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87GB On DVD-Sized Media

BostonMACOSX points to this report in the Detroit News that says, in part, "Boston College researchers have found a way to store about 19 times more data on a disk than a common DVD can hold, using optical media made with common products, the December issue of Nature Materials reports." And it's a mix of high and low tech: the disk is formed of "an epoxy glue sold at hardware stores and a glass-like substance," but written with a currently expensive laser.

347 comments

  1. What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by purduephotog · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Great technology, but again, remember back when they announced 100 gigs on a CDROM? Seems storage size is getting smaller ;P

    When I see someone manufacturing it, I'll be impressed, but until then.....

    oh yeah- don't forget- just how long would it take to back this up (should it ever become RW?) At SCSI 120mb/sec..... right, you get the picture.

    1. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by GigsVT · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And the more important question, would the RIAA/MPAA ever let it happen? Imagine people selling discs of thousands of hours of music, or a whole year's popular films for $5 on the street.

      I think we may be doomed to never have large capacity disposable/cheap removable media.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    2. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by |absolut| · · Score: 4, Insightful

      well the article says the Air Force is very interested in these types of technologies.

      I'd like to see the responce of the AF when the RIAA tries to tell them no :)

    3. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Blimey85 · · Score: 5, Funny
      "My fellow Americans...

      You will be happy to know that today,
      I wrote into law legislation that will ban the RIAA forever.

      The bombing will start in 5 minutes." - Former President Ronal Reagan
      speaking on behalf of the US Air Force in response to the RIAA saying no.

      --
      How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
    4. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by coryboehne · · Score: 2

      With larger hard drives becoming more common place everyday this technology is really far overdue, It's virtually impossible for some of us to really be responsible about backups the way we should be because of the prohibitive amount of data that needs to be backed up, yea it might take a while to fill up 100 gigabyte using IDE, however let's just figure .5 meg per second, that's 30 mb per minute, or 30 minutes per gig, equaling out to about 3000 minutes, that's about 50 hours for a full burn at the rather fast rate of .5 meg per second. But, consider the alternitives, swaping out 1000+ CDR's... Personally, I'll take the 100 gig disk and let it do it's thing for two days...

    5. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by paranoidia · · Score: 1

      Oh they'll let it happen, not much they can do. But they will make sure they make thier cut and themsome. I'm sure they will require a percentage of every blank disk sold, just like CD's. This is to compensate for copyright infringments. Then when people do copy mp3/ogg's to them, they will cry foul, and demand more money. 'tis the way.

    6. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      sounds like they need a new standard for buses... where's intel to push a new one.

    7. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · · Score: 4, Funny

      Charlie: Excuse me, Lieutenant. Is there something wrong?
      Maverick: Yes ma'am, the data on the DVD reader is inaccurate.
      Charlie: How's that, Lieutenant?
      Maverick: Well, I just happened to see a DVD containing...
      Goose: We!
      Maverick: Uh, sorry Goose. WE happened to see a DVD containing 89 megabytes.
      Charlie: Where did you see this?
      Maverick: Uh, that's classified.
      Charlie: It's what?
      Maverick: It's classified. I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

      (All credit to IMDB and none to me - I didn't even try to make it funnier. I'd say I am a lazy karma whoring bastard, but I think i'm capped :)

      --
      Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
    8. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by IanBevan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think we may be doomed to never have large capacity disposable/cheap removable media.

      I disagree. We will, because we can. It's human nature. It's why the RIAA is destined to fail to control all digital entertainment media in the same way that the suffragettes (sp ?) eventually got the vote. It makes sense, most people want it, and therefore it will happen.

      I have a similar theory that I apply to my everyday working life (software development projects); given enough time, common sense will prevail.

    9. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      given enough time, common sense will prevail.

      Why did Windows peak at W2K and start to get worse again then? :)

    10. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2
      And the more important question, would the RIAA/MPAA ever let it happen? Imagine people selling discs of thousands of hours of music, or a whole year's popular films for $5 on the street.

      With the latest legislative trends, the world will soon be safe for this kind of media. Maybe something like: make an illicit disk containing 20 movies, receive 20 consecutive life sentences. That should keep everyone on the straight and narrow path.

    11. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by jimmyCarter · · Score: 1

      "Imagine people selling discs of thousands of hours of music, or a whole year's popular films for $5 on the street." -- Imagine it happening a lot sooner than the RIAA/MPAA would like - say 10 years or less..

      --

      -- jimmycarter
    12. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Syncdata · · Score: 5, Insightful

      would the RIAA/MPAA ever let it happen
      Okay, this is just silly. The RIAA is not omnipotent. They cannot stop DVD-R's from being produced just because it has the capability to store a movie, nor can they stop Hard Disks from being produced, for the same reason.
      The RIAA/MPAA is pissed because there are applications out there whose main use (not necessarily intended, but main use) is distributing copyrighted material illegally. They won't sue dell for shipping computers with ethernet connections, just because they facilitate downloading music. Press the pause button on the conspiracy theories.

      --
      "Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
    13. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Rader · · Score: 2

      Where did you pull 0.5 MB/s ??

      Even my 8X cd burner is 1.2 MB/s

      I hope you weren't thinking of normal hard drive IDE speeds, which can easily sustain 40 MB/s.

    14. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by afidel · · Score: 3, Insightful

      and assuming the same rotational speed, this media would transfer 100 times more data per pass, so 120MB/s, sounds like you would have more problem with the PCI bus than the media.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    15. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 3, Funny
      Oh they'll let it happen, not much they can do. But they will make sure they make thier cut and themsome. I'm sure they will require a percentage of every blank disk sold, just like CD's. This is to compensate for copyright infringments. Then when people do copy mp3/ogg's to them, they will cry foul, and demand more money. 'tis the way.

      Can I demand money from the RIAA when all I use it for is to burn copies of my home movies? Oh right, I forgot, only big corporations are allowed to fuck the consumer and get away with it.

    16. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      30MB per minute?

      What about 48X drives? Full CD in under 3 minutes.

      Full CD is more than 60MB...

    17. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by coryboehne · · Score: 2

      You really expect fledgling technology to acheive those speeds ehh? Maybe, but I'm looking at what we could really expect from the first release in real world terms. But, hopefully you're right and I'm wrong, shit 50MB/sec would be great (hint: just divide all the numbers in my previous example by 100, and that gives the proper figures for a 100GB disk, however considering this disk is actually 87 Gig just take the results from that and multiply by .87 and that'll give the correct figures...) Like I said, it's all a numbers game....

    18. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, I haven't read all the replies to this article but a DVD can hold (uncompressed) up to 18 gig. The 4.7 gig which we are all using now, is just some standard the industry has argeed on, or not?
      As far as I know, a DVD has 4 layers (2 on each side) and so far we are just using one layer...

    19. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Rader · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Don't get me wrong, we might have to poke a hole for every byte in these things for all I know.

      But when DVD-R hit the consumer marketspace at 2.4X it was the same speed as CD-R 20X (3 MB/sec)

      Heh, you're right about a number game though, even at 3MB/sec that's 8 hours to burn an 87GB disc.

    20. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Rader · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes, you can press DVD's on both sides, with 2 layers on each side. You have to do this professionally though, and it's a "press" not a "burn".

      But when it comes to burning a DVD (with a DVD-burner that you can buy) , you can only burn one layer.

      That's why you only get 4.7 GB on one side.

    21. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOL!

      30 x 3 = 60 MB ???

    22. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by coryboehne · · Score: 1, Redundant

      Ha! Poke a hole for every byte... that's just a funny image..... :)

      Moderators: The parent is what the Funny +1 moderation was invented for.... :)

    23. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by theedge318 · · Score: 1

      2 layers disks exist. Namely those disks with Widescreen on one side, and 4:3 on the other side.

      Of course these disks require special cases ... those cases that are impossible to extract the disk from. Which inevitably means you get fingerprints all over one side ... reverting it back to a 1 layer disk.

      George: Um, excuse me, I - I think you forgot my bread.
      Sig Nazi: Bread -- $2 extra.
      George: $2? But everyone in front of me got free bread.
      Sig Nazi: You want bread?
      George: Yes, please.
      Sig Nazi: $3!
      George: What?!?
      Sig Nazi: No sig for you! [snaps fingers]

      --
      Sig Nazi- "No Sig for you, come back 1 year."
    24. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Jucius+Maximus · · Score: 2

      It would be cool to have one of these inserted into an in-car GPS device. You could have every mapped road in your GPS accessible at all times!

    25. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by uberdave · · Score: 3, Funny

      You mean like this?

    26. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I file that story with one about us only using 5% of our brain capacity

    27. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Kaboom13 · · Score: 1

      "They won't sue dell for shipping computers with ethernet connections, just because they facilitate downloading music."
      Yet.

    28. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by coryboehne · · Score: 2

      yes, except on a something that looks like a cd-rom and the holes are much smaller and closer together.... :)

    29. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by guck · · Score: 1

      If only the *duration* of time wasn't a factor that would be a great philosophy, eh?

      And yeah, give me a place to stand and i will move the earth.

      Sadly, I don't share your "pigheaded optimism" (let's call it) since all it takes is for a sufficiently "pocketed" legislative body to both retain power and distribute it to friends - coupled with just enough apathy in the majority and you have a defacto "Never".

      Hmm.

    30. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by docstrange · · Score: 1

      I firmly believe that we'll eventually get our 100 gig cdroms, or the equivelant.

      But before it happens the industry standard video disc, (whatever name they give it) will have 2048x1600+ resolution and the quality will require a 100 gig disc to fit a single movie.

      --
      Remember that you are unique, just like everybody else.
    31. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      a whole year's popular films for $5 on the street.
      I'm thinking that if these disks got popular then the quality of DVD rips and suck would go up so that they're actually at a quality level more like DVD. Just like right now most try to stay under 650MB and 700MB because those are the common CD sizes. I've seen some movies bigger, but they've all been less than 800MB which means that they've all been small enough to fit on a CD. So 87GB wouldn't go quite as far then. Probably wouldn't be just $5 either.
    32. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      • WTF?
    33. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by dubbreak · · Score: 0

      >question, would the RIAA/MPAA ever let it happen? What if the laser for recording cost $100,000 dollars, but another low powered inexpesive could be used for reading and you and could hold 87 gigs? Then they could produce a new near lossless format that uses no compression. Ie take up 87 gigs for 70-80 minutes of music . To copress this directly from digital it would take a huge hard drive and possibly lots of processing time. There goes duplication (well except for those with a set of rca cables and a line in, but eventually sound cards wil lhave some protection against that and we wil lhave to mod our sound cards.. aaaaahhhhh)..

      --
      "If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
    34. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It makes sense, most people want it, and therefore it will happen.

      Don't be too sure, most people want free money, but I don't think we're gonna see that any time soon. :)

    35. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by duggy_92127 · · Score: 1
      Top Gun is (was?), in fact, a Navy operation, I believe.

      Doug

    36. Re:What happened to our 100 gig CDROMS? by Pooua · · Score: 2
      sounds like they need a new standard for buses... where's intel to push a new one.

      Here's a recent (November 13, 2002) news story:

      "The PCI Special Interest Group (PCI-SIG), an industry consortium that includes representatives from Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and other PC giants, said it has begun initial work to develop specifications for PCI-X 1066, the successor to the recent PCI-X 266 and PCI-X 533 specifications.

      "The newest standard will allow PC components to exchange data at bandwidths of up to 8.5 gigabytes per second, compared with less than 1 gigabyte per second for current versions."

      PCI connections to put in double duty

      --
      Taking stuff apart since 1969 (TM)
  2. And in other news by xchino · · Score: 2, Funny

    The RIAA and MPAA has banded together with researches from Boston to create a "fail safe" copy protection technique. And in yet other news, Media companies sales have dropped 99% as now people can fit 19 times the copyrighted content on cheap media with faulty copy protection.

    --
    Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
  3. backup by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sounds like this could replace tape drives for backup, if it's cheap enough

    1. Re:backup by gato_mato · · Score: 1, Informative

      Only if the speed of the backup is worthy of replacing tapes. I mean Afterall you can get a Tapedrive that will do 400 Meg/Sec backup these days and that is still too slow.

      Gato

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

      If they can write at ~2 megabytes a second then they can keep up with DLT tape drives, which hold half of the data that these would.

    3. Re:backup by afidel · · Score: 2

      2MB/s is damn slow for DLT, and current DLT spec is 160GB native/ 320 GB compressed. Super DLT drives have write speeds up to 32MB/s.

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    4. Re:backup by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 1
      2MB/s is damn slow for DLT, and current DLT spec is 160GB native/ 320 GB compressed. Super DLT drives have write speeds up to 32MB/s.

      Still much too expensive for home backups. Sometime somewhere in the mid 1990's things went horribly wrong and hard drives ballooned out of control while tape technology stayed stagnant. I remember I could back up my whole hard drive on a couple QIC-80 tapes and it was affordable. These days I can't imagine how much it would cost to get a tape backup solution to backup my 80GB disks. Cheapest thing is to buy another 80GB disk and use it as a backup drive but then I lose archival ability. Ho hum. Come on guys, make an affordable 500GB tape backup system for under $300. :-)

    5. Re:backup by bryston2 · · Score: 0

      This could be a great archive medium. Speed is important in some applications, but if you set up your process to go from quick magnetic storage "tape" to optical later for permanence It looks like great tech.

  4. So... by Eggplant62 · · Score: 2

    Instead of paying $27 for my four DVD set of Lord of the Rings, I might have only paid $17 if this technology were available today?

    Cool.

    1. Re:So... by Silvermask · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Naw, they'd probably charge you more becuase they could fill up the disc with less compressed data and then use "87 Giga-Bytes of entertainment!" as a reason to tack on another $15 >.>

      --

      "Wild nights are my glory"
    2. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Likely you would've paid $26.95

      The cost of physical media is almost nill nowadays, its all royalties and middlemen

    3. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Yes but the fundamental difference is that you'd be able to store your DVD on the wall. Simply lick the glue side as you would a postage stamp and leave your dvd on the wall next to your entertainment center. In this way you can show off you serious 'bling-bling' to your geek friends.

    4. Re:So... by diesel_jackass · · Score: 2

      Back in the days of my Yamaha 4x burner, I tacked up the coasters throughout my apartment. After I ran out of nails and wall-space, I decided that a new burner would be a good investment. It was kinda cool because everywhere you looked there would either be a blue or silver disc, as well as several other colors of the rainbow.

    5. Re:So... by Havokmon · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Instead of paying $27 for my four DVD set of Lord of the Rings, I might have only paid $17 if this technology were available today?

      No, you'd still pay $27, but you could watch the whole movie without changing discs.

      --
      "I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
    6. Re:So... by _ph1ux_ · · Score: 2

      that, and they would have 4 hours of non-fast-forwardable previews before each movie

    7. Re:So... by Yort · · Score: 1
      No, you'd still pay $27, but you could watch the whole movie without changing discs.

      As well as possibly, in the future, getting a higher quality picture. Remember, DVDs are still compressed quite a bit, so there's room for improvement, both in the area of sound and in picture. And with movies starting to get shot in digital format, higher quality stuff will be more easily available.

      I'm guessing this will happen someday, just not soon. There will need to be a point where the standard changes from the ~5GB DVD to a new format that will store much more, but it's anyone's guess when that will happen.

    8. Re:So... by Blimey85 · · Score: 2
      non-fast-forwardable crap really pissed me off. It's bad enough that I have to watch it the first time I pop the movie in but if I switch dvd's, I have to watch it everytime I put it in. And I have several collections of tv shows (mostly British comedy of course) that I like to watch once in a while. I watch an episode or two, put in a movie, later I watch another episode or two. But each time I have to sit through 90 seconds of warnings about everything under the freakin sun.

      I wouldn't mind 4 hours of previews on the new format that I could watch when I want. Previews are good, when you CHOOSE to watch them. I like to watch a preview before I see a movie so I have an idea if I'll like it or not but forcing us to watch previews is like going to a car dealer to get an oil change an being forced to take a test drive or two or three before getting the service work that you need done.

      --
      How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
    9. Re:So... by jx100 · · Score: 1

      Not only that, but an HDTV-quality signal would also require a whole lot more storage.

    10. Re:So... by tps12 · · Score: 3, Informative

      There is no such thing as "non-fast-forwardable" material on a DVD. Try watching it with mplayer on Linux. You don't even have to see the stupid title screen, just jump right to the movie. You can even skip the credits if you want. It is a random-access medium, after all.

      --

      Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
    11. Re:So... by fishbowl · · Score: 3, Insightful

      >I wouldn't mind 4 hours of previews on the new
      >format that I could watch when I want.

      You just made me realize something: Where is the line between what will and will not be tolerated by the consumers? We seem to be willing to accept the forced (effectively forced, for most viewers, at least) exposure to ads in the intro to dvd movies, the FBI stuff, trailers, and commercials. Would we take a full minute of this? How about a full five minutes? At what threshold would we return to the video store for a refund and/or to cancel our club membership?

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    12. Re:So... by Blimey85 · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Does mplayer allow you to watch encrypted movies without breaking the law? Are you therefore suggesting that I should break the law???

      So if you want to get technical and stay within the law, there is such thing as "non-fast-forwardable" content on dvd's. While I'm aware that mod-chips exist for the dvd players that I own, and that I can use various software applications on my computers to view the dvd's in any manner I choose, I was talking about the movie studios attempting to force us to watch previews, copyright notices, etc.

      --
      How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
    13. Re:So... by charon_on_acheron · · Score: 1

      As far as I can remember, no one returned their "Batman" tapes because they were pissed about the Coke ad at the beginning. Besides, since MOST people see SOME movies in the theaters, rather than just downloading them, we are used to sitting still through several minutes of that stuff anyway. And I don't mean just previews (I hate that word "trailers". Trailers are what you tow boats on, or what my poorer cousins live in.)(And, yes, I might be a redneck.), but also ads, warnings, theater rules, etc.

    14. Re:So... by Blue+Stone · · Score: 1

      I don't understand why the manufacturers don't include the means to circumvent this "hostage-taking" technique used by Hollywood, et al.

      If they can give me a dvd player that takes region-coding, and wipes it's arse with it, they can give me back control of my FF button, I'd have thought.

      --
      Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
    15. Re:So... by aengblom · · Score: 2

      >Instead of paying $27 for my four DVD set of Lord >of the Rings, I might have only paid $17 if this >technology were available today?

      >No, you'd still pay $27, but you could watch the >whole movie without changing discs.

      No, you'd pay $35 because of the "added value"

      --


      So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
    16. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So instead get any version of MS Windows pre direct-x 9 and a dvd player like WinDVD4 or Zoom or TheaterTek. All of those three have the ability to jump to an arbitrary location in the disc and start playing. MS took away this functionality in direct-x 9, but I wouldn't be surprised to find a patch to direct-x 9 show up relatively soon that will return this functionality to even the bleeding-edgers...

    17. Re:So... by _ph1ux_ · · Score: 3, Insightful

      From my couch? so I *have* to have linux and mplayer to accomplish this?

      No thanks. Not that i am against linux - or mplayer, I just want to plop it in the tray and sit at my couch and wathc the movie. My computer room is upstairs and far away from my single TV. and I am dont want a machine wasted on being my DVD player when i have a dvd playter already thankyouverymuch.

    18. Re:So... by _ph1ux_ · · Score: 2

      The term trailers is refering to hooking the viewer in to trail him behind you to see the movie.

      (that and they used to occur at the end of a movie - hence trailing)

    19. Re:So... by jetmarc · · Score: 1

      > No, you'd still pay $27, but you could watch the whole movie without changing discs.

      So THEY saved by giving 1 disc instead of 2. What about me? Fucked as always?

    20. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      sucky for you ass-monkey

    21. Re:So... by Havokmon · · Score: 2
      So THEY saved by giving 1 disc instead of 2. What about me? Fucked as always?

      Well, if you read the article, you'd see these disc's aren't stamped like the current ones. At this point, they would have to write each one individually. In that light, I'm quite sure that you buying the 'new format' would help screw them. (same price, but more expensive disc creation process)

      --
      "I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
    22. Re:So... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can put together a DVD box for about the price of a good DVD player. Don't blame the MPAA because you chose a bad DVD player.

  5. Epoxy Glue + Disposable Media by Dareth · · Score: 3, Funny

    What next, you play it more times than your supposed to, it melts in your DVD drive as punishment glueing it shut to prevent future acts of piracy?!?

    --

    I only look human.
    My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
    1. Re:Epoxy Glue + Disposable Media by clyons · · Score: 1

      Or possibly some hacker comes up with a way to preserve "perishable" CD/DVD's with epoxy.

      Don't laugh, last time it was a Sharpie [sanfordcorp.com].

      --

      --
      Intelligence is definitely a recessive trait.

    2. Re:Epoxy Glue + Disposable Media by The+J+Kid · · Score: 1

      Yep, you're right. This is nothing.
      Now if they got 87GB on a CD-sized Medium.....

      --
      Moderation: +4. Modded 70% Funny and 30% Overrated. 100% Saturated.
  6. Well... by Flyskippy1 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I must say that this will be good for backing up my harddrive, but when else will I really have an opportunity to fill the entire thing up?

    One can only use so much porn....

    1. Re:Well... by Angry+White+Guy · · Score: 1

      Yeah, about eleven disks worth.

      --
      You think that I'm crazy, you should see this guy!
    2. Re:Well... by bsharitt · · Score: 1

      I could back up my hard drive a couple of times with this.

    3. Re:Well... by ejaw5 · · Score: 2

      Some films released today already do this, but since there's no excuse now...they can put BOTH Fullscreen and Widescreen formats on all DVD releases, along with the multilanguage sounds and subscript, as well as the other crap that comes on DVDs.

      I mean, come on! I think widescreen's just a ploy to sell more 16:3 tvs. Sure the pano effect looks nice even on a large 4:3 tv..but what about the folks with only a 20" tv? Why the Fsck should I buy a widescreen TV when everything else comes in standard format.

      --

      $cat /dev/random > Sig
    4. Re:Well... by hprotagonist0 · · Score: 1

      I remember when I got a 100M (external) harddrive for my MacPlus. I wondered how I could ever use all that space. I mean, I transferred all my 720k floppies onto it, and that was only like 20M. What was all that space useful for?

      --
      "A witty saying proves nothing." --Voltaire
    5. Re:Well... by Blimey85 · · Score: 2
      I think it would be a great use of this technology to pack on more "special features" as well as both full-screen and wide-screen. I myself have a 36" tv and I primarily watch dvd's on it. I do subscribe to cable (why? I don't know. I never watch cable), but dvd's are what I do with my free time when I don't want to use my brain much. I love movies, plain and simple. If you ever have a chance to look at the same movie playing in wide-screen on one tv and full-screen on another, both standard tv's, you will see a huge difference.

      You don't need a wide-screen tv see the difference. (But it does help)

      --
      How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
    6. Re:Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LOTS OF HDTV PORN!!!!!!!!!!!!

    7. Re:Well... by Rader · · Score: 2

      Hey, I'm looking forward to the wide screen tv's becoming the norm. Why not watch movies the way they were originall made?

    8. Re:Well... by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 1

      ". Why not watch movies the way they were originall made?"

      Well you can't, because 16:9 is NOT the same aspect ratio as a film screen. You still get black bars- just not as big.

      Shamelessly stolen from some website high on a list returned from Google:

      * 1.33:1 A standard television set; roughly equivalent to 4:3.
      * 1.37:1 Referred to as the academy aspect ratio. The standard for films shot before the mid-1950s.
      * 1.66:1 A bit wider than a standard TV, but not by much.
      * 1.78:1 The dimensions of a widescreen television set; roughly equivalent to 16:9.
      * 1.85:1 Popular aspect ratio for many movies.
      * 2.35:1 Another popular aspect ratio for movies.

      graspee

    9. Re:Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I clearly remember a conversation with my buddy, Phil, when the 486 100 came out.

      "Why does somebody need that much speed he asked?"

      A 386 was easily fast enough to do what people needed. . . accounting with bedford, spreadsheets with Quatro Pro, word processing WordPerfect
      *historical note for you guys born in the '80s. A 386 with windows 3.1 and wordperfect was capable of almost all of the tasks for which you currently use MS Office including WYSIWYG layouts of your school reports, and creating colourful charts in spreadsheets.


      Of couse with the faster processer came cooler apps like Corel Draw, and once you started editing images you needed a bigger harddrive (which lamely brings this meandering post back on topic).
    10. Re:Well... by MuteflY · · Score: 1

      I think widescreen's just a ploy to sell more 16:3 tvs.

      16:3? Damn thats one hell of a wide tv.

      That aside, whether it's a ploy or not there's no comparison between a movie the way it's filmed and a movie in pan & scan.

    11. Re:Well... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sorry, but one can never have enough porn.

  7. Cool and all, but... by phraktyl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While getting 87 Gig on something the size of a CD is cool and all, how is it possibly going to effect us? It has very little chance of being adopted by major manufacturers, and even less of becoming a standard. I'm sure that, to the folks that created it, it was a neat project, but that's about as far as it will go...

    --
    Karma: Marginal (mostly due to the border around the website)
    1. Re:Cool and all, but... by xchino · · Score: 2, Informative

      Why do you think it has little chance of adoption? Many media types have given greater MB/$ ratios, but people seem to LIKE the size and shape of CD's, which is one reason why DVD was adopted. If you can fit more information into a smaller space it ALWAYS has at least one useful application, even if it is just consolidating all your porn.

      --
      Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
    2. Re:Cool and all, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While getting 87 Gig on something the size of a CD is cool and all, how is it possibly going to effect us?

      Surely you mean affect us?
      *ducks*

    3. Re:Cool and all, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      affect, not effect

    4. Re:Cool and all, but... by ealar+dlanvuli · · Score: 2

      It may shock you but there are people who do commercial backups in this world...

      --
      I live in a giant bucket.
    5. Re:Cool and all, but... by infinite9 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      but that's about as far as it will go...


      Yep. And 640k should be enough for anyone.

      --
      Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
  8. obligatory UHF reference by IndependentVik · · Score: 2, Funny

    Headline reads "Researchers boost computer data storage with common materials". This discovery is, of course, nothing to the great Filo's "How to build plutonium out of common household objects".

    --
    I'd suggest you don't use Slashdot as your only news source, or you will suffer permanent brain damage.
    1. Re:obligatory UHF reference by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That quote is even better if you own the UHF DVD and you watch the deleted scene where he actually TELLS you the steps involved....

    2. Re:obligatory UHF reference by mpost4 · · Score: 1

      I you want to see that feature you have to turn the disc over!!!!!

      the problem with the ... scene ... acording ... to ... the ... disc ... was ... that ... it ... not ... slow ... enoph

    3. Re:obligatory UHF reference by tgd · · Score: 2

      You mean like this?

  9. can't wait to see the drive... by buzban · · Score: 1
    When the same laser was set at a lower intensity and fired at the same area, the material gave off a fluorescent glow indicating readable data was present. Lasers used on standard DVDs and compact discs read pits either engraved on the surface by another laser or stamped in mass production.

    it'll be interesting to see what the optical drive involves!

    also, i have to say...i think accidents make the best discoveries! ;)

    "We don't yet know how this happens, exactly," Fourkas said.

  10. Here it comes. by Fugly · · Score: 1, Redundant

    Yeah yeah... think of how much porn you could fit on one of those... blah blah blah...

    1. Re:Here it comes. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      about 87 gigs.

  11. Size Matters by bkruiser · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I don't care what anyone says, I like em big, 87G sounds fine to me!

  12. Dust by zebs · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If you're packing more on then dust will have a much bigger impact on the readability of the disks?

    Bring back caddys?

    1. Re:Dust by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think they are increasing the layers of data, not the density, so the impact of dust would be the same.

      The article doesn't really confirm either way, however.

      --
      Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
    2. Re:Dust by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or maybe they can just obliterate the offending dust particles with their "laser."

  13. When will consumers see this technology? by g00z · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You know, I've been waiting a damn long time for a optical storage solution that catches up to the size the will make backing up todays hard drives (40 Gigs and Up) a realistic possibility. 700 Megs just isn't cutting the mustard anymore when were talking about trying to back up 200+ Gigs worth of data.

    I Currently have about 1.4 TB of data sitting here in my room on CD-R right now, and let me tell you -- it's getting out of hand. DVD writables are not a solution (Too little, too late theory). I would love nothing more than to consolidate the 13 200 CD Cases I have here into something a little bit more compact.

    I've seen a couple of companies working on something like this (Optical CD-Sized solution that stores around 100 GB). Anybody have any theories to when the common dude can roll down to compusa (pick your posion) and snag a few blank 100 GB Disks for a reasonable price? I'm starting to feel like it's 1995 again when a 1.4M Floppy disk was as good as it got.

    --
    "The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
    1. Re:When will consumers see this technology? by Jus+ad+Bellum · · Score: 1

      Pack rat.

      Even if you do get this won't you feel nostalgic for the old media types, "back in my day we were only able to store 640 megs of data on a disc and were happy to. Without all you youngins' uppity sass-back and terabyte storage on a needles point..."

      And so on and so forth...

    2. Re:When will consumers see this technology? by fungus · · Score: 2

      God, what do you do with 13,200 CDs? Those are all music CDs you bought? Or full of open-source software?

      Or of homemade videos? (Probably not - else you would have got a DVD burner)

    3. Re:When will consumers see this technology? by Rader · · Score: 4, Informative

      I hear ya. I have exactly half of the data you have, and having 20 spindles of 50-paks laying around isn't that hot.

      Buying hard drives to hold it all isn't feasible, since it's a huge investment, and sizes keep going up and prices go down. (Not to mention you'd still want backups of that on....cdr!?)

      And DVD-R will only help by 7X.

      If blue-laser discs were out right now at the pace DVDR is, then that would be be a different story. That would be the perfect size to convert to right now to make it worth it.

    4. Re:When will consumers see this technology? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It will never end. You'll always be looking for the next best storage solution, holding more and more data which takes longer and longer to transfer. How long do you think it will take to transfer your 13,200 CDs worth of data to "better" media? I shudder to think.

      Also, the proverb "don't put all your eggs in one basket" comes to mind.

    5. Re:When will consumers see this technology? by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 1

      How did he come up with 1.4TB for 13200 CDs?

      It's about 2000 CDs.

      1.4TB/(650MB/CD) = 2000 CD.

      --
      Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
    6. Re:When will consumers see this technology? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Get a tape drive. A 50 GB drive will cost (from dabs.com) just GBP 374.82. If you have huge quantities of data, you can get a 2.2 TB, ten-slot drive from "just" GBP 6973.62 (so you NEED huge chunks of data to justify it - at least you'd have 697 air miles).

      Tapes are designed to hold huge quantities of data. CD-Rs are not (for one thing, files exceeding the size of a disc would need to be split).

      It looks like you have about 700 GB of data (assuming you fill the discs to the brim). A small collection of tapes is presumably preferable to huge piles of CDs (which need a separate catalogue so you can find a file - presumably this at least needs to be on a read/write medium so it can be updated, and on a permanent medium as well).

    7. Re:When will consumers see this technology? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      i think he meant 13 cd cases, each with 200 disc capacity. thats 2600 discs.

      it had me confused for a minute too though.

    8. Re:When will consumers see this technology? by LordKariya · · Score: 0

      g00z !!

      One of the few true contributors to the encoding cause.

      Thanks for your outstanding work.

      --
      I alternate between posting +5 and -1 Comments. Karma: +53 -47 = 6
    9. Re:When will consumers see this technology? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      I Currently have about 1.4 TB of data sitting here in my room on CD-R right now
      ...

      Dude! That is one rightous p0rn collection.

    10. Re:When will consumers see this technology? by Rader · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Well, the 10-slot drive is out of the question. I would rather mirror 120GB hard drives to hold everything with money left over. (This is by the way, a personal hobby--not business needs)

      I'm not an expert of tape drives, but everything I've looked up is also costly. Mostly in the fact that anything that holds a decent amount of data, is a lot of $$$ per tape.

      I checked out DABS but they didn't show pictures or descriptions of any of their products. I couldn't find the source you were looking at. However, I took a guess, and found one in that price range. The 50GB tapes were GBP 46 each. This comes to GBP 644. That comes to $1,016.00 !!!

      Yikes.
      CD-R storage is only $7.14 per 50GB.
      (GBP 4.50)

    11. Re:When will consumers see this technology? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >I'm starting to feel like it's 1995 again when a 1.4M Floppy disk was as good as it got.

      Wahh, wahh, wahh. Suck it up. I had to use Pocket Writer on my C64, and let me tell you, we were happy when we could edit more than three pages at a time in a word processor, never mind a fancy, shmancy durable diskette casing... :-)

    12. Re:When will consumers see this technology? by isorox · · Score: 1

      What we need is a leap the size of a floppy to CD jump. 2.88MB floppys didnt really take off outside the warez community, Zip drives and LS120's were 10 times the leap from floppys as DVD's are from CD's. We need a leap on the order of 250fold - pushing the size of removable media up past 100GB, at a high speed and low price.

      As an aside, Would it be possible to use mini-DV tapes as a cheap tape system? DV is arround 4MBytes/second - a 60 minute miniDV is about 15GB, still not good (as its linear and you'd ned 5 to backup a normal hard drive), but may help hoem user backups.

    13. Re:When will consumers see this technology? by whereiswaldo · · Score: 2

      I've got a ton of CDs myself and I wonder... if I lost 95% of it, would I really know what I'm missing? Probably not. I think I'm just a pack rat like the rest of you.

  14. I need something like this. by Blimey85 · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Then I need an mp3 player for my car that can use this type of media. My entire music collection on one disc. All those thousands of dollars on one disc. Hmm... would seem like such a waste at that point.

    Think of the uses for this though. Being able to back up all of my servers to a single disc without compressing anything. That would be a great time saver. And then there are the not-so-legal-but-who-cares-we're-all-going-to-die- eventually-anyway uses... like storing all the episodes of shows that aren't released on dvd in the US (Family Guy for one).

    But how much would they cost per disc and how much for the burner? While dvd burners are getting pretty cheap now, the media still isn't as cheap as I would like it.

    --
    How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
    1. Re:I need something like this. by Maul · · Score: 1

      Well, if the media became cheap, it would be great to have all your music on one disc if it were somehow easily navigated.

      If your car is broken into, would you rather have them steal the one disc backup, or the originals?

      Plus, the ability to back up the hard drive of a server or two on one disc like you mentioned is good. Very good.

      --

      "You spoony bard!" -Tellah

    2. Re:I need something like this. by TheWizardTim · · Score: 1

      Yes, it would be bad to have your entire music collection on one disc. Just think about how much money the RIAA would lose if you "lost" your disk, or multiple copies of it all at once. :-) -TheWizardTim

  15. So...If I understand this.... by GeneralEmergency · · Score: 5, Funny


    ...it means that when all the LOTR movies are done, we can REALLY piss off Jack Valenti by ripping them on to just one disk?

    Must go buy more popcorn now.

    --
    "A microprocessor... is a terrible thing to waste." --
    GeneralEmergency
    1. Re:So...If I understand this.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And several other movies too. And if the disc is double sided...

    2. Re:So...If I understand this.... by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 1

      "...it means that when all the LOTR movies are done, we can REALLY piss off Jack Valenti by ripping them on to just one disk?"

      You could do that now (apart from that the other 2 films aren't released).

      I've ... erm ... seen ... a rip of LOTR extended edition that's 1.35G. Multiply that by 3 and it still fits on a DVD-R. (Or +R if that's your poison).

      graspee

    3. Re:So...If I understand this.... by BagOBones · · Score: 1

      Thats probably because the movie part of the Extended edition is 2 disk long with about 6 alternate audio tracks including 6.1 and 5.1 audio, several differant commontaries and one alternate language track.. The movie part could have fit on one DVD if it where not for the audio tracks.

      --
      EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
  16. Common [ ] products by Matey-O · · Score: 5, Funny

    My brain inserted 'household' between Common and products. I got real excited when I thought something like Lemon Plegde would allow me to store more data on a DVD...

    ...kinda like taking a hole punch to a SSDD 5 1/4 floppy.

    (ya see, when _I_ was your age, floppy disks were actually bigger, and floppy, not 3.5" on a side and 'stiff')

    --
    "Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
    1. Re:Common [ ] products by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · · Score: 4, Funny

      I got real excited when I thought something like Lemon Plegde would allow me to store more data on a DVD...

      Dude, be careful! You'll start a new rumour for those silly audiophiles - first it was cd greening, next it will DVD pledging!

      (No offense to the not-so-silly audiophiles - you know who I'm talking about :)

      --
      Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
    2. Re:Common [ ] products by Havokmon · · Score: 2
      ...kinda like taking a hole punch to a SSDD 5 1/4 floppy.

      Or a 1/4" drill bit to a DD 3-1/2" floppy :)

      --
      "I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
    3. Re:Common [ ] products by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "This all began when we were trying to do something completely different with the materials"

      One can only assume how much he'd sniffed before the interview took place.

    4. Re:Common [ ] products by evilviper · · Score: 2

      But dude... green has the most RAM!

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    5. Re:Common [ ] products by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)

      No, that's original, as the line only appeared in a very, very losely similar form in the movie.

      WIZARD
      From the rock-bound coast of Maine to the
      Sun.... oh - oh, no -- -- ah - Well, be
      that as it may. Back where I come from we
      have universities, seats of great learning
      -- where men go to become great thinkers.
      And when they come out, they think deep
      thoughts -- and with no more brains than
      you have.... But! They have one thing you
      haven't got! A diploma!

      from http://www.un-official.com/The_Daily_Script/ms_wiz oz.htm

  17. burnable media by datsclark · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It seems as though every so often someone comes out with a new form of media storage which reflects our current style, as well as about the standard size of storge. I remember when DVD's were announced, i had two 9 GB harddrive in my PC. Now i have two 80 GB drives.
    And by the time this comes out, or something like it, it will cost considerably too much for a while, and then it will be fairly priced and it will be a norm that we find boring. The RIAA will have a fit about it.
    I think that new generations of storage media that use entierly new technologies, that really push the envelope, will be the real exciting times.

  18. Not good enough by ucblockhead · · Score: 2

    I need something to backup my 120 gig drive onto.

    --
    The cake is a pie
    1. Re:Not good enough by xenocytekron · · Score: 1

      Couldn't you just use 2 of them? and if you can't for some reason, do you mean to tell me that you have the entire 120 gigs filled up? couldn't you get rid of a little of it...

      --
      This is my .sig, if you don't like it, it will eat you.
  19. Too bad about the expensive laser by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Though it may placate the MPAA/RIAA a bit :)

    On another topic, I hate shit like:

    "...equal to 87,000 paperback books."

    My mother in law knows what a gigabyte is. I think it's safe to stop with the point-of-reference crap.

    --
    Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
    1. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by sharkey · · Score: 5, Funny

      "...equal to 87,000 paperback books."

      You also have to wonder what is being left out of the transcription of, say "War and Peace", to make it use the same amount of disk-space as "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing".

      --

      --
      "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
    2. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by micromoog · · Score: 5, Funny

      When did "paperback books" replace "Libraries of Congress"? Is this part of the U.S. metric system changeover?

    3. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by Bonker · · Score: 2

      An epoxy glue sold at hardware stores and a glass-like substance were formed into a DVD-size disk able to hold about 87 gigabytes, equal to 87,000 paperback books

      Hmm... Since when did a paperback weigh an entire megabyte? Few novels reach 800,000 characters let alone 1M.

      An authoring friend tells me that most first time novelists are only allowed 100,000 words... around 400k, or the size of the first Harry Potter book.

      That's for the text-only contents of a book. If you start talking about diagrams or fancy print that has to be scanned in as an image, you can go anywhere from 10MB-50MB, depending on detail.

      But, sticking to straight byte-weight, Let's try closer to 150,000 paperbacks, if you're going to start making real-world comparisons.

      --
      The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
    4. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by IIRCAFAIKIANAL · · Score: 2

      Exactly!

      Not only that, but they say "equal" and not "roughly equal."

      And, of course, what about compression? Different formats? HTML vs pdf vs ascii vs images.

      We could go on for weeks. But that's all I have to say about that.

      --
      Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
    5. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by pi+radians · · Score: 4, Funny

      On another topic, I hate shit like:

      "...equal to 87,000 paperback books."

      My mother in law knows what a gigabyte is. I think it's safe to stop with the point-of-reference crap.


      Actually, the most understood way would be to say "Can hold 174,000 songs that you haven't paid for."

      --

      sin(6cos(r)+5A)
    6. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by machine+of+god · · Score: 1

      Is very much of the library of congress in the form of paperback books?

    7. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by selectspec · · Score: 3, Funny

      I think they mean novels in word doc format. Oh wait, that would be 8.7

      --

      Someone you trust is one of us.

    8. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by boatboy · · Score: 1

      Yeah when I read it, my first thought was "would hardback books not fit?"

    9. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by sczimme · · Score: 2

      You also have to wonder what is being left out of the transcription of, say "War and Peace", to make it use the same amount of disk-space as "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing".

      Probably just chapters 2 to 347.

      --
      I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
    10. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by Chasuk · · Score: 2

      Hmm... Since when did a paperback weigh an entire megabyte? Few novels reach 800,000 characters let alone 1M.

      First, a megabyte is not a measure of weight. Second, many novels reach 800,000 characters, assuming that by characters you mean bytes of information.

      A quick scan of the Amazon bestseller lists reveal that seven out of the top twenty-five science fiction and fantasy novels easily top 800,000 characters.

      Erm, not that I mean to be pedantic. ;-)

    11. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by Geeyzus · · Score: 1

      I hate shit like:
      "...equal to 87,000 paperback books."


      I agree. I don't know why manufacturers don't stick to the standard unit of measure for high density media, Libraries of Congress. That's something we can all understand!

      Mark

    12. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by Hektor_Troy · · Score: 2

      I know you're being funny, and all things considdered, a book where you have one (1!!!) sentence, that runs across multiple pages is one big sun'bitch.

      But - just how much space will War and Peace require, once you compress it?

      --
      We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
    13. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by Q+Who · · Score: 0

      My mother in law knows what a gigabyte is. I think it's safe to stop with the point-of-reference crap.

      My words exactly. Everyone knows that one gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes.

    14. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by dagg · · Score: 2, Informative
      The Project Gutenberg version is here: War and Peace

      Their zipped version is 1,220,608 bytes.

      --
      Sex - Find It
    15. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by Jester99 · · Score: 2

      Everyone knows that one gigabyte is 1,000,000,000 bytes

      Hm. And here I thought that it was 1024^3.

    16. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by porky_pig_jr · · Score: 1

      Well, certainly it's not equal to even a single paperback. You can't wipe your ass with DVD.

    17. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 2

      "...equal to 87,000 paperback books."
      yes, but how many uncompressed hard-cover books?

    18. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by Q+Who · · Score: 0

      Hm. And here I thought that it was 1024^3.

      Dear Sir,

      I am so happy to help your ignorance!

      Systeme Internationale clearly indicates that the "Giga" prefix denotes multiplication factor of 10E9.

    19. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And it bzip2's out to only 884,061 bytes.
      Uncompressed it's 3,282,452 bytes.
      It contains 67337 lines, 566237 words, and 3,282,452 characters(obviously, being the same # of bytes ;-), a few pages of that being forwards and legal information.
      Dat's a lot of yacking!

    20. Re:Too bad about the expensive laser by Diamon · · Score: 2
      When did "paperback books" replace "Libraries of Congress"? Is this part of the U.S. metric system changeover?
      Probably, about the time someone realized that the size of data stored within the Library of Congress continues to grow constantly.
  20. damn.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    87GB On DVD-Sized Media

    damn, that's a lot of porn!

  21. Too many "said"s by medscaper · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Sorry, this just struck me as weird. 30 sentences, and I counted 14 uses of the word "said". Is this bad journalism? Or simply repetetive, dry and boring?

    Whatever happened to declared, spoke of, pronounced, noted, claimed, admitted, told, pointed out... ??

    --
    Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
    1. Re:Too many "said"s by medscaper · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      For instance, if I used the word "fuck" as much as they used the word "said", I'd have to say it every other sentence.

      Oh.

      --
      Any sufficiently well-organized Government is indistinguishable from bullshit.
    2. Re:Too many "said"s by dylan_- · · Score: 2
      Sorry, this just struck me as weird. 30 sentences, and I counted 14 uses of the word "said". Is this bad journalism? Or simply repetetive, dry and boring?


      You're right. I've fixed the relevent sentences for you:

      "The discovery is unique because the materials remained stable, keeping data intact, the project's leader bellowed."

      ""This all began when we were trying to do something completely different with the materials," simpered John Fourkas"

      "That lets the laser focus on different levels in the material to write and read digital data, Fourkas whispered seductively."

      "So, far, researchers have been able to write data on as many as 25 levels, he exclaimed in an interview.
      "We don't yet know how this happens, exactly," Fourkas whined."

      "The discovery began about three years ago, Fourkas ejaculated"

      " "We thought it might be useful for something," Fourkas grunted. "

      "funded by a $344,000 grant from the U.S. Air Force, Fourkas sneered. "

      "The researchers have applied for a patent, Fourkas confessed. They haven't been in contact with any companies about the discovery.
      A number of issues still need to be worked out, Fourkas screamed. One is that once data is written to the disk, it can't be changed. Each disk has to be written individually, he jested."

      Hope this helps...
      --
      Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
  22. My new invention by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Papertape(tm) imagine, all 8 bits represented in a single line one cm long on a 8 cm wide strip of paper, A 250 metre reel of paper tape can hold 50kbytes while the 20 km one can hold a whopping 2 megabytes. 1 Metre of Papertape (tm) costs $0.10 and holds an amazing 200 bytes of data.

    PaperOGGS are a new copy protected media based on papertapes, which destroy them selves when played, can be bought for just $17.95 per song per play. With my new PaperOGG Player.

  23. So... by Longinus · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...how many Libraries of Congress is this?

  24. Journalism grammar school? by redfenix · · Score: 3, Funny

    By John Stebbins / Bloomberg News
    "and the data don't degrade"


    Looks like Mr. Stebbins might be a slashdotter himself!

    --
    "It's a very tangled subsystem." --Windows kernel guru
    1. Re:Journalism grammar school? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Data is a plural noun. It's the plural form of "datum." Therefore, "the data don't degrade" is correct.

      If you don't believe me, look up "data" on an Internet dictionary. I don't need to, because I am extrasmart.

    2. Re:Journalism grammar school? by shadow303 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not exactly. There are some weird people who have this idea that a single piece of data is a datum, and data is the plural of datum. Using that warped philosophy, it would be correct.

      --
      I've got a mind like a steel trap - it's got an animal's foot stuck in it.
    3. Re:Journalism grammar school? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      omg you owned him lol

    4. Re:Journalism grammar school? by Spy4MS · · Score: 1

      I'm tired of saying 'these data' when everybody else says 'this data'.

      Common usage becomes standard usage, as in
      Data, singular or plural?, where they compare the pluralization of data in some technical and popular journals. The verdict: nobody says datum, so it's ok to use singular data.

      Now if we can acknowledge the fact that 'they' may be incorrect, but is a much better replacement for the indefinite 'him or her', I'd be satisfied and wouldn't ask for any more usage changes.

    5. Re:Journalism grammar school? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shadow303 is right, "data" is plural for "datum", a Latin name of neutral gender.
      Similarly, people should say "scenarii" instead of "scenarios" for the plural of "scenario".
      But since learning languages has not been a priority in modern school systems, compared with more scientific matters, what should we expect?

    6. Re:Journalism grammar school? by Boothby · · Score: 1

      Replace 'wierd' with 'correct' (or even 'educated').

    7. Re:Journalism grammar school? by hplasm · · Score: 1
      Zim. Baffon grak, imm ap bether quigg tff. Blluip vot, wat tuu pitherthiuh aff.

      Pho!Pho! Grag tvv ut wiiither!

      --

      Gwint gwant ap gwithhh....

      --
      ...and he grinned, like a fox eating shit out of a wire brush.
  25. Big deal...Constellation 3D had better...and died by WaxParadigm · · Score: 4, Informative

    The FIRST version of FMD from c-3d would have been 100G...they were thinking 20 layers (200Gig+...I think I read somewhere they were hoping for a terabyte) would easily be possible..and they had tested throughput at rates high enough for 1080i HDTV (full-resolution) reads.

    I think the company (which I once owned stock in) is now dead. Their site is not working. Here's a a couple interesting links to info...

    http://www.filmandvideomagazine.com/Htm/2000/10_ 00 /News/c3d.htm

    http://homepages.ihug.com.au/~roidy23/technology s. htm

    If they couldn't make it with this killer technology (TONS of storage) how does this other company expect to fare any better with technology that is only 1/10th the product.

    C-3D was doing pretty well with agreements for disc makers, agreements with WAMO (who pushed DVD), etc.

    Sucks ass when something this promising doesn't ever come to fruition. I remember last year this time they had working RW drives.

    Damn it, I want FMD...not this wussy 80GB crap.

  26. Screw Media by bkruiser · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Why are we looking for Media Solutions... Data should all be Stored Dynamically. I need a 10t store at "Yahoo" (pick your flavor) for $5 amonth with a data access rate in the 5ms range accessable from any spot on earth, by me and anyone else I so desire. - anyone working on that?

    1. Re:Screw Media by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heh heh. Apart from the speed it's called the edonkey p2p network.

      Hey! That's where I store all my movies...

    2. Re:Screw Media by Hektor_Troy · · Score: 5, Funny
      I need a 10t store at "Yahoo" (pick your flavor) for $5 amonth with a data access rate in the 5ms range accessable from any spot on earth
      Let's see. Light travels at roughly 300,000 km/second. In .005 seconds it can travel 1,500 km.

      The circumfrence of the earth is roughly 40,000 km, so the farthest you can be from a given spot is 20,000 km.

      Add to that, that you also need to send the request, you somehow need to think up a transport medium, that can travel at 20,000 km / 0.0025 seconds == 8,000,000 km/second.

      We'll get in tuch with you, when we manage to send data at 26 and 2/3rds the speed of light at a distance of 20,000 km.
      --
      We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
    3. Re:Screw Media by SecGreen · · Score: 1

      "I need a 10t store at "Yahoo" (pick your flavor) for $5 amonth with a data access rate in the 5ms range accessable from any spot on earth"

      While we're argueing specifics, we might as well argue semantics as well... You missed that he used a lowercase "earth", so he's probably just talking about a pile of dirt out in his back yard.

      --
      Dupe posts are /.'s tacit protest on the rights of users to time-shift content...
    4. Re:Screw Media by penguin_punk · · Score: 1

      Caching Proxies.

      That what the cable co's do. ;)

      (Albeit, those blood sucking assholes do it for a different reason - Bandwidth)

      --
      HURD - Hurd's Under Research & Development
    5. Re:Screw Media by rthille · · Score: 2

      The access time can be achieved simply by replicating the data over the earth's surface at points no more than 1500km apart. :-)

      --
      Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
  27. Word of Caution: by Quaoar · · Score: 5, Funny

    Take it from me...pouring epoxy glue on a DVD does not increase the storage capacity.

    --
    I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
    1. Re:Word of Caution: by Tharsis · · Score: 2

      Well... if I can make a cupboard out of epoxy glue it does...

  28. so what? by io333 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I've been seeing reports of stuff like this for at least two years. Wasn't there someone just a few months ago, probably reported here... hang on a sec...

    yea here it is.

    Anyway, I've been seeing reports like this forever, but zero consumer products. When something hits the market, I'll be interested. Until then I don't care.

  29. Suggestion. by 3-State+Bit · · Score: 3, Funny

    Whoever implements this:
    PLEASE BRING BACK THE CADDY!

    Breathe the wrong way on this baby and you've wiped out HOW MANY library of congresses worth of text?

    Okay, no panic, we're not there yet. But we will be.

    CADDY! CADDY!

    I'm tired of renting blockbuster dvd's with cigarette burns on them.

    Um, yeah. I just got a down-mod shiver, so here's something insightful.

    a DVD-size disk able to hold about 87 gigabytes, equal to 87,000 paperback books
    EXCUSE ME?? Are you saying a paperback book is 87 megabytes? NOT EVEN IF YOU SCAN EACH PAGE IN BITMAP!!! (Because paperbacks are black and white.)

    What's the writer smoking?

    1. Re:Suggestion. by Bonkers54 · · Score: 1

      We're you absent when division was taught? 87GB / 87,000 = approx 1MB per book, that seems very reasonable to me. Lay off the crack.

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

      I think the question is "What are you smoking?" 87,000,000,000 / 87,000 = 1,000,000. And if your "paperback book" unit is "L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth"...

    3. Re:Suggestion. by TheKey · · Score: 3, Funny

      Also of note - they had to specify paperback? I mean, are they any larger or smaller than hardbacks? Are they basing the file size of book on weight?

      --
      My Journal - 1,337 fans and countin
    4. Re:Suggestion. by WaxParadigm · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Uuh, do the math moron...that's 1MB per book...not 87.

      87,000,000,000 / 87,000 =! 87,000,000

      87,000,000,000 / 87,000 = 1,000,000

      Not only are /. ers poor at spelling, they can't divide either.

    5. Re:Suggestion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      he is smokin the same thing you are nuthead...

    6. Re:Suggestion. by 3-State+Bit · · Score: 1

      Fuck that. Obviously I meant metric meBIbyte, which is one eighty-seventh of a megabyte.

      In other word, shush.

      The complete works of william shakespeare weigh in at just over 2 megs. That paginates to n pages, and n/2 pages is SOME FUCKING PAPERBACK.

      For an average paperback, try 80-120 k compressed.
      So the article is still off by a factor of 10, metric giBIbyte notwithstanding.

    7. Re:Suggestion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Multiplication may be a problem as well for lots of /.ers :-)

    8. Re:Suggestion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no, the writer is saying a paperback book is 1 MB.

    9. Re:Suggestion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps you need to look into publishing before spouting off.

      The average paperback book is 1MB.

      The complete works of william shakespeare weigh in at just over 2 megs. That paginates to n pages, and n/2 pages is SOME FUCKING PAPERBACK.

      Yes, and if you'd ever read Shakespeare (which you probably will, once you finally get to jr. high school), you'd realize that Shakespeare isn't quite "average" - there's lots of whitespace (much more than average), because they're PLAYS.

      Try this: Take a paperback book, count the number of characters on a page, multiply that by the number of pages. That will tell you how big it is. Do this 20 - 30 times, and you'll find that the average is indeed, about 1MB.

      For an average paperback, try 80-120 k compressed.

      Compressed? Nice try. When you're talking about storage capacity, you're always talking uncompressed - or are you going to argue that your 80Gb HD is really 160GB, because you can compress everything?

      the article is still off by a factor of 10

      No, it isn't.

    10. Re:Suggestion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Go to www.baen.com/library/, download some books (most of these are 200 or so pages, so smaller than an average paperback.)

      Unzip them, take out the pictures, take a look at the file sizes. You'll find that they average around 900K, which is pretty damn close to a meg, no?

    11. Re:Suggestion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WERE you absent when ENGLISH was taught? We're = We are... Lay off the crack...

  30. Sigh by Gaggme · · Score: 1

    Another technology promising the world. I recall a year or so back of the forthcoming Blu-Ray DVDS which would hold a whole season of Sponge Bob Square pants, or 3-4 hours of HDTV. Why will such media never exist? It doesn't fit a buisness model. Right now they can sell two episodes for $12.99 and pace that all out over 12 disks. Then why compress it all into one? There is no profitable reason to.

    --
    My ignorance is a perfect shield against your logic.
  31. Question by mpost4 · · Score: 2, Interesting


    Other then people doing video work, at this time who really needs this kind of storage.

    I have a 20Gb mp3 player and I still have not filled it 1/2 way.

    I would hope that a system would never need more then 15Gb for a full useful install (included a suit of programs for use to be productive)

    With the above listed size I would hope a system would never need, a 20 Gb system would still have 5Gb for user data, a 40 Gb system would leave 25 Gb for user data. (admittedly some specialty apps such as cad systems would need more storage, but here I am thinking more on the lines of home users, maybe I am wrong thinking there, maybe these systems are targeting business then I can see the use, databases can get very large)

    Also how is the speed of this DVD?
    What applications would you see for use of this technology?

    1. Re:Question by bkruiser · · Score: 1

      sounds like you don't have jack for media... go to movielink.com and see how fast you can fill it up.

    2. Re:Question by Frobnicator · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Perhaps bandwidth, not media, is his problem.

      --
      //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
    3. Re:Question by tang · · Score: 1

      I think a lot of people on slashdot could probably fill these up easily. I have my cd collection ripped to mp3, its at about 80 gigs at the moment, over 8000 songs. I wish I could back that up easily. But I do have the original cds, it would just take forever to re-encode them.

    4. Re:Question by Yort · · Score: 1
      Other then people doing video work, at this time who really needs this kind of storage.
      I have a 20Gb mp3 player and I still have not filled it 1/2 way.

      Hmmm... so you're saying you have at least 2 DVDs worth of music on your hard drive. Do you not plan to have any more, ever? What about backing up that 20GB drive?

      I would hope a system would never need, a 20 Gb system would still have 5Gb for user data

      Sure, your user data or your OS may fit on 5GB (although really 640k should be enough for anyone), but with hard drives already in the 100s of GBs, it'll soon take a whole pack of DVD-Rs to back that sucker up. (And have you seen the latest MS Office products? Or heck, even the latest RedHat distro?)

      But yeah, who'll ever need that much storage? I still store everything of mine on my 5 1/4" floppies...

      Troy

    5. Re:Question by jfengel · · Score: 2

      Well, the new Fellowship of the Rings DVD takes 2 DVDs for the movie alone, and that's low-rez NTSC format. Already you've got a reason for a DVD+ sized disk. Jack the resolution up to HDTV format and suddenly you've got something that the average person wants that would require 80Gb.

      You're talking primarily about recording stuff. You may not do it on your computer, but if your TiVo could burn onto 80Gb disks, you'd be able to store a lot more hours of TV. Again, especially after HDTV provides you with 4x as many bits to store.

    6. Re:Question by markr · · Score: 1

      I'm probably in the minority here, but not only do I have over 20G of audio (about 450 discs), it's all paid for. I have to pick and choose what part of my music collection gets loaded onto my iPod.

      And anytime I hear someone say that a particular size of storage is more than anyone could ever need, I laugh. People say that sort of thing all the time, and a year later it's really ridiculous. Our use for space grows as fast as the technology expands.

    7. Re:Question by mpost4 · · Score: 1

      Ok, I see your point there, I was thinking only of computers, I stand corrected.

      I was comming from the point of view that video on a computer screen is not always the best way to watch something IMHO.

      Again thanks for the info.

    8. Re:Question by NetGyver · · Score: 2

      Let me answer your 20GB-mp3-player-is-good-enough-for-me question first:

      I have about 130 music CDs, not to mention a couple gigs worth of mp3s that are lying around my LAN. (which are a mix of indie free mp3s and some not so legal. *cough* So i'm a sinner, crucify me)

      I've been looking for a effective way of transferring my entire CD collection to mp3. Why mp3? Because it's just so damn popular. That and I will not accept anything less then 320k bitrate mp3s for my cd collection. (mp3s that I get on the 'net, my ears can get away with 192-256k)

      So that alone will probably eat up all that space on your 20gig player. Not only that, but what about my multi-gigibyte collection of mp3s I already have? What about future storage for mp3s that I don't have yet? And since i'd be making a big investment on a large storage medium, wouldn't it be nice to use it like a floppy in a sense that I could plop general non-media data on as well?

      (side note, why compress my music at all with 87gigs of storage on *one* disc??)

      As far as video is concerned, you don't have to be a video editor to have gigs upon gigs of video either. (TV Episodes you just can't get any other way, Replay/maybe Tivo shows that you want to back up permanently, etc) Also, I'm not a Mac user, but i've seen and heard good things about ivideo that makes it look like child's play to create your own video productions.

      You could ghost images of windows/linux/beos/etc
      fully decked out with apps, all on one disk with a generious amount of space left over.

      These are all consumer uses of this technology, and i'm sure others could find interesting ways of filling that much space.

      In this day and age, asking the question "What will I do with all that space?" isn't the right question to be asking. As time progresses and programs get bigger and more sophisticated, when video editing becomes ever more popular, the question that's getting asked now-a-days is that:
      "When is a storage technology going to satisfy my demands?"

      You also have to take the long-term consideration of this type of medium. The storage space you don't use today, will most likely find it's use tomarrow.

      Now the business/corperate applications for this technology I probably don't have to go into detail about. But i'm sure they will find even more uses for it. The nice thing about that is you get all these companies purchasing it, (being early-adopters and all) as with most technology, it drives the prices down so eventually consumers like us can take advantage of the same technology without bankrupting ourselves in the process.

      All in all, 87gigs on a disc seems fantastic to me. But will it come to pass? Their still trying to breakout the DVD-R/W medium for mass consumpiton. So if it does, it won't be for a good long while.

      Anyway, this post has turned into a rant, and my soap box is getting weak ;)

      --
      A Penny for my thoughts? Here's my two cents. I got ripped off!
    9. Re:Question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey congratulations, your Britney Spears collection fits on your fucking Ipod. There ARE other people in the world that have bigger collections than you. Can't you think farther than the street curb?

      Just the full discography of Miles Davis and Bob Dylan comes to 29GB.

    10. Re:Question by CrackHappy · · Score: 1

      Remember Bill Gates and 640k??

      I certainly need more than that!

      --
      1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
    11. Re:Question by Mattsson · · Score: 1

      Eum... Well, I've got around 260 Gigs of data on my harddrives that I would like to retain in case of a hardrive malfunction.
      Ok, at most I'll loose 160 Gig in one go but to backup that drive, I'd nees *two* of those disks.

      And also, this kind of technology is probably a few years from consumer market.
      In a few years, how large harddrives do you think we'll have?

      I wouldn't be suprised if I can go out and buy myself a 1TB drive by the time this hits the market.

      And by the way. I am a home user.
      I'm sure there's thousands of other slashdoters who would have use of a really large backup media at home.

      --
      /.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
  32. Re:Big deal...Constellation 3D had better...and di by WaxParadigm · · Score: 1

    Oh, Yah...they would have been just as cheap to make as today's CDs/DVDs...and they were CLEAR.

    --
    I want my, I want my, I want my FMD.

  33. LOL - I JUST DUMPED 87GB IN MY TROUSERS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Imagine, a joke about how much porn this new technology could be used to store! Touche!

    1. Re:LOL - I JUST DUMPED 87GB IN MY TROUSERS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you have got to be that same guy with the "could i run linux in my large intestine?" joke (from a couple of weeks ago). you shouldn't post anonymous so much if so - you're hilarious!

    2. Re:LOL - I JUST DUMPED 87GB IN MY TROUSERS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      damn, don't scare me like that. don't be all building signature hashes and stuff. i just blurt out whatever comes to mind when i see a glaring slashdotism. i'm glad if it's a little funny. good day to you.

    3. Re:LOL - I JUST DUMPED 87GB IN MY TROUSERS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hmm. your insightful post has caused me some turmoil. i've been going over old random rude statements i made and i'm rather shocked at the feces-centricity of it all. i'm not sure feces is inherently funny.
      i think perhaps the root of it is that i tend to see the darkly humorous aspects of some stuff when it's suggested to me, but when left alone for relatively long periods of time, i tend to recurse or something and just crank out more and more obscure drivel. i'm not going to say that what i come up with in that mode isn't inventive, but i'm pretty sure it's humor that isn't valid in any context other than my mind. like i often find things absolutely hilarious but i am at a total loss to explain why.
      slashdot just really tends to bring out this bad attitude or something in me because upon seeing the "xxx new data storage medium stores more than the one we told you about last week" headline, i can't help but perfectly envision the post down below with (+5 Funny) consisting of "pr0n ;-D".
      like all these beautiful abstract concepts with mathematical certainty and precision and simplicity like stacks and queues and trees and so forth all come down to people viewing crude images of other people with no clothes on because of our horribly religiously sabotaged excuse for a culture. there's just so much wrong that i guess i do the easy thing and just add to the general chaos and confusion.

    4. Re:LOL - I JUST DUMPED 87GB IN MY TROUSERS by Hrothgar+The+Great · · Score: 1

      Awesome. I knew you were the same guy, and your explanation made reading this stuff even better. Don't worry too much about whether humor is relevant. Taking people to task is something I myself find enjoyable, and reading someone else doing it is also quite entertaining. That's all that really matters.

  34. Uh.. I think the Editor missed something. by TheMayor · · Score: 0, Troll

    Who wrote this article? and for that matter, who edited it?

    "The materials that the team used are stable, and the data don't degrade after repeated readings by the low-intensity laser."

    The data "Don't" degrade? Shouldn't it be "doesn't"? Oh wait.. this is a Detroit newspaper.

    1. Re:Uh.. I think the Editor missed something. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, the word 'data' is the plural form of 'datum'. Thus, "don't" is the proper term.

    2. Re:Uh.. I think the Editor missed something. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, you're saying you should say "My data are missing"?

    3. Re:Uh.. I think the Editor missed something. by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 1

      So does that mean that for the classic joke I have to say:

      All your datum are belong to us

      ?

      graspee

  35. Buy this instead of a space trip by jki · · Score: 2
    it's much cheaper:

    A number of issues still need to be worked out, Fourkas said. One is that once data is written to the disk, it can't be changed. Each disk has to be written individually, he said. A mass- production method would need to be found to lower costs. The cost of the laser also is prohibitive. "The one we use is about $100,000," Fourkas said. The cost would come down with mass production, he said.

    1. Re:Buy this instead of a space trip by Blimey85 · · Score: 2
      The cost would come down with mass production

      Why do people state the obvious? Doesn't the cost of EVERYTHING come down when it's mass produced? Why is it that when someone gets interviewed about their cool idea, they suddenly think that anyone that will read or hear the interview is a complete moron?

      So the big question is, what company is going to be the first to market with this new media? If they can get the cost of the laser down to $100, they should be able to sell burners for this media for around a grand and make a killing. Just think of all the warez pirates out there. Since they obviously aren't spending any money they have on software, they have more for hardware and can easily afford a drive that can burn 87 gigs.

      And what will come next? Development efforts will continue on this and the process will be refined so that even more data will fit on the same disc.

      --
      How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
    2. Re:Buy this instead of a space trip by jki · · Score: 2
      Doesn't the cost of EVERYTHING come down when it's mass produced?

      To me it seems that the factors that are limiting the price-cuts from mass-productions are ones that are not feasible by current technology. Ofcourse, the price will come down - but is this invention still feasible in say 3-4 years when the technology needed to bring the cost to a fraction of the current is available? Don't know, but...

      Why is it that when someone gets interviewed about their cool idea, they suddenly think that anyone that will read or hear the interview is a complete moron?

      No - just the opposite, I thought the /. audience would be equipped with the brains to make up the rest of what I wanted to say, after stating the obvious. Sorry :)

    3. Re:Buy this instead of a space trip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope. Take a look at CDs. They used to be $12-$14 a disc. Now they are almost $20 a disc. Yes, even most music is Mass Produced.

    4. Re:Buy this instead of a space trip by Blimey85 · · Score: 2
      I wasn't aiming my comment at you. I was merely upset that most of the interviews I read include a lot of dribble that is just common sense. I understood why you posted it in your message and that made perfect sense. I just thought that the person who had made the comments could have left out telling us that the cost would come down if and when the media is mass produced.

      The cost of the dvd's that we use now has come down quite a bit since the initial release. The cost of everything associated with dvd's has come down.. except for commercially released dvd movies. Those will only go up as they add more features and screw us more and more.

      --
      How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
    5. Re:Buy this instead of a space trip by cptgrudge · · Score: 1

      Why is it that when someone gets interviewed about their cool idea, they suddenly think that anyone that will read or hear the interview is a complete moron?

      Because there's a chance that the reader IS a moron, perhaps not complete, but a moron nonetheless.

      Example:
      We have a local radio talk show where the hosts went to Washington DC for the national talk show week or something. They got to go on a tour of the White House with some other people and one of these other people made a comment.
      As he was looking at a candelabra that had fake candles (decorative lights bulbs) in the individual candle holders he said, "Gee, do you think they ever had real candles in there?"

      --
      Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium
    6. Re:Buy this instead of a space trip by UrGeek · · Score: 1

      The Content Nazi's will love this. I don't imagine that burners would get below $1,000 or even $10,000 soon.

      They will want this to kill Blu-Ray.

      DAMN!

  36. Re:Big deal...Constellation 3D had better...and di by WaxParadigm · · Score: 1

    Sorry, way over-excited/over-stimulated...

    At certain sizes (terabyte?) future capabilities were being stated at something like 8 hours (or was it 24 hours) of HDTV content being stored on one of these puppies. I'm sure the market would have settled on like 2.5-3 hours max...but that would be sweet.

  37. forget gigabytes by drxenos · · Score: 3, Funny

    They should start measuring storage space in hours of porn.

    --


    Anonymous Cowards suck.
    1. Re:forget gigabytes by JonWan · · Score: 1

      Does that mean that porn occupies more space than say a Disney movie? Not that I ever watched a Disney movie. ;-)

  38. Re:Low tech by FooGoo · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Epoxy was invented by the Shell Chemical Co. in the 1950s...jerkwater.

    --
    People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
  39. Speaking of standards, lets not forget by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    CD-R is to 1.44 MB floppy as
    DVD-R is to 2.88 MB floppy (remember those?).

    Your right too little, too late, but I doubt we will see anything above 9.something DVD-/+R anytime soon.

  40. Remember the 'Scotch Tape Drive'? by Jack+William+Bell · · Score: 5, Informative

    This seems pretty similar to the 'Scotch Tape Drive' where they were getting 10 gigabytes of data onto a roll of adhesive tape using a laser in much the same way.

    Jack William Bell

    --
    - -
    Are you an SF Fan? Are you a Tru-Fan?
  41. Typical Slashdot Storage Story by swb · · Score: 2

    They're all like this. "Researchers at Acme, Inc have discovered a way to put 2 TB on a Post-It with 2GB/s transfer rates, excellent durability and low cost...."

    There's seldom a followup story, unless it involves the mythical holographic cube storage, in which case we hear about it all the time; maybe each time Taco watches 2001.

    In reality, we have lots of cheap ata disks and 4.7GB DVDs will be everywhere in about a year or so, but no zillion-gig storage devices.

    1. Re:Typical Slashdot Storage Story by Frobnicator · · Score: 2
      These minor changes are likely to trickle into society soon, but that's not what we need.

      With a bit more work we could turn the disks into nanotube interfaces to a frozen light held inside the platter. The article on that wouldn't say how many paperbacks it can hold, more like "If you could convert your body into pure data, you could store N million skinny people (or M million fat people)." Sure it would have to be kept cold, but big deal. And that's not even new technology, what's so great about a lousy 90 GB?

      --
      //TODO: Think of witty sig statement
    2. Re:Typical Slashdot Storage Story by robwills · · Score: 1

      You will find that the DVD writable discs will only hold approximately 4.3GB... not the advertised 4.7GB.

      It's actually 4,700,000 bits of data

    3. Re:Typical Slashdot Storage Story by Q+Who · · Score: 0

      Please explain how one GigaByte does not equal 1,000,000,000 bytes of data.

      It's actually 4,700,000 bits of data

      More like 4,700,000,000 bytes.

    4. Re:Typical Slashdot Storage Story by swb · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's the whole gig/meg/kilo number thing.

      If 1K = 1024, then 1M = 1K * 1024 and 1G = 1M * 1024.

      In which case, 4.7GB should actually be 5,046,586,572 bytes.

      If you're the G=1,000,000,000 measurement school, then it should be 4,700,000,000 as you say, or 4.3GB in the 1024-base units, as I think a parent poster indicated.

    5. Re:Typical Slashdot Storage Story by pwarf · · Score: 1

      You're right about the 1000 factor being used instead of 1024 by many manufacturers of flash memory, hard drives, etc. However, the parent did acccidentally say bit instead of byte.

      There are a few unfortunate confusing matters about memory sizes. One is the "gig/meg/kilo" number thing. Another is the use of megabit for modems, ethernet, etc. and megabyte for hard drive storage. Adding to this the fact that the abbreviations differ only by capitalization is also not helpful. Oh well, another silly legacy term. Better than the Calorie/calorie problem.

    6. Re:Typical Slashdot Storage Story by Q+Who · · Score: 0

      If you're the G=1,000,000,000 measurement school, then it should be 4,700,000,000 as you say, or 4.3GB in the 1024-base units, as I think a parent poster indicated.

      Dear Sir,

      My school is called Systeme Internationale.

    7. Re:Typical Slashdot Storage Story by Uncle+Jimmy · · Score: 1

      Argh.

      SI Units:
      kilo-, k, 10^3
      mega-, M, 10^6
      giga-, G, 10^9 ...

      Then one day someone invented:
      kilo-, K, 1024 (note the capital K)
      which is generally only ever used when talking about bytes.

  42. Incredible by DoctorGrim · · Score: 1

    That's enough to hold 87,000 paperback books! Incredible. It's not a Library of Congress though...

  43. oops... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    misread that to be "... using optical media made with common products, the December issue of Nature Materials."

  44. I hate to say it... by Cervantes · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I really do, because I hate the "old news" posters, but I do recall seeing this for CDs. A guy in check-o-slow-va-kia (those who've seen the show will get the joke) made a multilayer CD that could hold gigs worth of data. It was revolutionary, but was derided because HD's were getting so large. Why do I think the same thing will happen here? (after everyone is done the pr0n jokes)

    --
    If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
  45. If only it were true... by Amazing+Quantum+Man · · Score: 1

    I guess we can dream.

    --
    Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
  46. oops, I meant 2 terabyte max by WaxParadigm · · Score: 1

    100GB/layer * 20 layers = 2 terabytes

    (and I was ripping someone else's post for math errors)

    Now that will hold a useful number of Simpson episodes.

    1. Re:oops, I meant 2 terabyte max by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wouldn't rip on your math.
      Just the fact that you keep responding to your posts!

  47. When the tech industry by FreeUser · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And the more important question, would the RIAA/MPAA ever let it happen? Imagine people selling discs of thousands of hours of music, or a whole year's popular films for $5 on the street.

    When the Tech Industry creates its own, well funded PAC a la the NRA and starts outbribing the Hollywood Cartels in Washington. The tech industry is orders of magnitude larger than the consumer electronics industry, which in turn is an order of magnitude larger than Hollywood and the Recording industry put together.

    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
  48. pondering... by zonker · · Score: 1, Interesting

    last night i was watching the new extended release of lotr's and was thinking about how nice the transfer was. early dvd's had lots of different problems, from crummy software that caused lots of jaggies and bad color representation to poor bitrate. i started to wonder if the reason why the problems with the css encrpytion may have been a compromise due to earlier size limits to the standard. as i understand it (correct me if i'm wrong) data that is encrypted tends to grow in size compared to the original. if you already are pushing the bounds of the data that can fit on a disc then encrypting it with larger keys will increase the size of the data (again, please correct me if i'm totally off my rocker and have no idea what i'm saying... quite possible). so as a compromise a smaller key was chosen (48 bit) as a compromise between size of data and the storage capacity of the disc (at the time). also a smaller key would mean less chip processing power, meaning cheaper chips, meaning less costly machines (meaning a less secure encryption method). anyway, it's a thought...

    1. Re:pondering... by man_ls · · Score: 2

      Your description of the encrypted data expanding is accurate. That could certainly be one reason CSS encryption is quite weak -- the early players weren't powerful enough to decrypt any more than that, and still have CPU time left to decode the MPEG stream; it could also be the disk wasn't big enough to hold the movie encrypted with "strong" encryption.

    2. Re:pondering... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Nope, the reason the encryption is weak is that it's an insoluble problem, a "trusted client" problem. (Palladium would have failed in this too, so don't get me started on that.)

      Encrypted data is the same size as unencrypted data. You need to store the keys as well, but there's no need to use a whole set of independent symmetric keys when there's only one real secret, and the size of even a table of huge 256-bit symmetric keys (say, Twofish) encrypted with 16384-bit RSA (ridiculous overkill) for 1000 different manufacturers would be 2MB, or about three frames of DVD-bitrate video.

      Early players used hardware assist because their CPUs were not fast enough to decode MPEG. They used hardware CSS assist as well, for the same reason, and there is no reason that the hardware assist could not have implemented a tested, believed strong algorithm with a similar or lesser gate count, like (for example) XTEA.

      I don't know why CSS was so weak, but it wasn't space, and it wasn't CPU power.

  49. They still use disks?? by mcmonkey · · Score: 1

    What ever happened to 10 gigs on a roll of scotch tape(TM)?

  50. A little quick math.... by ptparker · · Score: 1

    It would take roughly 125 CD's to fit 87GB worth of data 125*700MB aprox = 87000MB. So the money 125 cds = 20 dollars on a bad day cheap 32x burner = 40 dollars on a bad day 20+40 = $60 Now for the unrealistic toy: cheap media for one disc = estimate $10 worth of epoxy cheap laser for this stuff = 100,000 100,000+10 = $100,010 Mabye I'll get it when the price goes down about 99,800 or so.

    1. Re:A little quick math.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      REBATES!

      You're forgetting the rebates! After an instore CompUSA instant rebate, a rebate when purchased with a new computer, plus a 20 year service contract to AOL AND MSN it should be just about free give or take $10,000

  51. Thanks for bringing it up by cryptochrome · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, what he said. Not only that, this new tech sounds remarkably similar - it also involves flourescence at multiple layers. Of course c-3d's players would have been fully backwards compatible. Or alternately, wouldn't have even needed a laser per se, just coherent light.

    However anyone that's worked with flourescent compounds knows that eventually they will bleach. I have a strong suspicion that this may have been what killed c-3d, and it's possible it may prove to be an intractable problem with this new tech as well, although they say it doesn't degrade. We shall see.

    (For the record, I think c-3d's FMCs - a card-sized non-rotating version of FMDs - were their best idea. Exposed disks are too easily damaged and distinctly kid-unfriendly, and the normal sized disk is too large to carry in a pocket. CDs and DVDs got this very, very wrong.)

    --

    ---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?

  52. Duh! by Gubble · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Go ahead, impress me, show me an epoxy glue from 1960.

  53. Blu-Ray? by tedDancin · · Score: 5, Informative

    What is happening with Blu-Ray, the DVD format that nine members of the DVD forum supported earlier this year? Blu-Ray uses a 405nm blue-violet laser, and can hold up to 27GB on a single-sided single-layer disc. While the capacity is not as great, the commercial support is.

    I think I'll wait on this format (that has the backing of Hitachi, Sony, Pioneer, Philips etc etc) before going out on a limb with any epoxy solution.

    --

    Ladies, form queue here -->
    1. Re:Blu-Ray? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since when did BC start doing research? Go back to football!

  54. It has to be said... by slipgun · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    87GB! Imagine a beowulf cluster of one of those!

    "Eww, what's that smell?"
    "Nothing, it's just my karma burning."

    --
    SpamNet - a spam blocker that really works
  55. So what are you doing in the mean time? by s4ltyd0g · · Score: 1

    You could always take incremental or differential backups. 87G is still nothing to sneeze at we're finally starting to see optical media with the capacity of tape drives. Or if it's really a problem just install 2 of these babies it'll prolly still cheaper than a tape library solution.

  56. Since nobody else has pointed it out yet... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Imagine the implications this could have on the porn industry...

    Mmm...87 GB of pr0n...

    Erm...eh what? Sorry...I was busy imagining. :)

  57. Is that all? by ajd1474 · · Score: 1

    This aussie is developing a CD technology that will hold 2500 times the amount of data on CD and 400 times DVD...

    --
    I refuse to have a sig... dammit!
  58. 87 GB of pr0n by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    And imagine a beowulf cluster of these, with a petrified Natalie Portman.

    Imagine.

    1. Re:87 GB of pr0n by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 2, Funny

      That's Natalie Pr0tman to you...

      graspee

  59. Useless for recording applications by Cutie+Pi · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I fail to see the value of this technology for several reasons. The recording medium is not so much the issue in optical media. The bigger issue is the optics, specifically the laser. Why aren't 100GB Blu-ray DVD-ROMS in our computers right now? It's because the blue lasers in them cost > $2K right now. It's not because the technology isn't there to cheaply make the reflecting layers and organic dyes.

    So what do these guys do? They decide to reinvent the recording medium, only their medium is inferior because it can't be stamped. And that means their discs can't be mass-produced. To top it all off, they use a laser that costs $100,000, or 50X that of the Blu-ray laser.

    These guys have a product that:
    1) Has lower storage capacity than Blu-ray
    2) Costs 50X more than Blu-ray
    3) Uses an inferior recording medium compared to Blu-ray

    It might be kinda nifty that they used common materials, but that fact that those materials are inferior is probably why CD's and DVD's aren't made with common materials now! It reminds me of the /. story about the researchers who measured the dielectric constant of chicken feathers and then said it could someday be used to replace the high-tech dielectric layers being used in today's microchips. Dream on guys....

    1. Re:Useless for recording applications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      first of all BluRay has nothing to do with DVD... general BluRay capacity is half this and only has a theoretical capacity of up to around 100GB. the first BluRay products will hit shelves next year with i believe only around 30GB storage space.

    2. Re:Useless for recording applications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1) "Blu-ray" is a dumb name. Like Bluetooth, but much much worse.

      2) The current 137 GB limitation of today's non-long-word ATA bus addressing scheme should be the starting size for any new disc technology.

      3) Blu-ray is basically a wholly-owned product and sub-division of the MPAA (for all political and decision-making intents and pruposes). Any implememtation of it will have 'All your computer are belong to us' DRM so as to make this useless (and basically not-allowed-to be) written to by end-user technology.

      The claims of blue-light lasers being such and such (2k?!?) costly are a deterrent to letting consumers know this tech could be brought to market right now with mass production if the same companies owning it didn't also have their fingers in the DVD pie and lay beholden to the copyright behemoths such as Disney, et al.

  60. Yeah, but they're idiots. by cryptochrome · · Score: 2

    Maybe if they actually sold TV Seasons on a volume or two at less than $50 (A standard 26 ep season will often take 13 volumes and cost well over a $120) people would actually buy them. The current model, which is to charge MORE MONEY for LESS TIME than a movie for a LOWER QUALITY product that is available for FREE ELSEWHERE, is absolutely ludicrous. Being able to put a whole on a single volume would be a good start for mass-market pricing.

    --

    ---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?

  61. Re:Low tech by GreyPoopon · · Score: 1, Informative
    Epoxy was invented by the Shell Chemical Co. in the 1950s

    Uh, I'm not sure where you got this, but as far as I know, it was invented prior to 1939 by I.G. Farben Industrie of Germany. At least, that's when they filed the patent. Maybe Shell invented a type of epoxy?

    --

    GreyPoopon
    --
    Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?

  62. Is anyone else tired of hearing about new formats? by Schnapple · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I mean, I know this is for the most part just some researchers saying "look what we did", but every time someone says "here, we trumped everything that has come before" a few things happen.

    First, for the lesser informed, it sends a wave of "oh shit, that DVD player I just bought is already obsolete!". This is of course absurd.

    Second, there's always people who don't really know what they're talking about who then go and preach the aforementioned "DVD will be obsolete soon!" bit. Somehow these huckleberries always seek me out - probably because I'm a techie. Perhaps they want to impress me, perhaps they want to pretend they're the first to know something, perhaps they want to make me feel stupid for buying so many DVD's. No amount of evidence seems to convince these people that just because something brand new has been produced in a lab doesn't mean it will be on the market next week. They especially hate it when they tell you "HDTV is the next big thing!" and you point out that this has been the situation since 1989.

    But the worst part is that there's a certian chunk of the population that hasn't bought into Technology X and go on to say "yeah, I'd get DVD but I'm going to wait for the next format." They don't realize it takes decades for formats to get formalized and introduced to market - and then only if there's a killer app neccessary. The Compact Disc came out and worked since the music industry was ready for a new format. Witness how the VideoCD didn't go anywhere outside of Asia - VHS was king (killed Laserdisc even) and only with the advent of the fast Internet, big hard drives and CD burners did VideoCD take off, and mostly due to piracy. DVD only worked since they decided the killer app was video, namely movies. Notice how DVD-Audio is pretty much going unnoticed. The only format I see coming along in the near future is whatever format supports HDTV - fortunately the DVD Forum has decided that the HDTV DVD format will be reverse compatible.

    Just because something better comes along doesn't mean that everything will be tossed out in favor of it. I'm 25 and programming a 1985 mainframe in COBOL for a living, so I can vouch for this line of reasoning. However, much like people tend to think the latest (whatever) is always the best, they tend to think that the latest technology is about to obliterate whatever is currently out there and they're the first to know.

    And don't even get me started on those 13-year olds griping that their copy of Windows.NET Server 2003 RC1 won't run Counter-Strike...

  63. This will be great by Eusebo · · Score: 1

    With these puppies my MP3 collection will fit on only 3 disks! :p

    --
    It is quite simple
    Haiku should not be funny
    Try a Senryu
    1. Re:This will be great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh yeah? Well I work at a CD store and have TERABYTES of mp3s! How do ya like them apples?

  64. AND YET WE MOD YOU to by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    +2 insightful....what does that make us? Mazochists? [:D]

  65. And you know this how exactly? by cheshiremackat · · Score: 1

    And how exactly did you learn this? More importantly, how did you explain it to the guy @ circuit city that your DVD player just decided to ooze elmers school glue? _C

    --
    Bad spellers of the world untie!
    1. Re:And you know this how exactly? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      He said epoxy, not baby glue.

    2. Re:And you know this how exactly? by cheshiremackat · · Score: 1

      spoilsport... :P

      --
      Bad spellers of the world untie!
  66. Porn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I give it about two monthes before you see 87GB dvds being sold from the Porn Industry.

  67. Yeah, and... by ZaphodCrowley · · Score: 1

    ...``640K of memory should be enough for anybody.''

  68. Blue laser DVD by nedron · · Score: 2

    Well, you're right and wrong.

    The DVD Forum just selected the NEC/Toshiba blue laser system, so we should be seeing 15GiB DVD in two-three years.

    --


    * As is generally the case, my opinions do not reflect those of my employer.
  69. SCARED ? by hopbine · · Score: 1

    From the article -
    "We don't yet know how this happens, exactly"
    So they have discovered something but don't know how it works ! Slow down a minute and think about this. It worries me when any research lab comes up with a neat toy but is not quite certain of the proccess, or presumeably the ramifications. Before this hits the market I sure hope they will find out how it works.

    --
    Semper ubi sub ubi
  70. Well, not exactly... by fireboy1919 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Of course, you'll be able to fit the MOVIES on one of those, but who wants the movie? You already will have seen it in the theatre!

    If you want the extended-super-extra-feature making of the movie 94 disc feature set, which includes the entire life history of every actor, including those guys in the orc suits, as well as how Tolkien came up with the idea, and the complete works of Tolkien and every author he liked as read by Charlton Heston and William Shatner (with special guest appearances by Macho Man Randy Savage for the part of Sauron), there's no way its going to fit.

    --
    Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
    1. Re:Well, not exactly... by tekunokurato · · Score: 1

      I just got mine, and I have to say, some of those guys in the orc suits are grossly undervalued in the movie industry! Don't mess with the orcs!

  71. Re:Low tech by swb · · Score: 2

    Probably stolen from IG Farben after WWII, along with a lot of other German IP.

  72. Dr. Evil by Reggie+Funk · · Score: 2, Funny

    Dr. Evil - "And with this 'Expensive Laser' I propose to encode the world's copywrited material onto tiny plastic disks, thus causing the collapse of the world's media giants." Dr. Evil mischievously places pinkie next to mouth. Number Two - "That too has been done. 87 gigabytes is just overkill. The average person's ISP would send hitmen to assassinate them if they downloaded that much content, and who really needs to see HDTV porn anyway."

    1. Re:Dr. Evil by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I want my HDTV pOrn!

      of course I also want a HDTV All-in-Wonder, and a plasma TV, and of course a pony;

  73. how fast is the readout? by bbc22405 · · Score: 2

    I think of fluorescence as relatively slow to diminish. If you try to spin one of these disks at high RPMs (to reduce rotational latency, of course), are the bits lit while reading during the previous rotation still glowing when they come back around?

    1. Re:how fast is the readout? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting point, but I would guess it doesn't matter once the laser strikes the still glowing point again to read it.

  74. Huh???...Oh, yeah. I loved that part. by charon_on_acheron · · Score: 1

    I was totally clueless what your point was until the "Uh, sorry Goose." line. Then I was thinking, "who the hell is Goose?"

    Anyway, thanks for brightening up an afternoon, you karma whore. :^)

  75. From the (love I emacs) department by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now I can finally put my Emacs install on one disk!

  76. revomable disks bigger than my hard drive by m1dg3t · · Score: 1

    if they made it like dvd-ram, it would be like an infinite amount of hard drives. it would cost too much. plus, imagine burning 87 gigs. it would take a long time. this won't come out for at least 10 years.

  77. macguyver by buttahead · · Score: 1

    next up: building a faster cpu with a few beads, a clothes line, two liters of oil, three watermellon rinds, two hirpins, and a potato.

  78. I have a dream by Lemmeoutada+Collecti · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have a dream... imagine a drive where all the necessary OS files are stored, not a byte of them on the Hard Drive... then imagine that the configurations and other changable files ONLY are stored on the HDD. Now imagine upgrading your entire OS just by changing the disc in the drive...

    --

    You can have it fast, accurate, or pretty. Pick any 2.
  79. Damn... by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 3, Funny

    ...now I'm going to have to buy the White album again.

    --
    Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
  80. gonna have to start putting them in cases by zejackal · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't know about you folks, but I'm of the opinion that the CD/DVD format is on it's way out. I don't mean that CD's or DVD's are going away, simply that newer denser media won't look like those disks. The problem is this, as the spacial density of the data on the disk increases, the impact due to scratching increases. Instead of obliterating x number of bits, a scratch on a more dense media obliterates many times x bits.

    This can be mitigated by using error correcting codes. The cost of these codes is that the number of bits required to represent the same amount of real data goes up. At some point on the density curve we will reach a point where the amount of error correction bits required to make the media immune to most normal scratches will equal the added amount of information storage due to a higher density.

    We are already starting to see this with DVD's. How many times have you rented a DVD and it gets skippy and/or halts. Then when you eject it and look to see if it is scratched you see a few scratches that you know wouldn't even give your CD player pause were they to occur on a CD. That's because when the CD format was created they had a quarter inch rule in the standard. The error correction had to be able to withstand a quarter inch hole being punched in the CD. A DVD certainly can't handle that.

    What we will begin to find in our exposed media disks is that a higher and higher percentage of the available bit positions on the disk will have to be devoted to error correction. Thus a boost of n in the density won't corrispond to a boost in the actual amount of usable data stored on the disk. The solution, of course, is to put the media in a case, like a 3 1/2" disk for example. This mitigates the risk of actually scratching the disk and so we wouldn't need such a high degree of error correction. We would have those bits to store actual data in.

    1. Re:gonna have to start putting them in cases by newr00tic · · Score: 1

      Yeah, but one way to make it more resistant is to have one of these disks in ReWritable format, and use one of those casettes, in which the media can be protected all the time, even when it's used. Dunno if these slot-loading drives are all that common anymore, though.


      --
      A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
    2. Re:gonna have to start putting them in cases by Sarin · · Score: 2

      Yes dust, scratches etc. would be a big problem,
      but with storagemedia becoming this big I can imagine that you would use a certain part of the media as parity so it could recover from a little scratch.

    3. Re:gonna have to start putting them in cases by RealAlaskan · · Score: 2
      Instead of obliterating x number of bits, a scratch on a more dense media obliterates many times x bits.

      I get your point, but I think that we'll be able to get around it. Here's why:

      For some years now, the next big thing [1] in eyeglasses has been diamond film coating for eyeglasses, to make your plastic lenses as scratch resistant as glass. It sounds as if that sort of thing is what we need here.

      I suspect that the two technologies will finally come to market at about the same time, a long time from now. Rather than wasting too much disk space on error-correction-overkill, they'll make disks more scratch resistant.

      [1] Sort of like the situation with the DVD replacement technologies; they've been the next big thing for a lot of years too.

  81. CD Scratch = Bad by JojoLinkyBob · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Great for backing up your system, but depressing when you find out that "one little CD scratch" just wiped out a few hundred megs of important data.

    --
    -jc
    1. Re:CD Scratch = Bad by some+guy+I+know · · Score: 1

      That's why you always back up twice.
      The likelyhood of scratches occuring in the same place on both CDs/DVDs is very small.
      I have two sets of CD cases sitting next to each other.
      The CDs in the second cases are exact copies of the CDs in the first.
      And if I had the time money, and inclination, I would make a third copy of each CD and store it off site, say, in a safe deposit box.

      --
      Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
  82. It's already been done by Chriscypher · · Score: 1
    A company called Constellation 3D claims to have done this circa Y2K:
    The Company is the worldwide leader in the development of high capacity Fluorescent Multilayer Disc and Card (FMD/C) technology. Constellation 3D holds or has made applications for over 120 worldwide patents in the field of optical data storage, and is supported by 65 scientists. Headquartered in New York City, the Company has additional offices and laboratories in Massachusetts, Israel and Russia. More information is available at www.c-3d.net

    {their web site is down]

    --
    "You have liberated me from thought."
  83. You think 90 seconds is bad... by FuzzyDaddy · · Score: 2, Interesting
    We rent out videos for my daughter (3 yrs) - Blue's Clues and other semi-educational kids things. Each time, I sit there and fast forward through five minutes of promos for other crap (including Barney, which I vowed would never enter my house.)

    As annoying as it is now, if I couldn't fast forward through them, I wouldn't rent them. Period. I don't want her watching a bunch of commercials.

    And while she's clever, I'm not sure she's ready to log into our linux box and watch them on the computer. :)

    --
    It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
  84. Speed limits. by achurch · · Score: 2

    Data should all be Stored Dynamically. I need a 10t store at "Yahoo" (pick your flavor) for $5 amonth with a data access rate in the 5ms range accessable from any spot on earth, by me and anyone else I so desire.

    Hey, sounds good. Now what were you going to do about the speed of light?

  85. Errr... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't own a DVD player and I'm new to Linux, so maybe I don't understand. If it's random access, why do you say I can watch "whatever I want"? It's random, isn't it?

    1. Re:Errr... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good point. Due to humans' natural ability to recognize patterns, even where none exist, random visuals and audio will be transformed via your subconscious into whatever you want to watch at a given time.

  86. Understatement by ReadParse · · Score: 2

    The leading researcher on this is quoted as saying, "We thought it might be useful for something".

    Ya think? What use could anybody possibly have for more data storage? (all together now: pr0n!)

  87. Ever hear of RAID? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why are you even bothering with CD's?

    1. Re:Ever hear of RAID? by kels · · Score: 3, Informative

      RAID is not a full replacement for backups. It can protect you against single disk failure, but can't help you retrieve that file you accidently deleted last week, or recover your system if it gets trashed by filesystem corruption or malicious hackers.

      --
      "I believe that the cult of the particular brings only death - for it bases order on likeness." St.-Exupery
  88. RIAA/MPAA Joke. by Night0wl · · Score: 1

    Seems like they got a new prototype cd burner from the big ant-piracy giants to test out.
    Problem is though, it would work easily enough during reads, but as soon as you'd try and burn is when the problems began. They apperently used a new high speed motor, which simply caused todays standard CD-R's to shatter. Thus explaining why the new CD-R drive from the Anti-Piracy giant came in a cast iron container with a removable capture bin.
    One of the tech's had an idea to just epoxy the hell out of the cd's and this is a result.

    --
    Computational Madness in a round package.
  89. YES YES YES SO??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    this is all rather interesting and you would think it is WOOHOO worth, but without a date for it to be released to the general consumers, its nothing but hot air, and BIG WOOP worthy.

  90. I can remember when you didn't need 64K of RAM. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe you don't recall the days when a 5 1/4" floppy was the defacto standard, and a 10MB HD was a luxury item, but I do. PC's have come a long way, and will continue to expand. M$ will continue to push hardware to its extremes to run a simple file system. DOS used to be a single 5.25" disk with a second utility disk. People claimed then that we were living large.

    87GB in a cheap media (which the article indicates is the cost) will be used. It will yield longer playing movies with better sound.

    One thing unmentioned in the article is whether the you need a $100,000 laser to read the disk. It could be that the expensive one is for burns, while a smaller one could be used to do reads.

    The RIAA be damned, Pirates will always exist, as will people who don't care whehter their media is pirated or not. You can't mandate morals.

    If you build it, they will come.

    1. Re:I can remember when you didn't need 64K of RAM. by kcb93x · · Score: 1

      I've got some stuff *almost* like that...btw, anybody who wants a BRAND NEW (stuck in closet for 10 years after purchased, never used) 386 (SX, 16 MHz, 16 MB RAM, 2 HDD's, one's 250 MB, other unknown capacity, 3.5" and 5.25" floppies...let me know) and I also have a shrink-wrapped Vic 20, if anybody knows what that is...I've used the other two, and the Commodore 64s for years, and I'm only 18...those were MY first programming systems

      --
      There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  91. Games with 87GB of levels... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wonder when it will get to the point where the trees outside look less real than my CRT's projections.

    Just imagine walking to the shops for bread...

    "Every so often, I feel as though I'm in a big game..."

  92. Could be pricey, eh? by PhotoGuy · · Score: 2

    Up here in Canada, where proposed legislation will give CD's a 59c tax and regular blank DVD's a $2.27 tax per unit, I can just imagine what they'll want to tax something that can store 19x the data. Ulp! A $43 tax per blank media would really suck.

    (The proposal also has a $21 per gigabyte tax on devices with build in hard drives. Insane; a 10G device would have a $210 tax. Even though our dollars are smaller, that's still $135US additional for a 10G unit.)

    I sure hope the Canadian public is vocal enough to stomp this legislation, although we're not exactly known for creating a stir :-)

    --
    Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
  93. FINALLY! by zogger · · Score: 2

    --YES! finally, get all the $%^&8 latest released distros all on one disk, make them all work like a knoppix live cd, settle back, play with them, see which one really is better for "anyone you". Buy one disk, get all of it, done.

  94. Really nifty, probably... by Dark+Lord+Seth · · Score: 1

    But when do we get some more low to the ground replacements for obselete equipment, most notably floppy drives, who are so slow and unreliable these days it simply hurts to have to use them. ZIP disks failed because they ended up too commercialized. LS-120s are (hear-say) even slower then normal floppy drives... All other would-be floppy drive replacements have their flaws (availability, price, prop, lockdown, etc...) so when do we FINALLY get a floppy drive replacement?

    1. Re:Really nifty, probably... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, ZIP disks failed because they are (A) too expensive, and (B) far, FAR too unreliable (Google for "click of death").

  95. Re:Another quality first post. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I must admit, nicely done.

  96. RIAA by nothing+safe · · Score: 3, Funny

    In other news, the RIAA has dispatched a team of snipers throughout Boston College with orders to kill any geeks on site.

  97. Re:Is anyone else tired of hearing about new forma by CrackHappy · · Score: 1

    Thanks for this comment Schnapple. I completely agree with your statement and the examples you cite. Who out there can cite an example of a brand new technology overnight oblitering the old? When cars came along, how many decades was it until the horse and buggy went out the door?

    Just because it's exciting and "cool" and EVERYONE on /. is going to get one the second they hit the stores doesn't mean it's the end-all-be-all.

    --
    1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
  98. Cost with mass production by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >The cost would come down with mass production, he said.

    If it DIDN"T, then there wouldn't BE any mass production. No one mass produces $100,000 lasers.

  99. Necessity is the Mother of Invention by jonbrewer · · Score: 2

    You see, the Boston College IT department, under strict orders from the Administration*, has for the past two years had to back up their transparent proxy logs, and keep a record of every last packet of information travelling from the Internet to the dormitory ethernets.

    The cost of DLT tapes the wear and tear on their StorageTek robot was breaking the bank. After raising tuition from $27,000 USD to $31,000 USD in just three years, they still couldn't afford to keep a permanent record of every CD and DVD pirated by their students.

    At some point, the IT department made an offer to all faculty: "Come up with a way for us to back up our logs and we'll service your department first for the next ten years."

    Of course it was the oft-neglected chemistry department that so needed support for their purple Silly-Gs and ancient AlphaStations. They kicked into gear with a trip to Economy Hardware on Beacon Street and the rest, as they say, is history.

    *who were themselves were under strict orders from their Lawyers, who happen to be owned by RIAA

  100. [OT] About that stupid intel ad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    printf("Is there a simple way to increase application performance?\n");

    Stop using printf so much. (use puts)

  101. what if by utexaspunk · · Score: 1

    the RIAA/MPAA uses a new format such as this to release audio and video that is so data-heavy that it becomes impractical to try to rip/compress/share it?

    Just a thought...

    1. Re:what if by Jesus+IS+the+Devil · · Score: 1

      That's what divx is for. Unless they're ready to offer up 100 hour movies, this won't do much to thwart pirates.

      --

      eTrade SUCKS
    2. Re:what if by utexaspunk · · Score: 1

      if the entire movie is 87 GB (i'm talkin' some HIGH definition shit, or maybe just encoded uncompressed or both) it's gonna take you some serious time to rip the movie and encode it to divx. that's what i'm talking about.

  102. High Tech? by acoustix · · Score: 3, Insightful
    "And it's a mix of high and low tech..."

    Can someone explain the difference between high tech and low tech? There's only one technology. High technology and low technology? Technolody is technology.

    It is like the episode from Seinfeld: A big coincidence? No. Just a coincidence. There are no levels of coincidence. Just a coincidence.

    --
    "A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
    1. Re:High Tech? by RichardX · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You never played Elite, did you?

      You buy stuff from the high tech planets, and sell it to the low tech ones, thus making a nice profit along the way. Just watch out for those damn cat-people-things.

      --
      Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
  103. Big deal... by Call+Me+Black+Cloud · · Score: 3, Funny

    I can store an infinite about of data on my hard drive.

    Not all at once, mind you...

  104. 87 Gigs = by Superfreaker · · Score: 1

    10x's more PORN!!!

    I may just go blind.

  105. The reality of the issue is... by Proneax · · Score: 1

    All these people who say "It's too big to be usefull" "Think how long it would take for me to burn my audio collection" etc. don't get it. If this was introduced into the current marketplace, it would most likely take the place of tape backup. People wouldn't set their Easy Epoxy-CD Creator to mix all thier audio then come back a few days later. It wouldn't be like current cd burning until a new high speed drive interface came out (face it, even scsi 160 is really slow in that application)

    The other thing is, like most people have said, this won't be out for years to come, if ever. By then we'll have our 2TB pixie dust HDD on SATA4 at 1.2gb/s and we'll be like "100GB?, give me somthing big enough that I can actually use it..."

  106. Still waiting on blue lasers here. by JTMON · · Score: 1

    Same old CD-Rom with Blue Laser = More Gigs of Fun!

  107. So, what is the legal status? by beleg777 · · Score: 2

    Has anyone patented the technology? Can it be patented by anyone right now? How about copyright, any issues to work out there?

    Basically, is there anything stoping it from being made into a consumer product? I think it's safe to assume that the big players in the industry don't want to see this thing reach the public very soon. It would be bad for business. So it is possible that someone else will make it?

    --

    Science may someday discover what faith has always known.
  108. Fcking GLUE! by ruiner13 · · Score: 2

    I mean GLUE! 78GB! 25+ layers! GLUE!. Man, I gotta get me one of them low-intensity laser thingamabobs and glue me some bigger hard drives. GLUE! And all this time i've just been sticking stuff together with it....

    --

    today is spelling optional day.

  109. 27 Gig disks 10 years ago by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    I was in a Philips lab about 10 years ago where they showed me a disk with a 27 gig capacity. It's hard to believe, with hard drives going from 10's of megs to 100's of gigs in that time, that disks have only progressed to 87GB.

  110. Linux and kids by basic70 · · Score: 1

    No problem, just tell her she's not allowed to use it, then she'll figure it out in no time.

  111. Magic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's getting very magical, technology I mean. Eye of newt, wart of toad, crows feather and crocodile's tear, and presto, 87 gigs of pr0n!

  112. Another optical storage tech. But does it matter? by RichardX · · Score: 1

    Well, here we go again with the standard /.
    1. Create huge storage medium
    2. ???
    3. Profit!!@#!~~!
    4. Get sued by the RIAA/MPAA and end up broke
    5. Give up on technology, turn to religion
    6. ???
    7. Prophet!!@#!~~!

    Type story. or something. but anyways, enough inanity.. my point is. Am I the only one who fails to be excited by this stuff? Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be able to dump the whole contents of my puter onto a single disc. But I can't help feeling the future, surely, must be solid state? What about those cool little Thumbdrive things (y'know. Size of your thumb, has a USB plug on it... stick it in yer puter, copy data, stick it in yer pocket).. sure, right now they're hellish expensive, and the biggest capacity you can find is somewhere around the 128 or 256 Mb mark.. but the rapid uptake of digital cameras, MP3 players, PDAs, and similar devices has already driven down the price of Compactflash, Smartmedia, and so on.

    Question is, how long until we can pay harddrive style pound (or dollar) to megabyte ratios for these things. No, I don't expect it Real Soon Now, but it seems the most effective future solution to me.

    Well, anyways, just my thoughts.

    --
    Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
  113. Incompatible Formats by happybrick · · Score: 1

    We all think we are very smart by shrinking our data so much. Yet we end up proving how dumb we are when we end up have many incompatible formats like we have with writable DVDs.

  114. Re:HERE'S ANOTHER MEDIUM WITH A HUGE STORAGE CAPAC by tHiNk411 · · Score: 1

    HAHA mod parent up thats pretty funny, come on slashdot geeks we need some humor in life!

  115. Isn't that refreshing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He said "How many Libraries of Congress..." not "How many Library of Congress's..." Isn't good grammar a beautifil thing? That makes me happy. :)

  116. He even looks australian!!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... he does!

  117. Never overestimate the latency... by oddityfds · · Score: 1

    Never overestimate the latency of a station wagon full of tapes following you everywhere you go, always within WaveLAN range. :-)

  118. Good for the future of smaller media too... by xmnemonic · · Score: 1

    Smaller in physical size that is. What will really be nice is if we have a disc that is 19 times smaller in physical size, but with the capacity of current DVD's. It'll pave the way for PDA's that can play movies and decrease the size of disk drives dramatically, making for much smaller and lighter laptops.

  119. That's a lot of dough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Can hold 174,000 songs that you haven't paid for."

    And to think all of those songs cost a total of $217,500 (assuming of course that they're all in 12 song cd's at $15 a pop). You know that people are going to complain at the price of the dvd too.

  120. Last Post! by alpg · · Score: 1

    You are transported to a room where you are faced by a wizard who
    points to you and says, "Them's fighting words!" You immediately get
    attacked by all sorts of denizens of the museum: there is a cobra
    chewing on your leg, a troglodyte is bashing your brains out with a
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    long fangs into various parts of your anatomy, a large bear is
    dismembering your body, a gargoyle is bouncing up and down on your
    head, a burly troll is tearing you limb from limb, several dire wolves
    are making mince meat out of your torso, and the wizard is about to
    transport you to the corner of Westwood and Broxton. Oh dear, you seem
    to have gotten yourself killed, as well.

    You scored 0 out of 250 possible points.
    That gives you a ranking of junior beginning adventurer.
    To achieve the next higher rating, you need to score 32 more points.

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...