true, then they could take a TIFF of that same image and still enjoy luxurious 100x compression without ever bothering to print something out.

Another way to say "Novel Compression Scheme" is "scam", and

Re:

[e**(i pi)-1]

P.S. The calculation has to be divided by 8 to get Bytes from Bits.
So, the upper bound is 72.5 Gig not 579 Gig

Your mistake is...

[Dr. Zowie]

... in confusing number of colors with number of bits. Each of your pixels doesn't store 255*255*255 bits, only one of 255*255*255 values (about 24 bits). You have overestimated the capacity by a small factor of 700,000.

Re:

[SQL Error]

Sorry, like the other poster, you have used combinatorial maths where it doesn't apply.

Replace the 255^3 with 24 to get the correct number of bits. That reduces the result by a factor of 700,000.

Oh, and 10^12 is tera, not giga.

So no, not theoretically possible.

An upper bound

[TerranFury]

Here's an upper bound as a check on your numbers (not restricting ourselves to a small dictionary of shapes). I'll give away the punchline: My numbers agree with yours, but 256 GB is not possible using printers and paper.

Assumptions: I use your printer linear resolution of 1200 dpi, and assume that adjacent pixels can be resolved at this resolution. I also assume that 256 different colors can be distinguished, as you do, and that the paper we are using has an area of 96.6763 inches^2, also as you do.

Calculation: With a linear resolution of 1200 dpi, one can fit 1440000 dots per square inch (Check!), and so 139213872 dots on a sheet of A4. With 256 colors we can store a number as large as (number_of_colors)^(number_of_dots). So:

256^139213872 = 2^N (where N is the equivalent number of bits)
(2^8)^(139213872) = 2^N (recognizing that 256 = 2^8)
2^(8*139213872) = 2^N
N = 8*139213872 (bits)
(and if we just divide by 8 again to get bytes...) => 139213872 bytes = 139 MB

Discussion: This theoretical upper bound is three orders of magnitude smaller than what is being claimed by the article: It is not possible to store 256 GB on a sheet of A4. My result does however agree with your result in that the inequality (my_result)>(your_result) holds, as it should. Ad it's really not too shabby: Accounting for 8-to-14 conversion for some error correction, we can store slightly under 80 MB in this way.

Different assumptions: If I instead use your 2000 dpi laser printer figure, then I can fit 4000000 dots per square inch, and so 386705200 dots on a sheet of A4 and so almost 386 MB. (Including error correction, one might store 220 MB.) Pretty impressive!

The Absurd: Right now, many modern semiconductor fabs have working 90 nm photolithographic processes. That means that the smallest feature size is 3.54330709×10^(-6) in, and the linear resolution is about 282222 dpi. If all we print is the first metal layer, then a dot can either be "with metal" or "without metal" -- that is, one bit. And on a silicon wafer with an area the same as that of a sheet of A4 paper, we can then fit 7700207603555 dots, or 962 GB. Hard drives are about halfway there!