87GB On DVD-Sized Media 354
BostonMACOSX points to this report in the Detroit News that says, in part, "Boston College researchers have found a way to store about 19 times more data on a disk than a common DVD can hold, using optical media made with common products, the December issue of Nature Materials reports." And it's a mix of high and low tech: the disk is formed of "an epoxy glue sold at hardware stores and a glass-like substance," but written with a currently expensive laser.
What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? (Score:4, Insightful)
When I see someone manufacturing it, I'll be impressed, but until then.....
oh yeah- don't forget- just how long would it take to back this up (should it ever become RW?) At SCSI 120mb/sec..... right, you get the picture.
Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we may be doomed to never have large capacity disposable/cheap removable media.
Cool and all, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd like to see the responce of the AF when the RIAA tries to tell them no
Dust (Score:4, Insightful)
Bring back caddys?
Re:So... (Score:2, Insightful)
I need something like this. (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of the uses for this though. Being able to back up all of my servers to a single disc without compressing anything. That would be a great time saver. And then there are the not-so-legal-but-who-cares-we're-all-going-to-die- eventually-anyway uses... like storing all the episodes of shows that aren't released on dvd in the US (Family Guy for one).
But how much would they cost per disc and how much for the burner? While dvd burners are getting pretty cheap now, the media still isn't as cheap as I would like it.
Too bad about the expensive laser (Score:5, Insightful)
On another topic, I hate shit like:
"...equal to 87,000 paperback books."
My mother in law knows what a gigabyte is. I think it's safe to stop with the point-of-reference crap.
Too many "said"s (Score:2, Insightful)
Whatever happened to declared, spoke of, pronounced, noted, claimed, admitted, told, pointed out... ??
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, you'd still pay $27, but you could watch the whole movie without changing discs.
Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. We will, because we can. It's human nature. It's why the RIAA is destined to fail to control all digital entertainment media in the same way that the suffragettes (sp ?) eventually got the vote. It makes sense, most people want it, and therefore it will happen.
I have a similar theory that I apply to my everyday working life (software development projects); given enough time, common sense will prevail.
Re:Question (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Suggestion. (Score:2, Insightful)
87,000,000,000 / 87,000 =! 87,000,000
87,000,000,000 / 87,000 = 1,000,000
Not only are
Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, this is just silly. The RIAA is not omnipotent. They cannot stop DVD-R's from being produced just because it has the capability to store a movie, nor can they stop Hard Disks from being produced, for the same reason.
The RIAA/MPAA is pissed because there are applications out there whose main use (not necessarily intended, but main use) is distributing copyrighted material illegally. They won't sue dell for shipping computers with ethernet connections, just because they facilitate downloading music. Press the pause button on the conspiracy theories.
When the tech industry (Score:5, Insightful)
When the Tech Industry creates its own, well funded PAC a la the NRA and starts outbribing the Hollywood Cartels in Washington. The tech industry is orders of magnitude larger than the consumer electronics industry, which in turn is an order of magnitude larger than Hollywood and the Recording industry put together.
Thanks for bringing it up (Score:5, Insightful)
However anyone that's worked with flourescent compounds knows that eventually they will bleach. I have a strong suspicion that this may have been what killed c-3d, and it's possible it may prove to be an intractable problem with this new tech as well, although they say it doesn't degrade. We shall see.
(For the record, I think c-3d's FMCs - a card-sized non-rotating version of FMDs - were their best idea. Exposed disks are too easily damaged and distinctly kid-unfriendly, and the normal sized disk is too large to carry in a pocket. CDs and DVDs got this very, very wrong.)
Useless for recording applications (Score:5, Insightful)
So what do these guys do? They decide to reinvent the recording medium, only their medium is inferior because it can't be stamped. And that means their discs can't be mass-produced. To top it all off, they use a laser that costs $100,000, or 50X that of the Blu-ray laser.
These guys have a product that:
1) Has lower storage capacity than Blu-ray
2) Costs 50X more than Blu-ray
3) Uses an inferior recording medium compared to Blu-ray
It might be kinda nifty that they used common materials, but that fact that those materials are inferior is probably why CD's and DVD's aren't made with common materials now! It reminds me of the
Is anyone else tired of hearing about new formats? (Score:4, Insightful)
First, for the lesser informed, it sends a wave of "oh shit, that DVD player I just bought is already obsolete!". This is of course absurd.
Second, there's always people who don't really know what they're talking about who then go and preach the aforementioned "DVD will be obsolete soon!" bit. Somehow these huckleberries always seek me out - probably because I'm a techie. Perhaps they want to impress me, perhaps they want to pretend they're the first to know something, perhaps they want to make me feel stupid for buying so many DVD's. No amount of evidence seems to convince these people that just because something brand new has been produced in a lab doesn't mean it will be on the market next week. They especially hate it when they tell you "HDTV is the next big thing!" and you point out that this has been the situation since 1989.
But the worst part is that there's a certian chunk of the population that hasn't bought into Technology X and go on to say "yeah, I'd get DVD but I'm going to wait for the next format." They don't realize it takes decades for formats to get formalized and introduced to market - and then only if there's a killer app neccessary. The Compact Disc came out and worked since the music industry was ready for a new format. Witness how the VideoCD didn't go anywhere outside of Asia - VHS was king (killed Laserdisc even) and only with the advent of the fast Internet, big hard drives and CD burners did VideoCD take off, and mostly due to piracy. DVD only worked since they decided the killer app was video, namely movies. Notice how DVD-Audio is pretty much going unnoticed. The only format I see coming along in the near future is whatever format supports HDTV - fortunately the DVD Forum has decided that the HDTV DVD format will be reverse compatible.
Just because something better comes along doesn't mean that everything will be tossed out in favor of it. I'm 25 and programming a 1985 mainframe in COBOL for a living, so I can vouch for this line of reasoning. However, much like people tend to think the latest (whatever) is always the best, they tend to think that the latest technology is about to obliterate whatever is currently out there and they're the first to know.
And don't even get me started on those 13-year olds griping that their copy of Windows.NET Server 2003 RC1 won't run Counter-Strike...
Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
>format that I could watch when I want.
You just made me realize something: Where is the line between what will and will not be tolerated by the consumers? We seem to be willing to accept the forced (effectively forced, for most viewers, at least) exposure to ads in the intro to dvd movies, the FBI stuff, trailers, and commercials. Would we take a full minute of this? How about a full five minutes? At what threshold would we return to the video store for a refund and/or to cancel our club membership?
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
So if you want to get technical and stay within the law, there is such thing as "non-fast-forwardable" content on dvd's. While I'm aware that mod-chips exist for the dvd players that I own, and that I can use various software applications on my computers to view the dvd's in any manner I choose, I was talking about the movie studios attempting to force us to watch previews, copyright notices, etc.
Re:When will consumers see this technology? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not an expert of tape drives, but everything I've looked up is also costly. Mostly in the fact that anything that holds a decent amount of data, is a lot of $$$ per tape.
I checked out DABS but they didn't show pictures or descriptions of any of their products. I couldn't find the source you were looking at. However, I took a guess, and found one in that price range. The 50GB tapes were GBP 46 each. This comes to GBP 644. That comes to $1,016.00 !!!
Yikes.
CD-R storage is only $7.14 per 50GB.
(GBP 4.50)
Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? (Score:4, Insightful)
But when DVD-R hit the consumer marketspace at 2.4X it was the same speed as CD-R 20X (3 MB/sec)
Heh, you're right about a number game though, even at 3MB/sec that's 8 hours to burn an 87GB disc.
Re:Cool and all, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep. And 640k should be enough for anyone.
Re:So... (Score:3, Insightful)
No thanks. Not that i am against linux - or mplayer, I just want to plop it in the tray and sit at my couch and wathc the movie. My computer room is upstairs and far away from my single TV. and I am dont want a machine wasted on being my DVD player when i have a dvd playter already thankyouverymuch.
Re:pondering... (Score:1, Insightful)
Encrypted data is the same size as unencrypted data. You need to store the keys as well, but there's no need to use a whole set of independent symmetric keys when there's only one real secret, and the size of even a table of huge 256-bit symmetric keys (say, Twofish) encrypted with 16384-bit RSA (ridiculous overkill) for 1000 different manufacturers would be 2MB, or about three frames of DVD-bitrate video.
Early players used hardware assist because their CPUs were not fast enough to decode MPEG. They used hardware CSS assist as well, for the same reason, and there is no reason that the hardware assist could not have implemented a tested, believed strong algorithm with a similar or lesser gate count, like (for example) XTEA.
I don't know why CSS was so weak, but it wasn't space, and it wasn't CPU power.
High Tech? (Score:3, Insightful)
Can someone explain the difference between high tech and low tech? There's only one technology. High technology and low technology? Technolody is technology.
It is like the episode from Seinfeld: A big coincidence? No. Just a coincidence. There are no levels of coincidence. Just a coincidence.
Re:High Tech? (Score:2, Insightful)
You buy stuff from the high tech planets, and sell it to the low tech ones, thus making a nice profit along the way. Just watch out for those damn cat-people-things.