Talk:LOC

RFV

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LOC Computing sense.

Rfv-sense for the computing entry. Def given is - (computing) A unit of data equal to 20 TB, the approximate equivalent of the contents of the US Library Of Congress. It's listed as an initialism, but no explanation of what the letters mean.--Dmol 10:30, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

TB almost certainly = terabyte. As for (deprecated template usage) LOC, it probably stands for (deprecated template usage) Library Of Congress. This unit of data volume is very probably restricted in its use to humorous contexts, if it is used at all. — Raifʻhār Doremítzwr ~ (U · T · C) ~ 21:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Is 20 TB an established value for this? I think it was an LOC blog post that pointed out that that number isn't even wrong, since the LOC stores mostly analog data. Just counting the roughly 7 million books, 20 TB gives you 3 MB a book, which is on the high side for just text but very low for including images, like for an HTML version. Archive.org has scans of many books, and a seventh a GB is on the small side for raw scans, which would make the LOC have at least 1,000 TB, books alone.

Okay, that was a little off-topic. But "LOC of data" turns up nothing in Google Books and one quasi-relevant hit in Google Groups, which isn't on Usenet. If cited, I'd like to see in the cites some evidence that it means specifically 20 TB; the Slashdot.org discussion hit used it that way (though one responder objected), but the forums.bitcoin.org use didn't.--Prosfilaes 22:59, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually, the term LOC, as a unit of data capacity, was coined by Michael Dertouzos (MIT). The definition is given in Cosmic rays: essays in science and technology from the Royal Institution: "The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world and he estimated that all the textual data it contains to be about 100 terabytes, which corresponds to about 200 million books. This is 1 LOC and it is about the same as the storage needed for all the 100 billion personal photographs probably taken world-wide last year. It would probably take about 10 000 LOCs to store everything ever written, printed, composed, and performed in all the cultures on earth (...)"

As for the exact value of one LOC, despite Michael Dertouzos defines it as 100 TB, there doesn't seem to be a consensus in popular culture. w:Library of Congress#Using the Library says 10 TB (no source though), some on Slashdot say 10 TB or 20 TB, David G. Luenberger in Information science says 20 TB, etc. Personnaly, I would stick to the original definition of 100 TB.

IMO, this sense of LOC should also be tagged as {{dated}} because it was mostly of use 15 years ago when terabyte was an uncommon unit and did not express anything to the layman (so is petabyte today). At that time, the standard hard disk capacity used to top at a couple of gigabytes. Today, the TB has become a common unit and the LOC is almost only used humorously on Slashdot — Xavier, 11:24, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

RFV-failed. - -sche (discuss) 00:51, 11 March 2012 (UTC)