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Can Ten Billion Gigs Fit In A Test Tube?
Nipple writes: "Using Nanotechnology scientists ar Rice University have been able to store 10 billion gigabytes of data on physical storage small enough to fit into a small vial. The whole story appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer and
can be found here." No indication is given of which calculations for data density the tiny vial pictured would be able to hold that much, but the idea of all the books on my bookshelf (and yours, and yours, and yours ... in fact, all the books I ever want to read) stored inside the stylus of my 9-day-battery life, white-LED-backlit wireless anything box is pretty tantalizing.
I think some /.er did an analysis last year of how many bits of data are transmitted in a "Loving Spoonful". The chemists may have a way to go yet.
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Suppose if we use this as an alternative to SDRAM we might just be able to run Windows 2000. hehe.
Hm. Looks nice, but what are its access times? How much will it cost in mass-production, how reliable is it and how soon will it be on the market?
To compete in the portable sector (and I bet that such an invention will), it will have to be reasonably cheap, and appear before remote storage gets secure and cheap enough --- Why carry your bookshelf (however small or light) if it can be stolen at any time? Why not rely on somebody else to store your data in a secured disk(or vial)farm?
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echo [Address] | sed s/[-a-z]//g | tr A-Z a-z
So all you need is two of these vials and you've exceeded 64 bits of address space.
The actual idea of molecular storage (and computing for that matter) has been argued before, and even though it might be theoritically possible. How do we protect ourselves from data degredation ? After all, these are biological storages devices, they grow old You know.
Second: I don't believe it is as of yet (please correct me if i'm wrong) possible to effectively store and retrieve specific data in a vial of fluid, regardless of what they (the scientists at the lab in question) say...
There must be a reason why this theory has been around for so long, and not having made it into our homes yet.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
DON'T PANIC!
So, don't get too excited about it. It could as well take 25 years before they get this to work, if ever. There have been more "groundbreaking things" like this, and most of them never make it. If they do make it it would be very cool of course.
Um, nice bedtime story, but I've gotta know. . . what was in that vial? A urine sample? Imagine: your urine storing the library of congress! I bet you could store even more if you drank jolt the night before.
.but god, ignore the sensationalism, folks. Its gonna be a while.
I'm a big fan of molecular computing and the possibilities thereof. .
-s
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Don't worry, being eaten by a crocodile is just like going to sleep in a giant blender.
It seems like we really need to see either conventional RAM, CPU, or hard drives be replaced by some sort of new technology in the next 2 years for computing to jump to the next level; that and pervasive high speed networks. Can anyone really tell the difference between a 600Mhz Pentium, and a 1Ggz Pentium? Let's see the next level...
Check some articles about this in Wired and Scientific American. They are about Tour and Reed. It talks about their plan on developing molecular computers. Sounds like they are very close to coming up with transistors but have quite a ways to go to come up with wiring!
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
find / -name "lost.data" -ls
yeah, right.
I know that there are companies out there that are dealing with this sort of problem already (Zantaz archives email for a living... a lot of email) but I have no idea how much processing power it would take to find something is a reasonable time frame, or how it might be indexed.
Are these legitimate concerns or is this just another version of the "indexing the internet" problem?
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The web page for the Tour Group at Rice University can be found here. It has links to other articles on molecular computing. Beware, the page has a 500K picture on it, not very modem friendly.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Maybe this is where we'll find an everyday use for quantum computing - searching for files in this much data... since searching is one of the few things that a) we have an algorithm for and b) quantum computing does better than regular computers it could be used to search for data. Just a thought.
Actually, the article doesn't say that they've been able to store anything like that. The article says:
Ten billion gigabytes of data can be stored in this vial, according to Molecular Electronics Corp.'s cofounder, Jim Tour.
And they say that they've demonstrated the use of a molecular form of DRAM. Now these are pretty good advances already, and I believe nanotechnology will definitely change the way we look at computing, but please, Timothy: These guys don't have a secret RAM plant set up ready to conquer the world overnight.
Not just yet, anyway.
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Pokéthulhu
Gotta catch you all!
I don't think these are biological storage devices. From some of the examples, it looks like they are using organic chemistry, not biochemistry.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
10 billion gigs is good for about 20 million years of MP3s or a million years of DVD video.
Provided I didn't misplace a zero there. There were lots of them.
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i dont think there saying its a liquid i think there saying its just so small that it would fit in a vial like that.
Big parts of the universe would compress pretty well, I bet.
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Well they'll have to put that on to stand a chance of making any money. If it doesn't run Windows, it's not a computer y'know.
From what nipple says it sounds like they've already done this but when I read the article unless im mistaken they talked about being able to do this they never actually said they had done it but instead that in the future they would be able to do this maybe i'm just missing something anyone care to point out what i'm missing?
I worry about, its needing a tape autochanger the size of a house to back it up on for when I lose it down the back of the sofa.
Bob.
As I wronte in a earlier post, IBM has been messing around with (and having some limited success in a lab environment) with molecular computing.
And that was YEARS ago. Problem is, it doesn't really do us much good if WE cannot make this into a fully functional, flawless prototype. Unfortunately (for IBM's molecular computing), the last thing I heard of it was that they were stuck in data delivery, as they could not be sure which molecule picked up the data (physics dicate that You cannot know BOTH the location AND the vector of an Ion), as they merely threw it into the fray, hoping the right molecule got it.
If this is case with the storage tech, then I CERATAINLY hope they have a good errorcorrection.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
how many angels can dance on it?
and now for something completely different
Looks like You're right on the chemestry bit... But I still need to see effective storage/retrieval in an affordable home appliance before I would believe that They've solved all the "minor" problems they claim to be able to lick
"We're at a point where it's just a technology problem that will be solved by some smart graduate student or myself one of these days," Tour said. "This is not far out. This is going to happen."
But with the recent failures of so many other comanies doing the same, would it not stand to reason that Tour's Ida of "not far out" would at the very least be 15-20 years if not more ? I certainly think so.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
hmm... using nanotechnology, theroetically, we're one step closer to human/electronic integration... i would assume there's much less overhead in this than would be in getting silicon to talk directly to human cells/dna...
... I wouldn't mind having a wireless ethernet connection to my head, (i'd probably be first to sign up; i'd do it myself now if i could find a cell modem small/cheap enough) but i think most people would have some privacy issues with that =P
assuming an implanted cybernetic interface, it should be possible to send data straight to the brain, but there's got to be some way of physically getting it there
so here's my idea: Books on Pez
Imagine the entire dune anthology, in the form of tasty cinnamon candies, with a sandworm head... you could read the series 20 times in an hour (plus get a hell of a sugar high)
Walter H. Trent "Muad'Dib"
Padishah Emperor of the Known Universe, IMHO
While the idea sounds great and I'd love to have it working fine and dandy...
If the technology works anything like actual tube lights, something to keep in mind is that to turn them on they require a high voltage spike.
The second thing I noticed is that they said a glass tube.. have you noticed how careful people often are with glass tubes? Personally, I wouldn't want to drop a glass tube and say "oops, there goes my bookshelf, medical file, penguin, and, oh ya, my holographic house (it'll be a while).
Hope they get this technology ready for mass market!
SSL Certificate
what? digital paper. there's a story or two on slashdot about it, go search.
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To protect from data degredation, you can store data in triplicate or more - its not as though you are lacking in space.
Secondly, while you may not believe it, the article is basically saying that they have just proven it works (although I am sure many people didn't believe it when they invented the atomic bomb).
SSL Certificate
Reed solved the problem about measuring current on a single molecule in 1996 (I think), at least that was when I first read it.
Problem is if he wants to do data storage by altering a "switch" on each molecule, he should still be able to isolate EACH molecule (data storage unit) or the tech is worthless.
I know he's not gonna tell us HOW he does that (after all, that would be the trick of it wouldn't it?), but I've been unable to find anything that says that he even CAN do that.
I would imagine that it's possible to assemble molecules of different "types", where the "type" is to be used as an identifier, but that would still cause a FEW problems as he would have to WAIT for that molecule to "drift" into his reader. Not exactly the "baudrate" we would want from this tech.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
unfortunatly, they're all incorrect. in keeping with American tradition, the SI/metric system just HAD to be completely fucked up before the yanks could be happy with themselves.
the correct definitions are here. Until 1998, I fought to the death that a kilobyte = 1024 bytes, but now there are proper definitions for base 2, I will fight to the death kilobyte = 1000 bytes.
You store it in triplicate, but how do you know which is the "right" one?
Actually, the text says:
Ten billion gigabytes of data can be stored in this vial, according to Molecular Electronics Corp.'s cofounder, Jim Tour.
Operative word is CAN, not IS. Meaning that by "electrifying" the molecules (about 80*10^15 of those in the vial I would guess from the article), that's the POSSIBLE storage space available in that liquid, if they ever work out the kincks, like: Data degredation (Ok if ít's Organic chemestry, not Biochemestry, that's not an issue), storage, RETRIEVAL (Which I would believe to be a killer), addressing, Physical protection (from the environment, heat, radiation and other stuff that affect molecules), and more.
I would still have to say that it's not possible with currently available tech. In 15-20 years You might see a working prototype that's capable of leaving the lab, but I doubt it will happen before then.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
I would do it by using checksums and a vote (if two of them are the same, its probably that one).
SSL Certificate
Hmm... it's going to be a looong fsck if a system crashes on this. Then again, we could probably have a journaling file system for this gunk in a test tube.
And it will make a hot drink which is almost totally but not quite unlike tea...
Oh please,
Do these people even know what they are talking about? Hype hype hype, but not a sensible sentence to read. It reminds me of the optical processor debacle: computing at the speed of light! while they conveniently forgot that both electrical signals in todays chips and photon in the "computer of the future" go at exactly the same speed in semiconductor materials (about 1/3 of the speed of light in vacuum) and metals (about 2/3 of the speed of light in vacuum), as they are both form of electromagnetic radiation.
Who would need such a hypothetical device, and what data would fill this black hole of a memory - and how would you index it - or transmit it, for that matter.
It would take a lifetime to fill.
Maxwell rules !
Michael
Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing.
You can't beat hamsters - its illegal.
No indication is given of which calculations for data density the tiny vial pictured would be able to hold that much
Or perhaps it would just be a good idea if articles were proofread before submission
Rich
I can't imagine a home computer with such a huge data capacity.
: .Net and its AI sequel that we discussed some weeks ago ?) of workers, etc.
In fact, I think this can store more information than the human brain.
You speak about storing all of your books in this but I even think you could store much more, like all the uncompressed music records, DVDs, software, etc...
But why the Hell would somebody want to have ALL THE KNOWLEDGE EVER at home in such a small thing ?
Knowledge is made for being shared so I just thing that using a few of these "disks" and simultaneously accessing these from remote computer would be just fine...
Also, a small remark: the more powerful computers become, the stricter the ISO standard become. I guess so big a capacity would lead us to unthinkable levels of data certifications and historization... Imagine to which level somebody could be tracked
Keystroke strength or whatever leading to graphology-like studies aiming at demonstrating that most people are too stressed at work...
Video records (remember, the
Finally, because of stellar exploration I only see one good usage of bigger storage capacity: Storing dates according to universal time (GMT, relativity, Doppler, cosmic coordinates, etc.).
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
Yes, you could store every book you ever read (or could want to read), probably every movie you ever saw, every conversation you ever had, or Office 2010
Anyone remember the alien transpacitor acquired by American Computer a few years back? We were supposed to have 90GB poker chip sized transpacitor drives by now.
Yup! I think I worked out once that a standard novel with a jpg of the cover would be about a megabyte. Say on average it's a book a week. 52 books a year. 60 years reading life. That's 3120 MB. Compress that and you'll probably get it all on a 1.5 GB tape. Tapes these days have gotten better though.... 25 GB. But 20,000 million GB...!
As Keanu says...
Woah...
(I can only squash a few chapters of the Illiad onto my Palm IIIse as I only have some 400Kb for docs)
Oriental Hero "I want to live in a city where the Police don't shoot you" Jean Charles de Menezes
Now how do we get it out again?
I can think of some many reasons this would be great for mankind and society... unfortunatly, I sincerly doubt the corporations that own these books would be willing to allow such a collection without you paying for each and every book... Such a sad state of affairs.
This seems to be another example of the focus of the computing industry: create better and better hardware but use it to run software which hasn't really changed much in the last decade.
People are always making this sort of claim, yet no-one ever provides any evidence to back it up. I thoroughly disagree with your assertion. I say that software has changed a lot in the last decade.
Ten years ago, apps were small, slow, and lacked features. I couldn't do real-time video editing in software, heck I couldn't even playback video in software. Nothing as complex as a web browser existed ten years ago. I didn't have applications like Photoshop or Gimp that allow me to perform very sophisticated image manuipulation.
Try running some 10 year old software on today's hardware. It runs faster, but it feels archaic, feature-less and flat compared with modern software.
And that's just looking at the outside of the software. If you look at the code, its also changed radically, with the introduction of object-oriented programming and large-scale software engineering.
Just seems to be another excuse to create sloppy programs/bloatware.
What you call bloatware, other people refer to as fast, stable, feature-rich software. Of course there are bad applications out there, just as there were ten years ago or twenty years ago. But there are also whole classes of application that just weren't possible a decade ago, not just because the hardware has improved, but also because we understand how to build large-scale software like never before.
Sailing over the event horizon
We are not allowed to have technology that is extraordinary. Look at what happened to cold fusion -- it would have caused a true upheaval in culture and thus was stamped out.
This post encoded with ROT26. If you can read it, you've violated the DMCA. Handcuffs please, sergeant.
Anyway there isn't really a lot of point in saying look i have this much data if it isn't easily accessible.
When I blow my nose each of the dna strands in each moleucule will contain about a gigabyte of data each but until it comes with a usb interface how am i supposed to use it?
10 exabytes is enough to reproduce a small country worth of people electronically (10 terrabytes per person ... in the book 3001 - in the sources bit)
Why am I thinking of having the world in my bathtub?
Sigs are for wimps. I am proud to be one.
Its an excitng prospect. Being able to store the sum of human knowledge on a chip. It'd be cool being able to bring up any film, or any radio show in existance at the touch of a button. But it's also pretty scary. It'd change alot about the world.
Already lots of people are relying on technology to do trivial things for them.. (Ask your boss to do a division sum.. watch him reach for the calculator). If people could instantly recall anything at the touch of a button they wouldn't bother remembering anything. Do people want to be able to do interesting tasks quicker, or do they simply want a machine to take over their brain processes..
http://twitter.com/onion2k
uhhh, are you saying that recording the position of 1 atom takes less than 1 atom in the recording medium ? Otherwise you would need at least the whole universe to store the whole universe, now think about that
If I had published "Acts of the Apostles" in this format I wouldn't have all those cases of books in my bedroom. On the other hand if I stubbed my toe at night on the vial instead of a cardboard box my entire inventory would soak into the carpet in an instant. NA.
Ultimate Geek NanoNovel: Acts of the Apostles at www.wetmachine.com Fear the Future! Defrock the Infodruids!
Good luck getting your '9-day-battery life, white-LED-backlit wireless anything box' to address it all. ;)
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[ approaching AI ]
I wonder if you could store a few in there...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Well, this is interesting, but I have to ask: how useful will it really be?
We've 75GB IDE drives from IBM. You used to have to get a SCSI card for that.
I use 3 GBs on my 10 GB harddrive. It's already slow. Can you imagine dealing with a FAT on a drive at one exabyte? It'll be slow. The other question: Is it needed? Well, no. Apart from givin Microsoft a new way to give meaning to the phrase 'code bloat', all you'll get out of these drives is wasted space. Like having a compact warehouse in the middle of a wasteland.
I can forsee a new problem, too. We already have some information loss/byte rot on current harddrives-- if you squish the bytes too closely together, they're bound to lose their charge, right?
Imagine this on an atomic level. They better be using some strong compound, because it would just suck if all my priceless data would be lost in a small bump.
And how are you supposed to back up all that data?
Just thinking.
--Wormwood
Why do all of timothy's story intros use the word "tantalizing?"
The MPAA and RIAA must be apoplectic.
How is it that publicly funded tech always winds up in the hands of private hands?
This is another case of universities prostituting themselves out for for future funding.
Can anyone say cold fusion?
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
1*10^19bytes * 8 bits/byte=
8*10^19 bits / 192000bits/sec=
4.17*10^14sec / 60 sec/min=
6.94*10^12min / 60 min/hr=
1.16*10^11hrs / 24hrs/day=
4.82*10^9days / 365days/year=
1.32*10^7 years
I'd get to Alpha Centari before I had the chance to listen to my whole drive, or the restaurant at the end of the universe.
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
That's the only problem with the "all the books in the world" utopian stance. There's no way you'd get the rights to do it.
with 20 billion G, we could record the location of every atom in the universe. Think about it.
... the universe itself.
General estimates on the number of elementary particles in the universe yield numbers on the order of 10^80. How could you record the entire universe in something smaller than itself?
It's rather like the idea of predicting the future by building a computer to determine it based on computing the physics at the particle level; even without the Heisenberg uncertainty, the smallest computer that could do this is
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
10 billion gigs is good for about 20 million years of MP3s or a million years of DVD video.
Yeah, but I'd die before I could ever finish backing it up on floppies...
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
"Using Nanotechnology scientists..."
Those tiny scientists really can work wonders...
Just because you can't 'see' nor 'believe' it, has no impact on whether it will be possible. Do you really think that all the technology that we currently rely on will stay the same forever?
I make no claims to know the future, except to say that I believe that nobody can understand the massive amounts of change that are going to occur, as technology continues on at this dizzying pace.
Talk like this holds back those innovations and holds back innovators from doing what they do. They change the way we work, the way we live, our hobbies and passtimes. They change the food we eat, and that house we live in.
Everybody should support those who research new ideas, some might call them 'radical', but i call them 'imaginative'. Why is it that people feel the need to constantly, argue against new thoughts and ideas? Why is it that everybody has to disbelieve every new and slightly different idea that somebody spends all of the time researching? Why can't everybody be more accepting?
I challenge all who need proof, all who will not believe until they see, to go out there and find your proof. Whether it be proof that the idea might not be feasible, or you might find proof of its possibilities. At least you would be accomplishing something useful.
"Even after the first assembler is developed, it will require years, perhaps decades, of lab testing before a commercial product could reach the shelves."
Well that's just great. Maybee if they weren't so concerned with their patents and secrets then they would collaborate with the scientific community and we could have this technology in our boxes a little sooner.
My $0.02 will always be worth more than your â0.02, so
...my dog drank my homework!
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
Ever heard of compression? The universe hasn't reached infinite entropy...yet.
Furthermore, their has been a massive infrastructure shift in the last few years that, while not blatantly visible, will probably radically change the way we program and use computers.
Remember not so long ago when an application was a monolithic binary with a few config files? Now that same app is more likely to consist of a tiny frontend loader for multiple task-specific libraries, several of which may be used by multiple programs.
Back in The Day, "late binding" was a neat idea, but horridly inefficient. Given a few years to work out some of the bugs, coupled with incredible hardware advances, we now have some pretty usable object systems.
Think about Bonobo (sp?). Want online docs for your program? Throw together some HTML and call a globally-available browser. Noone really needs to write their own text editor anymore. The same holds for many other commonly-used functions.
This move has been underway for quite a while. It's been quite some time since an app needed to implement its own network stack. However, only recently have such high-level constructs been available as linkable objects.
This is part of what those CPU cycles and RAM bytes are used for. All of this linking, dynamic loading, and these powerful components take some horsepower. However, no coder in his right mind would go back to the old way without very specific reasons (embedded controllers, bare-metal recovery systems, etc.).
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
See the Wired 8.07 (July) magazine article for an in depth description. Geez, i would have submitted this if i did not think that *everyone* had already read it! :-)
Damn, isnt that the way it always goes! Thanks moderators for ignoring all my good links and putting out this 90 day old info.. Repeat after me: Bad karma, Bad karma!
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/moletron ics.html
Moderators need an additional choice: "Karma Whore" for people who cut-and-paste articles as their comments!
Read a good book lately?
Read a good book lately?
How many exabytes is that?
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Since no data is ever actually destroyed, it would be easy to add a pretty neat archiving facility to this filesystem, one that would let a person mount an active read/write filesystem multiple times in a readonly mode with attached timestamp. For example, I could mount it with last weeks date and see all the files that had existed at that moment in time. Every moment of the filesystems' existance, resolution right down to the second, would be available for perusal.
In theory I could quantum tunnel to the moon and die of asphyxiation, but I have not been able to do so yet. ;)
Sanity is a sandbox. I prefer the swings.
if i remember my large number stuff right, 10 billion gigabytes is enough to record every word everyone has ever said, ever.
hope you like to read...
Imagine replacing all of these volumes with a tiny vial on the bookshelf. Sterile, barren shelves. Sure, the world is now at your fingertips, but the whimsy is gone. It's just not the same.
Hopefully, by then, FAT will be obsolete. But regardless, I'm positive that the scientists involved here aren't going to bring to market an unusable technology. If it's too slow, it won't sell. They'll have to make it faster. End of story.
You sound like someone asking about sending people to the moon... "You can't send people to the moon! There's no oxygen! They'll die!" No they won't, silly... we'll solve that problem long before we get there.
In my opinion, the biggest problem with this technology is what several other insightful people have pointed out -- it's PRIVATEly held. That means there's an extremely finite amount of resources being put into it. If they'd share the science all around, we could have this stuff better, cheaper, and faster.
Why does it all have to be about money these days? Doesn't anyone still care about progress?
A very disquieting thought. Does this mean that sperm banks will be subject to DCMA suits?
Even worse, will we be seeing RIAA suits re that built-in "wow-chicka-wow" upload music you just installed? =)
Maybe now we can really have a Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy!
--Dave
The only thing I can think of on how to solve this is to use heterogeneous elements/molecules to store information. If there's only one water molecule and our fictional access drive/vial reader knows that H20 is where the file system starts, then it merely scans for it and uses the state of one of it's components to point it to the next "block."
Thoughts?
"Not invented here" is orthogonal to "invented by an ivory tower committee."
You do understand what orthogonal means, right? Or are you too blinded by your anti-american bigotry to grasp the notion that rule by design by closed committee is one of the least competent way to develop anything (remember the 7-level OSI network model? Seen any implimentations around lately?)
As an example of one of the most open and successful methods for developing standards, take a look at how the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) operates, and the standards they have created. (Hint: you're making use of a whole bunch of them everytime you read slashdot.)
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
I don't really like patents anyhow, but if someone wants to do the research and get a patent on it - they should atleast do it with private money. My tax money paid for that research and those patents, I should at least have right to use them as freely as anyone else (not that I would, but that's half the point - they are special enough in their field to make money even without a monopoly that locks out competition)
> Since they are nanotechnology, would it be possible to inject them into your bloodstream? Then you would never lose your information
Except for the prospect of having a mosquito run off with a few critical bits of your data...
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
if anyone wants more information (and more detailed descriptions) on molecular computing, try the june issue of wired and the june issue of scientific american. they both have great info on molecular computing. and they boast claims of storage capacities (for a 100 mL tube) of up to 125 Million TeraBytes. so try figuring out how many mp3's THAT would store. :)
"How it infuriates a bigot, when he is forced to drag out his dark convictions"-- Logan Pearsall Smith
he said every atom. Off course you could use different compression types depending for different purposes. On the other hand maybe someone can give every atom a record number and store it in a access database together with it's location.
Does the test tube come with the gigs? My band needs some.
That's the reason why even though the universe is completely deterministic, we can never calculate the future based on it. You'd need a computer the size of the universe, calculating for the entire period of the universe to calculate what's next. In other words the universe is a computer calculating it's own future.
Alot people seem to worry about access times on a "drive" this large... if you combine this with quantum processors discussed a few weeks ago here on /. then your problems are solved! the quantum processor works as both the CPU and the RAM, and the fact that quantum cpu performs all it's operations simulataneously it could easily work on the contents of multi X sized storage device.
M period. Fresh, comma
Probably. But you can't be sure, and that's my point. It's not likely that more than 2 would degrade, but you can't be sure. And that could be a problem.
Great! Now we can do a mass download of the whole world wide web and determine an official signal to noise ratio for this thing.
Paul Anderson
"I drank WHAT?!" -- Socrates
What's the block size of it then?
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
That's not true. IF one were to make a computer of, say, quarks and gluons, and all of the sub-sub-atomic particles (excuse my terminiology, it has been a while since my last subatomic physics class) to represent larger structures, then something smaller can represent something larger. It is like a map, or anything else: use a smaller structure to emulate a larger. Protons and Neutrons are relatively simple 'large' objects that one could probably calculate with electrons or gluons or something....
However, the dude who said the original comment aobut 20 Billion G is fucked. I've always heard there were 10^50+ particles in teh universe.... COMPLEX particles, too, not just bianry digits.
20 billion G is, what 20,000,000,000,000,000,000? (I may have missed some, but that is not the point). The number above is 2.0 X 10^19. And remember that is in BINARY. To understand the universe, this would have to be WAY WAY WAY more complex, by orders of magnitude we haven't even thought of.
The reason we love books is because we're used to books. I have no love for a newspaper because as I grew up and got interested in the news, I began to find it online much easier. I still prefer some magazines for longer articles, like Newsweek and New Scientist, but newspapers are unimportant to me. The same will be true of books when the younger generations still to come grow up with something better. We may be sentimental and decry the loss of the book as a form of communication, but we can't imagine days when books were originally manuscripts copied by hand and worth a fortune. Imagine what disgust typesetting brought about.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi
There's just something about books on the shelf, all lined up in rows.
[...]
Imagine replacing all of these volumes with a tiny vial on the bookshelf. Sterile, barren shelves. Sure, the world is now at your fingertips, but the whimsy is gone. It's just not the same.
I used to think just like you. Here's the reality, though:
I have a lot of books. I mean, a *lot* of books. I've been a voracious reader since I was in 3rd or 4th grade, now, I've got well over a thousand books (I have no idea how many actually, nearly all sci-fi). My wife is also a big reader, but doesn't own nearly as many (fiction) books -- say 200-300. The nine-foot tall shelves in the living room are full, with books piled in front of and on top of other books. My home office has the 70-80 computer-related books I've used most recently, plus, of course, all of the software packages and manuals I've collected in the course of doing my job. My wife's home office has a few of her business books, plus a closet full of shelves filled with more fiction. The plant shelves in the guest room and in our master bedroom have books piled on top of them. We bought a china cabinet (finished it ourselves) for our breakfast nook just to hold cookbooks.
It's an organizational nightmare. I've bought books at the bookstore that I'd forgotten I owned. It's been a long time since I even _tried_ to put 'em in any kind of order. I've spent half an hour looking for books I *know* I own -- but can't seem to locate the shelf they're on.
Now, although my 300+ videotape collection is in similar shape (mainly because it's a pain to write down the titles to all six "Babylon 5" episodes on the spine of the tape), my 700+ CD collection is in good order, mainly because I can keep 'em all in one place, and they don't take up walls and walls of room.
If all this was digitized, sure, I'd lose out on some interesting decorating. But I'd rather be able to find what I'm looking for without a lot of hassle, and put up some art in its place.
I admit, my wife and I have more books than anyone else I know. But my wife is a professor at the local university. She's got a few hundred books in her office -- and she needs 'em all (she's a sociologist). So do all of the other faculty stuffed into their 8x10 offices. It's sad really, seeing these people literally wedged into their offices along with the information they need to do their research.
Sure, physical books are neat. But there are some real disadvantages to having a lot of 'em. I'd rather have the world at my fingertips so I can spend more time using the information instead of trying to manage it.
"200 Quatloos on the newcomer!" "300 Quatloos against!"
The real problem is what level of precision do we settle on. Many (if not most) models rely on irrational numbers. I don't know if anyone has a good idea on how to represent them exactly using any computational method (of course, we are out of the realm of Turing machines. So, to be able to do this, a more powerful class of abstract machine is needed).
If you're talking about exact models, forget about it.
[14:55] Using Nanotechnology scientists ar Rice University have been able to store 10 billion gigabytes of data on physical storage small enough to fit into a small vial. :)
[14:56] <Cronik> dang, thats a few hour of mp3s
[14:56] <Criggie_> wolfie: uh huh
[14:56] <d27> small vial compared to the massive one they house at the Tokyo museum perhaps
[14:56] <sass-borg> but is it portable?
[14:56] <d27> but that ain't no small vial.
[14:56] <Criggie_> can it work in an MP3 player?
[14:56] <sass-borg> and cross platform? are there linux drivers?
[14:57] <d27> can you boot off the vial?
Wonderful. So now they can store oogles of data in a small space. So can I, if I just write all of the data on the same place on my hard drive.
Why don't I do this, you ask? Because retrieval would be impossible.
So the real question is: can you _retrieve_ the data in a timely fashion? I read the article, and it didn't say anything about how they plan to read the data from the vial. With the chemicals constantly swishing around, how can you organize the data? Would you have to search the entire container for the molecule with the data on it?
This is pre-vaporware here. There's absolutely no technical information, and they don't even claim that they can retrieve the information.
This falls under the category: Wow, that's really cool if it works, but I'll believe it when I see it.
It's called RAID. modern harddisk systems do this all the time. And you could refresh the data every once in a while, and correct the degraded copies.
Refresh from where? If 2 (or more) are corrupted (out of three), where do you get the correct data? (I realize a backup would do the trick, but would be slow - but forget that for a sec)
Maybe I just dont understand. If thats the case, could someone point me to somewhere I could look for more info?
And being as the universe may be a big computer calculating it's own destiny, It's UI would be the stars, hence we CAN determine the future or relative way things will happen/intereact with astrology. When your talking about fate etc. of course, not science :. Were just seeing the data with a little (or lot) of lag, because of distance. Unless the big one upstairs accounted for that too. Who knows?
Cain -=Bender=-
Did I ever say I disbelieved their efforts ?
No
Ddi I ever call the inventor unimaginative ?
No
In fact. Did I do ANYTHING other than question the mere fact that this particular group of scientists (Whom I've been following for some years in the scientific journals now), has NOT produced anything even REMOTELY like effective storage ?
No
And if You want proof from me that their invention is NOT feasable. Then I likewise challenge You to proove that ghosts do not exist. Not because I belive they do or don't, but merely because this would proove an equally vain effort on Your part.
In fact I encourage new scientific breakthroughs, not only because I've long since given up being part of that world myself. But also because I believe that the future of mankind is determined not only by the things we create, but also by how we use them.
But in particular this group of scientist have made ASTOUNDING progress in the field of molecular science, which is why I will do nothing to "disproove" their findings.
On the other hand, this very reputable group all of a sudden claims to achieve a breakthrough, but are not intersted in sharing the datils with anyone ? Do anyone here remember the "cold-fusion" hoaxes ? I just do not believe that thay've achieved this kind of breakthrough for several reasons. And if You read the particular article in question, You should be doubtfull aswell. In many places is says "can", "may" and "should", is stead of "is", "does" and "Eureka !"
IF in fact these problems WERE solved, would this not have caused an uproar in the scientific community ? I would believe so. So even if it's not this group that's responsible for the apparent "disinformation", then it's disinformation nonetheless, as the "essential" breakthroghs have not yet been achieved.
There's a reason that this tech has been researched so long by so many independant groups and noone has achieved results. As I've written in other comments, I have no doubt that this could be brought to work, I just doubt that the problems (mainly) of acessing the data, has been solved suffiently to satisfy my curious mind.
--- To err is human... Am I more human than most ?
Isn't there an article from wired a while back about crystal "hd". Won't that be more applicable, since you can retreive and also if it breaks you won't lose any data.
----------------------------------- http://www.superesc.com
Would two get corrupted simultaneously? The minute the first gets corrupted, you can update it based on the other two. And who says you have a limit of three copies? You could always expand the idea to make sure you have 20 or so, and as soon as any of them got corrupted they would be replaced by good data from the rest.
Memory was just one example.
When they can lay these out on a chip to make VLSI circuits, they could build massively parallel reconfigurable devices. Imagine if the folks at Starbridge Systems, who are already building reconfigurable ASICs, made their next Pensa Processor with this stuff. Obviously I think the Pensa stuff is interesting already with just regular silicon.
Hot Tamales
The main problem regarding mechanical nanocomputers as I understand it is that the heat generation problem isnt just going to go away. Even if moving bonds dont have friction, moving parts will still generate thermal radiation. Frequencies of operation will have to be selected with consideration of the normal modes of the components in motion. Add to that the regular heating that results from resistive current flow and you get a major heating problem. The reconfigurable circuit system would help it recover from real-time circuit failures, but I still wonder how long such a package would last. They might end up having an in-use half-life of a few days, such that you have to keep replacing them or use them only at 1% capacity to stretch out their effective useful lives (and keep the data intact long enough to port!).
JF