Caltrops - Enter the Matrix





	[quote name="Ray of Light"]For a while, I considered making an oink-torrent named "all good music, ever," a sort of Ratio Death Star. I think your estimate is a little low, but close to the right answer. Bear in mind that the normal unit of downloaded music is one album, so you're bound to get stuck with SOME dud tracks unless you go cull them out. I also assumed the percentage of released music which is good remains constant, and that each iteration of technology doubles the number of releases. Taking Pitchfork's Best of 2005 as a starting point, it's 50 albums and 4GB. It's all pretty good, but there's more good music from 2005 than just that list. I think we could construct an 8GB compilation from last year which would all be good, and that we could do the same for every year of the file-trading age. Working backwards: <table><tr><td><font color=white>pervasive p2p age, 2000-05</font></td><td><font color=white>8GB x5 = 40</font></td></tr><tr><td><font color=white>cheap CD / fledgling p2p age, 1995-99</font></td><td><font color=white>4GB x5 = 20</font></td></tr><tr><td><font color=white>expensive CD age, 1985-94</font></td><td><font color=white>2GB x10 = 20</font></td></tr><tr><td><font color=white>format proliferation age, 1970-84</font></td><td><font color=white>1GB x20 = 20</font></td></tr><tr><td><font color=white>competent production of vinyl age, 1955-69</font></td><td><font color=white>0.5GB x15 = 7.5</font></td></tr><tr><td><font color=white>incompetent vinyl age, 1930-54</font></td><td><font color=white>0.25GB x25 = 7</font></td></tr><tr><td><font color=white>??, 1880-1929</font></td><td><font color=white>0.1GB x50 = 5</font></td></tr></table> ... for a total of <b>120GB</b>. You still have to download more than 120GB to get this 120GB, though, for the same reason that the trucks at a gold mine are much bigger than all the gold produced by that mine. [/quote]