Re: Encyclopedia Galactica - Technical Details

On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Jeremy Sadler wrote:
> A few thoughts on the "Encyclopedia" idea:
> 1.3 Staff
> 
> The people who do the work

i'll volunteer, too. i can write decent english (government certified
and
published in respectable journals, of a sort), and i'm adept with html,
xml, java, and a bit with javascript, perl, unixes and other typical
hacker type things.

> I know this is not necessarily democratic, but speaking from
experience this
> sort of organisation will actually see the project come to life - a
full
> democracy probably wont.

absolutely true. i'd far rather be a follower than a leader, if only
because (a) it means i don't have to cope with looking after the other
idiots on the project :-) and (b) since everyone else (on the inet) will
be a leader, i'll have the real power (BWAHAHAHAHAHA!). sorry.

so, do we know who the leader is yet? could someone make an official
unofficial pronouncement and establish core addresses for things. come
on,
people, it's boot time!

> 4. HOSTING
> 
> With the amount of information that could be stored in this thing, the
space
> required could get very large.

if we write 100 pages of text, it'd be roughly 100 - 150 kB. graphics
would multiply this by ten. we will write more than 100, but probably
less
than 1000, so 10 MB is a good starting point.

xoom do 11 MB free web space, and the only advertising is by email to
the
account owner - we could set up an account on a free web mail thingie to
catch it.

> My suggestion: host it all over the place.

a distributed system. AAAAARRRRGH! no! centralise data, distribute
processing!

> As
> long as the look is consistent throughout, who cares if it's at one
place or
> not?

the person who has to look after it!

Tom