[WikiEN-l] Hypothetical print version (was Paper is not paper)

Wed Oct 5 00:26:54 UTC 2005

On 5 Oct 2005, at 01:11, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> There will eventually be a print version of a subset of Wikipedia.  
> Most
> likely a very small subset of it. As for whether or not there  
> should be one,
> I'm actually not so sure of it. Yeah, Jimbo wants to hand them out  
> to people
> in third world countries, but maybe it'll be possible, by the time  
> the print
> version is ready, to just include the digital version on the $100  
> laptops
> being handed out by that MIT project (http:// 
> laptop.media.mit.edu/). I guess
> you could argue that dead trees are less expensive, but are they  
> really that
> much less expensive? How much would it cost just to print a single  
> volume
> 1200 page encyclopedia? I'm thinking $50 or so in heavy bulk, but  
> maybe I
> have no clue what I'm talking about. Then add in the distribution  
> costs, and
> maybe we'd be better off just hitching a ride on a laptop.
>
> Incidently, has someone from Wikimedia talked to the MIT group about
> including Wikipedia on the laptops? They'd be kind of crazy not to  
> - I think
> the two projects fit together perfectly.

The small print for the MIT laptop saying 1GB means not 1GB RAM but  
1GB storage.
No space for wikipedia. They believe that P2P comms will be enough to  
get stuff
and so it wont have a hard drive, and I no DVD either. Remember it is
a media lab project, so has to be slightly impractical in some way.

Justinc