Floppy CDs And DVDs?

tregoweth writes: "A company (with no online presence that I can find) claims to have developed a way to make 'a completely functional digital disc that's five times thinner than a regular DVD or CD' and 'is also flexible enough to wrap around soda cans and be inserted into magazines without breaking,' according to Forbes.com. Does anyone else see floppy AOL CDs covering the landscape?"

Comments

Re:Sluuuuuurp...

[achurch]

Err, 650 megs... that's what I get for only previewing once. Blah.

--
BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL

Neat, but....

[AudioPunk]

This sort of thing is kinda cool, but I see several problems with it. Mainly :
1. How to get manufactures to shell out the money to make these?
2. How scratch/tear resistant are these things? They may be flexible, but don't look very sturdy. What about thermal resistance? It just seems like it would be much easier to screw up all the little pits in information layer and therefore screw the cd-floppy.
3. They also look like they'd be a pain to print on since most paints would be thicker than that the CD-floppy. How do you know which one is which?
4. CD's and thin cases are so cheap now, why do we need this?
5. How do you get stupid consumers to use the plastic adapter ring correctly. I see lots of problems with people misusing it and breaking their CD/DVD players.

I think a neat use for it might be a replacement for the magnetic disc in floppy drives. Get a new drive that reads the things and use technology to fit 1 gig or more onto a floppy. Too bad it won't be writable, but it might help with installation of certain programs on laptops & etc.

Possible uses

[Mumble01]

Ah cool, cheap Christmas wrapping paper. Nice and shiny too.

Re:I too have developed a thin storage medium

[savvy]

i had a friend that would constantly request them with fun names like Fidel Castro or Ghandi.

The best one ever was Jesus H. Christ though, because it included a letter addressed to Jesus, thanking him for his interest in America Online.

I think he framed it.

Re:Off topic/spam

[Kris_J]

Well said. I was whinging about something quoted as being "3 times smaller" than something else a few weeks back. It's a poor use of English. Particularly because there might be a valid use for it. If a standard widget is 10 units thick and an enhanced widget is 9 units thick, then an ultra widget that's only 5 units thick might be described as "5 times thinner" than an enhanced widget, compared to a standard widget. To be "X times smaller/thinner" you need two other points of reference.

Anyone having problems following the above now knows what the original statement does to people who actually listen to the words in a sentence, rather than just trying to divine the meaning from someone's facial expressions or hand gestures.

Re:I wonder...

[Ardant]

Well, you can find out what normal ones look like on a website about Data Destruction .

Re:OT: just for interest's sake...

[Ravagin]

Isn't there one like that? In fact, I think I have it turned on. Its output is thus:
date: 9:36pm
uptime: 235 days, 12:21, 0 users,
load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00
processes: 48
yesterday: 136329
today: 1
ever: 206134133

I don't understand some of that, though... ;)

-J

Re:Wouldn't the rotation hold it stiff?

[HerrNewton]

Actually I think you might be incorrect... bernoulli carts used to use a similar system, iirc, in which the spinning of the disc was stablized the by literal bernoulli effect created.

Better description from here

The Bernoulli drive was named after a Swiss scientist who discovered the principle of aerodynamic lift. The principal characteristic of a Bernoulli drive is that the flexible disk floats between the read/write heads, so there is no actual contact between the disk and the heads. With this principal the Bernoulli drive is less susceptible to head crashes.

----

Re:Practicality intervenes

[pen]

And he can use the chocolate to feed the monkeys! Brilliant!

--

Can you say FlacidWare?

[kvnmcsc]

I must be gettin' soft in my old age...

Re:I'm skeptical

[huie]

Yes, the criticisms of the whole optics of the thing are valid. I too would mod that comment up. Now, as for

consumers must possess a little ring that adjusts the optical device in their standard CD, CD-Rom and DVD machines; it's sort of like the plastic gizmo that snaps into a 45-rpm record

as mentioned before, even with a center support, you'll still get flutter on the outer edge. I believe any search on variations of "rotating travelling wave" will yield some information. One interesting thing being that the travelling wave can even move counter to the rotation of the CD, if I remember my Exploratorium exhibits correctly.

As for the optics of it, just a quick search on "CD laser optics" ("I'm Feeling Lucky")finds this site that points out that The polycarbonate itself is part of the optical system for reading the pits.

Maybe the polycarbonate isn't really needed, maybe it's just icing on the cake for robustness. If you do the math on one of the illustrations from the afore mentioned page, if the polycarbonate weren't there, the CD, instead of being 1.2mm thick, would have to be (let's see, cotan(27degrees) times 1/2 of 800microns is 785microns less than the regular 1.2mm thickness- duh, I could've assumed the angle was 30degrees and made things much easier) 0.4mm thick. That's not quite 1/5 the regular CD thickness- I guess the other 1-1/2mm comes from the reinforcing ring/plate you'd have to glue the whole floppy CD to.

Okay, someone else pointed out that the bournelli (sp?) effect could be used to keep the disc from fluttering by keeping it flying just a little bit above the read head, but is it really going to work with a head of unknown geometry and possible with other flat surfaces around? Like CD trays, caddies, slot feed mechanisms, etc.

Not that I'm disparaging the product even before it comes out (but I guess I am), it seems like it would be a nice trick to be able to make it work in almost any CDROM drive. I'd wish the company luck, but I'm afraid of where technology will lead- my no-name peripherals are already cheaply made- can you see getting your drivers and documentation on a floppy CD that won't even last a week on my desk. Admit it- you leave your CDs in a dusty pile too. Can you imagine if you had to reinstall?

And I thought we were through with the idea of disposable DVDs when Divx (the first one) died.

Re:I too have developed a thin storage medium

[pen]

Actually, I don't remember AOL ever removing the write protect tab. However, they did always set the disks so that they were write protected, and most people never figured it out.

As for autorequesting, I actually wrote a little program in Visual Basic (ah, the good ole' days... ) to simulate clicks on AOL buttons with WinAPI and then made it request disks to my house with random names and apartment numbers. Since I live in a house, they were all delivered to me anyway.

I still get a nice 30-disk bundle with two rubber bands every now and then...

--

Re:Website....

[naasking]

As of posting, the counter is 490.

LOL... good idea posting that... it's at 50966 now... :-)
-----
"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"

Re:Business-card CDs?

[HerrNewton]

Bad mojo. If you mange to not seriously foul-up the optics, you'll at least have to take the drive apart to fish out the CD. Not a fun thing I'd gater.

----

Re:Flexible AOL Disks??!!??

[Eg0r]

AAARRRGGG, they're everywhere cap'n, and I canna break them

Yeah but... I guess you would still be able to microwave them ;-)

---

Re:Possible problems...

[bonzoesc]

But you can't fold them into paper airplanes... Still, the best CD trick is to get your paws on some Pop Nazi's Backstreet-Sync-Spears-whatever CD, and shatter it in your bare hands while they watch you. Just make sure you are wearing glasses instead of contacts B)

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate

Look at it on the bright side

[Flavio]

Does anyone else see floppy AOL CDs covering the landscape?

If these new CD's are so cheap, *perhaps* free software distribution will get even simpler.

It would be a step easier to package free cd's with ANY magazine or newspaper and perhaps cheapbytes could rename themselves to dirtcheapbytes.

Flavio

Re:Look at it on the bright side

[Flavio]

We're talking senseless propaganda here! (not that senseless, actually.) Who cares about the latest version when you can reach 100 million people?

If it worked for AOL it's gotta work for free, good software.

You can distribute, say, OpenBSD or a tight version of any free OS and leave the end user to update things at will. Even 6 months later the CD will still be useful.

The bottom line is that "normal" people usually don't download whole OS's even if they have infinite bandwidth. The CD itself should be fundamental.

Flavio

Re:Look at it on the bright side

['This is false.']

It may be cheap to make a million of them, but that doesn't mean that smaller operations will be able to crank them out so quickly. Also, for those who crave each and every update, that's still a lot of CDs. highspeed connections are a muh more viable idea really.

planned failure

[swagr]

It's evident in many industries (automotive is number 1) that if a low quality product is sold, customers have to spend more money on replacements.

"Mr. Data recovery technician, I tore another floppy-cd while removing it from the drive tray..."

I too have developed a thin storage medium

[grahamsz]

It's paper thin
It stores information
You can get it in any shape or size you want
It allows advertisers to convey information to people
My specialized computer-less reading enables even people without a computer to read the information printed on the 'disk'
It is thin enough and flexible to be wrapped around a coke can
It has a gummed strip along one edge so it can easily be inserted into magazines
Computer users can scan them to they can be fully enjoyed online

In addition to the fantastic advertising properties I can also envisage a market where these partially gummed pieces of paper are sold in pads to corporate users. They could then be used as a digital memo system which could even be accessed without a computer, by using a special digital pen to write messages on them.

Just call me Mr 3m.

On a more serious note, we've already lost the ability to use AOL disks to save buying those pesky 3.5" floppies and we are now about to loose the ability to use them as coasters :(

Re:I too have developed a thin storage medium

[Leto-II]

grahamsz said:
"On a more serious note, we've already lost the ability to use AOL disks to save buying those pesky 3.5" floppies and we are now about to loose the ability to use them as coasters :("

What do you have against flexible coasters?

Fear my low SlashID! (bidding starts at $500)

Re:I too have developed a thin storage medium

[djocyko]

On a more serious note, we've already lost the ability to use AOL disks to save buying those pesky 3.5" floppies and we are now about to loose the ability to use them as coasters :(

actually, it seems to me that if it is flexible, it is also stickier (like seran wrap.) I think that adds to the worth of the coaster. Now we god AOL coasters that don't slide around. Just think of the possibilities.

Re:I too have developed a thin storage medium

[john@iastate.edu]

That's okay. Soon we'll be able to glue them to bubblewrap and use them as insulation.

We may just need that this winter.

But it's a little hi-tech for this old house -- when we moved in, the wall betwen the garage and kitchen was covered with those little styrofoam meat trays -- presumably for insulation -- the previous owner's ``frugality'' was well known :)

Re:I too have developed a thin storage medium

[Trespass]

"On a more serious note, we've already lost the ability to use AOL disks to save buying those pesky 3.5" floppies and we are now about to loose the ability to use them as coasters :("

That's okay. Soon we'll be able to glue them to bubblewrap and use them as insulation. :^)

Re:I too have developed a thin storage medium

[vheissu]

Oh come on, those things had a half life of about 3 days before you started getting the infamous "General Read Failure" message. And then AOL stopped including a write protect tab. Still, anyone remember the AOL disk autorequestor webpage? You filled in your name and address and it would send x number of e-mail requests to AOL for free disks. Then a couple weeks later the mailman would come by, glaring at you, with about 15 disks in his bag. That was classic. Of course, nowadays dot-coms just give money away. I just love "emerging markets"

Too Bad

[cbustapeck]

Sigh.

Now I'll need to find some other way to keep the post office from mangling my magazines when they stuff them into my P.O. Box.

What? There was data on those discs?

Another useless technology.

[caryw]

I'm pretty sure this is the last we'll ever hear about "ThinDisc" or whatever on slashdot. The idea is absurd. If a company wants to supply their software to magazine readers, they'll supply a web address, not a ThinDisc. If I ever came accross one of these items "wrapped around a coke can" or in a magazine, I'd do what the rest of the world would do with it as well; see how good of a frisbee it makes (hey, maybe AOL does have a calling for these things)!

Anyway, I'm still waiting for indestructible credit card sized storage devices that can hold 6 terrabytes by means of optical pulses.

At this rate something tells me I'll be waiting for an awfully long time.

Soda can wrapping?

[rew]

is also flexible enough to wrap around soda cans

Huh? Most modern CDs are flexible enough to wrap around a soca can. Try it.

and be inserted into magazines without breaking,

Exactly! Ever found a broken CD in a magazine? Didn't think so!

Roger.

Re:Off topic/spam

[dubl-u]

Given that x times thinner doesn't mean anything, how about we redefine it to mean 1/x as thick?

Re:High speed flutter

[Decimal]

"Just what the hell does 'five times thinner' mean anyway?!?!?"

Well, as "five times thicker" would be equivalent to 5 CDs stacked on each other, I'd guess that "five times thinner" would be 1/5 the thickness of a CD.

Re:hehe

[ncc74656]

I remember them. You could supposedly drop one off the roof of a building in the middle of a read/write operation and not loose any data or damage the media from the impact.

A few years ago (probably '91 or '92), an Iomega rep brought a Bernoulli drive and some disks to a user-group meeting. He took the disk (with his demo) out of the drive and tossed it out into the audience, and encouraged the audience to throw it around for about a minute (in which time it hit the floor and bounced off the walls a few times) before asking for the disk to be returned. Once he had it back, he popped it back in the drive...and it still worked.

Woah, wait a minute...

[J. T. MacLeod]

:

You could theoretically rotate this at infinite angular speed in vacuum without deformation.

:

Hold on, wait... think about that for a minute... if you can spin that thing at infinite speed who cares about deformation?

What I'm saying is this: if the inside of this disc is moving at infinite speed, that would mean that the outside is moving at faster than infinite speed...

Woah, what if only the outside moves at infinite speed? Just how fast would the inside be moving??

OK, I think I need to sit down...

J. T. "Mac" MacLeod

Re:Woah, wait a minute...

[0-until-pink]

Actually factually according to the accepted theoretical behaviour of infinities first proposed by Georg Cantor, the inside would be moving at a slower infinity. Check out Hilberts Hotel paradox.

What about high speed drives?

[SClitheroe]

I find it hard to believe that this be all that viable, especially for data. Imagine spinning a CD-ROM at 40x, when it is flexible enough to be curled around things. I sure wouldn't want any high speed flutter (which is already a problem with some of my CD-ROMS), or warping from being curled around things, to mess up the insides of my CDROM drive.

Re:What about high speed drives?

[Chagrin]

• ...consumers must possess a little ring that adjusts the optical device in their standard CD, CD-Rom and DVD machines; it's sort of like the plastic gizmo that snaps into a 45-rpm record

I don't see the flutter as being as bad as you describe. You're also forgetting about the "hub" piece that is used with the discs - I'm sure they could be designed in such a way to eliminate the flutter problem (perhaps a ring of rubber to act as a shock absorber?).

There are lots of thin plastics that will not warp (unless creased). A material like Mylar could be used for the actual media layer since it is fine enough for the task and again does not warp.

Re:What about high speed drives?

[driehuis]

That was my immediate reaction as well. The whole thing reminds me of the 45 RPM singles that were distributed in magazines way back when: not sturdy piece of vinyl, but a square, badly deformed thin sheet that produced some noise if you eventually got the thing flat, even if most of it came from the record player rather than the amp.

Still, if they pull it off it's be a cool gizmo. It would reduce the shelf space for an MSDN subscription significantly. Besides, if you use them as frisbees they don't have enough mass to poke someones eye out.

Off topic/spam

[unperson]

What does it mean to be five times thinner ? To me, it means nothing. Five times thinner than what? Why can't people say, "One fifth as thick..." Hell, I'd even settle for "One fifth as thin"

Re:Website....

[SubtleNuance]

12.04.00-22:37EST - 51173 Hits

This is a useless line because the lameness filter dosnt like 4 upper & 3 lower chars

Re:Well, of course it's withstanding it...

[RadioHacker]

Of course it's handling it nicely - there isn't anything really TO the site yet

Which makes it all the more puzzling why they had to use Frontpage to make it...

meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0"

Can you say notepad.exe?

hmmm

[Unknown Lamer]

Semms nice, and cool, but it reeks of vaporware. I wish these were real. But they probably aren't, and I'm not gonna wait for them(like I did for FMD...they said october and it is december)

-------------

Re:Is there a point to "thin"?

[Arlet]

Thickness doesn't matter for the capability to withstand rotating at high speeds. As the thickness is reduced, the mass of the disk, and therefore the forces on the material will be reduced by the same amount. This compensates the decreased strenght of the material.

Of course, if there are small imperfections in the disk, those will become more problematic as the disk gets thinner, so the production process needs to be designed carefully so that the material has even thickness and strenght throughout the entire disk.

Defeats the purpose

[CAIMLAS]

That soft of defeats the purpose of including them in the magazines in the first place - what about skeet shooting? :)

This sounds vastly like vaporware to me. No web site, for a company that is supposedly developing new technology for mass distribution?

Also, I wonder, if in fact it were real, if current cdrom/dvd drives would be able to read the format? (might the flimsy nature of the media also cause for misreading of information?)

-------
CAIMLAS

hehe

[XneznJuber]

'a completely functional digital disc that's five times thinner than a regular DVD or CD' and 'is also flexible enough to wrap around soda cans and be inserted into magazines without breaking,'

Does anyone remember Bernoulli drives? they had a floppy that that got stiff (i can just see the replys to this post with tons of euphamisms) when it spun up. They weren't teriffically fast, but lots of mac people swore by em

Re:hehe

[cpt kangarooski]

Yeah, I had a Bernoulli 230. The last of the really good things that Iomega made.

The reason people liked them, even though SyQuests were more common, was that they were solid as a rock. I don't think that I've ever heard of a Bernoulli failing. The disks were nigh-indestructable.

Given how much hard disks cost in the early 90's, I loved 'em. OTOH, the cartridges cost ~$100 a pop which was affordable at the time. However, Iomega brought the cheap Zip media, the large Jaz media, and CDRs became commonplace, with cheap, large, easily portable media. The Bernoullis never had a chance. Sniff.

Re:hehe

[Valdrax]

I remember them. You could supposedly drop one off the roof of a building in the middle of a read/write operation and not loose any data or damage the media from the impact.

Re:hehe

[Tycho]

On a similar note I remember reading about a reviewer taking a magneto-optical(sp?) disk, strapping it to the front fender of his car in winter and then driving at least twenty miles with it on. The disk still worked afterwords.

Sounds like vapor...

[$lacker]

If the disk had any bend in it when it was being read by the CDROM drive, I don't believe the laser would be reflected at the angle needed to read the disk. This would cause slow, unreliable data transfer at best, and make the format completely useless at worst.

Re:Sounds like vapor...

[Fuzzums]

Bendable is something different than foldable. The carrier of the data should be, err 'preparated' to bend back to it's original state, but we also have 'intelligent' metals which reshape themselve to their original form after being 'mutulated'. So, Why not?

Re:Sounds like vapor...

[setab]

The metals that your talking about only reshape themselves at certain temperatures...I really wouldn't want to have to put my media in the oven to reshape it...Not to mention that if the material bends back to its origional shape you have yourself a blank disk.

Re:High speed flutter

[Kyobu]

No, his point was that "thinner" measures thickness. So "five times thinner" is actually five times thicker. To say what they really meant, you'd have to say "one fifth as thick." Incidentally, as long as I'm being pedantic, five times thicker would be actually equivalent to 6 CDs stacked, not 5, because it's the comparitive form of the adjective, meaning you're adding, not replacing. Five times as thick would be equivalent to 5 CDs.

Re:Two points - weight and disposability

[Anonymous Coward]

AOL bulk mails their CDs and they pay less than $.05 per cd to get it to my mailbox. The weight does not matter to them at all.

A little ring?

[phossie]

So these are like the little floppy records you used to get as a kid? Those were always really good quality.

Seriously - this is really not a great idea.
Always looking for your little ring-thingy to make the disc not damage your hardware when it wobbles off the platter (will it play in vertical mount drives..?)... about as fun as the stupid codes for prizes inside Spite(TM) bottle-caps that ask you to go to a web site and then hand out personal information to get an ID just to check the code.... dumb, dumb, dumb.

space

[nate37]

did it ever mention how much it holds? it said thinner then cdroms/dvds.. but it never said if he even neared the volume cdroms could hold... maybe it doesn't even hold 1.44MB :)

Re:space

[Flavio]

As far as I've understood it, it's a fairly normal CD if you disconsider the "adapter" (necessary for it to be read by normal drives).

Since CD's are read from the middle to the periphery, I believe they hold exactly the same amount of information.

Flavio

Re:space

[Cuthalion]

Um. The data on a CDROM is not exactly stacked on top of itself, you know.

Re:space

[nate37]

well i was more thinking that only the stuff in the center.. that isn't as wabely... more stable.. is readable.. kinda like how the bizcard cds only hold 50 meg

needs improvement

[Helix150]

This is a great idea but they got one thing wrong.

First, it says you need to own a small ring that will hold the disc in place. Bad idea. I would just make the hold like a normal CD. Most players have a metal spindle with a magnetic free floating thing above it that will hold the CD down. The spindle spins, mag thing spins with it.

Or if you want to gurantee compatibility, then make a ring around the hole as thick as a normal CD. Use flexible plastic. It would work better.

Re:Is there a point to "thin"?

[Flavio]

I don't see much in the way of an advantage here. What do they possibly offer?

SAVINGS! that's the brilliant part. You save on material and manufacture dirt cheap CDs.

I believe there's not much of a deformation problem at high speeds, since the CD is supposedly uniformly dense and as flat as possible. You could theoretically rotate this at infinite angular speed in vacuum without deformation. I suppose it could bend abnormally if you consider the drive's inner air circulation at extremely high speeds, but we're not there yet.

You've got a valid point about scratches, but there are two points to cover that:

1. error correction.
2. this media isn't designed for very reliable storage. it's for AOL cd's and, as I suggested in another post, dirt cheap linux propaganda. if the target's interested in the data he acquires the normal CD version if needed.

I think the idea's great, but it kind of depends on how easily these things can be pressed.

Flavio

Re:Is there a point to "thin"?

[Icebox]

I think what they are offering is not in the area of performance, which will probably be worse, but marketing. Somewhere at AOL/Time Warner there is a guy who is responsible for designing the packaging for their CDs. Although his latest 'innovation' is to stuff them in pseudo DVD cases but I think he might be running low on ideas. But if a paper thin CD comes along....imagine opening up the Sunday paper and a half dozen AOL CDs pour out.

Re:High speed flutter

[SClitheroe]

Right...four years of development, and no product demonstration..

coaster quality control

[Racer X]

I guess this worry is obvious, but I'll say it anyway. Does this technological "advance" set us back years in terms of coaster technology? First there were the 3.5" floppy discs, which were effective against desk coffee cup ring-marks but could accomodate only a rather small amount of the surface area of a cup (at least, *my* cup). Then came the CD's, which improved coaster surface area at the expense of a condensation-permitting hole. Now where do these skimpy CD's fit in? Not only are they holed, their thinness makes me doubt their viability as an obstruction to coffee cup moisture. Further, I anticipate that the lightness of the floppy CD will make it stick annoyingly to the bottom of a lifted coffee cup--a characteristic universally recognized as the hallmark of a poorly designed coaster.

Truly this is a sad day for coaster technology.

Re:coaster quality control

[eudas]

super glue.

glue an aol floppy to the center of an aol cd and your drink coaster not only gains weight so that it avoids sticking to your drink in the manner described above, but it also aids with the condensation-permitting hole problem.

eudas

p.s. i have not actually done this, heh.

eudas

Re:coaster quality control

[Saminu]

While CDs work well as coasters, I remember fondly the old days of the 8" floppy, which worked perfectly as placemats, or with a bit of string, as a bib.

Re:coaster quality control

[technos]

Naw.. Their best use is lusers. I have a couple boxes of them still, and you should see a lusers face when I pull one out of a drawer and say "This'll fix your problem. Just pop it in the drive and run setup.exe."

After the 'OMG' face wears off and they take me seriously, I see them wander back into Marketing with it held at arms length. Of course, most of them have already been bitten by me, so they start prarie dogging over their cubes and laughing while said luser tries to find where to put it.

Re:coaster quality control

[madhakr]

Coasters stick to the bottom of coffee cups because the condensation forms a seal around the bottom of the cup. Lifting the cup tries to expand the air trapped between the curved surface of the cup and the coaster. If the air does not expand enough, or the surface tension of the condensation ring doesn't break, then the coaster lifts. With a hole in the center, air from the room can enter between the coaster and cup and equalize the pressure, which lets the coaster fall. So AOL realized that no matter how light they make their coasters, they will never stick to coffee cups (as long as the coffee ring doesn't act like glue). Since light coasters work as well as heavy coasters when there's a hole in the middle, AOL can save lots of money by making them lighter.

--
To go outside the mythos is to become insane...

Note to self: How to make a grand or two

[dasunt]

Think of a nice imaginary product that would appeal to the slashdot crowd.

Register www.mycoolproduct.com

Put an ad on the page to generate $.03 in revenue each time its viewed.

Submit a story to slashdot about mycoolproduct and let the page hits accumulate.

Spiffy, now I have money to upgrade. :o)

Re:New CD-ROM drives?

[YxorY]

I and some friends had Creative Labs 52x CD-ROM drives. It always stops working after a few months.
Now i got another one. It still works, but only sometimes :)

Re:Is there a point to "thin"?

[eudas]

if it's not very reliable storage, i sure as hell wouldn't want to be the aol tech support monkey who will be receiving all of the calls when people can't get the software to work. (that *is* the point of it all, right? getting software to people? or is the point more just a stupid advertising gimmick?)

tech support is hell already, there's no need to make it worse...

eudas

Re:Possible lemons, possible lemonade

[unitron]

"If they look too much like paper, there will also be problems, like data-airplanes, where they get folded up and flown across offices."

If they can be unfolded and remain readable, this could be a fun alternative to sneakernet. As long as nobody gets an eye put out.

Re:I'm skeptical

[xjesus]

You bring up some good points, i'd mod you up if i had the power. You missed one of the key point in the forbes article, where they mention one of the hurdles of the technology:
"consumers must possess a little ring that adjusts the optical device in their standard CD, CD-Rom and DVD machines; it's sort of like the plastic gizmo that snaps into a 45-rpm record"

I'd like to see more info on this ring (heck on the technology itself for that matter), maybe they're using the ring for rigidity and optical refraction, and the floppy stuff would just be the top layer with the data on it.
They'll probably rely on AOL to send out the first wave of floppy CD's plus the ring, and then everything following would just be the top layer (assuming most of the human race would have one by then).

Re:Screw thinner, I want a smaller radius.

[SubtleNuance]

smaller standard for CDs - an 8cm diameter...They're cool and tiny and should be the future

They're proprietary and useless. Remember: the /. crowd can smell a cash-grab like a fart in a car, and sony is universally noted for stinkers.

Re:It's still vaporware... too bad

[Compuser]

Read the article. You'll need a little
"ring" to use it in a regular CD-Rom.
I wonder why you'd get yourself this "ring"
given that this would only allow you
access to junk mail.

And to head off the environmentalists...

[tswinzig]

"And if it's true, that plastic is not degradable, well! the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the Earth plus plastic."

-- George Carlin

"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Printable CD's

[caveman]

I just went to the media cabinet here at the office; our current stock of CD-R's are Sony CDQ-74CP's.

These particular discs are allegedly 'Full Colour Printable', and say on the back of the jewel case 'Full colour printing possible with ink jet printers with water-based ink'.

Erm. right. We have seven different types of inkjet printer here in the office, but none of them have a sufficiently straight paper path to avoid snapping the CD, or scratching the data face to death, not to mention what taking those expensive ink cartridges for a scrape across polycarbonate would do for the budget.

Flexible CD's? Now you're talking. With any luck, these will even go around the bends in the Deskjet 690C.

Re:Practicality intervenes

[phutureboy]

Well if you will spin things at infinite speed, what do you expect? Hang on a sec, just how are you proposing to spin them up to infinite speed? With an infinitely powerfull motor, driven by an infinite watt power supply?

Don't be absurd He's going to use an infinite number of monkeys banging on an infinite number of DECWriters, all hooked up to a big Willy Wonkaesque machine that not only produces an infinite amount of chocolate, but drives a spindle as well. It's all quite simple, really.

--

Re:Why not laserdisc sized DVDs and DVD ROMs?

[Zaaf]

Uhm, yeah, mmh,
Alas I only have 5,25 inch bays available for drives.
Oh Wait! That's why those things are flexible, aren't they?

---

Re:Vaporware Generator

[unitron]

I thought MS already had a patent on the Vaporware Generator.

Re:Is there a point to "thin"?

[anotherone]

I wish I had an infinityX Cdrom drive.
-------

Re:Website....

[Fesh]

Is that a way of indirectly yelling "First post!"? *grin*
--Fesh

porn... of course

[gtx]

i don't know about AOL CD's, they'll be everywhere no matter what media is introduced, but, i do see kids using floppy CD's to come up with inventive new ways to hide their CD's that are full of JPEGs.

think about it... they could keep in in their shoes, in their wallets, in pez dispensers, i see the porn industry making a killing here among the 15-17 industry (because once you turn 18, porn loses it's novelty because you can buy it)

Re:Website....

[Heutchy]

and it is now well over 10,000......
Slashdot - the ultimate advertisement.

but, the server seems to be withstanding this quite nicely.

Re:Wouldn't the rotation hold it stiff?

[Tet]

The principal characteristic of a Bernoulli drive is that the flexible disk floats between the read/write heads, so there is no actual contact between the disk and the heads.

So, just like a conventional hard drive, then...

Remember Floppy 45's?

[GSearle]

History repeats itself. Does anybody remember the floppy 45's that used to be found in magazines? You had to carefully tear them out and put them on a record player to listen to them.

These were laminated into the strangest places, like the back of a cereal box. You actually had to cut it out of the (empty!) box to use it.

Make a CD sandwich?

[greear]

I wonder how feasible it would be to make a super thin 'CD'. This CD would contain the Data, but would require a clear face-plate and/or back-plate to make it rigid, and backwards compatible with today's systems. Then, you could just cut the flimsy CD out of a catalog, slap it between your two rigidifiers, and pop the whole thing into the CDROM drive....

Juts a few caveats....

[rabtech]

Just a few problems. I think the technology is great, but its not really anything new. All they have done is taken the data layer from a CD and put it into a thin, flexible disc. The hardest part is making it so that it won't break.

Once you have one of these floppy CDs, you've got to possess a reflecting disc to attatch it to, before placing it into your drive, otherwise there is nothing for the laser to reflect off of and the disc cannot be read.

That's the real key: if they can't get these reflective discs out there (at least one in every house), then the format won't sell.


-----

Aging CD Market

[Gefiltefish]

I think I see what's happening here.

CD-ROM's have been around for some time now. The market is aging.

With the aging market, the formerly rigid disks have more trouble. Sometimes, they go flaccid without any clear cause.

The good news is that this may liven up a market for Viagra.

needed stuff

[non-plus]

Now, if one of these gets out of balance and starts smacking the internals of my drive.....

Re:One Question?

[Choron]

And I'm not sure they make such good cup holders as well.

AOL disks

[mcdade]

As if they don't already cover the landscape, great now i need them showing up in my newspaper, stuck under my windshield wipers at public place and wrapped around my soda cans...

advertising is going to kill us..

anyone remember getting flexi vinyl w/comp mags?

[dayeight]

When tape was still a valid media? These were the first demo discs, i guess. You had to dub the record to an audio tape, then use it on your computer. And it never, ever, worked.

Perfect!

[NuclearArchaeologist]

It should be just the thing to distribute MS Office 2000^H^H^H^H 10^H^H 1492 or whatever. It's cheaper and will last just long enough for the new release of SpyGlass^H^H^H^H^H^H^H MSIE to break it. You could even get a special eddition of the paper clip on his own CD.

They might also try to distribute Windows 2000, ME, Whistler, NT, 0.net, PE, and BS as these change faster than their office product these days.

Then again, who would pay $200 for less than an ounce of plastic?

A pint's a pound the world around, and that is 16 ounces well purchased.

Re:High speed flutter

[bluephone]

Well, when a CD "flutters" as you say, it's really a wobble. Now, this may seem like I'm quibbling over the word, but I'm not. The wobble is focused at the spindle axis, while a flutter would be around the edges of the disc. It's caused by cheap manufacturing processes with CDs, where the plastic isn't properly distributed around the disc. With these discs, they're so thin, I'd bet that they'll be much more stable due to Bernoulli forces. Plus, with only 20% of the material present, even with the drive spinning at full stroke, there's less mass in the disc, thus less inertial force to wobble the disc.

The ring would do nothing to stop this, it's only to allow the disc handling mechanism grab on to the disc. The previous poster was incorrect in attributing stability to that.

New CD-ROM drives?

[YxorY]

Today's CD-ROM drives may not be able to read it. The floppy CD should be at a plastic protection (like de 5 1/4 floppy disk). And for that, you will need a different CD-ROM drive.
No big deal on buying a new one, since today's CD-ROM drives just work for a few months anyway.

Re:New CD-ROM drives?

[Legion303]

Now i got another one.

Wait--the first one died, so you went out and bought another of the SAME BRAND?

Damn. I'm off Sony products forever because a walkman died on me in the 80s.

-Legion

Re:New CD-ROM drives?

[Squarewav]

Today's CD-ROM drives may not be able to read it. The floppy CD should be at a plastic protection (like de 5 1/4 floppy disk). And for that, you will need a different CD-ROM drive. No big deal on buying a new one, since today's CD-ROM drives just work for a few months anyway.
mostlikly, or maybe an adapter that lets it be read in a normal cd-drive
What kinda sorry ass cd-drive you have there I bought the cheepest 48x drive I could find over a year ago(25$) and it still works like it shud

Well, of course it's withstanding it...

[ClassicG]

Of course it's handling it nicely - there isn't anything really TO the site yet, so a few thousand hits isn't causing too much strain on the bandwidth.

[virtually nothing] * 10,000+ == still almost nothing...

A computer media manufacturing company...

[socratic method]

with no online presence? Sure sounds fishy to me. Maybe slashdot needs a topic for vaporware sm

Soon we'll see

[ChodeMonkey]

the best use of AOL media yet. Box of AOL CD-Tissue paper. Makes you feels just that much better every time you blow your nose or wipe you butt.

Do these scratch or skip?

[DA_MAN_DA_MYTH]

Nothing pisses me of more than a scratched CD or now especiall DVD

"If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten."
-- George Carlin

Re:Website....

[thing12]

Wow... 23000 now and going up at over 100/s for the past minute or so.

Re:Website....

[tregoweth]

It wasn't up when I submitted the article, I swear! :)

-j

Re:Is there a point to "thin"?

[Flavio]

Um no. If anything of a nonzero radius were spun at infinte speeds, it would be thrown outward with infinite force.

True. Since I was talking about an ideal disc, we _could_ suppose it would resist to the infinite speeds (that depends on your benevolence, actually =). But in any case, what I said fortunately stands because the disc won't bend, it'll just desintegrate symmetrically in two dimensions, leaving the third dimension intact.

And if these discs can withstand infinite force in one idrection (or nearly so), then there are far more important things to make with it than floppy cds:)

=) that would kick ass.

the interesting part is that we're talking about tensile versus shearing stress.

Materials that have very good tensile stress characteristics (i.e., they can compress/stretch along its main axis without rupturing) not necessarily have good shearing stress. Materials with near ideal tensile stress tend to perform badly with shearing stress _unless_ we're talking about some substance with an isomorphic or amorphic structure.

On a more off-topic note, there are peculiarities regarding tensile and shearing stress themselves, even when considered isolated. For example, concrete supports a lot of weight without cracking, thus having a good compressional tensile stress coefficient, but concrete breaks very easily if stretched.

This is kind of offtopic, but I suppose someone might find it interesting and I don't think there will ever be a story to post this on.

So, uh... flexible media kicks ass! =)

Flavio

Re:Website....

[Pandora's Vox]

46k and counting...
bleh i wish they'd get something up on their site :-(

What about slot loading drives?

[schmack]

I don't imagine i'd have much luck trying to
get one of those into my slot-loading drive!

Sure, if you cut a knife shape out of a piece
of paper you could lacerate yourself with it,
but could you use it to spread cottage cheese
on a cracker?

I DON'T THINK SO, MR THIN MEDIA!

Updating an old theme...

[krb]

Remember those little plastic 45 rpm records that used to come in magazines and stuff? You had to punch them out of the page and then they'd play on a regular record player...
just think, soon all of our magizines will come with plastic insert pages containing thin CD's full of all sorts of clutter for our increasingly giant hard disks. Or, of course, to be true to the original, compilation CD's to tease you into buying the latest Limp Bizkit or Backstreet track.

Kick ass!

-k

(with a healthy dose of sarcasm towards the end there...)

Re:Is there a point to "thin"?

[mitheral]

Actually this isn't a problem. After all the purpose of direct mailings is to get people to show interest in your product. If these people call you Fed-Ex them a real CD. This is the kind of tech call I like:

ME:"Your CD isn't working? No Problem; Give me your address and I'll Fed-Ex you a convential CD with 100 bonus hours"

User:"Wow really? You are really helpful; thanks.[1]"

As a bonus you get a postal address of someone who is actually interested in your product.

[1]: OK, So maybe I was a little optimistic thinking they would actually thank you.

Re:Website....

[degauss]

Is it just me... or does this image on that site just look like a scan of 1 person's business card with the name wiped in photoshop or something. Then again mabey it's just me....


---------------

Oh, wow...."DaliDiscs"!!

[alumshubby]

Coming soon to tree branches everywhere...complete with silk-screened pictures of clock faces?

Re:Is there a point to "thin"?

[gradbert]

the new plastic boxes from AOL are GREAT. Look at it way, AOL used to be such a great company because they would send you perfectly good floopy disks for free. But with the popularity of the CD they stopped sending me usefull things for free. But these plasit boxes are usefull. I often send CD's to people (as they are bandwidth poor) and I need a nice lightwieght box to mail them in.

The guy who came up with this isn't a lame-o he's a philantropist who uses the company dollar

floppy dvd's

[davonds]

This is not a particularly difficult technology, all you have to do is bond the aluminum to mylar rather than polycarbonate, but I see a couple of problems. First you would have a short life span, the discs would get pretty scratched up in just regular use, but this is really not an issue for a disposable disc format. Secondly, and more importantly, the discs would not be compatible with all drives, and would be prone to read errors, and jamming drives during ejection. I can see the tech support calls already, "Hi, I installed your software, and it hosed my drive, please send me xxx dollars to replace it.

This sounds similar to the old paper records

[jandrese]

Does anybody remember back in the dying days of vinyl when all of the magazines and cereal boxes started shipping with little promotional "records" that were more or less your average 45 printed on a piece of 8 1/2x11 paper (although the paper was coated IIRC). After you went through all the trouble to cut the record out you got a scratchy advertisement for Coke and maybe a song or a story. Well, that's enough nostalga for today, back to techie stuff.

Re:High speed flutter

[Kyobu]

What the hell? That wasn't flamebait! I was serious! Can't a guy be a pedant once in a while? I didn't do anything wrong.

Re:Screw thinner, I want a smaller radius.

[ivan256]

Not only are they not proprietary, but you can get CD-R media this size. A quick search on google turned up hundreds of places like this.

Re:High speed flutter

[HD Webdev]

I would guess that they must be 5 times lighter also :)

Re:Wouldn't the rotation hold it stiff?

[jovlinger]

I think you'll find that a conventional harddrive has a stiff (glass?) platter ontop of which very light read heads float. The same aerodynamic effect which pulls a wing up pulls the heads down towards the spinning disk but keeps them from touching, IIRC.

Re:Website....

[Anonymous Coward]

heh.. obvously none of you have heard of ab.

try it out:

ab "http://www.thindisc.com/_vti_bin/fpcount.exe/?Pag e=index.htm|Image=1" -n 2000 -c 100

quickly add 2,000 hits to their counter

Re:Is there a point to "thin"?

['This is false.']

"I believe there's not much of a deformation problem at high speeds, since the CD is supposedly uniformly dense and as flat as possible."

Um no. If anything of a nonzero radius were spun at infinte speeds, it would be thrown outward with infinite force. And if these discs can withstand infinite force in one idrection (or nearly so), then there are far more important things to make with it than floppy cds:)

- Richard

Thats nothing new....[been there, seen it]

[EABinGA]

Whats so revolutionary about this?

5 times thinner than a CD...

Can be wrapped around a soda can...

5 1/4" floppies could do this years ago!

If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck...

OT: just for interest's sake...

[DJGreg]

They should put up a slashbox that shows the current stats for slashdot.

• Uptime (for all machines) ;)
• Current hits per second (1 min average)
• Current bandwidth usage (1 min average)

It would be interesting to see and also be a great advertisement for Open Source Software in a high stress environment.

Two points - weight and disposability

[Fencepost]

These aren't intended to replace your existing CDs, they're intended to be a cheaper, lighter, more convenient media for people to distribute things that don't need to be kept for very long.

I think the main use of these will be in areas that can be considered "promotion," but there's a huge amount of money spent there every year. Ignore the possibility of these being 50% of the cost - how much would AOL save each year by eliminating the postage on 80% of the CD's weight?

Say a CD weighs 0.5 oz (which is close), if they can find a way to get that down to 0.1 oz, they can probably get a little creative with the packaging and get a mailer that's below 1 oz (or 2, or any other integer up to 13). They're paying a bulk mailing rate rather than one-off first class rates, but if they paid the latter then going from 1.6 oz to 1.2 they'd have a real incentive to shave off that last 0.2 oz. Right now, standard first-class mail rates are $0.33 for the first ounce, plus $0.22 for each additional. If AOL sent 10 million CDs a year out at those rates, it could save them 2.2 million dollars a year on postage. Even if their savings would only be a quarter that amount, would they switch for a $550,000/year savings just on postage if it didn't have any adverse effect?

These things are also much more disposable - if you're producing something that you want people to be able to use for a month or two but you really don't care beyond that, then these are great - less cost to produce them, and by the time the breakage percentage gets up to areas that you'd be concerned about the material on the disks is out of date anyway. Heck, if they could I suspect there are companies who'd love to have CDs that would intentionally become unreadable after a short time, the problem is that it can't be anything that might muck up someone's CD-ROM drive.

As to the question of reliability, maybe they start to stress after a few hours of spin and become unreadable. So what? As long as they don't actually break apart, what's the problem if your disposable CD needs to be disposed of?

-- fencepost

Re:Two points - weight and disposability

[jafac]

Well, the other problem is, as the disk degrades, reads will go from - good, to slightly bad (ecc compensates), to possibly read errors that don't get caught by ecc (I know that's theoretically impossible, right? but who has never hit one? nobody), where you think you've got good data, but the files are corrupt.

This could lead to execution of bad code which causes - well, just about anything. But mainly crashes, freezes, hangs, dumps, chorks, hiccups, dr watsons, bluescreens, abends, and kernel panics. If you're lucky, you'll only lose non-critical data.

If there's going to be an intentional time limit on the reading of a disk, it is computationally irresponsible to do it this way. It has to read fine, then just plain not read at all, preferably with an error message that states the reason (Your evaluation period has ended, please bend over for more time). And the failure has to not just be friendly to the user, it has to be friendly to the OS as well.

Re:Two points - weight and disposability

[MrScience]

Heck, if they could I suspect there are companies who'd love to have CDs that would intentionally become unreadable after a short time

For the life of me I can't find it (anyone?), but Slashdot earlier this year ran a story about new "rental" disks that had an added layer which became opaque while watching the movie. Woohoo. Divx.

Digital origami?

[tewwetruggur]

Now, when I am bombarded with 2 billion free hours of AOL, I can make those nice little swans to decorate my desk.

Re:I'm skeptical

[Chagrin]

What if you spun it?

1060 hits per minute and counting

[discovercomics]

09:40 pm eastern time 47381
09:41 pm eastern time 48441

1060 hits per minute
63600 hits per hour if rate is sustained

Re:Business-card CDs?

[Pandora's Vox]

bad shit. a friend of mine works at a company that makes them, and they have to put a disclaimer on their cds cuz some guy sued them for wrecking his car stereo...

One Question?

[Space]

I dont think they will ever truly replace AOL cds. They just wont fly the same.

* Space pulls out his shotgun
[Space] Pull!!!

Re:One Question?

[Anarchos]

Hey, at least you won't have to buy anymore kleenex =).

Re:Website....

[WildHunter]

at well over 77 thousand as of 10:50 am.

Behold the power of Slashdot!

Possible problems...

[bonzoesc]

This new disc will be flexible and extremely thin. That also means it will be really easy to cut with scissors, if not torn by hand. If they look too much like paper, there will also be problems, like data-airplanes, where they get folded up and flown across offices. Now that I think of it, that would be cool if I could fold AOL discs like that without them shattering...

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate

Re:Possible problems...

[Flavio]

Now that I think of it, that would be cool if I could fold AOL discs like that without them shattering...

WITHOUT them shattering? What's the fun in that?

What getting a bunch of AOL CD's that were mailed to you in magazines and newspapers and just breaking them with your bare hands or throwing them at walls? Of course you must do that in the middle of the office so everyone knows what a freak you are =)

Flavio

free floppies! 1-800-848-8199

[Justin Goldberg]

yahooters!

Re:High speed flutter

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the article, the flutter problem has already been solved. The article says: "consumers must possess a little ring that adjusts the optical device in their standard CD, CD-Rom and DVD machines; it's sort of like the plastic gizmo that snaps into a 45-rpm record."

But you couldn't possibly be expected to read the article. I mean, you had that first post to shoot for.

Re:Possible lemons, possible lemonade

[Lyrrad]

If they can be unfolded and remain readable, this could be a fun alternative to sneakernet. As long as nobody gets an eye put out.
Yep! It'll now be frisbeenet.

Yea but.

[emf]

Can you stick them in a microwave for a nice light show?

Re:Screw thinner, I want a smaller radius.

[Kris_J]

They're not proprietory -- they've been in the CD standards since the beginning. Go to a decent second hand CD store and you should find a couple of old music ones stashed away somewhere...

Re:Business-card CDs?

[jafac]

um - special hardware IS needed - unless you've had that special experience of disassembling a slot-loading CD ROM drive to get one of these little motherfuckers out.

I say there should be mandatory warning labels on these non-circular CDs.

I know they don't fit into slot loading drives,
You know they don't fit into slot loading drives.
But my #$)%*)(@#$!!! mother-in-law doesn't know. Well, she knows now. . .

Website....

[blogan]

http://www.thindisc.com/ Not much there now, but it was the same with Transmeta's site :) As of posting, the counter is 490.

Re:Website....

[Sivat]

Increasing at about 30 hits a second...good for /.

Mmm...cherry....

[glowingspleen]

The article mentions that they can be moved around like a Fruit Rollup. Now what -I- want to see is for them to actually use them in Fruit Rollup packages, replacing that annoying cellifane wrap!

That'd be like a snack and a movie that I could carry in my pocket. Mmmmm....

It's still vaporware... too bad

[perrin5]

It seems to me that this is not really a CD project yet. Sure they can make it in the shape of a CD, but until they can make the thing spit out of a front loaded CD changer, or make a CD-ROM read it at all (as it seems they still have not from the article) this is just a pretty circle that you can read with their own special drive...

Soon, however, I hope to see guys doing good work like this make some money, and then I can play frisbee with something that doesn't hurt my hands quite as much as those AOL coasters I use now...

Is there a point to "thin"?

[WarSpiteX]

I don't see much in the way of an advantage here. What do they possibly offer?

I'll concede perhaps a faster spinup time since they're lighter, but will these flimsy CDs be able to withstand rotations at 70X without deforming? What about scratches? Most of the thickness of current CDs and DVDs is a protective coating. The real disc itself is extremely thin. Anyone can remove lacquer, it's just making sure that the disc is still worth using afterwards that's important.

Re:Is there a point to "thin"?

[jallen02]

SO it can fold better! :-D Its designed for ads n stuff stick it in the middle of a mag, the thinner the more malleable right?

Jeremy

Re:Is there a point to "thin"?

[eudas]

yeah you've got a point. still, i wish it was the advertising monkeys who come up with stupid ideas like this that had to field the calls instead of the poor techs. the advert guys always drop the real crap on some other dept. anyway...

and yeah, it was optimistic to think that a cust would thank you. ;)

eudas

Re:Is there a point to "thin"?

[rgmoore]

The guy who came up with this isn't a lame-o he's a philantropist who uses the company dollar

So was the guy who came up with the AOL CD. He apparently decided that American coffee tables were under critical threat of being destroyed by condensation stains. His brilliant response was to provide every home in the country with an endless supply of free coasters.

Re:High speed flutter

[shyster]

Actually, "thinner" is the "opposite" of "thicker". In mathematical terms, I believe it's called a reciprocal.

So, therefore, "5 times thicker" would equal n*5=5n.
"5 times thinner" would be n*5^(-1)=n*(1/5)=n/5.

Well done.

[Ravagin]

37704. I would swear that jumped a couple thousand in the last five minutes.

Amazing. And it wasn't even in the body of the story...

-J

Re:Business-card CDs?

[Sivat]

Does anyone know what happens when you put one of these business card cds into a slot load cd player...?

all we need

[cydorg_monkey]

Now all we need is a jewel case that's 5 times as brittle as standard jewel cases.

I'm skeptical

[DeadSea]

The specification for CDs is very strict about what angle the laser hits the disk, how big the pits are, what wavelength the laser uses, the index of refraction of the cd material, and the thickness of the CD.

The aluminum layer containing the pits is actually right under the label. The polycarbonate has to be a certain thickness with the right index of refraction such that the laser beam coming in at the right angle will find the pit and return at the correct angle for the detector.

Furthermore, because CDs are so thick, the point at which the laser enters the plastic is a good ways away from the focal point of the laser (on the pit). This means that the laser enters the CD over a large surface area (many many times the size of a pit), just one factor that makes CDs resistant to dust and scratching.

Even if you were able to play with the index of refraction of your material such that you could get the cd to work when it is thinner, your CD would be more suseptible to dust and scratches (face it, CDs aren't great now). In the applications suggested here, I'd think that might be something of an issue.

At the very least expect it not to work in many drives just because it can't be held in place properly. My CD-ROM operates on its side. To work like that the cradle has little clips on the sides to hold the CD. That obviously relys on the CD's rigidity. Also think of walkmans that use ball bearings in the center hole to hold on to a CD.

Re:Wouldn't the rotation hold it stiff?

[sPaKr]

You have lived in a world of perfect physics much to long. When you step down from the ivory tower you will see that never do you have a 1m 1m 1m box, that the lever is never exactly 2m, that the sack of potatos never wieghs exactly 5 kilos. Measure the forces when the whole is slightly off center, or the disk isnt balacned, at 40x the entere thing will flutter whildly until its launched out the front is lodged into your head. This seems like the worse new invention of the year.

Practicality intervenes

[Phil Wilkins]

Well if you will spin things at infinite speed, what do you expect? Hang on a sec, just how are you proposing to spin them up to infinite speed? With an infinitely powerfull motor, driven by an infinite watt power supply?

Re:High speed flutter

[Anonymous Coward]

The article goes on to state: "With current silkscreening processes, images of Natalie Portman can be applied to the surface of the discs. This would dramatically improve the rigididty of the disc, perhaps keeping it erect enough to allow the discs to be used in so-called "vertical smile" CDROM drives."

sing with me!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

COPY AND PASTE KARMA WHORE MOTHER FUCKER copy and paste karma whore mother fucker COPY AND PASTE KARMA WHORE MOTHER FUCKER copy and paste karma whore mother fucker wicky wicky woo COPY AND PASTE KARMA WHORE MOTHER FUCKER copy and paste karma whore mother fucker COPY AND PASTE KARMA WHORE MOTHER FUCKER copy and paste karma whore mother fucker wickity wickity woo COPY AND PASTE KARMA WHORE MOTHER FUCKER copy and paste karma whore mother fucker COPY AND PASTE KARMA WHORE MOTHER FUCKER copy and paste karma whore mother fucker wicky wicky woo COPY AND PASTE KARMA WHORE MOTHER FUCKER copy and paste karma whore mother fucker COPY AND PASTE KARMA WHORE MOTHER FUCKER copy and paste karma whore mother fucker wickity wickity woo

Re:High speed flutter

[HD Webdev]

Just what the hell does 'five times thinner' mean anyway?!?!?

Think about it.

Brainstorm

[British]

Reminds me of the item in Brainstorm(1983). Imaginge a reel-to-reel tape player, but intead of a black magnetic tape, it was all reflective n shiny like a CD.

50429

[Gorimek]

It holds up well.

Re:High speed flutter

[SClitheroe]

How does a snap in plastic ring indicate that there won't be problems with flutter on the outer edges of the disk?

Think about it...five times thinner is _really_ thin

Re:High speed flutter

[Decimal]

Actually, "thinner" is the "opposite" of "thicker". In mathematical terms, I believe it's called a reciprocal.

So, therefore, "5 times thicker" would equal n*5=5n.
"5 times thinner" would be n*5^(-1)=n*(1/5)=n/5.

Thank you! I thought the last poster's logic seemed a bit fuzzy. "Because thinner refers to thickness, thinner means thicker"??

Business-card CDs?

[hiryuu]

Me, I'd think that the business-card CDs and CD-Rs you see at trade shows and advertised in the classifieds would have become more common than they are by now; no special hardware needed to play them, while the article on the ThinDisc mentioned a need for a hub adaptor. Since I haven't seen the former taking off, I have trouble imagining the latter will actually see widespread use - and that's neglecting the notions of "vaporware" already making the rounds here on /.

Re:Business-card CDs?

[FFFish]

That's because the business card CDs are bloody expensive.

At [this outlet] they're $1.25 to $2 a pop.

Ouch.


--

Re:High speed flutter

[bonzoesc]

The little ring that adjusts the device sounds incredibly stupid. If we want something that can be read in existing CD readers, what can we use that is already out and requires just a little bit more care in its transport. What is that called again... oh, right - A CD-R(W).
This is a reply to an AC post - don't forget to mod them up...

Tell me what makes you so afraid
Of all those people you say you hate

Re:High speed flutter

[cherubim]

well, of course we all know paint thinners give paint the consistency of set concrete and corn flour is used to thin the sauce, or was that thicken?

Re:anyone remember getting flexi vinyl w/comp mags

[markbanang]

I remember them.

I never had a problem with them because rather than copying them to tape first, I used to connected the computer directly to the stereo. Having said that the short playing time (even at 33rpm) didn't leave room for very complex programs. *8')

Ah, fond memories of the Sinclair ZX81 (Timex 1000 for those of you stateside).

Mark..........

Flexible AOL Disks??!!??

[natet]

AAARRRGGG, they're everywhere cap'n, and I canna break them

Re:Scratching?

[ZHaDoom]

Scratching ever since someone found out it would be cheaper if they did not sandwich the data layer in the cd and just put it under the printed layer there is only a layer a few atoms thick on my current cd to scratch and ruin the disk. I doubt they can make that any thinner. Plus if they are planning to put it though a printing press I would imagine that it probably has a higher tolerance (protection) against scratching.

No web site?

[Keighvin]

Try www.thindisc.com, or a search on Google which turned up the name of the company in connection with several venture capital firms.

Re:Screw thinner, I want a smaller radius.

[0peth]

Yeah, I listen to a bunch of European metal, and they still use the smaller size CDs for singles. Often, actually, what they do is take a normal-sized CD, only write on the area in the middle of it that is of the size for the smaller CDs, and then cut out bits of the larger CD to make a shaped CD to fit whatever picture is on the CD (like Here)

It doesn't get any better then this.

[moz711]

Wow, floppy CDs. I would dare say that this is the height of human achivement. It took a few million years to reach this point, but we finally did it.
And I would dare say that it doesn't get any better then this. The human race should stop while it's ahead.

Maybe EVATONE can come back!

[imagineer_bob]

Remember the company that made paper-thin records that were found on the backs of cereal boxes, in Mad magazine, and in National Geographic?

Maybe they can have a comeback with this technology.

Sounds like...

[StandardDeviant]

they'd make really great frisbees.

Lends a whole new meaning to sneakernet ("Hey Joe-Bob, can you toss me that thar backup?").

--

Re:Screw thinner, I want a smaller radius.

[dstone]

They're proprietary

They're not proprietary. I have commercial music CDs from the mid-to-late 80's in that small size (U2, Wall of Voodoo, Beach Boys, etc.) I believe those "business-cards-on-a-CD-ROM" also use that format. My home CD player can play them. Several portable CD players I've tried over the years play them fine (indicating they are, in fact, part of the CD audio standard). Notebook PCs have a center spindle and I'm certain would play them. And all desktop CD-ROM drives I've seen have the smaller cutout to hold them, also.

Standard enough for ya? ;-)

Adding some weight....

[SomeoneGotMyNick]

Would I have to put a penny on the inside edge of the floppy CD so it will spin properly?

Just like those cardboard records you used to cut off the back of cereal boxes in the 70's that needed to be weighed down with a coin to turn properly on a turntable.

Note to those who graduated high school this year: Records are old CD's which used to be made out of vinyl

Maximum rotational speed...

[Loligo]

IANAPTOO (I am not a physicist, theoretical or otherwise)

But as the outer edge of the media approaches the speed of light, wouldn't the transfer of data actually start to slow down?

I seem to recall an analysis of this sorta thing on slashdot at one point, theorizing the maximum rotational speed of magnetic media before relativity(?) starts to muck up the results.

-LjM

Right...

[MasterOfDisaster]

I'll belive it when it's jamed in my slot loading CD drive, and I cant get it out.
But, realy I think it's a totaly stupid idea, and therefore will catch on, assumeing that it's not vaporware

FMD

[yetisalmon]

Hell, I just want the FMD. Go FMD...

Screw thinner, I want a smaller radius.

[Kris_J]

There is a second, smaller standard for CDs - an 8cm diameter. Sony use them in their new digital camera. They only store about 180MB when standard CD technolgy is used, but Sony has that double CD density technology, and if you did a DVD in that size you'd be able to fit over 4Gig in a double sided, double layered disk. They're cool and tiny and should be the future.

Re:High speed flutter

[claycalhoun]

Taking "thinner" as a relative descriptor, dt, such that t2=t1 + dt and where t2t1, suggests a disk of 1/5 the typical thickness. Hence, the phrase, "You look thinner, honey." would mean, "You've lost weight."

However, it you choose to view "thinner" as a non-relative, binary indicator of measurability (wherein the phrase, "You look thinner, honey." should be interpreted as, "You take up space, honey.") kind of adjective thingy, well, then the "5x as thick" line of logic choo-choo's along quite nicely.

Sluuuuuurp...

[achurch]

...is the sound your new floppy CD with its 650 gigs of irreplaceable data makes as you accidentally bump the box and the vibration flops the CD enough to get it caught in the motor.

Okay, I guess that wasn't such a good investment after all...

--
BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL

Re:High speed flutter

[claycalhoun]

Taking "thinner" as a relative descriptor, dt, such that t2=t1 + dt and where t2 is less than t1, suggests a disk of 1/5 the typical thickness. Hence, the phrase, "You look thinner, honey." would mean, "You've lost weight."

However, it you choose to view "thinner" as a non-relative, binary indicator of measurability (wherein the phrase, "You look thinner, honey." should be interpreted as, "You take up space, honey.") kind of adjective thingy, well, then the "5x as thick" line of logic choo-choo's along quite nicely.

Floppy (CD) Disks?

[0peth]

I searched the posts, and couldn't find anythign about this, and was surprised nobody thought of it. If they can produce these, and they work with normal CD-ROMS, then some people, at least, will hopefully start using them, and if enough people do, I wonder about releasing them like floppy disks--just as they are proposing now, but with a case and sliding shield to keep them safe, it would mean a different drive, but if people are using them already, it would probably sell, and production would be very similar to the current CD production lines, so it wouldn't cost much to make new assembly lines. Still would have the downside of not being able to write on them, but they'd probably be better than current CDs, at least.

Re:High speed flutter

[Keighvin]

The plastic ring is probably just the center hold - note the abnormally large central hole in the picture. This would give the CD/DVD player the ability to grip and spin the CD but note necessarily stabalize anything.

Danke

[J. T. MacLeod]

Actually, I did know that, I just wanted to be silly 8)

Thanks for the link, though! This is exactly what I've been looking for to people to prevent me from having to explain the paradoxes I frequently discuss.

Thanks!

J. T. "Mac" MacLeod

Vaporware Generator

[bartyboy]

I can't write code, but I imagine that Slashdot editors have something that takes the following inputs:

• Elite Company Name [FooBar Co. Inc.]
  
• Elite Product Name [SuckaFoo Storage System]
  
• Storage Size [1 gig | 400 cds | 1200 DVDs ]
  
• Media Type [Ashtray | Spare Tire | Carbon Paper]
  
• Available in [2006 | 2019 | 2495]
  

and prints out a story like this one.

Yes, the (soon to be patented) Slashdot Vaporware Generator.

Believe the hype.

Who is ThinDISC?

[XneznJuber]

They participated in East Bay Golden State Venture Capital Conferece...

ThinDISC Media, Inc. is creating a new digital advertising medium known as ThinDISC. The physically unique ThinDISC is one-fifth the thickness of a standard compact disc. This proprietary optical media will extend all market segments for digital media within data distribution, advertising and sales promotion markets. TDM will enable advertisers and print media publishers to capture a larger segment of the emerging $400B Internet e-commerce market because of ThinDISC's unique delivery methods. Exclusive new packaging and distribution methods, coupled with never before achieved, low replication costs and extraordinary quantity capability within tight deadlines will enable the digital publishing revolution to reach mass media proportions that were previously economically unfeasible with any other form of digital media

Wouldn't the rotation hold it stiff?

[vheissu]

I would think centrifugal force (ok, intertia for all you refrence frame nitpicks) would have some stabilizing factor. I'm not sure what the plastic adapter disk looks like, but perhaps that could provide stiffening as well. Anyway, the point is that these can be manufactured more easily for promotional type deals, not as a safe storage medium for important data. I can see this-there are zillions of cheap CDs kicking around that you wouldn't use more than once or twice--video game demos, etc. What I want to know is: Do they still spark in the microwave?