EriktheGreen's Journal: Rainbow data storage on paper

I ran across an older article on Slashdot, about how a
"new" method for data storage on paper that could store 250GB per page was being researched, and then I read all the reasons and calculations in the thread why it must be a hoax.

The thing that stood out for me about all of them was that all the calculations on why it wouldn't work assumed bit wise storage.

I had the thought that I can think of at least one way for 250GB to be
"stored" on an A4 page... tell me why this wouldn't work (other than that it's impractical)

1) Develop an "index" containing all possible patterns for 256GB of data to take

2) Number the potential iterations of data 1..N

3) Print in base 10 on the A4 paper the index specifying the number of the iteration which is "stored" on that page.

4) To retrieve the data, look up the correct permutation of data in the index :)

Yeah, I know it's not actually storing data. But it was amusing to type .