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One Terabyte On a 12-inch^H^H^H^Hcm Disk

News for nerds writes: "At InterOpto'02 - international optoelectronics exhibition hold in Chiba, Japan - OPTWARE Co.Ltd. made up of ex-Sony engineers, demoed(in Japanese) 1-terabyte super-high speed optical disk system "T-VRD." It uses hologram and stores 1 terabyte data in a 12-cm-CD-size disc, with 100Mbps - 1Gbps transfer rate. Available in 2003 as 19-inch rackmount, 2005 for PC." Update: 07/16 18:33 GMT by T : Sorry, that's centimeters, not inches, which is of course even better ;)

462 comments

  1. 12 cm or 12 inch? by spookymonster · · Score: 2, Informative

    There's a big difference there....

    --
    - Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
    1. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You slut!

    2. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Elledan · · Score: 1

      The article mentions 12 cm, and shows pictures of CD-sized disks, so I'm willing to bet that these disks are 12 cm :)

      --
      Site & blog: http://www.mayaposch.com
    3. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by ryanr · · Score: 2

      Surely, it must be 12cm, which is more CD-size. I get that impression from the pics.

    4. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by breon.halling · · Score: 4, Funny

      Please don't tell my girlfriend!

      --
      "Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
    5. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by jdubois79 · · Score: 1, Troll

      According to the article, it's 12 cm.

      Ah, another wonderful example of americans not being able to tell the difference between CM and IN. ;)

      --
      --------
      Nothing can be done before the tremendous power!
      RabidComics
    6. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nonono. Not all Americans are metric-ignorant. Just half-assed /. editors.

    7. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by CerebusUS · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Fuck it. I tried to reply twice and got filtered based on time.

    8. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      "12 cm or 12 inch? There's a big difference there...."

      Most blondes don't know the difference.

    9. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by gerf · · Score: 1

      oh my god, i cracked up here at work when i read that... stoppit, or i'll get fired for reading /. all the time.

      seriously, this is awesome. maybe they'll replace DVDs, since we'll "all have HDTV's by then", (reminiscent of people in the 60s thinking we'd be flying to work by now... buy anywho), it could replace DVHS as a top-quality, insane movie experience.

      or maybe we'll buy one of those instead of 30 DVDs for the entire collection of LoTR!

    10. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most Americans can, just not the one's that work at NASA.

    11. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2, Interesting
      The first time I saw a terabyte of storage, it did use 12-inch disks. This was at a trade show well over 10 years ago. It was a juke box type machine the size of a couple of old-fashioned telephone booths. It was filled with hundreds of 12-inch optical disks.

      At the time, they were touting the amazing density of optical technology. I guess they've made a little more progress since then.

    12. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by craw · · Score: 1

      12 cm must refer to the floppy disk version, while 12 inches is the hard disk.:-) Quite impressive. If they were marketing this product towards women they could nickname it Magic Johnson. Unfortunately, I believe that John Wayne Bobbitt already has dibs on this nick.

    13. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by NotoriousDAN · · Score: 1

      If you take into account the fact that "^H" represents "backspace", the title makes an awful lot more sense.

    14. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Hammer · · Score: 1

      I do belive that our friend Timothy tried, in a subtle way, to show the 2.54^2*3.14 increase in data density. 12-inch^H^H^H^Hcm
      He should have known that it would wizz over the head of some...

    15. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by scott1853 · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      I don't know about blondes, but brunettes don't fall for the ol' "it's not the size the matters" line.

    16. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Ioldanach · · Score: 3, Funny

      Its 12 cm, until you rub it. Then... ;>

    17. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Ioldanach · · Score: 2
      If you take into account the fact that "^H" represents "backspace", the title makes an awful lot more sense.

      Yes, it does, now that its been changed. It only said inch before, like the editor's comment says...

    18. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by nachoman · · Score: 2, Informative

      12 cm is about 4.7 inches for you non-metric people...

      very nice.

    19. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by feed_me_cereal · · Score: 1

      yup. looks like someone forgot to stty erase ^h

      --
      "Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
    20. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most blondes don't know the difference. When the unit is wang inches, there is no difference. One penis inch is about equal to one cm.

    21. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by fatphil · · Score: 1

      Haha, why the heck have you included 3.14 in that ratio?
      Do metric circles have area r^2, and imperial circles have area pi.r^2?

      Funniest thing is that you've posted exactly the same flawed post /repeatedly/ in this thread. Next time do it in all caps and bold too!

      FP.

      --
      Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
    22. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >> Ah, another wonderful example of americans not being able to tell the difference between CM and IN. ;)

      Ah, just another attempt by a European to try and seem important by pushing thier foriegn standards on Americans.

    23. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Ah, just another attempt by a European to try and seem important by pushing thier foriegn standards on Americans."

      Please work harder on your trolling skills that was just a tad lacking.

    24. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Hammer · · Score: 1

      Let me guess...you flunked math...
      Area always is pi * r^2 regarless of the unit you use.
      2" circle is 2^2*3.14 = 6.28sqin
      5.08 cm circle is 5.08^2 * 3.14 = 81.03 cm2 (incidentally the same actual area....)

    25. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Alsee · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      What's the difference between a blond and a Porsche?
      You don't loan a Porsche to your friends.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    26. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by nortcele · · Score: 1

      Or the same size as the bore on a M1 Abrams tank.

    27. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by saider · · Score: 1
      We know the difference is just that for most Americans there is a one-to-one conversion ratio. So what's the big deal?

      ;-)

      --


      Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
    28. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      A blonde woman doesn't get much respect from her boss because he thinks she is stupid. So she decides to study a few things and see if she can earn his respect. A few days later, she passes her boss's office and asks him to name a state, and she'll tell him the capital of it. He says "Okay... Wyoming."

      The woman paused for a moment to recall the answer. Suddenly her eyes lit up, she had the answer at last: "W?"

    29. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by johnnash · · Score: 1

      That would still equal 8 inches, wouldn't it?

    30. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by MSG · · Score: 2

      Yeah, but the difference of the area of two circles in relative terms is (r2 - r1)^2, not (r2 - r1)^2 * pi.

      I think I need a new sig:
      Don't be an elitist asshole. You're just going to look like an idiot.

    31. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by fatphil · · Score: 1

      No, let me guess you flunked English.
      Re-read your post. Reread my post. _Understand_ what I've written therein.

      Then come back here apologetically when you realise that you've not just
      made a minor cock-up, which was forgivable, but you've completely missed the
      point being made by the person who was pointing out your mistake, and
      thus made yourself look like a total fuckwit. Good darts. Double top, in fact.

      FP.

      --
      Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
    32. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by edremy · · Score: 2
      Ooh, ohh, I get pedant points.

      12cm is the bore on an M1*A1* or *A2* tank. The M1 has a 105 mm rifled gun, the same as on the older M60 series.

      --
      "Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
    33. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's the size of a CD or DVD.

    34. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by fatphil · · Score: 1

      Erk, semantic minefield.

      I'd say:

      Difference in area is (r2^2-r1^2).pi
      Ratio of areas is (r2/r1)^2
      Difference of areas as a ratio is (r2^2-r1^2)/r1^2

      On the whole anything that is a ratio won't have the pi term, and anything that's absolute area will have a pi term.

      Phil

      --
      Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
    35. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They're asians; 12cm.

    36. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, let me guess, you're all fucking retards.

    37. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How can people NOT see this as funny?!?

  2. Great... by tiedyejeremy · · Score: 2

    Another opportunity for the RIAA to change formats and resell everything!

    --
    Anything you say will be held against you. ... "tits"
    1. Re:Great... by Cynikal · · Score: 1

      no, but can you imagine the blank media tax on your brand new 1TB mp3 player?

    2. Re:Great... by jlagrua · · Score: 1

      Yeah, except by then the recording industry will have been destroyed by everyone gathering every song ever recorded to burn on it. Feh! One disk... DONE!

      --
      - Que profuturus est maeror causa sententia Caelestis
    3. Re:Great... by aztec1430 · · Score: 1

      "...I'll probably have to buy "The White Album" again..."

  3. 12 cm, not 12 inches... by hyoo · · Score: 1, Redundant

    12 cm is much more impressive..

    1. Re:12 cm, not 12 inches... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depends on what you are talking about. 12 inches might be much more impressive ...

    2. Re:12 cm, not 12 inches... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your girlfriend just told you that to be nice...

    3. Re:12 cm, not 12 inches... by SoCalChris · · Score: 1

      You don't have a wife or girlfriend, do you?

    4. Re:12 cm, not 12 inches... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I beg to differ!

      Betty

    5. Re:12 cm, not 12 inches... by Mrs.Trellis · · Score: 1

      "12 cm is much more impressive.. Windows users are always more impressed by less.

    6. Re:12 cm, not 12 inches... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not for my girlfriend it's not.

    7. Re:12 cm, not 12 inches... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which is why she's screwing someone other than you.

    8. Re:12 cm, not 12 inches... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      12 cm is much more impressive..

      That's not what my wife said.

    9. Re:12 cm, not 12 inches... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's an asian pickup line.

  4. 12 inch? Try 12cm by ebbv · · Score: 0, Troll


    Big difference there, guys. C'mon can we pay a little attention? Yeesh.

    Sounds interesting though, if only I knew japanese.

    --

    Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
  5. I want one :) by billatq · · Score: 1

    Though I don't doubt that it will be very expensive upon release, that would be really nice for storing all of my mp3's and anime on one disc. I'm sure it would also be great for anyone doing video editing or any other space intensive task. I can't wait until it hits the consumer market and the prices begin to bottom out.

    1. Re:I want one :) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're a fucking loser.

    2. Re:I want one :) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And just think -- I could store all my recipes for filet mignon on this 1 little disk. This world is amazing.

  6. Look Out by ShwAsasin · · Score: 1

    Look Out, the RIAA and MPAA are gonna have a field-day once they catch wind of this technology...in 2015.

    1. Re:Look Out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But that's OK though. Don't you remember that they stopped piracy? Now they can all rest easy.

  7. 12 cm or 12 in? by GimpyTheWonderPickle · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I cant read Japanese, just curious.

    1. Re:12 cm or 12 in? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably 12 cm, since they use metric in Japan, and probably didn't convert it to inches for the few Americans who can read Japanese. :)

    2. Re:12 cm or 12 in? by denisbergeron · · Score: 1

      Since the only country in this world whom use Imperial system it's the USA, I bet for the 12cm disk !
      Anyways since the end of the Vinyl Era nobody will make an 12 inch disk

      --
      Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
    3. Re:12 cm or 12 in? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      End of the vinyl era? When was this?! I just spent $200 on vinyl just this weekend! Technology moves much too quickly for me...

    4. Re:12 cm or 12 in? by fatphil · · Score: 1

      It you are going to try and look clever, you'll probably want to avoid using
      'whom' in utterly the wrong way.

      HTH

      FP.

      --
      Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
  8. Re:Metric/Imperial by azadism · · Score: 0

    And we wonder how NASA messed up.

  9. Re:NASA did it and now it's spreading to Slashdot! by joew · · Score: 1

    Must be using that nasa metric converter...

    Though personaly I prefer http://metricsucks.com/convert.html

  10. I wish it was 12 inches... by idfrsr · · Score: 1

    then I go around saying:

    " My 12 inches packs a Terabyte! Want an upload?"

    --
    "The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
    1. Re:I wish it was 12 inches... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just be sure it's actually inches and not cm, on the off chance that someone takes you up on your offer. :)

  11. Capacity or speed? by ZaneMcAuley · · Score: 1

    Solid state storage I want for speed, sure optical disc's are great for capacity at the expense of speed.

    Ok, I have a compromise, solid state optical storage.

    Shouldnt be too hard, I mean, Star Trek and co have been doing it for years.

    --
    ----- Whats wrong with this picture? http://www.revoh.org:1234/whatswrong
    1. Re:Capacity or speed? by randomErr · · Score: 2

      From the article: 12-cm-CD-size disc, with 100Mbps - 1Gbps transfer rate

      From the previous poster: Solid state storage I want for speed, sure optical disc's are great for capacity at the expense of speed.

      From me: My network at work can't do a sustained 100Mbp. What the heck do you mean optical can't do speed?

      --
      You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
    2. Re:Capacity or speed? by blamanj · · Score: 2

      From me: My network at work can't do a sustained 100Mbp. What the heck do you mean optical can't do speed?

      Two words: seek time

    3. Re:Capacity or speed? by RyuuzakiTetsuya · · Score: 2, Funny

      Optical Solid state storage?

      IT'S CALLED PAPER.

      --
      Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
  12. Re:Change the headline!!! by f8xmulder · · Score: 1, Redundant
    12 cm is much more impressive than 12 inch.

    Only in certain instances...

  13. Re:point? by eyepeepackets · · Score: 2, Funny

    Is your real name Bill Gates by chance?

    --
    Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
  14. Re:point? by (startx) · · Score: 2, Funny

    and there's a world market for maybe 6 computers total....and 256KB should be enought memory for anybody....and I thought I'd never find a use for my 250MB HDD.... as long as they keep building more storage and faster CPU, we will find ways to write in enough code bloat to use it.

  15. Holographic storage? by Bonker · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Babelfish's rather loose translation:

    From the past it is researched, applying the " hologram system ", the system which was developed. With hologram system of conventional type there was a problem in compatibility and the like of the existing media such as miniaturization and cost and DVD. With the technology which this time is announced, you say these weak points were overcome by using the same company individual " polarized light Cori near hologram technology " and so on.

    Hologram technology until recently, using two object glasses, had the necessity to irradiate separate " reference beam " and " signal light ". You say with polarized light Cori near hologram technology these from one object glass the economical space, cost decrease is actualized by the fact that it makes lighting possible. In addition, we have assumed it can maintain also the compatibility of the DVD and the CD media.


    I'm not sure if the translation is making it accurate or not, but it looks like this is indeed using holographic storage and not just holographic printing.

    --
    The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
    1. Re:Holographic storage? by cybercuzco · · Score: 0, Troll
      Babelfish's rather loose translation:

      In A.D. 2101
      War was beginning.
      Captain: What happen ?
      Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb
      Operator: We get signal
      Captain: What !
      Operator: Main screen turn on
      Captain: It's You !!
      Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
      Cats: All your base are belong to us
      Cats: You are on the way to destruction
      Captain: What you say !!
      Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time
      Cats: HA HA HA HA ....
      Captain: Take off every 'zig'
      Captain: You know what you doing
      Captain: Move 'zig'
      Captain: For great justice

      I'm not sure if the translation is making it accurate or not, but it looks like this is indeed using holographic storage and not just holographic printing.

      --

  16. size doesn't count by voisine · · Score: 1

    Timmothy is exagerating his size again.

    l8r
    Aaron

  17. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And no one would ever need more than 640K, either.

    What about when Gigabit ethernet becomes the standard and you can fill your hard drive in under an hour?

  18. Re:point? by SirSlud · · Score: 5, Funny

    > Computer technology has pretty much advanced about as far as is necessary.

    Its almost grammarically incorrect to say something like that without punctuating it by sticking your foot in your mouth in 3 years.

    --
    "Old man yells at systemd"
  19. Just imagine a RAID-0 of these guys by roachmotel3 · · Score: 1

    MMMm.... First off, I wonder what interface format they will use between the disk and the motherboard? SCSI? IDE? Something completely different? Anyway, whatever they use, I'd love to see a level-0 stripe right across 4 or so of these babies ;) Speed and storage!

    1. Re:Just imagine a RAID-0 of these guys by randomErr · · Score: 2

      Did they ever say if these lil' guy were re-writable yet?

      --
      You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
    2. Re:Just imagine a RAID-0 of these guys by andyring · · Score: 1

      I'd love to see it in a pure FireWire I/O. I think (could be wrong, though) that we have yet to see a genuine FireWire hard disk. The ones out there now are simply IDE disks with an adapter converting to FireWire, significantly hindering the speed. If we could get a pure FireWire drive, oh baby, the speed would be awesome.

  20. 4.8 inches? by Zabu · · Score: 1

    12 cm = 4.72 inches

    That is impressive.
    I will ask santa for one next christmas.

    --
    It's all good.
  21. 640k is more than enough for anyone... by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 2, Redundant

    'nuff said...

    --
    retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  22. cm to in. by bravehamster · · Score: 5, Funny
    NASA Scientist: 12 cm, 12 inches, whats the difference?

    (cut to shot of rocket blasting off, lifting 5 feet off the ground, then falling back to earth in a huge fireball)

    NASA Scientist: Oops.

    --
    ---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
    1. Re:cm to in. by __aaklbk2114 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Damn! Where are my mod points! +1 Funny!

    2. Re:cm to in. by the+way,+what're+you · · Score: 5, Funny

      NASA Scientist: 12 cm, 12 inches, whats the difference?

      NASA Scientist's Wife: Ahem.

      --
      example.org - powered by Linux!
    3. Re:cm to in. by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 2


      What, was it supposed to lift 12.7 feet off the ground before falling back to earth in a huge fireball?

    4. Re:cm to in. by *xpenguin* · · Score: 1

      This is funny. Why was it marked offtopic?

    5. Re:cm to in. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NASA did do that mistake a while back on one of those orbiters around Mars or some other rock... Thing burned up because of metric vs. imperial confusion. Somethink like that, anyways.

    6. Re:cm to in. by Iamthefallen · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      This is slashdot, you are only allowed to rehash the text that is in the story, do not discuss outside the text, draw conclusions, make jokes or otherwise stray from the immediate specific article, or we (the insane offtopic-moderators union) will have to take action, thank you.

      One of my colleagues will be by shortly to moderate both you and me offtopic for daring to use slashdot to comment comments and moderations, I think we all learned something from this.

      --
      Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
    7. Re:cm to in. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Well, do we really want every discussion to be about the mod system? When I click on comments, I want to read comments about the article, not someone bitching about slashdot or the fact they can't force children to swear an oath to god.

      Crap. I just did it. There's no way but down now.

    8. Re:cm to in. by Iamthefallen · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Yes, but sometimes moderations are so off that it's worth paying attention to them, the -1 offtopic moderations being such a plague, it's used randomly for trolls, flamebaits, funny comments or other things that are on a slight tangent off the topic

      --
      Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
    9. Re:cm to in. by CoreDump01 · · Score: 1

      Did you know that the very first Ariane 5 Rocket did a selfdestruction a few seconds after liftoffbecause the flightprogram was written using "cm", but the software on board the Ariane was an old version (from Ariane 4) which used Inch?

      Big "Ooops", indeed :)

    10. Re:cm to in. by pfavr · · Score: 1
      Did you know that the very first Ariane 5 Rocket did a selfdestruction...

      No I didn't know that. Maybe that is because it is not true! AFAIK it had something to do with a buffer overflow. BTW no sane engineer would use anything else but the metric system.

  23. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Didn't Gates say the same thing 20 years or so ago...

  24. Re:point? by Cynikal · · Score: 1

    are you on crack??

    2 months ago i thought 80gigs would be all i needed, right now i'm scoping out an extra 120g to add to my system... you can never have too much storage, or speed...

  25. Great stuff! by Nogami_Saeko · · Score: 1

    Now I can finally back up my system! Been waiting years to do that ;P

    And of course, the obligatory RIAA/MPAA annoyance note...

    "WOW, I could store like 100,000 MP3s, or around 200 DVD-style movies on ONE disc! Hope I can hook it up to my TV so I can RECORD LOTS of shows on it! Maybe even some new HIGH-DEFINITION signals!" :)

    Technology marches on...

    --
    "Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
    1. Re:Great stuff! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      100,000 mp3s .. damn that's a lot!

      Imagine you could categorize songs into 100 categories. You can then get the top 1000 songs from each category of music.

      Or, you can have the top 100 songs from a thousand artists.

      Amazing.

      Die RIAA Die.

    2. Re:Great stuff! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or the Billboard Hot /Top 1000 for a hundred years.

      Since there wasn't a thousand songs recorded in the first 20 years of the last centruy ..we could just have the top 1000 of each century of the last 20 centuries in there too for go measure.

      Of course the effort to compile such a list would be mind boggling.

  26. Re:point? by rgoldste · · Score: 1

    "No one will ever need more than 640K of RAM"

    A decade ago, no one forsaw a need for Ghz processors, GB of RAM, Gigabit ethernet, etc. I think your comment is shortsighted.

  27. Re:point? by jcr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No one needs a terabyte disk. No one needs a 50" monitor. No one needs 10GB RAM. No one needs a 10GHz CPU.

    Can I put that in my quotes file, right next to "640K should be enough for anybody"?

    If you have a terabyte of storage, you can keep EVERYTHING you ever look at, plus about 3x the space for various indices in case you want to find it again.

    Now, if they were talking about a petabyte, you might have a point.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  28. back to caddies? by lingqi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    i wonder how scratch-resistant this is;

    i mean -- one little scratch will now render hundreds of megabytes unreadable...

    makes no difference to me if in the end half the storage space is dedicated to data-redundancy.

    i want those little data-cubes you keep seeing in Sci-Fi movies. those are neater than the disk format.

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

    1. Re:back to caddies? by benzapp · · Score: 1

      I am sure it will be in some type of protected cartridge, such as with a jaz disk, or syquest disk.

      --
      I don't read or respond to AC posts
    2. Re:back to caddies? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think you'll handle the surface of the hologram directly, as oils and things tend to be bad.

    3. Re:back to caddies? by imta11 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      A local lab brought a prototype cube to my school a few years ago. You don't really need to worry about scratches as much as small vibrations causing dispersion of the bean as it travels through the 3-d space. Remember NextSetp on the discovery channel? They had a demo around 1996. It might be the same technology, just in disk form.

    4. Re:back to caddies? by Grape+Shasta · · Score: 2
      dispersion of the bean as it travels through the 3-d space

      Who would've thought, the future of data storage technology was with us the whole time: The simple, humble bean! Well, I'll be on eTrade if you need me.

      --

      "I am a cipher, a cipher, wrapped in an enigma, smothered in secret sauce" -Jimmy James
    5. Re:back to caddies? by Jherico · · Score: 2

      If its really holographic storage, depending on how its implemented, it will be much more resitant to scratches than typical CD's or DVD's. Every part of a hologram contains a bit of the whole. If you shatter a hologram of a rose, you don't get lots of little parts of the rose. You get lots of little holograms of the whole original picture, each less distinct and clear than the original. Combined with digital error recovery this could make the media very resiliant.

      --

      Jherico

      What can the average user can do to ensure his security? "Nothing, you're screwed"

    6. Re:back to caddies? by imta11 · · Score: 1

      Sorry, I've been programming EJB's for a while now. Freudian slip.

    7. Re:back to caddies? by mr_zorg · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but if you shatter the disc, how the heck do you get the drive to spin it? :-)

    8. Re:back to caddies? by swb · · Score: 2

      I hate caddies, but I do like something other than bare optical storage. I understand that the original CD spec included the box/caddy as part of the medium (ala Minidisc or DVD-RAM carts).

      They'd be bulkier, but ultimately simpler to use/store.

    9. Re:back to caddies? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      each less distinct and clear than the original

      Nope. You get lose viewpoints. Instead of seeing the rose from 45 degrees, you might only get 2 degrees. But the image is still as sharp and clear as the origional.

    10. Re:back to caddies? by Hard_Code · · Score: 3, Funny

      *busily scratching hard drive platter* What was that you said?

      --

      It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
    11. Re:back to caddies? by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 1

      Did you feed a postcard of a white light reflection hologram of a rose into a garbage disposal unit late at night during a brown-out so it's rotating jaws were sluggish, but still the unit emited a thin scream as it's steel teeth slashed laminated plastic and the rose into a thousand fragments?

    12. Re:back to caddies? by trenton · · Score: 2

      RAID. That's what it's for.

      --
      Too big to fail? Does that make me to small to succeed?
    13. Re:back to caddies? by SpaceJunkie · · Score: 1

      Hmmm... I do like the link in your sig... Perhaps I need to seed some Chaos around merry london....

      Like theres not enough of it already though- tube strikes tomorrow..yay- and I still gotta go to work... Yay...

      Holomemory is the future.. I really think that motorised heads are so backwards. Maybe we should also be moving towards using linear motors for those which still retain mechanical heads.

      Considering the number of problems I have trying to balance various systems accessing the same CD/DVD drive and heads and streaming from them in the project I am working on - I have learned to hate the fact you have to move the heads..And no- I dont have any room to increase the buffer sizes - they are maxed out already...Multiple audio streams, multiple texture streams and a couple of mpeg and vertex streams thrown in for extra fun.. Yuck..

      --
      OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
  29. Re:point? by fo0bar · · Score: 2, Funny
    I said the same thing about 10 years ago, give or take...

    Salesman: "For only $150 more, you could get a 1.2GB hard drive instead of this 850MB."

    Me: "What would I need all that space for?"

    Trust me, Windows 2012 Supa Dupa edition will find a way to take up a 1TB disk during initial install.

  30. Re:point? by crow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    When technology exceeds what is needed for current tasks, new tasks will arise. We can't necessarily say what those tasks will be (if we could, we would start up companies to develop those products), but we can see some recent examples. When hard drive capacities shot up in the past few years, first MP3 collections took off, then TiVo and ReplayTV arose.

    (I guess I've been trolled. Oh well.)

  31. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People said the same thing 10 years go.

  32. Babelfish says 12 cm by Vamphyri · · Score: 1, Redundant

    The corporation optical wear the 1TB (the tera- byte) announced the optical disk technology " tera- byte optical disk system " whose it is possible to write capacity, to the disk of 12cm CD size in the comprehensive exhibition " InterOpto'02 " of optical industrial technology.


    From this Babelfish Translation
    1. Re:Babelfish says 12 cm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The babe fished around and found the asian doodes only had 12cm.

  33. Re:point? by Mr+Krinkle · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Hmmm
    No future sight there.
    What was the quote from the CEO at IBM, something like,
    "I believe worldwide there is a market for 25 computers." That was said in the 60's. And it did not sound ridiculous. As for the 50 inch monitor, for my desk NO, but damn would that be nice for a monitoring system on a wall. As for 10 GB RAM welcome to the minimum system specs for Windows (Insert random suffix here) in 10 years.
    Computers get more powerful. We force them to do more and more and expect them to be able to do more and more.
    Don't ever say technology has hit it's peak we will always advance.

    --
    I am 31337 or something.
  34. "T-VRD" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can see the jokes already

  35. 12 inches? Yes! by sitcoman · · Score: 1

    Now I can finally get those jewel cases for my record collection!

    --

    -=20
    me doesn't live for do [DEPRECATED]

  36. Sloppy Sloppy Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Making a mistake is one thing.

    But refusing to correct it is absolutely ridiculous!

    Slashdot has been making lots of errors lately and they have not taken ANY effort to correct it.

    It makes a big differennce 12 inch vs. 12cm. A lot of people may just skip over the article based on the title because of slashdot's irrational need to be stubborn.

    Ridiculous.

  37. "T-VRD." by verloren · · Score: 1

    Dude, did he just say turd?

    {smirk}

    1. Re:"T-VRD." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

      You're so funny!

      No really, you are!

    2. Re:"T-VRD." by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ur teh funnay too mistar!

  38. Tools by EhobaX · · Score: 1

    If you tools would click on the link, you'd see it's the size of a CD.

  39. Redundant?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    WTF? This was posted 3 minutes after the story. It is the first post that says something other than "inches != centimeters" or "first post." How in heaven's name can it be Redundant?

  40. Re:point? by azadrozny · · Score: 1

    You are absolutly right. I still use my Tandy 8086! Who could possibly need more than 640K? ;)

  41. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are joking right?
    Umm, isn't that what they said 20 years ago?
    Who needs a 60gig drive, 265 megs of RAM and a 1.4ghz processor?
    I can think of a few things I could use a 10ghz processor for. Call me in 10 years and let me know you and your old box are doing....

  42. Why does this post remind me of the joke about by Rooked_One · · Score: 1

    the man who wished for a 12 inch pianist? =)

    In all seriousness, it was just a matter of time before this happened. Seems like if you want to do anything these days you have to totally rethink it and build it from the ground up. Holograms huh? Whoduthunkit?

  43. ITS CM by paradesign · · Score: 2
    its says so in the first line of the article, and its not in kanji.

    bla bla bla InterOpto'02 bla bla bla 12cm CDbla bla bla

    RTFA!

    --
    I want 2D games back.
    1. Re:ITS CM by PunchMonkey · · Score: 4, Funny

      its says so in the first line of the article, and its not in kanji.

      bla bla bla InterOpto'02 bla bla bla 12cm CDbla bla bla

      RTFA!


      Well, I don't know kanji!!!! For all I know "cm" is the kanji characters for "inches"...

      --
      I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
    2. Re:ITS CM by Nevermine · · Score: 1

      For all I know the letters C and M combined into CM is an SI-Unit and does not differ from language to language..

  44. Anyone read Japanese? by Andy+Dodd · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    For all we know, the page could be saying, "look at all those Slashdot fools who thing that this page actually contains information, HA HA HA!!!"

    It would be very impressive if this is for real... Question is how much will it cost, will it be recordable, etc?

    i.e. does it have any showstoppers that will prevent it from making Philips' blue laser disc technology stillborn?

    --
    retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
  45. Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Dunkalis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you had a terabyte of MP3s, you would have approximately 250,000 songs, if you assume an average song is 4MB. If there are approximately 12 songs on a CD, you would have to own 20,833 CDs.

    If you had 1MB of video per minute, you could hold one million minutes of video. That comes out to 16666 hours of video. It would take you 694 days to watch every minute of that, or a little under 2 years!

    Now, who has that much content? Hmm? Correct my math, if I messed up. I'm not feeling too good today...

    --
    Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
    1. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Hitokage_Nishino · · Score: 1

      Watch an uncompressed video signal suck it all up in no time at all.

      Fullcolor 1024x768 at 24fps = 25.3GB per minute

    2. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by hagbard5235 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Let's do you video calculation again. If memory serves compressed HDTV is about 19MB/second. Let's call it 20MB/second to make the calculations easier. So 1 terabyte gives us about 50,000 seconds. This is about 13-14 hours. So we are looking at about 13 hours of HDTV.

    3. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      Video at 1 MB a minute? You pull that out of your ass?

      DVD bitrates run closer to 1MB a _second_. High-definition video is over twice that.

      Now bust out your slide rule and go do the math, Poindexter.

    4. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here you're assuming that one would be storing highly compressed audio or video. With a terabyte disc, why bother? Higher quality without worrying about space. Sounds damn nice to me.

      Also, this is ideal for video and graphics people - the ability to store huge, uncompressed projects on a small, single disc is drool-inducing.

    5. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Hoi+Polloi · · Score: 2

      Sounds like you could fit all of the contect that was available on Napster onto one disk. Now we can just mail it to each other!

      Time to start downloading some more...

      --
      It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
    6. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Tralfamadorian · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but that's when you start increasing the quality of what is stored.

      No longer do you have 1MB per minute of video, but much greater, and then you also have 5.1 audio for that video.

      Hell, they could even fit the next Mandrake release on one of these suckers (currently impossible with DVD technology :))

    7. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Dunkalis · · Score: 1

      OK, I exaggerated the 1MB a minute. So sue me. I haven't looked at video compression lately. And read that 'IF.' Lets try this again, though. I found a movie on a CD around here, so here it goes:

      The Divx on the CD is 150 minutes. It is 600MB. That comes out to 4MB a minute. Therefore, you could hold a quarter-million minutes of video COMPRESSED at a somewhat respectable quality. 4,166 hours of video, and 173 days ov Divx video. Better now? I know that uncompressed video is massive, I've worked with it before. I'm expecting some more flames, now...

      --
      Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
    8. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Russ+Steffen · · Score: 2

      Well, if I had that much storage space, to hell with MP3 - I'd store everything as 16/44.1 stereo WAV files. And, you're off by quite a bit on the video estimate. DVD-quality video averages closer to 30 MB/min. So you're really only going to get about 550 hours of video, and far less if you want HDTV-quality.

    9. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Mt._Honkey · · Score: 1

      4MB might be accurate for a 128 kbps MP3, but if I had that much stoarage I'd sure as hell have a lot better quality than that. Hell, I'd probably use CD format (or better).

      And 1MB of video/min??? I'd use HD res, and that is sure as hell a lot more than that. The LotR divx rips I see are ~ 1.4 GB. They look good enough, but if you really let it loose I would perfer a 50 GB version. That's only 20 3 hour movies. See, not that much. Hell, we may even start storing movies as holograms, and then you have to store phase and polarization date along with frequency! Or if you want true 3d, you would need depth info for each pixel. Whoa...

      And they would be good for transfering around scientific data. As we speak, I am working with 330 GB of data from FermiLab. And that's only one type of particle, and only since this Janurary. It took 4 days to transfer from there to here (~150 miles away). If they could burn it on one of these disks, then drive it down, that would be a hell of a lot better.

      --

      Don't Bogart the fish sticks
    10. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      If you had 1MB of video per minute, you could hold one million minutes of video. That comes out to 16666 hours of video. It would take you 694 days to watch every minute of that, or a little under 2 years!

      With that much space, I would say that the compression you're assuming is excessive. Try 640x480x4 byte frames, thirty frames per second, and raw CD audio; that comes to somewhat less than 125 gigabytes per hour. Now the terabyte disk only holds eight hours of TV.

    11. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by mh_tang · · Score: 3, Funny

      All these numbers are very confusing to me. Can someone please break it down into meaningful numbers, such as how many Library of Congress's can be put on each disc??

    12. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by dolanh · · Score: 2

      A friend working at the "Death Star" (big black Sony bldg in San Jose) showed me a Sony product called a PetaSite that they used for storing broadcast-quality video during editing. Apparently the product is marketed as the PetaFile in Japan..

    13. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by SpookyFish · · Score: 1

      Video takes just a *little* more than 1MB/minute!

      For decent quality MPEG2, SD (Standard Definition) is ~4 Mb/s

      ATSC 1080i HD is 19.4 Mb/s

      So, around 25 MB/Minute for SD and 145 MB/Minute for HD.

      Sure, MPEG4 (or MPEG7 in the future) will help some, but still -- ~700 hours of SD or ~115 hours of HD.. suddenly doesn't seem like so much.

      Goes to show why we'll need this kind of storage in the future.

    14. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by pdp8 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think US broadcast HDTV tops out at ~20 megabits/sec (not megabytes), so 1 Terabyte works out to ~100 hrs of HDTV (in practice much more because most HDTV content will probably be done at a lower bit rate...). Still wanting to put 4 years of your favorite show on to one disk is not an unreasonable thing to want to do (100 hrs is much less than one pro-football season worth of games....)

    15. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That would be even more confusing! The real question for us Americans is how does this relate to the size of Texas?

    16. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1 meg a minute is a garbage rate, lets look at Digital Video that comes out of today's DV camcorders. It's about 13 gigs an hour, and thats with the standard 5:1 compression. Now you could store 76 hours on one of these disks. Might seem excessive but not to someone editing a documentary with 50 hours of raw footage. It'd be a huge advantage for the AV crowd to be able to cram that much data on a disk and then edit off of it. Not to mention HDTV.

      I remember when zip disks first came out, it was unthinkable that I could ever have enough shit on my computer to ever have the need for more than 10 of those disks. I mean I had a 200 meg harddrive and zip comes out with storage disks that are half that.

      If they create the storage capacity someone will find a way to use it. Just uncompressed NTSC video on one of these disks would be 13 hours. Not exactly a huge amount anymore.

    17. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by bafreer · · Score: 1

      Perhaps people aren't keeping this in perspective. Yes, it is a lot of space, but... If you get two large HDs per ide chain, you could fit a good 300+ gig per chain. Thats 600+ gig that you could fit on even the wekest motherboard. If you add in an additional ide controller, you can get .9 or even 1.2 terabytes. Granted, this system would be nothing but HDs, which is why the holo-drive is so cool. It lets you have a lot (not an obsene amount) of space while not needing wa whole other computer. -"homer, that's not G-d, its just a pancake that got stuck to the ceiling!" homer: "hmmm, sacrilitious"

    18. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Kredal · · Score: 2

      You could hold 500 bazillion 1:1 scale maps of Texas on a single disk.

      Or something.

      --
      Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
    19. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can fill 2000+ of these disk off kazaa network right now.

    20. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by hagbard5235 · · Score: 2

      You are correct... mia culpa... I always forget
      the bytes to bits thing :)

    21. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by kuiken · · Score: 1

      and watch the recording industry go postal on US mail

      --

      42
    22. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Com2Kid · · Score: 1

      You could hold 500 bazillion 1:1 scale maps of Texas on a single disk.


      1:1 what?

      You couldn't store a /true/ 1:1 map of a human hair on a mere Terrabyte disc, Texas is way out of the question.

    23. Re:Whats someone gonna do with all that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How the hell can this NOT get modded as funny?!?

  46. OK, how many LOC*s is that? by DeafDumbBlind · · Score: 2

    * LOC= Library of Congress.

    --


    Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
    1. Re:OK, how many LOC*s is that? by zhar · · Score: 1

      Aproxamatly 1/10 of all the books in the Library of Congress would fit on one of these discs. Total size of the Library of Congress is estimated to be about 10.5 Terabytes

      --


      DRINK DUFF (responsibly) DRINK DUFF (responsibly) DRINK DUFF
    2. Re:OK, how many LOC*s is that? by WEFUNK · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Not including pictures, the answer is about .05 LOC per disk, or about 20 of these 1TB disks for the entire text of the collection.

      For added perspective, the Internet Archive lists a number of other comparisons to their over 100 Terabytes of web pages dating from 1996.

      Finally, in 2000 the "How Much Information?" project attempted to estimate the total amount of information produced in all major mediums: from books to TV to the Internet to photos to x-rays and more. Based on their data (from a few years ago), every American musical recording produced each year could fit on a couple of these new 1TB disks (compressed) and every new DVD could probably fit on about a dozen. The Internet is harder to estimate, due to hidden content (databases, dynamic pages) but they estimated the "surface" web to be 25-50 Terabytes and total "web-connected documents" to be as high as 7,500 Terabytes!

      --
      My next sig will be ready soon, but friends can beat the rush!
    3. Re:OK, how many LOC*s is that? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As opposed to NCLOC: non copy-protected libraries of Congress

  47. Re:first post by DaveAtFraud · · Score: 1

    NOT!!!!

    --
    They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
    Ben
  48. IBM Must be Seeing Red? by IronTek · · Score: 2

    This makes IBM look bad (well, even worse)...haven't they been working on holographic storage for years and years and years?!

  49. Re:point? This guy's a comedian! by spookymonster · · Score: 1

    In 25 years, we will all be using the same PCs we are today. They'll be smaller, and software will be better, but we really won't need any more power than we have now.

    Isn't that the same thing IBM said, oh, 25 years ago?

    --
    - Despite popular opinion, I am not perfect.
  50. Just think... by awyeah · · Score: 1

    ... of how much porn you could fit on one of these. :)

    --
    Why, no, I haven't meta-moderated lately. Thanks for asking!
    1. Re:Just think... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Bet you'd fill it with real quick with:

      wget -Yoff -Hr -l9 -Agif,jpg,jpeg,mpg,mpeg,avi http://pk.com/indexgp02.html

    2. Re:Just think... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      About a third of CmdrTaco's collection.

  51. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nobody needs more than 640k of memory!
    (Bill Gates)

    There isn't a market for more than 6 computers in the entire world!
    (IBM)

    Let's not jump to conclusions, eh?

  52. In related news. by aengblom · · Score: 5, Funny

    In related news. Sony announces it will immediatley begin selling these disks to consumers.

    Optware Spokesman:
    "We were thinking it would take 10 years the technology to be needed, but bad jokes about our hardware's "12 inch vs. 12 cm" capabilities, beowulf of them, and how much prOn one could store on it completly overwhelmed previous storage technologies" ;-)

    --


    So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
  53. 120 mm ! : go see the optware site guys... by pruneau · · Score: 5, Informative
    HERE they will explain you what their technology is. Go to the technology section, all you will need is a flash plugin ;-)

    And of course, it's 120 mm = 12cm != 12 inches ~= 36 cm...

    Because CD-media size is a must !

    Basically, they:

    • "split" the beam of light in differents rays, each carrying data, as opposed to CD/DVD where the beam carries one bit at a time.
    • They work into the "bulk" of the recording media, instead in a 2-D way for CD/DVD
    --
    [Pruneau /\o^O/\ warranty void if this .sig is removed]
    1. Re:120 mm ! : go see the optware site guys... by martyn+s · · Score: 1

      1 inch = 2.54 cm
      Saying that 12 inches ~= 36 cm is really stretching the meaning of the "~=" symbol.

    2. Re:120 mm ! : go see the optware site guys... by SpaceJunkie · · Score: 1

      Sorry - us Europeans really dont understand imperial - they stopped teaching it in schools about 15 years ago. We are lucky if we understand 12 inches = 1 foot. I have absolutely no idea how imperial weights work.

      But then as posted above, who in their right mind would use a non-SI unit for scientific purposes anyway?

      --
      OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
  54. Re:point? by Albanach · · Score: 1
    Indeed - storing video will easily present a domestic use for a terabyte of data.

    Where you have a domestic use for the technology we can be pretty sure we'll both see it, and see it at a reasonable price.

  55. Re:point? by dirvish · · Score: 2

    Can you say V C D? A movie is ~1.3 GB. If I wanted a decent collection I would need a lot of storage space.

  56. I'm still waiting for Holographic storage by qurob · · Score: 1


    IBM said we'll have it in 5 years...oh wait...

  57. Wow...think of the uses! by Nobody's+Hero · · Score: 1

    That's alot of space.

    That can hold one heck of alot of spyware!

    --
    The Only Person Willing to be Me is ME!
  58. Does this mean DVD's with 120 movies by f00zbll · · Score: 1

    probably not going to happen, but it would allow studios to put what is currently 2 DVD's onto 1. Or it would be nice to get a DVD of every Kubrick film on one CD. The only downside of this is when toddlers take out the disk and start using it as a toy. There goes 200.00 of movies in 5 seconds.

    1. Re:Does this mean DVD's with 120 movies by randomErr · · Score: 2

      Well that isn't a new DVD standard for HDTV yet so your idea may not be that far off. About a new movie media, and the kid.

      It would be a killer to the new dVHS as well.

      --
      You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
  59. Timber! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You don't have a wife or girlfriend, do you?

    That's diameter they are talking about, you know.

    If a guy went into a sex change operation with a thing like that the doctors would have to hack a notch into the base and then push it over.

    1. Re:Timber! by jx100 · · Score: 1

      Isn't that just a botched vasectomy?

  60. Re:NASA did it and now it's spreading to Slashdot! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is no difference between centimeters and inches.

  61. Yay!!! by jerkychew · · Score: 1

    Now I'll have enough room for all of my porn!! (If I get 2 discs)

  62. resell everything by oliverthered · · Score: 3, Insightful

    on one disk!

    --
    thank God the internet isn't a human right.
  63. aren't our HDD's the bottleneck now? by Rooked_One · · Score: 1

    Seems to me they are.... It used to be the FSB limited at 100mhz, but now we have 533mhz bus speeds, and our hard drives are laggin behind badly.

    Anyone that has used a hard drive with a 8 meg buffer will say they can feel the difference. My guess is that these things will support Serial ATA before conventional hard drives do. (j/k)

  64. Media size does matter. by DaedalusLogic · · Score: 2

    I think that most people would side with the fact that as a whole consumers have picked what size disc they want. We want media with the same diameter as a CD/DVD from here on out whenever possible. Why? They're easy to keep track of... unlike the little Dataplay cartridges that we've all seen stories about. I personally wonder why would you want something that small when you could have something of a more manageable size that uses the same technology... Discs maintaining the same size also ensures future drives will play old media. My DVD deck will play CDs etc... Which a very good point was made that record labels don't mind a format change to provide extra income once in a while. Collectively they've just got to learn to get over it and produce more new product worth buying... you know... good music. On the other hand you could also look at it this way. This data storage format will initially not be needed by your average consumer. Producing a propreitary system would cut initial costs to bring the technology to market. Then money could be made of the product and directed to adapting the technology to a consumer audience. It might cost much more for them to cram all the work into a 5.25 drive... or it might not be possible. Speaking of which... that is the weirdest drive enclosure I think I've ever seen... looks like a PS2 on crack.

    1. Re:Media size does matter. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because you have to spin them to read and write the data. That's SOOOOOO 20th century. Hang on, let me hook up my phonograph for you to listen to some hits of the 1920's. Future technology should have NO moving parts like CompactFlash cards. THAT is the way to go.

    2. Re:Media size does matter. by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 2
      We want media with the same diameter as a CD/DVD from here on out whenever possible. Why? They're easy to keep track of...

      Speak for yourself, bub. CD's have a really crappy form factor. They're too big to fit inside a pocket, need specially designed carrying cases, and have crappy latency characteristics. Give me a non-rotating piece of storage the size of a credit card. These would fit in standard-sized pockets, we already have specialized carrying cases for them (called wallets), and they wouldn't have the rotational latency issues. Now all we need is the density...

      --
      That is all.
    3. Re:Media size does matter. by Ioldanach · · Score: 2
      We want media with the same diameter as a CD/DVD from here on out whenever possible. Why? They're easy to keep track of...

      Speak for yourself, bub. CD's have a really crappy form factor. They're too big to fit inside a pocket, need specially designed carrying cases, and have crappy latency characteristics. Give me a non-rotating piece of storage the size of a credit card. These would fit in standard-sized pockets, we already have specialized carrying cases for them (called wallets), and they wouldn't have the rotational latency issues. Now all we need is the density...

      What about business card sized? Do the same form factor with this optical technology as is already done with cd, and assuming the same 50:670 data capacity ratio you'll get 76GB of storage space on a business card sized disk. Would that take care of your needs? That'd be about 116 raw cd's, or 600 high quality encoded cd's.

    4. Re:Media size does matter. by captredballs · · Score: 1

      I used to think this way, till I realized that CD/DVD style media is laking in durability. I don't understand why they didn't make cd's similar to minidisc's, where there is a protective case surrounding the media. Perhaps it was limiting to speed, or a danger to the media in and of itself.

      Regardless, I'm tired to renting skippy-dvd's and I'm tired of having un-rippable cd's from one fragile drop-to-the-top. Optical media would at least solve this problem, since it removes the need for media to be spun.

      How many hundreds of cd's will I own before something better comes out (quality and durability)? If it wasn't for ripping onto my pjb for work and mobile listening, I would probably be back to vinyl.

      --

      I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
    5. Re:Media size does matter. by Animats · · Score: 2
      The CD form factor was defined to fit the size of the standard hole for auto radios. Really.

      Personally, I'd rather have a more protected medium. CD carriers have gone out of fashion, partly because they were unstandardized and overpriced. But some protection for a 1TB recording surface seems indicated.

    6. Re:Media size does matter. by SpaceJunkie · · Score: 1

      It would sit nicely next to a PS2 TOOL then- the PS2 on steroids....

      I thought it looked more like a PS2 on acid..

      I would like CD backwards compatibility etc.. but to be honest the fact that it is spun, takes more than my pockets worth of space, is easily scratched kinda positions me all for some kind of smartcard sized technology. How long before we get multi-gb smart cards?Or better still multi terra-byte. Nice...

      And I dont neccesarily stipulate what technology will be behind these - just that I hope we get there.

      --
      OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
  65. crappy sig by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Set a man a fire and he is warm for a night, set a man afire and he is warm for the rest of his life

    Thats a lot better way to say it.

    1. Re:crappy sig by idfrsr · · Score: 2

      complain to Terry Pratchett, unfortunately I can't fit his name in too....

      --
      "The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away" -Tom Waits
  66. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We'll find a way to use the increasing computing power. We always have. It was like this a couple years ago, nobody really needed 2Ghz CPUs. Then stuff like desktop video editing and DivX movies and Quake 3 came along and everyone needed to upgrade to do any of those things. And then there's Windows, which practically requires you to upgrade your PC every revision or two. :)

    Remember getting a 1GB hard drive way back when? Remember thinking about how you'll never fill that up? Well, now we have games that take up more space than that. A lot of people have more MP3s than that. 1GB is tiny now. And I'm sure that in ten or twenty years 1TB will seem small.

    If you really think that in 25 years we won't find any reason to make computers faster or find something to do with our excess speed, I think you're foolish. Just try to go 25 years without upgrading your computer. I'm sure you won't.

  67. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    I need a 25GHz CPU and 50GB RAM to generate my holograms. You're right, I don't need a 50" monitor, I need a big room covering projection system.

    We'll have by 2010.


    loz

  68. Re:point? by Jorrit · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A terabyte is really not THAT much in some applications. For example at my work they have very large medical images (electronic X-ray images and so on). These have to be very detailed so they are big. Since this is also the biggest hospital of Europe there are lots of images coming in every day (several hundreds a day, I don't have exact figures) so this grows quickly indeed.

    Keep in mind that a terabyte is only 1000 gigabyte. I have a digital video camera which I plan to connect to my future computer to work on video's. If you like to store huge movies on disk then this huge capacitity will get small very quickly indeed.

    Greetings,

    --
    Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
  69. It is a great thing though.... by Gabreal · · Score: 0

    If you actually take a close look though think of the possibilities of it!! If they could make it writable then network admins could use it for complete network backups instead of using multipul cd's!! And think of it as a gamer-how many multipul games could you store on that? As well for comp techs like me where I have a dozen cds for my collection of programs I need to work on systems I could put it all on one! This is a little extreme with the amount of storage but still it is a great great thing and look to the future for holografic hard drives and other stuff like *VIDEO*! I great thing!!! Just my .02 cents.

    1. Re:It is a great thing though.... by Gabreal · · Score: 0

      Doesn't anyone read my comments anymore? I thought it was informative but apparently not!!!!

    2. Re:It is a great thing though.... by Kredal · · Score: 1

      too many exlamation points to be informative... and your karma is so low, you're posting at 0, which is below the default threshold.. sorry, Gabe, you're toast.

      --
      Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
  70. dammit, you got the company name wrong too :p by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that's oputowea, not optware dammit

    1. Re:dammit, you got the company name wrong too :p by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OH poo poo!! WA! Weh! :[

  71. This is a step in the WRONG direction by Ark42 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well sorta ...

    at 100mbit/sec, we can say about 12.5 mbyte/sec transfer rates. That is really slow now-a-days for a hard drive. 1gbit/sec (125mbyte/sec) is decent, but with UDMA100/UDMA133 standard right now, this technology seems to be behind times in speed when it finally gets released for PCs a year or two from now.

    Remember, the hard drive is probably the bottleneck in almost every PC and server, particularly with huge databases. I would really like to see hard drives get faster and faster instead of bigger and bigger.

    1. Re:This is a step in the WRONG direction by zrodney · · Score: 1

      I would really like to see hard drives get faster and faster instead of bigger and bigger.

      That's a place where you could use hardware raid
      controllers and have 2x or more throughput on
      regular ide drives used together in parallel.

      but I agree it would be great to have a single
      drive that was ten times the bandwidth for the
      same price.

      size and speed are both increasing, but not at the same rate.

    2. Re:This is a step in the WRONG direction by pmz · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, aside from the fact that 12.5MB/sec is probably what people actually get from UDMA133, such a terabyte disk could be a very good application for WORM drives in systems that need permanant on-line storage of everything. Isn't this a feature of Plan 9?

    3. Re:This is a step in the WRONG direction by lewiscr · · Score: 1

      Depends if those specs are for the individual Drive or the Bus.

      My 5400 RPM IDE drive pushes about 12 Megs/sec on UDMA66. Sure, the Bus supports 66 Megs/sec, but the drive sure doesn't.

      The volumes at work have 3 10k RPM SCSI drives on Fiber Channel. That bus is 1Gbps (125 Megs/sec), but the drives will only push ~25Meg/sec. With the RAID0 I can substain around 75 Meg/sec Read/Write. Since we mirror acrossed controllers, I can do 150 Meg/sec Read, 75 Meg/sec write. 'Course, these are all magic benchmark numbers.

      Now, if the inidivudual Drives will are 1Gbps, that would be sweet. It would take me 5 10k RPM SCSI drives to do that. If I grab 5 of those new 180G drives, I can get a RAID0 900 Gbps at 1Gbps for somewhere in the neighborhood of $20k. But since 5 drives are less reliable that 1 drive, I really need to buy 10 drives and RAID 0+1. More hardware... yada yada, probably talking about $50k for 900 Gig @ 1Gbps.

      So I'll keep my eye on these, and try to find some specs I can read. Might be useful, might be useless.

    4. Re:This is a step in the WRONG direction by ottffssent · · Score: 2

      ...this technology seems to be behind times in speed when it finally gets released for PCs a year or two from now.

      By 2005, hard drives will probably be in the vicinity of 100M/sec STR (double today's value) so the gigabit high-end quoted in the article will be quite acceptable. Where these discs will really have problems though is in access time. Modern CD and DVD drives have access times of about 85-125ms, 8-30 times slower than modern hard drives. Fortunately, discs are used primarily for STR-bound tasks such as playing audio or video, backing up data, and the like. What is important, I think, is the expense of making drives and even more so of making the discs themselves. Then there's the issue of need. CDs are starting to show their age. DVDs haven't matured yet to take their place, but are begining to feel the pinch as well. Only backup applications would need a terabyte of space and until there is a mass-market need for the technology, it will be expensive and relegated to the market currently occupied by tape drives today.

      Remember, the hard drive is probably the bottleneck in almost every PC and server, particularly with huge databases. I would really like to see hard drives get faster and faster instead of bigger and bigger.

      I disagree. Granted, faster is better, but it really isn't a problem. Hard drives are a mass storage device, and should not be used for a computer's working data set. This is why 32-bit addressing is such a problem - 4G isn't much data at all for a large DB. I don't know much about databases, but it seems to me many DB operations are limited by access time, not STR. And access time is limited by the moving parts inside hard drives - you can only flick a read head back and forth so fast before things start to break (and melt too). On the other hand, data storage needs increase year by year and for 99% of them, the speed of access isn't very important.

      Personally, I'd rather see RAM get cheaper (and faster) than hard disks get faster. 50M/sec and 100-400 IO/sec is more than I need from a single drive. Besides, both those figures can be increased dramatically with RAID if needed. OTOH, modern CPUs are all starved for data in nearly all operations. I suspect in the future we will see more 3-level caches with the third level consisting of a fairly large amount (128M-1GB) of very fast DDR DRAM and main memory consisting of many RAM banks such as are found in modern servers. Apple's got a L3 DDR cache that delivers ~2-3G/sec, but many main memory systems can deliver that bandwidth. GFX cards on the other hand are in the 10-20G/sec range and would, I suspect, dramatically benefit high-end CPUs. See, for example, HP and IBM's MCM technology with large shared caches. Another approach may be to design an ISA with very many registers replacing the common L1 cache for efficiency, leaving only L2 and L3 caches buffering memory accesses.

    5. Re:This is a step in the WRONG direction by Mattsson · · Score: 1

      But on the other hand, a thing that large would probably be used mostly as bulk-storage.
      And if you need to get to the data more often, you could put a fast raidset in a server with lots and lots of ram to work as a cache for your set of 12TB storageunits. ;-)

      --
      /.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
  72. Re:point? by AJWM · · Score: 5, Interesting

    No one needs a terabyte disk.

    Talk to the computer vision people. MPEG and JPEG compession work in part by throwing out a lot of information that the human vision system won't miss. Applying current machine vision algorithms to such data doesn't work at all well due to compression artifacts.

    Consider the latest digitally-produced Star Wars episode. If that were stored in uncompressed form, it'd take about three terabytes. (Assuming 2k by 3k frames, 24 fps, and two hour running time.)

    Nice troll, though ;)

    --
    -- Alastair
  73. Rough Translation by kawaichan · · Score: 5, Informative

    The corporation optical wear the 1TB (the tera- byte) announced the optical disk technology " tera- byte optical disk system " whose it is possible to write capacity, to the disk of 12cm CD size in the comprehensive exhibition " InterOpto'02 " of optical industrial technology.

    From the past it is researched, applying the " hologram system ", the system which was developed. With hologram system of conventional type there was a problem in compatibility and the like of the existing media such as miniaturization and cost and DVD. With the technology which this time is announced, you say these weak points were overcome by using the same company individual " polarized light Cori near hologram technology " and so on.

    Hologram technology until recently, using two object glasses, had the necessity to irradiate separate " reference beam " and " signal light ". You say with polarized light Cori near hologram technology these from one object glass the economical space, cost decrease is actualized by the fact that it makes lighting possible. In addition, we have assumed it can maintain also the compatibility of the DVD and the CD media.
    Difference of data record method such as CD drive Device of record to tera- byte disk

    Those where the reflecting horizon where structure of the tera- byte disk media puts the cubic measure hologram record material with the disk baseplate of the glass make, the pre- format is done is pasted in the one side. It is not the glass in the future, you call the schedule where the disk baseplate of the plastic make is used. In addition, at the beginning the media of the is offered, but you say relying tub Lu it will be able to offer also the media in the future.

    At the time of data record, signal light and reference beam are irradiated vis-a-vis this reflecting horizon, reference beam and the information light which are reflected to interfere inside the cubic measure hologram material, the data is recorded to the interference fringes which occur.

    When grasping the device which grasps the hologram which irradiates only reference beam, is recorded to the cubic measure record material.

    With the former DVD and CD drive, using single laser light, it does reading and writing, but with hologram technology, the bundle of the light whose large number is thin is used. In addition, the data was recorded until recently level at the bit unit, but with hologram record, it is possible to record to three-dimensional cubic measure hologram layer as a page data.

    Because of that, with the disk media which uses hologram, it is possible to write the data of 3 ten thousand bit inside hologram of diameter 500 mu m. While the respective hologram to be piled up, because it is existence possible, we have assumed it is suitable for large increasing capacity. In addition, only the 1bit data transfer could do with the pickup of former DVD/CD drive, at one time, but because with hologram system the data of 3 ten thousand bit can be read and written at one time, also data rate improves substantially, you say data transfer with the 100Mbps - the 1gbps becomes possible.

    Appraisal device " T-VRD " of the tera- byte optical disk system was displayed in the InterOpt meeting place, demonstration was done. At the same company, at the beginning we have assumed, introduction in TV station and the Government agency is anticipated, we have assumed on end of 2003 offer of 19 inch rack-mounted type system, furthermore it miniaturizes drive itself in 2005, it develops in for the foam/home server and the PC market as a consumer product.
    The drive part of T-VRD When drive was opened. As for the media being stored by the cartridge, it is The corresponding disk was displayed from each company

    Actually hologram it was recorded the media As for this way unused media. The record aspect has like the mirror high reflectance

    Yoshio Chairman and CEO Aoki Chief Executive Officer

    At the announcement meeting place, Yoshio the Aoki of Chairman and the CEO Chief Executive Officer greets, " presently in communication industry, per second also the 1TB thing data has become transmission possible. This the movie of 2 hours is something which is made transfeable in 0.1 seconds. Is, but when it reaches the point where it can exchange the large capacity data instantaneously, even on the storage side which retains that data large capacity and high speed the media which had transfer speed becomes necessary ", necessity of the tera- byte optical disk system was expressed.

    " With the former CD and DVD drive, NA value of the object glass was increased, precision of recording density was increased by the fact that wave length of the laser is reduced. Is, but with this method already the limit has been visible ", also you talked, the disk system which uses hologram emphasized that it is the system which system differs until recently completely.

    Home page of optical wear
    (As of July 16th, the information regarding this product is not published)
    Http: //www.optware.co.jp/ja/main.html

    --

    kawai
    1. Re:Rough Translation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Too painful to read.

      I skipped it... as did most others I'd imagine.

    2. Re:Rough Translation by ganiman · · Score: 0

      Informative?? Did anyone else find what this guy wrote extremly difficult to understand? It's not that the words, or even what he was talking about is over my head, just poor english. I couldn't even get half way through it without getting a headache.

      --
      geek n performer who performs morbid or disgusting acts, as biting off the head of a live chicken
  74. Contest by dr_dank · · Score: 1

    The first person to "imagine a Beowulf cluster of these" will receive an atomic bitchslap, furnished by the National Commission on Horribly Played-out Jokes.

    The runner up will receive a matchbook with which to burn their karma.

    --
    Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
    1. Re:Contest by doofusclam · · Score: 1

      Well said! Same for the previous comments about windoze users. I suspect some users here sit waiting for a new headling so they can stick some pap in containing the words beowulf/windoze/boxen.

      seany

    2. Re:Contest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Imagine abeowulf cluster of these...

      And imagine a beowulf cluster of 12 inch dicks in your ass, cocksucker.

  75. Obligatory "Imagine a beowulf cluster..." by devnullforU · · Score: 1

    uh ! nevermind
    this is a media storage device not a computer
    okay...back to smoking crack again.

  76. Re:point? by Loligo · · Score: 1

    >"640K should be enough for anybody"?

    Sure. Who you gonna attribute this to?

    Hint: It's not Bill. He never actually said it.

    If you claim otherwise, provide documentation. At least a date. Preferably video or audio.

    -l

  77. DVDs. Nuff sed. by freeweed · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A terabyte is roughly what, 100 dvd's? Hell, I own more movies than that, and I'm not even 30 yet. I'd love to not have to swap them just to watch.

    Of course, by your line of thinking, a Commodore 64 suits everyone's needs: it has color, you can do programming, word processing, can get online, and even save your games on disks! Why would anyone need anything more?

    --
    Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
  78. News blast from the future. by supabeast! · · Score: 5, Funny

    Headlines from 2003/2005

    Software pirates in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Asia immediately began selling copies of NBC's entire 2006 TV lineup, Warcraft IV-10, Photoshop 2008, and MS Office Xtra-Ultra-Uber-Nextgen on the new disks for a street price of $5, all on one disk.

    RIAA and MPAA lawyers assaulted Sony with lawsuits today, claiming that the disk assited in storage and dissemination of intellectual property and violating copyright control schemes.

    Immediately after, Canadian and European lawyers under the control of movie and recording lobbyists added a hefty tax to the sale of each disk, with collected fees sent to movie and music companies.

    Australians quickly installed $1 per/disc copy machines in Lucky Dragon stores across the continents.

    Citizens of the USA tried to read reports about the new discs, but because a Microsoft lead consortium refused to provide digital certificates to news releases, Americans cannot view the files on their computers.

    1. Re:News blast from the future. by KoopaTroopa · · Score: 1

      I think 2005 is quite a bit early to start expecting Warcraft IV :)

      --
      Sharpies don't just sniff themselves.
    2. Re:News blast from the future. by Fugly · · Score: 1

      Well, seeing as Sony is part of the RIAA, I don't think news flash 2 will come to pass. Kinda sucks suing yourself. I'd predict something more like:

      "Sony releases new holo-disc technology capable of storing 250,000 mp3's on a single disc"

      "RIAA lobby pushes through legislature requring a tax on all blank holo-disc media sold due to rampant piracy. All proceeds will go to RIAA member labels to be 'distributed to artists.'"

    3. Re:News blast from the future. by glwtta · · Score: 2

      hmm, is Sony only a member of RIAA, or is it both RIAA and MPAA? though I'm sure suing yourself will get some interesting tax loopholes.

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
    4. Re:News blast from the future. by supabeast! · · Score: 1

      Sony was part of the RIAA when it pushed CD-R taxes through in Canada and some European nations, and is also a manufacturer of CD recorders. Never underestimate greed-borne stupidity.

  79. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Surely you must be trolling...

    All I can say is that I won't even being to be happy until my Spectral Path Tracer can run in realtime at HDTV resolution (which BTW requires about 100,000 times increase in CPU speed)...

    And of course I also want a highly detailed geometric representation of my scenes (which requires oodles of memory)

  80. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I would have guessed this would have been a really weak troll, but already over a dozen people have bitten. Nice job!

  81. Not that impressive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    not that impressive really, considering you can buy 200GB IDE hard drives these days, you'd only need 5 IDE HDD's to match this devices capacity, and they aren't even coming out for another 2 and a half years, I'm sure IDE HDD's will be up to half a TB by then.

  82. Re:point? by Sesq · · Score: 1

    PLEASE DON'T FEED THE TROLLS!

  83. Library of Congress Disks by RobPiano · · Score: 1

    How much do you think the complete library of congress disk is going to run? :)
    Rob

    1. Re:Library of Congress Disks by Jedi+Holocron · · Score: 1

      1 tera-cent? Perhaps...

  84. 12in now 12cm? by Hoi+Polloi · · Score: 1, Redundant

    I thought size didn't matter but how you used it?

    --
    It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
  85. Size Matters?! by Chicane-UK · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Sorry, that's centimeters, not inches, which is of course even better ;)

    I am sure that plenty of women might argue with you there :)

    --
    "Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
    1. Re:Size Matters?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah. Right.

      The one guy I know of that has 12" faints each time he gets an erection. And most women find anything over 8" way too painfull. But never mind, just keep promoting the myth.

  86. Re:point? by cosmosis · · Score: 5, Interesting
    You're right about a Terabyte being just in time to hold ALL of our music, videos, and digital photo's, as well as everything else.

    Here is what I can see for future increases in storage:

    Petabyte: Store your entire DVD collection, CD collection, MP3 collection, all of your digital photo's from a lifetime, books, documents, etc.

    Exabyte (1 million Terabytes): This amount of storage will be useful if you want to record in hig-quality digital video all of yor life from your wearable computer that you take everywhere. You will be abel to access every moment of your life, every conversation and play it back at anytime. The type of memory would also come in handy for storing large, highly detailed Virtual Worlds of your own creation. This is exactly where I see 100GHz machines coming in handy - the ability to render realistic virtual worlds on the fly.

  87. Q: Who Needs 1 TB? A: Video by 4of12 · · Score: 2

    I've got a couple of TiVo's, one with 200 GB of IDE disk in it and I'm running out of space. It's a nicer quality archive format than VHS, but limited in quantity.

    I can foresee cheap wireless video cameras being used around the house for security monitoring being recorded to disk. That kind of application will eat up disk space in a hurry.

    --
    "Provided by the management for your protection."
  88. Sure there's a need by Agent_Eight · · Score: 1

    Digital content creation has a need for such a storage device, providing it becomes cost effective. Personally, I do quite a bit of animation work that requires rather large amounts of storage space.

    Granted, this would only make sense if it became cost comparitive with traditional high speed hard drive arrays.

  89. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    No, he didn't.

  90. centimetres or inches? by DrVxD · · Score: 2

    > Sorry, that's centimeters, not inches, which is of course even better ;)
    Scarcely matters if it's in a 19 inch rackmount, does it? I mean the technology is neat but a 19inch rack is a 19inch rack - doesn't matter how small the contents are (unless they don't fit in a 19inch rack at all...)

    --
    Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
    1. Re:centimetres or inches? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You need to get out of the data center more often, dude.

      Some of us have 15 inch lap-mounts.

    2. Re:centimetres or inches? by Diellan · · Score: 1

      > I mean the technology is neat but a 19inch rack is a 19inch rack *blink* And what's wrong with a 19 inch rack? The bigger the rack, the better.

    3. Re:centimetres or inches? by DrVxD · · Score: 1

      > And what's wrong with a 19 inch rack?
      Nothing. You wouldn't ask me that if you'd seen my spare bedroom :-)
      My point was that as long as the widget fits in a 19" rack, it doesn't matter if the widget is 12cm or 12".
      > The bigger the rack, the better.
      Only up to a point, but as a general rule, yes!

      --
      Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
  91. You are oh so mistaken by FreeUser · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Eh, what's the point of having that much storage space? Computer technology has pretty much advanced about as far as is necessary.

    Nice to see you joining us on slashdot, Bill.

    I still remember when you told us all we'd never need more than 640k of RAM. Still trying to live that one down, aren't you? :-)

    On a more serious note, until I can render my entire featurelength movie with full 3d animation effects in realtime I won't be satisfied.

    Indeed, that is only equivelent to a 1x CD-RW or DVD-RW, so even real time won't be acceptable.

    Which means, until I can render my entire featurlength movie in 1 second and ship it out to all my friends and relatives in another second, I won't be satisfied.

    But wait! I want to do that featurelength movie in HDTV 1080p format. Actually, since most of my friends have 1200p capability, I'd like to be able to render in 1920x1200 30 fps, 48bit color in under a second.

    Well, movie making was fun, but now I prefer fully immersive virtual reality, at resolutions sufficient that the human eye can't tell the images aren't real. While realtime was initially fast enough for this rendering (no matter how fast I turn my head!), I find I want to render my worlds much more quickly than that to support multiple presences, so I can meet friends in my virtual world. So, until I can render all 3-d objects down to the molecular level in my entire, vast virtual world, in under a second, I won't be satisfied.

    But wait! I'd like to ...

    1 Terabyte sounds like a lot now, but I suspect we will find it to be very limited a few short years after it comes out. Human creativity is an amazing thing, and tends to push the boundries of whatever technical limits are placed upon it. I see no sign of this changing anytime soon, or of human creativity having come close to reaching some ephemeral "limit."

    We won't be using the same computers in 20 years that we are today. Well, maybe some of the less flexible of us will be, but our children certainly won't be, and those of us more willing to keep up with a changing world likely won't be either.

    Unless, of course, Hollywood is given veto power over all new technologies, in which case our children will be using computers more akin to the old IBM PC/XT my parents used back in the 80's, rather than what we're using today, but that is a tangent for another day.

    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
    1. Re:You are oh so mistaken by isorox · · Score: 2

      On a more serious note, until I can render my entire featurelength movie with full 3d animation effects in realtime I won't be satisfied.

      If its in real time, it doesnt really matter how long the movie is does it?

    2. Re:You are oh so mistaken by Palarran · · Score: 1

      Burst, versus sustained.

    3. Re:You are oh so mistaken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      One second? I dunno about that, maybe half a second. I can't stand waiting a second for a webpage to load or some application to start. One second is way too long.

  92. Yeah except... by sterno · · Score: 2

    That example is irrelevant because the broadcasters will never let us record anything :).

    --
    This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
    1. Re:Yeah except... by Zathrus · · Score: 2

      Nah, you just have to record the raw video streaming out of the DVI port.

      Which means that 1 TB gets you about 10 seconds of video.

    2. Re:Yeah except... by ShavenYak · · Score: 2

      At 1920x1080x24bit, a frame of HDTV is just under 6MB. 1TB should hold about 176000 frames. At 30fps that's about 98 minutes. That doesn't include audio, but 10 tracks of 24 bit 96kHz digital audio for 98 minutes will fit in about 16GB - less than 2% of the disk. Figure 95 minutes of audio/video, almost enough for an average length movie.

      Of course, there's nothing stopping you from compressing the A/V between the DVI port and the disk. Even with lossless compression, you would be able to fit just about any movie on the disc.

      --

      Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
  93. This idea is old news.... anybody remember FD-ROM? by BenJeremy · · Score: 1

    Flourescing(sp?) media uses 3D storage (holograms) to pack more data into a standard form-factor 120cm disc - albiet not as compact as 1cm, but they certainly could achieve that with.

    These guys are still at it.. though when they wil release somethign to the market is anybody's guess. I was in brief contact with them over a particular application of their card technology.

    Of course, they are attempting to develop for the commercial market, and include write-once and rewritable options. IMO, this is bigger 'news' though the trail seems to have gone stale on FD.

    I want my terabytes on the desktop today, not a decade from now.

  94. So much data to lose by Tenebrious1 · · Score: 2

    One TB on a single disc. Man, I hope the plastic coating is much more sturdy than on current CDs and DVDs, it's a lot of data to lose because you didn't set the disc properly and the drawer scratched the disc as it closed.

    And titanium alloy jewel cases that aren't going to shatter and splinter when sent through the USPS or sat on by your kid/dog.

    --
    -- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
    1. Re:So much data to lose by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have scratch-resistant sapphire to cover the disc surface? =)

      That'd be sweet.

    2. Re:So much data to lose by glwtta · · Score: 2

      sat on? I have never shattered or splintered a CD or DVD without delibrate intent (and much effort); in fact, I can't recall a single one becoming unusable (or at least un-rescuable), CDs and DVDs are very durable media (at least in comparison with hard-drives)

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
  95. Re:point? by wowbagger · · Score: 1

    Even a petabyte...

    dd if=/dev/brain of=/mnt/cdrom/wowbagger.backup

  96. Re:point? by Trinn · · Score: 3, Informative

    As for the 100GHz machines, unless clustering has induced much more delay than I am used to expecting, you would still need many of those to render realistic virtual worlds on the fly, given the time it took to render scenes on render farms for films like Monsters, INC., toy story, FF:TSW, and others. a 10THz machine, with well optimized code, however, should be able to pull it off. Your 100GHz machine though would almost certainly be able to throw a primitive polygon-based version in realtime. Anyway, just my $0.02.

  97. 2003? 2005? by qurob · · Score: 1


    "Available in 2003 as 19-inch rackmount, 2005 for PC."

    So...in about 2006 I'll have one in my car? Schweet! 1TB of Music!

  98. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gramarically incorrect, eh?

  99. It wasn't NASA by tg_schlacht · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It was Lockheed Martin that was using Imperial units.

    NASA however apparently failed to read Lockheed Martins' code.

  100. Aw yeah? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Sorry, that's centimeters, not inches, which is of course even better ;)

    Your girlfriend says different.

  101. just a thought by headwick · · Score: 1

    set erase = ^h

    --
    ~ fact is not dependant upon your belief therein. ~ ~ Have I therefore become your enemy because I tell you the truth?
  102. Re:point? by anonymous_wombat · · Score: 2
    Now, if they were talking about a petabyte, you might have a point.

    If they were talking about a petabyte, then you could keep all of the scientific satellite data being sent down (terabytes daily) for awhile on one disk. Even a petabyte isn't enough for some purposes.

  103. Year 1981 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Computing_timeline

    Check it out

    1. Re:Year 1981 by Loligo · · Score: 1

      >http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Computing_timeli ne

      But no date. No place. No context. That's what I'm looking for.

      Something besides some random attribution on some random website.

      Show me someone that HEARD him say it. Someone that can say where he was. When it was. Who he was addressing. ANY details. NOBODY can ever provide anything except "1981".

      While we're at it, let's find the part where Al Gore claims to have invented the internet.

      -l

    2. Re:Year 1981 by fatphil · · Score: 1

      And because it's on wiki it must be true, right? Now _that_'s naivete.

      "Anonymous Cowards stick their heads up the goatse man's arse", Josef Stalin

      How convincing was that? Exactly. Sheesh.

      Anyway, about 12 years ago, I remember the purported quote being about
      "256K", not 640K. 256K being the actual ammount of memory the top of the
      range systems were being shipped with at the time.

      FP

      --
      Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
    3. Re:Year 1981 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      March 9, 1999; CNN interview
      "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

  104. Best troll ever. by phriedom · · Score: 1

    I can just hear him now: "Lets screw up the units in the most obvious way possible and see how many people post about it. 10...20...30..."

    --
    Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
  105. Hrmph by spottedkangaroo · · Score: 2, Funny
    There seems to be some confusion about this ... lemme see if I can help.

    bash$ stty erase ^H

    That should take care of the problem.

    --
    Imagine if you weren't allowed to use roads because a bus company complained about your driving 3 times. --skunkpussy
    1. Re:Hrmph by captredballs · · Score: 1

      Har har har!

      When I was first learning vi (I used emacs first - and still do for everything but admin work) I would have files full of ':wq!:q!:' all at the bottom.

      I always imagine Timothy, Taco and the rest writing replies to grammatical nazis and "posted already" folks, abandoning halfway through with a series of spit, curses and vi context mistakes. If anybody ever hacks into their laptops, dead.letter is the first thing to read ;-)

      --

      I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
  106. Music to my ears! by Mr.+Mai · · Score: 0

    This equals to all the mp3 you can hear for the rest of your life! In one CD!!. Music companies must be terrified!

    1. Re:Music to my ears! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We could actually move away from MP3, and move to a none-lossy format that supports more than two channels!
      WOOT!

  107. Re:point? by tg_schlacht · · Score: 1

    I have no idea who on Earth would need more than 640K but I do know that NASA needs 8086 chips. Plus if you have an 8-inch floppy drives they'd like those too.

  108. It all deopends... by DiS[EnDeR] · · Score: 1
    Update: 07/16 18:33 GMT by T: Sorry, that's centimeters, not inches, which is of course even better ;)
    I once made that same mistake at a bar once, had 4 girls hanging all over me for four hours before I realised I had said 12 inches and not 12 centimetres.

    They didnt believe me when I said its not the size of the wave.. you get the rest..
    --

    Harder.. Better.. Faster.. Stronger
  109. Re:12 inch? Try 12cm by Hammer · · Score: 0, Troll

    12-inch^H^H^H^Hcm
    I do belive that our friend Timothy tried, in a subtle way, to show the 2.54^2*3.14 increase in data density.

    He should have known that it would wizz over the head of some...

  110. 100Mbps = 1GBps!?! by unixfan · · Score: 1

    You are missing one order of magnitude. Which one is it?

    1. Re:100Mbps = 1GBps!?! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      crap!

      You just assigned 1GB to a varible named 100Mbps. So either you named the variable wrong, or we are going to have a serious overflow and overwrite problem. I can just see the BSOD and memory leak now...

      thanks a lot, like I didn't have enough crap with 2000

  111. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're on the right track, but the short-sightedness got even worse. Rather than guessing 25 computers in the 60's, Tom Watson of IBM said in 1945 that he saw a world market for maybe 5 computers.
    Heck, I have more than that at home... and if we count my laptop, Palm Pilot, cell phone and digital watch, I guess I'm carrying 4 on me! :-)

  112. Who cares? by md17 · · Score: 2, Funny

    '640 Kb should be enough for anyone.' - Bill Gates

  113. Haha by Andrewkov · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Sorry, that's centimeters, not inches, which is of course even better ;)

    Yeah, sure Timothy, you've been telling that to girls for years!

    -1 Redundant, I know...

  114. Re:point? by beanyk · · Score: 1

    When technology exceeds what is needed for current tasks, new tasks will arise.

    That sounds a lot like Parkinson's Law. It used to be that necessity was the mother of invention. Now smaller, apparently useless inventions are the mothers of inventions. Unless someone designed this to store all the spam e-mail they get?

  115. The size of a CD by Strange+Ranger · · Score: 3, Funny

    I can see it now..
    "Free with a purchase of a new Dell!: Sony's all-in-one 40x/12x/32x/CDRW//20x/8x/4x/DVDRW//2x/1x/T-VRDRW.. con't. on p.44"

    All Your media are belong.. oh screw it

    --

    Operator, give me the number for 911!
  116. New use for this by brsmith4 · · Score: 1

    It seems that games these days have awesome graphics but lack really good game play like the games of yesteryears. This is probably because game companies are focused on bedazzling all of these gamers with the fancy gfx, fog, lighting, yadda yadda yadda. Games can benefit from this new optical technology by keeping graphics the same (or better) as they are now and focusing more on game play by increasing level sizes and adding more content to make the game feel dynamic instead of for instance, every time you go through a level, its the same dudes in the same places waiting to be shot at. I mean, it would be great if there was a fps that one would want to play over and over just because the plot and storyline were quasi-dynamic. That would be cool. Ait, i'm done.

  117. In the next chicktechno movie by gelfling · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah in the next Angelina Jolie movie some government agency will accidently lose the entire genetic code of every living thing on earth on one of these disks and there will be massive quantities of Chick-Fu to retreive it.

    1. Re:In the next chicktechno movie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Yeah in the next Angelina Jolie movie some government agency will accidently lose the entire genetic code of every living thing on earth on one of these disks and there will be massive quantities of Chick-Fu to retreive it.

      If they are looking to retreive my genetic material, Angelina Jolie is just the girl to send.

  118. Fuckers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I know y'all don't read Japanese, so stop slashdotting their site -- some people want to read it.

  119. Re:Well, all those development are great by Kredal · · Score: 2

    Offtopic I know, but I've got "excellent" karma to burn...

    why say Y2K+2 requiring 5 key presses, and 3 shift key presses, when it only required 4 keypresses total to type 2002?

    I've seen this year written as 2K2 which is kinda cool, but adding in more stuff just takes more time to type. So why do it? So you look like a 1337 h4x0r?

    --
    Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
  120. porn by logitek · · Score: 1

    please refer to subject

  121. T-VRD! by nortcele · · Score: 1

    At first glance I thought it was named T-URD... gotta start using a better font.

  122. Re:point? by nirvdrum · · Score: 1

    Do you get by without that now? Then why do you "need" it?

    Take for granted you may need it in the future (though screens aren't something that typicall grow in size), but this person is clearly using the present tense.

    --
    If there was a "-1 Not Funny", that'd be my most used mod.
  123. Re:point? by ajs · · Score: 3, Interesting

    In email from Bill Gates he denies the quote, but instead of offering up context for its origin or any explanation of why the quote originated, he waxes on about memory limitations. He even claims credit ("I and many others have said") for "Moore's Law", though he uses a mildly modified form of the assertion (1 extra bit every 2 years).

    As rebuttals go, it's pretty weak. I'd love to hear from the original citer on when/where it was quoted from.

  124. Re:point? by Loligo · · Score: 1

    >I'd love to hear from the original citer on
    >when/where it was quoted from.

    So would Bill, among others.

    Go do a google search for "bill gates 640k". You'll find a couple of articles with Bill denying having said it, and a thousand sites with the quote itself, some with "1981" added on, but nobody ANYWHERE can say where he was or who he said it to.

    As mentioned in a previous post, can we add this to the list of "handy quotes that were never said", right up there with Al Gore "inventing the internet"?

    -l

  125. Wow.. The Trans-Capacitor sucks compared to this.. by TheNarrator · · Score: 1

    Remember the "Trans-Cap" The so called storage technology recovered from the Roswell aliens that stored 90gb!! It's already out of date... Damn those aliens have some catching up to do.

    http://accpc.com/tcaps

  126. Johnny Mnemonic could only hold 160 GB by John+Jorsett · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was amused by the Johnny Mnemonic movie, in which Keanu Reeve's head would explode if he didn't get the 320GB of data out of it (Johhy's capacity was only 160GB, or 'leakage' would occur). Given how far into the future it was supposed to take place, that amount seemed pretty small. Johnny's 'futuristic' capacity looks ever more ludicrous with each new jump in real-world capacity.

    1. Re:Johnny Mnemonic could only hold 160 GB by ErikZ · · Score: 2

      Hey, it was in his HEAD.

      How much functional hardware can YOU stick in your head? None? Well then 160GB is pretty damn impressive.

      --
      Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
    2. Re:Johnny Mnemonic could only hold 160 GB by MrScience · · Score: 1

      Keep in mind, though, that he had a neural implant. So the technology was interfacing with the neural grey matter which stored the data. The brain, as far as I know, hasn't been following moore's law. :)

      --

      You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco

    3. Re:Johnny Mnemonic could only hold 160 GB by Derleth · · Score: 1

      How much functional hardware can YOU stick in your head? None? Well then 160GB is pretty damn impressive.

      Well, I still have more than 160 gigs worth of Star Trek trivia and pr0n in my skull. Johnny was a wussy!

      --
      How can you use my intestines as a gift? -Actual Hong Kong subtitle.
    4. Re:Johnny Mnemonic could only hold 160 GB by MonkeyBoy · · Score: 1

      Wow, really?

      If you get into the habit of repeating a monotoned "Whoa" every fifteen or twenty minutes you could land the title role in Johnny Mnemonic 2: Pr0n Boogaloo.

      --

      Moof!

  127. Re:point? by fatphil · · Score: 1

    "
    A decade ago, no one forsaw a need for Ghz processors, GB of RAM, Gigabit
    ethernet, etc.
    "

    So for example in october 1988, when Arjen Lenstra and Manasse factored
    the first 'hard' 100-digit number using the Multiple Polynimial Quadratic
    Sieve, by spreadding the work over ~400 computers around the world, they
    weren't thinking "I wish computers were ~400 times more powerful"?

    I perform hard computations for a hobby - my electricity bill for my home
    network is $400/year. No future processor is too powerful for me to be able
    to make use of it.

    FP.

    --
    Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
  128. here you go some info you. by Gabreal · · Score: 0

    Here is a link for all of you to read up on the possibility of this whole situation. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_2 59000/259347.stm in this link it discribes how the poduct works and the possibility of future hard ware.

  129. We Need More... Lots More by RhettLivingston · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Its remarkable to me how unimaginative this community is at times. Terabytes are nothing to use even with today's technology.

    This is barely enough to start cracking the doors to the real future of computers. With this, you may be able to store a few seconds of fully immersive video. I'm talking the kind of stuff that gives you limit of human sight resolution for anything beyond arm's length no matter what direction you look in. Add this storage to flight simulator technology that notes your head position and dynamically reproduces the right resolutions across your field of vision using 210 degree goggles, and you've got an experience in the making.

    Another technology that would soak it up in seconds would be life recording. I've got a fairly poor memory and generally forget completely almost anything beyond three years ago. I'd LOVE to be able to wear a device that records my every moment in 360 degrees with fully directional audio. But, really, the recording technologies, including storage, won't be the most difficult part of the development. The really tough part will be the technology to search the database. It will need to be able to interpret everything seen and heard in order to be able to replay what I'd like without my having to remember times and places. Furthermore, it would need to do so in near real time as the only time that it might have to "catch up" would be when I slept...actually, I'd probably won't much of that time recorded too. Expand that to recording not only my personal experience but anything occurring anywhere on any property that I own in full 3D realistic resolution and bringing things to my attention that I've told it too and the task is at least 30 years of technology away (2^^30 * current storage capacities + 2^^24 * current processing capacities). Add recording of other aspects of the environment like smell, temperature, RF, etc and you could soak up technology forever. People will want these things.

    The day will come, probably within this century, when petabytes and petaips are to us what bits are today.

  130. DVD Blue? by cez · · Score: 1

    Anyone remember people working on a DVD Blue technology which increased data capacity using a blue laser instead of a red laser?

    --
    Walk with Music;
  131. DVHS killer? by Psyko · · Score: 0

    Hopefully this will be accepted as a viable solution to DVHS... I know I don't want to go back to tape even if it is digital for movies... Just have to get the product done, pricing reasonable and all of the turds at MPAA and RIAA onboard with this one...

    --
    01:36AM up 426 days, 2:46, 1 user, load average: 0.14, 0.11, 0.05
  132. "That's a lot of movies"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Movies? Forget movies. That's a HELL of a lot of pr0n...maybe a college student will be able to keep his full collection on only 2 or 3 of these... :-)

  133. 1Tb = Windows installation size in 2008 ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    by the time these media will be available, Microsoft will probably have found a way to add even more bloatware to Windows to fill the whole Tb...

    1. Re:1Tb = Windows installation size in 2008 ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry but all Linux installs I've seen in the last few years dwarf any Windows install in the same time period. Nice try though, your FUD skills are sure to develop if you keep practicing.

    2. Re:1Tb = Windows installation size in 2008 ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not if you knock all the default options of 20+ text editors, 12 million crap WM's, (but not the one true WM, LWM!), 13.5 billion email clients, 25 shells that most Linux users don't even know exist (you mean there is something other than Bash?!), 100's of shitty text games that crash your box, two different windowing Envoroments and o/c the source code for everything, plus it's sheep.

  134. You really want terabyte-level storage by MtViewGuy · · Score: 2

    I think the need for terabyte-level storage is a lot larger than people think.

    This is especially true for the entertainment industry. People forget that a digital copy of Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones used for DLP theatrical digital projectors need something like 300 gigabytes of storage capacity. What will be needed in the future when digital projectors go to higher resolutions and 96 fields per second display to improve picture quality? In that case, easy-to-transport terabyte-level storage becomes very necessary.

  135. The price for Re:The size of a CD by denisbergeron · · Score: 1

    The drive will be sell for 300$ and each disk for 600$ :-)

    --
    Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
  136. tera, peta, whata? by caveat · · Score: 1

    7,500 terabytes...7.5 petabytes?

    --

    Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
    1. Re:tera, peta, whata? by Fweeky · · Score: 2

      Yup.

      Look at http://foldoc.doc.ic.ac.uk/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?prefi x. And memorize it this time ;)

  137. 19" rack mount! by parp · · Score: 1
    12", or 12cm, They both seem stupid to me if it goes in a 19" rack mount!

    Now how about a nice array of 20 in a 19" rackmouth with raid 1, then we'd be styl'n!

  138. A readable translation... by torokun · · Score: 1
    Argh... I can't stand reading those automatic translations. It scrambles my brain. Here's a more readable gloss by my brain...

    Optowear creates "Terabyte optical disk system" capable of storing up to 1TB of data"

    Optowear, at the optical industry technology conference "InterOpto '02", introduced the "Terabyte optical disk system", a technology capable of storing one terabyte on a 12cm CD-sized disk.

    This is a system developed by applying the research done up to now on 'hologram systems'. In previous holographic systems, miniaturization, cost, and incompatibility with DVDs and existing media were problematic. In this newly released technology, the company's proprietary "Polarized colinear hologram technology" allowed them to overcome these weaknesses.

    Until now hologram technology has had to use 2 lenses to illuminate the object with the separate 'reference beam' and 'signal beam'. With polarized colinear hologram technology, only one lens is needed, allowing space and cost savings. DVD and CD compatability can be maintained as well.

    They use a disk where the holographic media is sandwitched between glass plates, and where one side has a preformatted reflective layer stuck onto it. In the future, they plan to use plastic rather than glass. Also, at first they will only offer 'write once' disks, but later plan to offer rewritable ones as well.

    When data is recorded, the reference beam and signal beam are shined on the reflective layer, and the reflected reference and information beams interfere in the holographic material, storing data in the interference pattern.

    At reading time, only the reference beam is shone, allowing the recorded hologram to be read.

    Existing DVD and CD drives use a single laser beam to read and write data, but holographic technology uses many tiny bundles of light. Also, previous systems stored data by the bit on the surface of the disks, whereas holographic recording can store whole pages of data at once in the holographic medium.

    Because of this, holographic disk media, in a 500um diameter holograph, can store 30,000 bits of data. And because these holograms can be stacked on top of each other, this method is suitable for storing huge volumes of data. Also, current DVD/CD drives only transfer 1 bit at a time, whereas holographic drives transfer 30,000 bits at a time, so transfer rates are much higher, allowing rates of 100Mbps-1Gbps.

    In the InterOpt conference display, an evaluation model of this system, the T-VRD, was demoed. The company believes that television studios or government bodies would be the first to bring in this technology, and will offer a 19in rack mounted version in 2003, and a miniturized consumer version for home servers and PCs in 2005.

    At the conference center, CEO and Aoki Yoshio introduced himself -- "In the current communications industry, 1TB/s data rates are becoming possible. This is like sending a 2hr movie in 0.1 seconds. But, if we become able to send and recieve huge volumes of data in an instant, we need something with huge volume and speed to store that data." -- so underlining the need for the terabyte optical disk system.

    "By raising the NA value of the objective lens, and shortening the laser wavelength, existing CD and DVD drives have been increasing their storage density. But this method is already seeing its limitations", he also said, emphasizing the fact that holographic drives are a totally different technology than other optical drives up to now.

  139. US Company Invented and has many Patents on by geekster_2000 · · Score: 0

    3D Volume Holographic Optical Storage nanoTechnology.

    I have learned from the inside that SONY and
    many other storage professionals, universites,
    and corporations are regular visitors over
    the years.

    this company will develope disk drives for its
    internal usage that will >>>> 10 terabytes on
    a 3.5 in or 8.8 cm disk. will exceed
    >>> terabits/sec bandwith, have a shelf life of
    100 years, and will be 3D VOLUME STORAGE not
    2D AREA Storage emulating Holographic Storage.

    http://colossalstorage.net

  140. And with Canada's new media tax... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... these will cost how much now? Second mortgage you say?

  141. MS Office 2005.... by feldkamp · · Score: 1

    Will be at least 2TB. (1TB min install) :)

  142. 1 Terabyte is not that much... by eatenn · · Score: 0

    One word: PORN

    --
    "But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by" - Stiff Little Fingers
  143. Actually by RobinH · · Score: 2

    Actually, these non-metric people would say 12 cm is about 4 11/16 inches. ;-)

    --
    "I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
  144. Re:point? by Hoeken · · Score: 1

    Your 100GHz machine though would almost certainly be able to throw a primitive polygon-based version in realtime. have you ever played any FPS? hmm, they're realtime and a *little* bit more advanced than primitive polygons.

    --
    Educate > Enlighten > Evolve http://www.neuroatomik.com
  145. Re:Why did the blonde go to church? by CyberDruid · · Score: 3, Funny

    Because she heard they had a guy hung like _this_ *stretches arms*.

    --

    Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati

  146. Re:point? by cosmosis · · Score: 2

    We could use this argument to say that cave man got by without any technology at all other than the use of fire and chiseled bone and rock.

  147. MOD the parent down. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He doesn't what he is talking about.

    Sustained transfer rates on individual hard drives is about 15 MB/s or 120 Mb/s. This is the sustained transfer rate. Generally you get less than this in real world applications. With a four drive RAID0 setup you may be able to pull about 50 MB/s.

    15 MB/s may be slow from your perspective, but it is about the best you are going to get from a IDE 7200rpm drive. It doesn't count as 'really slow for a hard drive'.

    Do a little research before you post.

  148. 1TB won't be anything ten years from now by xRizen · · Score: 1

    It wasn't more than 10 years ago that I had my DOS 5 install on an 80MB HD. Back then, the thought of a HD actually being multiple GB was just insane. Now I sit here with my 110GB of HD, and terabyte storage doesn't seem so insane, in light of the past.

    1. Re:1TB won't be anything ten years from now by Temsi · · Score: 1

      Heck, 1TB barely anything today... I have 460 GB in my main PC. 40+40+60+120+100+100.
      1 TB can just barely hold a full length feature film in High Definition 24p (1920x1080 24fps is 7MB/frame ; 168MB/sec ; 10GB/min, so 90 mins = 900GB).
      So.. I'll be happy when I can get a TB device or even a PB or beyond. The bigger the better!
      100Ghz? Bring it on! 100GB RAM? Where do I sign up?
      Of course... I'm a gadget junkie... so I'm not really the best example, but still.

      --
      -- This sig for rent.
    2. Re:1TB won't be anything ten years from now by SuperLiquidSex · · Score: 0

      Thats uncompressed though, ummm I dunno of anything that uses uncompressed HD, I doubt anything ever will either, the bandwidth requirements are just to huge.

      --
      Oops....you'll know what I'm talkin about in a bit.
    3. Re:1TB won't be anything ten years from now by Temsi · · Score: 1

      A $25.000 Mac with a CineWave-RT HD card running Final Cut Pro supports uncompressed HD. So does the $200.000 HD Avid similar to the one used to cut SW-EP2. A few other high end editing packages work in uncompressed HD. How else are you gonna do an online HD edit? You may use compressed while you're editing the offline (online=the final master made to conform the offline; offline=where you do the creative part of editing, so lower quality is ok), but you need uncompressed to finalize the master. There's even an uncompressed HD professional system which costs as much as a big house in a good area which does pretty much anything you want in realtime.
      Check out ProMax for basic Final Cut Pro based systems that handle uncompressed HD. These systems use Medéa SCSI-3 RAID towers for the hard drive space, which can pump out the necessary 200+ mb/s needed for uncompressed HD (168mb/s for 24p).
      I'm working on visual effects for a movie shot on 24p HD right now, and it's being done in uncompressed HD, so I know a tiny bit about this stuff.

      --
      -- This sig for rent.
  149. Ob MS Bashing by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 2

    1TB disk... should just barely be enough for the installation disk of Microsoft Windows XXXXP 2005!

    --
    Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
  150. Re:point? by Hercynium · · Score: 3, Funny

    One word for you: Holodeck!

    --
    I'm done with sigs. Sigs are lame.
  151. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that's when the geforce 30 comes out and does better than real life quality in real time. ;)

  152. Oh fun. Piracy leaps to unexplored levels. by Thedalek · · Score: 1

    You relize that when this thing eventually finds its way onto the market, someone somewhere will likely compile a "Complete Game Collection," a massive archive of every videogame to date. Ever. And it'll only take up 2 or 3 discs. Heck, the biggest part will be the PSX games, and that might not be that big, after all.

    Now, once emulation reaches perfection on all the known systems... that's when the real fun begins.

    --
    Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
  153. Re:point? by ba_hiker · · Score: 1

    There are many apps that are still memory and compute bound. Voice recognition could easly use 4x more memory and more compute power, other apps (decode hd tv, monitoring video, home security) can all take big bits. Heck even the fridg that reads bar codes needs a place to store the UPC and usage data, and you probably want a file server, rather than the hard disk in the fridg.

  154. Since you asked... by R2.0 · · Score: 1

    "While we're at it, let's find the part where Al Gore claims to have invented the internet."

    "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet," in an interview with CNN.

    "Invented the Internet"? No.
    Self aggrandizement? Yes.
    Relevance? not a lot.

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
    1. Re:Since you asked... by Loligo · · Score: 1

      >"During my service in the United States
      >Congress, I took the initiative in creating the
      >Internet," in an interview with CNN.

      And he DID have a role in the early development of what we know as today's internet (http://www.salon.com/tech/col/rose/2000/10/05/gor e_internet/ )

      The point was that it's another one of those things where someone (in this case, GW Bush's campaign) cooks something he said into something he didn't, which spreads via modern folklore until he's remembered as the guy that claimed to have invented the internet.

      Rather like Bill Gates is popularly credited with saying "640k ought to be enough for anyone", when he never said it.

      -l

    2. Re:Since you asked... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, we were laughing at Al Gore long before we knew who GW was. I mean, how much of a LOSER do you have to be to lose to GW?

    3. Re:Since you asked... by Hellasboy · · Score: 1

      So you're saying you could have won? No? DAMN! you must be one hell of a loser!!! =/

      --

      "Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
  155. Re:I think you missed the point by CyberDruid · · Score: 2

    Since he had to pass through customs (or something like that), he could not keep the data on regular media. Bear in mind that the actual data that he downloads is originally on a tiny CD-like thing. He had to use "natural" media (the brain) so that they wouldn't suspect him of being the courier.
    Thus it is really the brain that is supposed to have 160 GB of free space, that can be utilized before it starts to write over personal stuff. You can hardly expect the brains storage capacity to follow the same exponential laws as hardware, now can you? ;)

    --

    Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati

  156. Why do you think they sold their HD business? by jonr · · Score: 3, Funny

    Of course IBM has something up the sleeve. Good bye, rotating media!

  157. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ever hear of a small us Goverment agancy called USGS they have the abality to use large massive ammounts of data storage really really quicky they just retweak there satlattlie download filters to drop it from discard 99.5% to 99.2% when they add 30 terra bytes of storage

    Or another govie called the IRS... data storage is never going to be enough as digtial imagrey improves and more and more paper documents get converted to digtial media's

  158. Re:point? by Space+Coyote · · Score: 2

    MP3 collection? With that much space, who needs lossy compression at all? :)

    --
    ___
    Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
  159. Obligatory Simpsons Reference by PowerBook2k · · Score: 1

    Abe "Grandpa" Simpson: "The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes saying it!"

  160. How to pronounce ^H^H^H^H by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    There ought to be a verbal shorthand equivalent of the textual use of ^H (control-H) to indicate an edit - whether for purposes of sarcasm or to emphasize a change.

    How about "Hiccup", with all but the last one abbreviated verbally as "hic".

    So "inch^H^H^H^Hcm" would be pronounced "inch-hic-hic-hic-hiccup-centimeter".

    And yes, I know some prefer to spell it more like a "cough" than a "cup" - pronounce it as you see fit.

  161. Re:point? by RumorControl · · Score: 1
    You will be abel to access every moment of your life, every conversation and play it back at anytime.

    in my case you could simply make a symlink to the common points and store only the changes. So that drive to and from work could be the same file for every day...hell..just about everyhting else too. Maybe I could fit my life on a CD.

  162. A Couple of Thoughts... by Mysticalfruit · · Score: 1

    A terabyte on a single disk is sweet, but I've got a couple of thoughts...

    1. Demoed and "We've got readers and writers going on sale next year" are two extremes. Just because you can demo a technology doesn't mean it's mass productable or stable enough.

    2. how delicate is the media going to be. I noticed on their website they show the disk in a cd caddy. the last thing I want is a scratch taking 100gigs worth of data with it.

    3. 100Mbit/s sucks. I probably did the math wrong but that's like 12.5 Megabytes per second. Just to read a gigabyte is going to take 80 seconds. To read a 50gigabyte file is going to take 67 hours.

    Just a few things that I see offhand. Other than that, I think the technology is sweet. I will be much happier when they come out with a solid state terabyte device the size of a postage stamp, but beggers can't be choosers.

    --
    Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
    1. Re:A Couple of Thoughts... by Dynedain · · Score: 2

      ummm.....i think your math is off.....

      if you can read a gigabyte in 80 seconds, then a 50 gigabyte file should only take you 50 x 80s / 60 s/m = 67 minutes

      --
      I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
  163. One word... by MrScience · · Score: 1

    Backups.

    Tape is just not cutting it. Seems like it's cheaper buying a newer drive as a backup than the whole tape subsystem.

    --

    You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco

  164. Re:LOL! I got a -1 OffTopic! by SoLoatWork · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Maybe he/she thought the joke was "completely inane"?

  165. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's, not its. Grammatically, not grammarically.

    But hey, what do I know?

  166. Re:LOL! I got a -1 OffTopic! by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    That's possible. Had the moderation been 'Overrated' (and I did get one of those) I wouldn't have posted that.

  167. Re:LOL! I got a -1 OffTopic! by NanoGator · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Wow dude, now you're getting 'Off Topic' mods for challening a moderation to your post that was on topic?

    Why is challenging a moderation off-topic? Why does that result in a mod but no response? I'm serious here. The AC's original comment was a sarcastic response to the article, not some out of the blue topic change. When he got modded down, he pointed that out and challenged the validity of the moderation. Then he got modded down again. That's off-topic? The proper thing to do would have either been for a moderator to fix the crappy moderation, or for the moderator who modded him down to explain why.

    I know, I'm going to get modded as 'off-topic' as well. I was only aiming for a little understanding here. I hope at least one person reads this and performs more helpful moderations down the road.

    --
    "Derp de derp."
  168. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    10THz? That's probably not good enough for real time radiosity (>2nd order). Not that we will ever see 10THz machines... I doubt they'll get to 500GHz.

  169. for the "who needs this much space?" people by glwtta · · Score: 2
    this is actually pretty old

    In IT terms, the human genome is a text of seven billion characters, and together with its associated annotations, Celera already maintains a 70-terabyte database, after only a year and a half of operation. That database is growing rapidly - by 15 to 20 gigabytes a day, or eight terabytes a year - as is the number of people accessing it.

    I don't know when this article is from, but they are already over 100TB.

    --
    sic transit gloria mundi
    1. Re:for the "who needs this much space?" people by geekster_2000 · · Score: 0

      your right, infact CEO of Celera and others
      in same data crunch, would buy 10 terabyte
      storage disk like tootpickes if they
      were available. Maybe in the future.

      http://colossalstorage.net

    2. Re:for the "who needs this much space?" people by h4mmer5tein · · Score: 1

      On a more mundane level. One of my projects this year is to come up with a storage solution for approx 25 TB worth of image data, generated by scanning in our collection of historic maps ( approx 100,000 of them ).
      The brief is to have every single map scanned and stored in a way that allows it to be retrived and printed within 15 mins of the request being made. These discs sound like just the job :)
      Now if they come up with a jukebox system for them as well :)

  170. Backup by AeiwiMaster · · Score: 1

    Great, I need to make a backup of the internet.

  171. "...copy machines in Lucky Dragon stores..." by tlambert · · Score: 2

    Oh!

    Most Excellent subtle reference to William Gibson's "Idoru"!

    Extra points awarded for the Australians doing the installing...

    -- Terry

    1. Re:"...copy machines in Lucky Dragon stores..." by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 1

      Did you see the Fragments of a Hologram Rose reference in the discussion about the return of caddies?

    2. Re:"...copy machines in Lucky Dragon stores..." by supabeast! · · Score: 1

      If you enjoyed those lucky dragons, check out the ones in his last book,"All Tomorrow's Parties".

    3. Re:"...copy machines in Lucky Dragon stores..." by tlambert · · Score: 2

      Sorry; didn't read that discussion.

      -- Terry

  172. I agree by uberdave · · Score: 1
    The problem with transfer rate and seek times are always going to be a bottleneck until you lose the MECHANICAL bits. Why not make these things rectangular, and have an array of laser/sensors that sense the bits directly.

    "Perfect speed, my son, is being there." - Chiang Seagull.

  173. what does ^H^H^H^H mean? by marcushnk · · Score: 1

    no.. really, what the hell is ^H^H^H^H ????

    --
    "Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
    1. Re:what does ^H^H^H^H mean? by /dev/trash · · Score: 1

      it's the representation of backspace.

  174. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Throwing textures on polygons is not "advanced". We've still got a long ways to go.

  175. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    time=time-10years;
    speed1=~s/G/M;
    speed2=~s/T/G;

  176. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    # grep "losing virginity" life
    #

  177. Re:LOL! I got a -1 OffTopic! by NanoGator · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Um right.

    Moderation is an expression of how one person interprets a post. By commenting on the moderation, you are seeking clarification. There is no difference between saying "Why was I modded down?" and "What did you mean by that?"

    The explanation you gave me is a cop-out for people with moderation points to burn. You're playing games with semantics. Duh.

    --
    "Derp de derp."
  178. all your 1337 are belong to us by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    some day, the ^H^H^H^H^H and other related strings will be seen as the equivelent of 1337 5p34k1nG d0odz talk of years not that far removed from this period. It might also contain an abundance of those who truly detested such nonsense after about the first week of seeing it, the same way they got sick of 1337 speak.
    No seriously, if it bothers you... ignore it. If my saying it bothers me or just make fun of it while it does not bother me... just ignore that. But please, PLEASE, don't sound like a broken record saying that it is different from 1337 speak and giving some stupid self defacing reason

  179. this is great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can store all my last weeks Word documents on just one disc. Well, one of them was more than 100 pages, so probably take that one out :)

  180. Re:12 cm or 12 inch? Tape by billstewart · · Score: 2
    The first terabyte system *I* saw was a 12" reel of inch-wide digital write-once paper tape, from Creo. The drive was about the size of a conventional tape-drive (i.e. refrigerator-sized, in those days). The drive cost about $250K, and each tape reel was about $10K (as opposed to typical magtape at $25/reel.)

    Somebody else at the same trade show had a video-cassette-based jukebox that could be expanded to about 6 TB if you used enough bays and enough tapes. Times change :-)

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  181. Re:point? by fonetik · · Score: 1

    Funniest. Comment. Ever.

  182. Re:point? by NeMon'ess · · Score: 2

    If only it was 2k by 3k then I'd be all for digital. It was only 1k by 2k and that's why it sucks compared to film. When digital reaches about 3k by 6k it will have equaled films potential. In reality the optical soundtrack reduces the potential space for visuals, damn it. Why stop at 24fps anyway? I'm looking forward to 3k by 6k at 70fps. That will be enough so I can't see jerkyness at all. *cues quake players to bitch 70fps is too slow*

  183. Re:point? by fonetik · · Score: 1

    From data storage to Snow Crash in just a couple comments. Think this will facilitate the Uncle Enzo's pizza Delivery service too?

  184. Re:point? by cosmosis · · Score: 2

    Advanced in optronics alone will give us computers operating in the Thz range, and when we start seeing the fruits of nanotech, and nanotube circuitry, we will easily be getting into $1000 machines millions of times faster than what is available today.

  185. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are wrong. We will *never* see 10THz processors.

    http://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae3 91 .cfm

  186. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cut n' paste:

    "It is difficult to speak of an absolute frequency limit, since there are many different limitations on clock speed, some of which are technical, and some are purely physical.

    One important assumption in circuit design is that all circuit elements are "lumped". This means that signal propagation time from one element to the other is negligible. "Negligible" means that the time it takes for the signal produced at one point on the circuit to propagate to the rest of the circuit is (very) small compared to the times involved in circuit operation.

    For all practical purposes, electrical signals travel at the speed of light. Let us take an example: Assume a processor which works at 1GHz. This means one billion clock cycles per second. This also means one clock cycle takes one billionth of a second, or a nanosecond. Light travels about 30cm (about a foot) in a nanosecond. So, the size of circuitry involved at such clock speeds better be much less than (at least 1/10 of) 30cm. So, your maximum circuit size is 3cm. Taking into account that the actual CPU core size is less than 1cm a side, we are still in safe waters.

    Remember that this was for 1 GHz. If the clock speed is increased to 100GHz, a cycle will be 0.01 nanoseconds, and signals will only propagate 3mm in this time. So, your CPU core will ideally need to be about 0.3mm in size. It is quite hard to cram a CPU core into such a small space. So, we're still in safe waters, but somewhere between now and 100GHz, we're going to hit this physical barrier."

  187. 1.44 TB by user32.ExitWindowsEx · · Score: 1

    I wonder how far off the 1.44 TB rewritable version is.
    That would be the 'floppy disk' of the future.

    my $0.02

    --
    "Evil will always triumph because good is dumb." -- Dark Helmet
  188. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do the signals in these optical processors travel faster than light? No (see above).

  189. Re:point? by haydon4 · · Score: 1

    No one needs a terabyte disk. No one needs a 50" monitor. No one needs 10GB RAM. No one needs a 10GHz CPU.

    Not yet anyway... :D~

  190. Re:exsqueeze me? by duren686 · · Score: 1

    12 inches would be 12''..

    Do you mean that, or are you asking whether they said "12 cm" or "12 superinches?"

    --
    Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
  191. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dammit! I keep thinking you mean "First Post" with that "FP." at the bottom of your posts.

    Please make it less confusing or get a wittier sig to play off it.

  192. Write-Only Filesystem by jelle · · Score: 2

    Such technology asks for whole new filesystems.

    Instant-snapshot logging filesystem

    Nothing ever gets deleted and any file ever written can always be retrieved.

    Put a new medium in the drive once a month and you've got full backups too.

    Who needs a versioning system then?

    --
    --- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
  193. Re:point? by duren686 · · Score: 1

    I can't wait for the Yattabyte to come into common usage..

    Just think of all the stuff I could put on one of those discs!

    --
    Y2K Compliant since the late 1890s
  194. Re:point? by Saeger · · Score: 2
    I'm looking forward to 3k by 6k at 70fps.

    And I'm looking forward to that kind of quality being beamed into each of my eyes, for a full FOV, stereoscopic experience... vs. the boring 2D screen.

    I'd easily pay over 10 grand to be an early adopter of this tech. Too bad Microvision's current stuff pretty much sucks - so it'll be a while yet.

    --

    --
    Power to the Peaceful
  195. Re:point? by Saeger · · Score: 1

    Well, crap, I replied to the wrong person. How'd that happen? :)

    --
    Power to the Peaceful
  196. Re:Offtopic: Can everyone do me a favor... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    CUMMING, GA 30041

    Just what kind of spam are we talking about here?

  197. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

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    the admiration of all!

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    based on your present knowledge and life experience.

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  198. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Exabyte (1 million Terabytes): This amount of storage will be useful if you want to record in hig-quality digital video all of yor life from your wearable computer that you take everywhere. You will be abel to access every moment of your life, every conversation and play it back at anytime.

    Yeah - and I thought my girlfriend bringing up crap from three years ago was bad enough.

  199. s/s/c/ by BlowCat · · Score: 2, Funny
    12 cm must refer to the floppy disk version, while 12 inches is the hard disk.:-)
    12 cm must refer to the floppy dick version, while 12 inches is the hard dick.:-)
  200. Re:point? by Saeger · · Score: 1
    Quite right - now that I've got 240GB to play with, I'm actually encoding to lossless Monkey's Audio instead of high VBR mp3.

    Yeah, Monkey's Audio is slightly less Free than FLAC, but not by much, and it does a better squeeze job.

    --

    --
    Power to the Peaceful
  201. Re:point? by jrivar59 · · Score: 1

    Can't you get arrested for being a petabyte?

  202. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    So, your CPU core will ideally need to be about 0.3mm in size. It is quite hard to cram a CPU core into such a small space.

    .3mm == 300 microns == 300,000nm on a side == 90 billion "large atom sized" units of area for transistors. A Pentium4 only has 55million transistors, over a much larger area. There's always the 3rd dimension. THz is possible with nanotech.

  203. um. guys. by VoiceOfRaisin · · Score: 1

    ive read tons of the supposed bill gates "640k" quotes in this thread over and over.
    people. he never said that.
    go look it up, its an urban legend.

  204. Why do we need this much storage? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    1 hr. of uncompressed HD video at the full-resolution ATSC spec. of 1080X1920 pixels (otherwise called 1080p) scanned at 60 fps with 10 bpp will require 1.5+ TB.

    This is without _any_ audio encoding.

  205. Re:point? by MoFoQ · · Score: 1

    correction: 1024GB = 1TB (remember.....as far as storage capacities are concerned, it's a power of 2...usually a multiple of 1024bytes [1K])

    man....1TB...it's about time...I can finally backup my harddrives (I have about a TB of storage.....backing it up on CDRs is not every economical or logical....let alone using floppies....)

  206. ENLARGE YOUR DATA DENSITY 100% NATURAL by Rui+del-Negro · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Sorry, that's centimeters, not inches, which is of course even better.

    Depends what you're measuring.

    RMN
    ~~~

    1. Re:ENLARGE YOUR DATA DENSITY 100% NATURAL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL! I guess things just look bigger in metric.

  207. Re:point? by John+Ineson · · Score: 1

    "This is exactly where I see 100GHz machines coming in handy - the ability to render realistic virtual worlds on the fly."

    That, and keeping small towns warm in the winter.

  208. Numerical comparison, potential ways out... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I consider the day we can record and play raw, uncompressed 1024x768x32 video frames to be the nearest "holy grail" point we can shoot for.

    If I've done the math right, at 60Hz, this works out to a bit over 188MB/s. (not MiB/s; I'm lazy). An hour of such frame-by-frame video would thus take 676GB, irrespective of audio.

    So.. 1TB is a pretty excellent size, even if you need an independent disc for uncompressed audio. The speed's got to crank way up, though.

    One technique I like for speeding the reads is the one Constellation 3D (www.c-3d.net) proposed for their FMD-ROMs - and yes, I've pimped their idea before, but I'm no relation, just think it's the most robust (if not most dense) concept yet mentioned, post magneto-optical.

    In the FMDs, you've got multiple layers that glow when exposed to the proper frequency of light. Potentially, you can illuminate all these layers at once (especially if they respond to a single frequency and emit at multiple frequencies; think sidelighting). The C3D drives then use a now-cheap CCD or CMOS sensor to read a whole heaping pile of bits at once.

    It's complex until you think about it; then it's rather elegant. Still, since the company's been operating on the verge of bankruptcy for 5 years now, advances from a keiretsu-backed firm like these guys may eclipse their efforts. Still, multiple pickups are the way to go, and with lasers getting so godawfully cheap, you could probably use a whole stripe of illuminators and pickups (not unlike an LED-printer's write head on a much smaller scale), vibrating it just slightly to shift track to track.

    Problem is, of course, angular velocities and such, but I assume that's not an untackleable problem.

  209. Lets also notforget the infamous IBM one by THX1138 · · Score: 1

    "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." - Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

    --
    Don't take life too seriously. It is only a temporary situation. Usual disclaimers apply.
  210. Re:LOL! I got a -1 OffTopic! by NeMon'ess · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    at the risk of insulting your intelligence, you might want to post without the +1 bonus when replying to not especially important threads. or threads whose parents are +1 or 0

  211. That's just plain wrong... by schmaltz · · Score: 2

    12 inches == 30.48 cm.

    1 inch == 2.54 cm !~= 3.0 cm...

    --
    Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma ... where's Siggy?
  212. Re:LOL! I got a -1 OffTopic! by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    You know, many people have informed me of that, you are the only one who has done it tactfully. For that, I thank you.

    I do use that button sometimes. Unfortunately, sometimes when I run into the 120 second limit and things get farqed. Oh well. T'was an interesting day karma wise. One post alone (the one about blondes not knowing the difference...) so far has had 13 moderations. Fun stuff, eh? :)

    Again, thanks for being polite, it is in such short supply here.

  213. I think I learned... by s.fontinalis · · Score: 1

    That yet another portion of life is just like high school - dominated by narrowminded twits in the pursuit of some higher goal. Yay!

  214. Re:point? by bay43270 · · Score: 2

    An Exabyte might be more useful for recording all video from the 23 cameras in your small store. You will want to keep high resolution copies of all of the video for each camera for years. This way a cheap e-machine (300Ghz AMD Superion) can analyze changes in customer blood pressure, eye contact and body language as they look through your merchandise. This data can be used for future direct marketing product customization and of course for resale to other institutions.

  215. Re:point? by mixmasta · · Score: 1

    it may have been shown at the theater in this resolution, but I'm sure it was not scanned/rendered/composited at 1k. Prolly 2 or 3 minimum, sometimes space scenes are done at 4k+ because the stars get lost otherwise.

    I seem to remember a 3k frame with 48 bit color uncompressed coming out to about 47MB a piece in an uncompressed cineon file. To lazy to check calculations....

    --
    #6495ED - cornflower blue
  216. So if the 19-inch Rackmount is first by 2 years... by mal0rd · · Score: 1

    ...then I expect that alot of people are going to start using rackmounts. I know I would, as long as it was afforable.

  217. Re:To AC or not to AC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You're so damned lame! Never heard of "Hamlet" which you totally ripped off.

  218. only for low resolution images and videos by slaida1 · · Score: 1
    Digital cameras now record about 4M pixels but there's really no upper limit on how much is needed since somebody somewhere will want to enlarge their pics and zoom into details.. remember Blade Runner?

    Also, when we get wall-sized TV-screens we'll want video feed at 40K x 30K rez at 100 full refreshes/sec. Then you can think again how much that kind of material can 1 exabyte store.

    --
    Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
  219. Re:point? by wallsg · · Score: 1

    Did you choose the Red Pill or the Blue Pill?

  220. Transfer speed SUX by mattr · · Score: 2

    Okay. A terabyte disk, right on schedule.

    Maybe it's fast enough to serve a few channels of TV simultaneously, but it takes what, an hour and a half just to make a copy? Doesn't sound like something you are going to be able to stamp out for 10 cents each.

  221. From their website...'without consciousness' by vortexau · · Score: 1

    "and we expect that internet will have further development and readiness of use for people, and everyone will be able to use necessary information at any time any place without consciousness."

    Wow! The end development they expect is the delivery of information 'without consciousness'; which must mean while in an unconscious state!

    That must mean ......... 'sleep learning' through your net connection!?
    .

    --
    (David Bowman, EVA near HUGE Monolithic Win-PC in orbit around Jupiter) "My God - its full of Malware!"
  222. Re:point? by nirvdrum · · Score: 1

    Ummm . . . I guess you're missing the point between "want" and "need". Cave man, I'm sure, wanted a slightly better lifestlye, so he made changes to achieve that goal. He did not necessarily need one (though it would increase his longevity). But being able to store all your DVDs on a single disk is a desire and not a necessity.

    So, please spare me your ill-conceived logic. Your analogy really has no bearing to this, and falls flat when challenged.

    --
    If there was a "-1 Not Funny", that'd be my most used mod.
  223. Re:point? by Quixadhal · · Score: 2

    "No one needs a terabyte disk..."

    Yeah, you say that now, wait until Windows FP (Fat Porker) edition is released, THEN you'll wish you had that terabyte disk for your swap file!

  224. your .sig by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I hate Linux because it made me type man mount.

    i used to it was a little strange having to type that, that and:

    man find, man man, man tail, man head ...

    you get the idea.

    1. Re:your .sig by NanoGator · · Score: 1, Offtopic

      Heh. My coworker had me type 'make love'. The response was like "unable to make love". heh. That was a while ago, I don't think it works today, but it was funny. :)

      --
      "Derp de derp."
  225. Re:point? by ajs · · Score: 2

    As mentioned in a previous post, can we add this to the list of "handy quotes that were never said", right up there with Al Gore "inventing the internet"?

    Al Gore never said he invented the Internet. He DID however, claim responsibility for it, which is partially true. He was one of the senators who lobbied for the funding that DARPA needed for many projects which included the creation of a research network (ARPANet) which would eventually evolve into the Internet.

    What upset me about the statement was the fact that he was tacitly taking credit for the foresight to fund the creation of the Internet, when he almost certainly had no clue what rammifications ARPANet would have.

  226. Re:point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Really?
    I work for a local radio - we are planning to rip all of our CD's(3000+) to mp3s.
    It is legal since we keep the cds.
    This thing will take us 1-2 months and about 450gb of space!
    We get about 80 new cds/month.
    We also need backup on different hard drives!
    So - we will need about 10 120gb hard drives;)

  227. What happens when you die? by pornaholic · · Score: 1

    How long will my life's work be accessible? Will I lose the ability to read my disc/chip before I turn 30? I know this is a bit redundant with other frequent /. topics, but I feel a little helpless. What will my grandchildren do with my outdated chip, just throw it away because it costs to much to get it read?

    What we need is a group to take charge of compatibility issues. This group would devise transitional technologies for all types of hardware/software/communications. With such a body, the history of change can be documented as well as the history of us, making any public form of storage accessible.

    This sounds eerily similar to the way libraries archive books. Perhaps the perfect place for updating of information is at the library. Imagine stopping by the library to get your pile of cd's thrown onto a DVD through their updating kiosk. I know there are some hurdles to overcome on the copyright front, but if the ..PA's realize that they are just a succeptible to data loss internally, perhaps they will lossen their grip for the sake of preservation.

    We're brought into this world alone, and leave alone. Somewhere in between, we get the idea that we're not alone. We are wrong.

  228. Technology wont work according to expert !! by geekster_2000 · · Score: 0

    First they need to get it from solid state cube
    and large gas lasers in the lab to a rotating
    disk and solid state lasers.

    he says flying head and polarized photons
    need to have the head gap at around 940 nm.

    that is like flying a 747 jumbo jet 1 foot
    off a super highway without crashing !!!

    go to 3D Volume Holographic icon at

    http://colossalstorage.net

  229. Re:Well, all those development are great by klerck+II · · Score: 0

    I wanted to stress the fact that we're 2 years after the year 2000. "2002" is so common that people might miss the point.

    I'm not suffering from insanity, I'm enjoying every minute of it!

    Good for you!

    --
    Have you hugged your moderator today?
  230. Re:"check out `All Tommorrow's Parties'" by tlambert · · Score: 2

    I've already read all of William Gibson's writing that has ever been published. 8-).

    -- Terry

  231. Re:This idea is old news.... anybody remember FD-R by oooga · · Score: 1

    I check in to their website every couple of months. They never seem to make any progress...

    --
    -- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
  232. Re:LOL! I got a -1 OffTopic! by NanoGator · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    I'm not taking back the comment about semantic games. You're WRONG.

    "The topic is "One Terabyte On a 12cm Disk"."

    No. The topic is what the article covered. You can talk about the media itself, that's on topic. You can talk about quotes in the article, that's on topic. You can make fun of the sudden correction in the headline, that's on topic. In this particular case, the moderator that modded the AC down had a very strict idea (just like you do) about what is on-topic. He actually used the subject of the article in his post and he still got an offtopic moderation for it. Did you look at the mods he got? He didn't challenge the 'overrated' mods, he challenged the offtopic one. It was wrong. He had every right to fight it. The answer is not to have the users 'just take it and move on'.

    Modding a comment as funny is basically the moderator's way of expressing "This comment was funny.", or in other words, he's expressing his point of view. If somebody responds to one of my posts and says "no, your idea won't work.", then it is not Off-Topic to say "Why don't you think my idea will work?" There isn't a difference there. So if I a moderator makes a moderation that I find confusing, there should be no punishment for asking why. Instead, the right thing to do is for the moderator (or anybody else who knows the answer) to pipe in and say "he probably thought you meant something else. Your wording is a little ambiguous." That is so much better than modding me down to shut me up.

    Seeing as how Slashdot provides us with 0 ways of reporting bad moderations, then you're just going to have to shut up and deal with the noise it generates.

    There might be a solution that makes us both happy: Create a forum dedicated to challening bad moderations. Got a questionable moderation? Think you can provide concise proof that the moderation sucked? (or want to know if it was misinterpretable?) Go post over there and keep it out of the main discussion area. That way you don't get your noise, and when I get mod bombed I can do something about it.

    Whatcha think of that?

    --
    "Derp de derp."
  233. Re:LOL! I got a -1 OffTopic! by Bnonn · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Seems like Slashdot isn't the best place for you, since you're looking for politeness, fair moderation and, apparently, people with a sense of humour. Not to say you can't find it here, but have you tried kuro5hin?

  234. Re:LOL! I got a -1 OffTopic! by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Looking into it now, thanks! :)

    I'm not anti-Slashdot, I just think a moderator or two needs to be a little more open minded and stop being so literal. I wouldn't blame the whole site for that.

    To be honest, though, I wish all the 'i hate microsoft' posts would die down. Too many people doing that just because it makes them cool. It's not inspiring people to be informed. Heh. :)

  235. Re:Exabyte by jthill · · Score: 1
    Exabyte (1 million Terabytes): This amount of storage will be useful if you want to record in hig-quality digital video all of yor life
    No more having to rely on others to videotape your beating!
    --
    As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
  236. Re:This idea is old news.... anybody remember FD-R by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    Actually, Constellation3D basically imploded. Their costs were spiraling up, and despite all their demos and such, they haven't brought anything to market.

    I was watching the stock (CDDD) until it got delisted, and now it sits at a nickel to a dime or so (CDDD.PK). Really sad actually, they seemed to have the lead for a while there.

    Also consider that WAMO (warner advanced media operations) signed up with them, as well as Ricoh, Plasmon, and a few others. They had the names and the weight to finish this thing, but they just moved too slow. Now with the current economic situation, it is extremely unlikely they will ever pick it back up.

    Who knows though, we might see their reflection in someone elses' products, once their patents get bought.

  237. Peta! Peta! by fm6 · · Score: 2
    Now, if they were talking about a petabyte, you might have a point.
    Well maybe. Isn't that about the maximum size of an NTFS partition? Maybe I'm thinking of an exabyte.

    I'm reminded of my boyhood back in the cybernetic Jurassic. We thought it was a big thing when the university mainframe went from 512K to 1 meg RAM. An expensive proposition, since this model, like most computers of the time, didn't use IC RAM. It used clay-ferrite "cores" (hence "core memory"), with all the logic wiring hand-weaved. The punchline: it took the MIS people precisely a week to write a COBOL program that wouldn't fit in that humungous address space!

    The moral being: people use the resources available. That's what they "need".