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1.5 TB DVD by 2010

prostoalex writes "The consortium of three universities and four Japanese companies is investing $25M into a project, that is supposed to deliver a 1.5 TB (that's a terabyte and a half) Digital Versatile Disk by 2010. The Inquirer story quotes multiple layers being used for storage." More importantly, they claim that this will be backwards compatible to existing DVD technology.

139 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. Nice to see the correct name by Microsift · · Score: 4, Informative

    Seems like everyone thinks the V in DVD stands for video.

    --
    My other sig is extremely clever...
    1. Re:Nice to see the correct name by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 2

      Actually the DVD consortium has said that DVD doesn't stand for anything. You just call the discs DVDs.

    2. Re:Nice to see the correct name by aengblom · · Score: 5, Funny

      Seems like everyone thinks the V in DVD stands for video.

      I think it stands for vapor now

      --


      So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
    3. Re:Nice to see the correct name by Proc6 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      Fact Check:

      http://www.dvdforum.org/tech-dvdprimer.htm

      What does DVD mean?
      The keyword is "versatile." Digital Versatile discs provide superb video, audio and data storage and access -- all on one disc.

      --

      I'm Rick James with mod points biatch!

    4. Re:Nice to see the correct name by Carbonite · · Score: 3, Informative

      From another "official" FAQ:

      http://www.thedigitalbits.com/officialfaq.html#1 .1

      [1.1.1] What do the letters DVD stand for?
      All of the following have been proposed as the words behind the letters DVD.

      Delayed, very delayed (referring to the many late releases of DVD formats)
      Diversified, very diversified (referring to the proliferation of recordable formats and other spinoffs)
      Digital venereal disease (referring to piracy and copying of DVDs)
      Dead, very dead (from naysayers who predicted DVD would never take off)
      Digital video disc (the original meaning suggested by some of DVD's creators)
      Digital versatile disc (the meaning later suggested by some of DVD's creators)
      Nothing

      And the official answer is? "Nothing." The original acronym came from "digital video disc." Some members of the DVD Forum (see 6.1) tried to express that DVD goes far beyond video by retrofitting the painfully contorted phrase "digital versatile disc," but this has never been officially accepted by the DVD Forum as a whole. The consensus is now that DVD, as an international standard, is simply three letters. After all, who cares what VHS stands for? (Guess what, no one agrees on that one either.


      --
      ich muß mehr Kuhglocke haben
    5. Re:Nice to see the correct name by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 2
      How about from this page? http://www.flemingmultimedia.com/FAQDVD.html


      What does DVD stand for?

      Originally, DVD stood for Digital Video Disk. As the standard evolved to include additional capabilities, its meaning was changed to Digital Versatile Disc. This didn't translate well into every language, so now DVD doesn't stand for anything -- it's just DVD.


      I've found lots of other pages stating the same thing.
    6. Re:Nice to see the correct name by glwtta · · Score: 2

      Oh come on, everyone knows it stands for 'Valenti'.

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
    7. Re:Nice to see the correct name by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 2

      Oh, come on. Somebody throw this AC a few mod points. The post cracked me up!

      --

      I write in my journal
    8. Re:Nice to see the correct name by terrymr · · Score: 2

      I seem to remeber the original trademark registration being for Digital Video Disc - the Versatile came later after they started thinking of more uses for them.

    9. Re:Nice to see the correct name by falser · · Score: 2

      I think this new type of DVD should be called DXXXD, cause you fit a lot of porn on one of those.

    10. Re:Nice to see the correct name by Tony-A · · Score: 2

      I think the comment originated with Churchill, probably after he got razzed for dangling his preposition.

  2. Unfortunately by efedora · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No one needs the space because by 2010 all digital material is covered by copyrights - which have been extended for 250 years.

    1. Re:Unfortunately by robbyjo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So you assume that all that big space are for DVD rips and MP3s? How about storing gene info? Backups? Anyone?

      --

      --
      Error 500: Internal sig error
    2. Re:Unfortunately by robbyjo · · Score: 2

      hosted only on one dsl

      You know what? It's easy to take a revenge. Just post where it is to Slashdot and we'll handle the rest...

      --

      --
      Error 500: Internal sig error
    3. Re:Unfortunately by Ed+Avis · · Score: 2

      Genetic information? I thought that gene sequences and stuff were fairly small, as in a couple of CDs for a typical organism.

      A complete record of everything in your life so far - as will happen once phones all have full-motion video cameras, and are left on all the time - could easily fill a terabyte however.

      --
      -- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
    4. Re:Unfortunately by SETIGuy · · Score: 2
      How about storing gene info?

      I patented your genetic code, retrieved from a hair sample, last week. You can't afford to store your genetic code.

      Backups?

      Backups are illegal under the Ernest P. Worhl Copyright Act (EPWCA) of 2005.

      Anyone?

      People may not be duplicated under the Arnold Ziffle Anti-Cloning Act (AZACA) of 2007. Disney holds the copyright to most people anyway.

    5. Re:Unfortunately by sql*kitten · · Score: 2

      No one needs the space because by 2010 all digital material is covered by copyrights - which have been extended for 250 years.

      That's why they're using multiple lawyers for storage!

    6. Re:Unfortunately by glwtta · · Score: 2
      How about storing gene info?

      Space requirements for "gene info" are either modest or laughable (depending on your definition of "gene info"), by todays "enterprise" standards

      As an example: GenBank contains basically all published sequences, and the whole thing is only about 80GB (if memory serves), but the pure sequence in it would only take up slightly more than 5GB (assuming a binary format, ie two bits per base).

      Here's their stats page.

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
    7. Re:Unfortunately by buswolley · · Score: 2

      I don't know. Sounds wonderful too me. Unemployment in not the disease. It is the cure.

      --

      A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.

    8. Re:Unfortunately by Jugalator · · Score: 2

      The material many use to store on discs are already copyright protected, still it's burned. :-)

      From a piracy point of view, the interesting part isn't if it's copyrighted or not, but if it can be circumvented. ;-)

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  3. And in other news... by inteller · · Score: 3, Funny

    The same Japanese universities plan to store the entire Intarnet(tm) on one DoCoMo 6G 10Ghz cell phone using an old bubble gum wrapper and a used condom by the year 2020.

    1. Re:And in other news... by Jugalator · · Score: 2

      The same Japanese universities plan to store the entire Intarnet(tm) on one DoCoMo 6G 10Ghz cell phone using an old bubble gum wrapper and a used condom by the year 2020.

      Meanwhile, the US government is passing the planning stages of monitoring Internet, and slowly moving towards a practical implementation.

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  4. Of course... by JanneM · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What's the chance of that hardware ever being available without DRM? Not all that useful if we cannot actually use it for backing up any data, moving the discs to any other device and so on.

    --
    Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
  5. In other news.... by Em+Emalb · · Score: 3, Funny

    snip snip

    "It will also be backwards compatible with standard DVDs, the reports said, with its storage ability equivalent to around 300 DVDs using the current format"

    This new technology will drive you to work, make love to your frigid wife, baby-sit the kids, wash the dog and the car. Yes, folks, the year 2010 will be a great one. All thanks to this DVD and $25mil.

    --
    Sent from your iPad.
    1. Re:In other news.... by Helter · · Score: 2

      Ever hear "Step Right Up" by Tom Waits?

  6. More interestingly, the article states: by jhampson · · Score: 5, Funny

    "* BY 2010, according to senior Intel architects, a CPU will have processing power equivalent to the brain of a bumble bee."
    Wow. Woweewow.
    Imagine a beowulf cluster of those.
    Oh. Wait. I have one of those in my back yard.

    1. Re:More interestingly, the article states: by orangesquid · · Score: 5, Funny

      Top ten modal dialogs in Windows DS/2010:

      (10) WINVIEW: Error reading "cum lolitas.jpg". This problem has been automatically reported to Microsoft with a full profile of your computer.

      (9) Due to overwhelming user request, "Clippy and his Crew" are now an integral part of the operating system and can not be disabled.

      (8) Corruption in ADVERTIS.DLL. Windows halted.

      (7) You have been idle or unproductive for the last thirty seconds. Activating HIVE parallel processing...

      (6) HIVE .NET connection failed. Please unisntall any non-Microsoft software and try again.

      (5) Application terminated unexpectedly. Please do not blame this on Microsoft again.

      (4) Give me more honey!

      (3) Give me more, honey!

      (2) Wrong BigDVD key. Stinger engaged.

      (1) DRM violation detected. Replacing your yellow-and-black stripes with black-and-white ones, please wait...

      Top Linux 3.4 kernel boot message:

      iBee processor (986) detected.
      DRM extension detected, workaround enabled.

      --
      --TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
    2. Re:More interestingly, the article states: by terrymr · · Score: 2

      Wouldn't it be easier to just hook up a bee to a computer :-)

      Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these - or would that be a swarm ?

    3. Re:More interestingly, the article states: by Tony-A · · Score: 2

      Does this mean that MSN will have the brain of a butterfly?

  7. Backwards compatible? by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Backwards compatible is no big deal -- your typical DVD player can read CD, VCD, etc. formats. The real question is whether consumers will be ready for yet another format change by 2010. Somehow I doubt it. If you go by the previous cycle, it took about 15 years before consumers were ready to buy DVD players.

    Also, we don't want to give Hollywood and the DVDCCA another shot at locking us out. The CSS cat is permanently out of the bag for the lifetime of the DVD format, but a new format would provide them an opportunity to come up with some sort of freedom-restricting technology.

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    1. Re:Backwards compatible? by aengblom · · Score: 4, Insightful

      will be ready for yet another format change by 2010. Somehow I doubt it

      If HDTV is really coming, they may be

      --


      So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
    2. Re:Backwards compatible? by vasqzr · · Score: 2, Informative


      15 years to buy DVD players?

      In 1983 the first CD players were released in the USA.

      CD's have only been out ~ 20 years, DVD's half of that.

    3. Re:Backwards compatible? by ryanvm · · Score: 2

      it took about 15 years before consumers were ready to buy DVD players.

      Actually, it took about 15 years for the industry to produce a replacement. I'm pretty sure that if there were $150 DVD players and all new releases were on DVD in 1990, consumers would have bought in just as quickly then.

      Also, we don't want to give Hollywood and the DVDCCA another shot at locking us out.

      That's a pretty silly policy - avoiding progress because of potential risks. Besides, who's to say that Congress won't have finally hammered out some decent fair-use legislation by then?

    4. Re:Backwards compatible? by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 2

      If HDTV is really coming, they may be

      Just for the record, not only is HDTV really coming, it's already here. I've owned an HDTV-- an absurdly expensive top-of-the-line Sony model I bought on a whim after coming into some extra cash; the burden of being a videophile-- since this summer. There's something on in HD 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. HBO and Showtime are running movies in HD via DirecTV, and all three major nets are broadcasting most of their prime-time schedule in HD. PBS is showing a lot of HD content, and the Discovery Channel set up a whole new channel just for HD programming. Even the WB is running shows like Smallville in HD; can't say I care for it, but it's fun to watch with the sound off. Hell, CBS is even running some of their soaps in HD. The playoffs are in HD, the Superbowl will be in HD next month, the Oscars will be in HD next spring.

      There's still a heck of a lot more SD than HD out there, but HD has definitely arrived.

      --

      I write in my journal
    5. Re:Backwards compatible? by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 2

      Pluralizing an abbreviation, on the other hand, does. At least, according to most style guides.

      It's "CD's" and "DVD's," not "CDs" and "DVDs."

      --

      I write in my journal
    6. Re:Backwards compatible? by IGnatius+T+Foobar · · Score: 2
      Besides, who's to say that Congress won't have finally hammered out some decent fair-use legislation by then?
      Jack Valenti, Hillary Rosen, Bill Gates, George W. Bush, and John Ashcroft. That's who.
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      Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
    7. Re:Backwards compatible? by mcmonkey · · Score: 2

      Wow, wrong on both counts.

      First, if you followed the thread on V=video vs. V=versatile, you'd know DVD stands for DVD, is short for DVD, and is an abbreviation of DVD. In other words, the word is 'DVD'. DVD is not an abbreviation.

      Second, only lower case and single letter abbreviations get 's. Others just get an s.

      DVDs, CDs, cgi's, A's.

      ( http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/pubstyle/ch6_1.htm and http://www.wooster.edu/psychology/apa-crib.html#ab brev )

    8. Re:Backwards compatible? by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 2
      From the Chicago Manual of Style:
      6.10 Abbreviations with or without periods, lowercase letters used as nouns, and capital letters that would be confusing if s alone were added for the plural with an apostrophe and an s:
      M.A.'s and Ph.D.'s
      x's and y's
      S's, A's, I's
      SOS's
      Note that "SOS" doesn't stand for anything-- it's simply the three-letter combination that is easiest to send and recognize in Morse code-- and it forms the plural with an apostrophe. The correct plural of "DVD," whether or no it has an acronymic expansion, is "DVD's."

      I dare say that the well-respected and venerable Chicago Manual takes precedence in general use over the very specific EIA and APA style guides, particularly given the fact that the EIA guide, at least, explicitly notes that the recommendation for acronymic pluralization contained therein differs from that given in a more general style guide.
      --

      I write in my journal
    9. Re:Backwards compatible? by rmohr02 · · Score: 2

      Well, DVD Audio isn't really that big (I mean, using a DVD to store wav files?), so comparing the DVD to VHS is probably a more accurate comparison. But then, VHSs haven't been out too much longer than CDs.

    10. Re:Backwards compatible? by Catbeller · · Score: 2

      True, but with a Democrat you have some chance of denying a moneyboy what he wants. With the lineup in the 3 branches today, all Republican, there is NO chance of opposition. None. It's utterly against the robber-baron no-regulation mentality. The business of America is business, and all that. Death to unions, tax rebates to corps that don't pay taxes, offshore tax havens. It's a far-right neo-con agenda, and we are ficked as consumers.

      It would have happened eventually with the Dems, but that is frankly because they are turning into '80's Republicans -- while the main Repubs are now a coalition of neo-con tax cutters, end-of-worlders, guvmint haters -- the farthest of the right wing.

      What was far left no longer exists. Left is now considered radical, moderates are now lefties, conservatives are now moderates, far-right wings are considered moderate-to-conservative, and the looniest fringe nutjobs are now amiable "right-wing" with their own TV networks (Fox, MS-NBC, CNN).

      The Dems would have at least slowed down the corporatization of the world. The Repubs love it, live it, they by and large ARE the corporations that are taking over the four branches of our democratic guvmint.

      I remember vivdly Kornbluth and Pohl's "Space Merchants" novella of 1950. They showed a U.S. Senate comprised of Senators from U.S.Steel, G.M, etc. There were no people's reps, only corporate ones.

      It's happening de facto.

    11. Re:Backwards compatible? by xigxag · · Score: 2

      Did you read your own quote, Twirly?

      It says to add an apostrophe s to capital letters that would be confusing if s alone were added for the plural.

      SOSs could be considered confusing because of the two Ss's, ergo an apostrophe is indicated.

      There's no confusion with DVDs, hence no apostrophe is mandated. Unless you happen to be one of those wacky "DVD is an acronym" people, then go ahead and add it.

      Okay, I'll come clean and admit the whole purpose of this post was to write "Ss's". ;-)

      --
      There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
    12. Re:Backwards compatible? by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 2

      Did you read your own quote, Twirly?

      Did you? It said, "Abbreviations with or without periods... for[m] the plural with an apostrophe and an s." Yeah, I let a typo slip in there, but it should have been clear from context.

      Whether "DVD" now has an agreed-upon expansion or not, it is not a word. At best, it's a neologism coined from an abbreviation. As such, it has to follow the rules for an abbreviation.

      Okay, I'll come clean and admit the whole purpose of this post was to write "Ss's". ;-)

      That's okay. The whole purpose of my post was just to pick a grammar nit, which is something that I happen to get a kick out of. Does it really matter? No. But I find it more entertaining than arguing about religion or politics, and almost as fun as talking about sports. ;-)

      --

      I write in my journal
    13. Re:Backwards compatible? by xigxag · · Score: 2

      Since the subject is of passing interest to you, I'll briefly mention the following three factoids:

      1) I'm a New Yorker, and as such I defer to the NY Times Style Guide over the Chicago Manual. And I notice that the NY Times' website uses DVDs, which is enough to convince me.

      2) If you google the phrase "DVD's", you'll get a message that says, "Did you mean: Dvds" The latter phrase also vastly outnumbers the former.

      3) Here's the Chicago Manual Of Style's own FAQ page. I can't imagine you didn't at least peruse their online resource first, only to find that DVDs weren't mentioned. So I'm guessing you missed the subtle yet quite conclusive rebuttal to your argumentum ad verecundiam which is prominently displayed on the "New FAQs" page. Well, in fact, there it is.

      --
      There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
    14. Re:Backwards compatible? by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 2

      I'm a New Yorker, and as such I defer to the NY Times Style Guide over the Chicago Manual.

      Style guides for newspapers and magazines, including the AP's style guide, describe an extremely simplified mode of writing, appropriate for mass communication media. I prefer the more conservative mode described by The University of Chicago Press. It's a preference thing.

      If you google the phrase "DVD's", you'll get a message that says, "Did you mean: Dvds"

      Oh, well, that's an appeal to authority that I can agree with. ;-)

      So I'm guessing you missed the subtle yet quite conclusive rebuttal to your argumentum ad verecundiam which is prominently displayed on the "New FAQs" page.

      My deskside copy of the Manual is a 13th ed.; I had to go consult a more recent edition to get to the bottom of this. In editions more recent than my own, the Manual distinguishes between types of abbreviation: acronyms, initializations, and contractions. An acronym is meant to be spoken as a single word, like NASA or BART. Acronyms form their plurals with a single s, as in FAQs (pronounced "facks"). Initializations are pronounced as separate letters, like CD, ATM, or VCR. Initializations form their plurals with an apostrophe: CD's (pronounced "see dees").

      When you start pronouncing "DVD" as a word, rather than as letters, you can drop the apostrophe. ;-)

      Now, would you like to split this hair still further, or shall we just agree to disagree?

      --

      I write in my journal
    15. Re:Backwards compatible? by xigxag · · Score: 2

      The latter, I suppose. But I boldly and fearlessly predict that within 10 years the CMS will bow to good sense and popular usage and come around to my position. Honestly, who'd write, "I went to various ATM's in the area?" That doesn't look right a'tall, no indeed. Not that I'd expect you to agree.

      --
      There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
    16. Re:Backwards compatible? by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 2
      Honestly, who'd write, "I went to various ATM's in the area?" That doesn't look right a'tall, no indeed. Not that I'd expect you to agree.

      Actually, I do agree. The apostrophe rule comes from the Olden Dayes when abbreviations were actually written out with periods. Which is better, "A.T.M.s" or "A.T.M.'s?"

      As to changing the Manual, I'll agree that the rule should be changed when the name of the candy is changed from "M&M's" to "M&Ms."

      ;-)

      --

      I write in my journal
  8. TB GB MB Is Obsolete by robbyjo · · Score: 4, Funny

    The trend unit is "how many equivalents of library of congress" does it hold?

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    Error 500: Internal sig error
    1. Re:TB GB MB Is Obsolete by glwtta · · Score: 2

      LoC's, in their turn, were obsoleted by the "Human Genomes"

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
    2. Re:TB GB MB Is Obsolete by AndroidCat · · Score: 2

      It might hold a lot of data, but how fast will it be on read/write? I want to know what its MPAA speed rating will be! (It's what, 32x = 1 MPAA?)

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
    3. Re:TB GB MB Is Obsolete by cosmosis · · Score: 2

      I'll take a serioud crack at your question.

      If are considering text only, then the Library of Congress is aproximately 100 Terabytes. We can call this unit measurement 1 LCT (Library of Congress Text)

      If we add images that are in these books, as well as their map collection, then we are up past a Petabyte (1000 Terabytes). We can call this unit 1 LC (Library of Congress - ALL).

      Question: The trend unit is "how many equivalents of library of congress" does it hold?

      Answer: Each of these new discs has a storage capactiy of 0.015 LCT, or 0.0015 LC.

      Planet P Blog - Liberty with Technology.

    4. Re:TB GB MB Is Obsolete by Glonoinha · · Score: 2, Informative

      Jesus man, you said that with enough authority to almost sound like you knew what you were talking about.

      The LoC is approximately 100 Terabytes. I would love to the see the goatse that approximation came from ... perhaps share a little of your scratch paper with the rest of the world?

      Here is a little math of my own :
      1 page 8x11 is roughly 50 typed lines, 80 characters per line. That is a little large for most books, but gives us something to work with. That is 4,000 characters per page on the high end, and assumes that a page is mostly typed and not white space.

      Two hundred pages is about the average, pulled right from goatse.cx but close enough for government work. 200x4,000 = 800,000 characters in a full book. Lets stretch it just a little and say there are lots of fat books, make the average 1 million characters (bytes) per book.

      A million books, at a million characters (text only) per book is 10^12 bytes, or a full Terabyte. In ASCII form, one terabyte could hold the text of one million books, assuming 200 pages of single spaced (no white space) pages. For reference, Neuromancer by William Gibson as text (including the copyright notice at the bottom) is stored in an ASCII file 472,253 bytes in size. So might we say that half a million bytes is closer in size to average we are up to 2 million books stored in text only form on a 1TB disk.

      How many books are in the Library of Congress? Dunno. Are there two million? Probably. Extrapolate that to your 100TB estimate and we are presuming two hundred million books in the LoC, each about the size of Neuromancer. Every man in America would have had to write two full 200 page novels, get them published to some degree, and then into the LoC to have that many. I am guessing that the LoC has closer to 3 million books in their archives.

      3 million books at 500,000 characters apiece and Voila! this new disk could hold all of them (ASCII format.) Thus the new unit of measurement is born : the LoC = one of these disks = 1.5TB

      It still wouldn't hold all of my porn, though.

      --
      Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
    5. Re:TB GB MB Is Obsolete by sql*kitten · · Score: 2

      The trend unit is "how many equivalents of library of congress" does it hold?

      Didn't Neal Stephenson use "Boeing 747 full of encyclopaedias"?

  9. Slashdot can teach us many things by addps4cat · · Score: 5, Funny

    1.5 TB (that's a terabyte and a half)


    Thanks captain obvious!
    --
    Don't eat shrimp candy, just a heads up.
    1. Re:Slashdot can teach us many things by ottffssent · · Score: 4, Funny

      At least you don't see "that's equivalent to a stack of paper stretching from the earth to the sun 12 times" in magazines anymore.

  10. So much data -- a little OT by sisukapalli1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The amount of data on a single disk made me think what the uses could be, and the primary thing I could come up with is hi-res multimedia. There was an article in one of the popular magazines about the next 10 years advancements, and one of them was about digital projections that fool the eye -- one would not be able to distinguish between real images and digital images.

    But, this also makes me wonder... Our ability to process information has stayed the same (e.g., it still takes me awful lot of time to read a small book -- let alone the LOTR), but the amount of data is just exploding.

    May be there would be some new technology that leads us into faster/better processing of the tonnes of information?

    S

    1. Re:So much data -- a little OT by freeweed · · Score: 2

      May be there would be some new technology that leads us into faster/better processing of the tonnes of information?

      Yes, it's called a 'computer'. Seriously, not trying to be a troll or anything, but that's precisely what the field of computer science has been working on for decades now. The machine I'm typing this from really is nothing more than a glorified calculator, multiplied by several orders of magnitude.

      The basic idea behind a computing device is to speed up data processing - and to handle amounts so vast the human mind can't deal with it all. Remember, before electronics, a 'computer' was actually a reference to a human being.

      --
      Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
  11. Nice quote from the article... by MonTemplar · · Score: 3, Funny
    • * BY 2010, according to senior Intel architects, a CPU will have processing power equivalent to the brain of a bumble bee.


    Hmm... so what that make my Pentium III equivalent to? A cockroach? :)

    --
    -MT.
    1. Re:Nice quote from the article... by Stonent1 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Your Pentium III will be equivalent to a prion, perhaps an amoeba, or a damaged/diseased sperm cell forever searching to impregnate the first cell it "sees".

      Thats the funniest thing I've read in a long time. I can't wait to use it against someone. (Where they think that it is a complement) "You're as smart as my 1.2Ghz Pentium III!"

  12. Sweet by BoomerSooner · · Score: 2

    So DeCSS will still work?

  13. Unified Paranoid Theory by CatWrangler · · Score: 2
    This is just what Big Brother needs. Cheap mass storage to collect info from you will be a breeze now. Electronic sniffing noses, spy cams, facial recognition software, the Total Information Awareness project will all join together to track every thing about you, and store it on disc.

    1000 hours of film footage of you, plus every transaction you have made with credit card, through paper work, and what have you, will all be put on one of these bad boys, and tin foil is not going to help.

    --

    ---
    When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--

  14. I still haven't filled my 60GB HDD... by Junior+J.+Junior+III · · Score: 2

    I wonder how much one of these things will cost? Considering I could probably buy one and not fill it up for like 10 years, I'm curious as to how this technology will be viable, at least in the home user market. It'll be great for big IT department backups, though.

    --
    You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
    1. Re:I still haven't filled my 60GB HDD... by glwtta · · Score: 2
      mirc
      kernel.org
      kazaa lite
      sourceforge
      edonkey
      video capture

      have fun filling up that hard drive...

      oh, and you'll probably need on of these soon

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
    2. Re:I still haven't filled my 60GB HDD... by El+Puerco+Loco · · Score: 2

      i never even filled my 20gb drive. and i had 3 operating systems and an impressive collection of pr0n and mp3s on it. unless you do digital video editing, you probably won't ever need anything larger than 40gb. at least until the next version of windows and office comes out.

    3. Re:I still haven't filled my 60GB HDD... by DrEldarion · · Score: 2

      I remember when I was a kid and saw an ad for a 540MB hard drive and thought to myself, "How on earth would it be possible to fill that up?".

      Now I have single files that are larger than that.

      Imagine a nice 3200x2400 lossless-compression movie. Or being able to store all your MP3s in lossless-compression audio.

      By 2010, 1.5TB isn't going to seem nearly as large as it does now.

      -- Dr. Eldarion --

    4. Re:I still haven't filled my 60GB HDD... by eggstasy · · Score: 2

      Let's put it this way.
      When recordable CDs came out, I backed up my entire floppy-based game collection to one.
      Games have been using multiple CDs for a while now, I expect them to use multiple DVDs a few years from now. And you know it won't really be 1.5TB... They said DVDs could hold 34 gigs, then they said 17, then they said 9, and sadly what most people have are 4 gig DVDs...

    5. Re:I still haven't filled my 60GB HDD... by Helter · · Score: 2

      Then why is my 200 GB of storage almost full?

    6. Re:I still haven't filled my 60GB HDD... by El+Puerco+Loco · · Score: 2

      your pr0n-fu is obviously better than mine.

    7. Re:I still haven't filled my 60GB HDD... by Blkdeath · · Score: 2
      i never even filled my 20gb drive. and i had 3 operating systems and an impressive collection of pr0n and mp3s on it. unless you do digital video editing, you probably won't ever need anything larger than 40gb. at least until the next version of windows and office comes out.

      I've come pretty close to filling my 80GB Western Digital that resides in my server, and the 20GB and 40GB that make up my workstation are getting pretty close to filled based on;

      • Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault
      • MechWarrior 4: Vengeance
      • Max Payne
      • Need For Speed III
      • Oni
      • Soldier Of Fortune Platinum
      • Soldier Of Fortune II: Double Helix
      • Return To Castle Wolfenstein
      • WarCraft III
      • WarCraft II
      • Star Trek: Armada 2

      With more coming (Comanche 4, Silent Hill 2, Hitman 2: Silent Assault, etc) as soon as I upgrade my video card. That's not to mention the fact that I've got;

      • Windows XP
        • Microsoft Office 2000
        • Corel Office 2002
      • Windows 2000
      • Gentoo 1.2
        • KDE 3.0.5a
        • OpenOffice 1.0.1
        • VMWare
        • Windows 98SE
        • Windows 2000
        • SuSE 8.0

      Gentoo 1.4

      FreeBSD 4.7

      installed presently. Video editing does eat up a lot of space, but there are probably dozens of reasons why a person would require large amounts of storage capacity. A friend of mine with 30GB worth of MP3s, another friend with several game CD images stored on his drive (he hates hunting for the CDs), a colleague who runs a recording studio and deals with raw, uncompressed digital audio, etc. etc.

      The 15GB drive in my laptop is getting a bit brimming right now, since I have to have three operating systems and a lot of data (network maps/plans, company information, images, price lists, development tools, etc.).

      --
      BD Phone Home!

      Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.

  15. DVD technology? by tandr · · Score: 2, Interesting

    More importantly, they claim that this will be backwards compatible to existing DVD technology

    But wait a sec... with which DVD it will be compatible? DVD-R ? DVD-RAM? DVD-RW? DVD+RW? There are more then enough DVD-xxx technologies already, and if rate of creating new ones will be the same, I think in 7 years they will have at least 3-5 new more to choose from!

  16. What happened to Constellation 3D? by agallagh42 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There was a company called Constellation 3D that was supposed to have something called a Fluorescent Multilayer Disc (FMD) with capacity in the Terabyte range.

    You'll notice that their website no longer exists. It did stink of vapourware from the beginning, but I had a glimmer of hope that it would become something. Here is the most recent press release I could find on the subject, but it's from early 2001.

    They said they'd have their terabyte discs out "within a year or two". Oh well, I guess I'll have to wait until 2010 now...

    --
    Carpe Cerevisi - Seize the Beer
  17. 2010? by Rew190 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not until 2010? 7 years is a long time. Shouldn't that amount of space be pretty much commonplace by that point anyhow? Sure, it sounds like a lot now, but somehow I don't think that number will be at all impressive in 7 years.

    I imagine that if one of these gets scratched you're gonna lose a whole lotta data unless it has some sweet error correction going for it.

  18. LOTR 3 in 1 by Scrameustache · · Score: 3, Funny
    So the LOTR extended footage 3-in-1 complete story on one DVD is due out in 2010 then? Damn...7 more years to wait!

    --

    You can't take the sky from me...

    1. Re:LOTR 3 in 1 by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 2

      Never flown trans-Pacific, huh? Sitting in one chair for 12 hours is no picnic, but it's not that big a deal. Fifteen to Sydney is a hike, and 16 from Hong Kong to New York is no fun. But it's doable.

      --

      I write in my journal
  19. LOTR Full Set by Aggrazel · · Score: 3, Funny

    WOW! 1.5 TB!

    That ought to be just enough to hold the LotR collectors edition with all 3 special editions, all 3 regular editions, and 56.2 hours of special footage detailing every aspect of every actors life, and every thought that went through Peter Jackson's head in the last 12 years (not to mention, Sean Astin's 6 hours of bitching about how his hobbit sized underwear kept riding up while filming) all on ONE DVD! In both Widescreen and Fullscreen formats!

    Awesome!

    1. Re:LOTR Full Set by AndroidCat · · Score: 2

      Due to the success of LOTR, by 2010 they'll probably have shot the second trilogy. :^)

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
    2. Re:LOTR Full Set by AndroidCat · · Score: 2

      I was kidding. Using the Silmarillion for movies would take some .. adaptive writing. LOTR was hard enough to bring to the screen without butchering the story.

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
    3. Re:LOTR Full Set by mcmonkey · · Score: 3, Funny

      But The Silmarillion deals with the history of Middle Earth before the events in the LOTR. So would the current movies actually be 4, 5, and 6 in the series?

      Just don't tell me it turns out Sauron is Frodo's father.

      I said, DON'T TELL ME!!

    4. Re:LOTR Full Set by Zeinfeld · · Score: 2
      Actually, if they used Tolkien's writings on the First or Second Ages of Middle-Earth as it's basis, a prequel trilogy wouldn't suck.

      Or if they were to look at the nothern mythologies on which they were based. Tolkein madee no secret of the fact that he took ideas from those sources. One of the motivations for the books in the first place was to get people interested in them.

      Tolkein was disgusted with 'that bloody ignoramous' Hitler for hijacking the Norther heritage for his own political ends, he correctly realised that Hitler would pollute many of the symbols he appropriated.

      There is no reason that the Silmarilion etc could not be made into workable movies. After all The Bond movies have done perfectly well using short stories, not that they are based on Flemming's books any longer.

      --
      Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
      Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
    5. Re:LOTR Full Set by AndroidCat · · Score: 2
      Imagine a Beowulf cluster of .. Beowulf! :^)

      over Xmas I reread the Simillarion. I can't see tieing together the various tales in that book into a coherent set of movies. There's some good stuff that could be expanded, but that would take "creative writing", and I'm not sure that I'd like to see that done, even if it had the blessing of Christopher Tolkien. (Almost a week without computers or Internet, not even any spam, yaaargh! Today I start on the telephone/voice interface to email, never again! Injury a buttocks culture of voice recognition software!)

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  20. Re:not that amazing by benzapp · · Score: 2

    2010--- that's 7 years from now. 7 years ago I was dumbfounded by Pentium 166's with 200MB hard drives.

    I don't know what it is with youngins today not knowing the history of hard drives. Needless to say, 200 meg hard drives were common with 486's were the dominant process. This was around 1992-1993. When I got a 486 DX/2 66 Dell in 1994, it came with a 360 meg hard drive.

    gigabyte were common by the time Pentium 166's came out in 1996. That same year I got a 1.6 GB western digital that still works to this day. Hell, even my Compaq laptop from that era, 486 DX/2 50, 16 megs of ram, 640x480 256 color screen, and a 340 meg hard drive! This laptop was super high end, nearly $5000 in 1994.

    Technology moves fast, but not that fast. besides, you are making me feel old and I am only 25

    --
    I don't read or respond to AC posts
  21. but... but... but... by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't WANT more on DVDs. I want bigger HARD DRIVES.

    Thing is, I don't want to have hundreds of stupid little plastic discs in their stupid little plastic boxes lining shelves in my place.

    Thats why I ripped all my CDs to my hard drive and hooked my comp. to my stereo. I listen to stuff I never bothered to before because it was a pain going through all my 1000+ CDs.

    I want to store all my DVDs on my HD for the same reason. But I cant as it is!

    Give us 50,000 TB hard drives FIRST (what comes after tera??)

    --
    This space available.
    1. Re:but... but... but... by WetCat · · Score: 2, Informative

      PB - Peta Bytes.

      (no relation to PETA which is animal rights group).

    2. Re:but... but... but... by glwtta · · Score: 2

      tera -> peta -> exa -> zetta -> yotta

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
    3. Re:but... but... but... by Helter · · Score: 2

      As removable media becomes larger and larger the need for a hard drive becomes less and less.

      So you have your entire CD collection on your HD, why not have it all on one DVD? As long as the thing is rewritable what's the difference? Realistically, unless HDs improve at a drastic rate (which they probably will) I really don't see much of a reason to keep them. I'd much rather have a computer the runs off of removable drives (remember back when you had the OS on a 5.25 inch disk?) rather than a hard drive anyway. Want to dual boot? Just image another DVD with a different operating system. Want to store your entire CD collection in a lossless format? Just put it on a disk and keep on adding as you get more music.
      Not to mention it would make migrating to a new PC so much easier.

      Really, I've got 200 GB of HD space in my house (mostly full), but I'd trade it all for some GOOD, RELIABLE rewritable disks like I just described.

    4. Re:but... but... but... by ryanvm · · Score: 2

      I don't WANT more on DVDs. I want bigger HARD DRIVES.

      Where are you going to back up all this data? That's what these big ass DVDs are for.

      Thing is, I don't want to have hundreds of stupid little plastic discs in their stupid little plastic boxes lining shelves in my place.

      Again, if you have 1.5 TB DVD's you aren't going to have hundreds of little plastic discs laying everywhere. That's what you have now.

    5. Re:but... but... but... by Helter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Yeah, I need the best of both worlds. Huge amounts of space, easily rewritable, AND removable/reliable.

      Until that arrives I'll stick to the combination of HD and removable media, but I'm waiting...

      Incidentally, if/when this happens it'll also require a dramatic shift if OS design. To have the installed OS act generic you would probably have to have the hardware abstraction layer stored in the hardware, instead of in the OS system data. That way I could just pop my disks into any computer I wanted and use it just like it was mine.

    6. Re:but... but... but... by InfoVore · · Score: 2
      I don't WANT more on DVDs. I want bigger HARD DRIVES.

      Don't worry too much about it. Hard Drive capacity seems to be doubling approximately every 12 months, while the price seems to be holding constant.

      If that holds true, then when the new 1.5TB MegaDVDs are released, you should be able to pick up a 10TB hard drive for around $100 retail. (Calculation: 2^7=128, 128*80GB=10TB. $80GB HD today costs about $100).

      A bit below the 50,000TB you want, but you will only need to wait another 12 years for that. Perhaps sooner, since all these doubling trends seem to be accelerating.

      Of course, some of us don't want TB class DVDs or HDs... we want terabytes of solid-state memory. Holographic storage crystals would fit the bill nicely.

      I.V.

      --
      "These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
    7. Re:but... but... but... by Salamander · · Score: 2
      Where are you going to back up all this data? That's what these big ass DVDs are for.

      No, that's what tapes are for. Writable optical random-access media happen to do well for short-term backups (they don't have the shelf-life for long-term) but it's not really what they're *for*.

      --
      Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
    8. Re:but... but... but... by /dev/trash · · Score: 2

      I'd rather have one DVD to hold all my data ( actually two, redundancy ya know) than one HDD with movable parts.

    9. Re:but... but... but... by ryanvm · · Score: 2

      No, that's what tapes are for. Writable optical random-access media happen to do well for short-term backups (they don't have the shelf-life for long-term)

      1) Big tape drives are slow and very expensive. Most home users don't do tape backups.

      2) Tapes are absolutely not good long-term storage. They use magnetic recording and the signals will fade. Granted, in it's current incarnation CD-RW won't hold up in the long term either, but at least the technology has some potential. Magnetic media will never be an acceptable long term solution.

    10. Re:but... but... but... by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Migrating to a new PC is no problem. I have 2 HDs, one 180 gig for media, and the other for the system.
      I just pop out the media drive and put it in my new system.

      And that way I don't have to dig around in a stack trying to find the right piece of removable media. Everything is on line all the time. So as I lie in bed I can use my remote to cue up any one of over 10k tracks of music.

      I like neatness. Everything self-contained in a little machine. Everything instantly accessible online. I HATE swapping discs, I HATE having CD shelves.

      I HATE having media which has no need of being wedded to a physical format being FORCED to be. I want the MUSIC, I don't want a chunk of plastic.

      --
      This space available.
    11. Re:but... but... but... by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 2

      I have it all backed up on another HD, stuck away in a safe place. True, I could use the writable DVD to back it up, but it would probably be slower, and my bet is the new flavor DVD, if writable, will come with some form of copy management system.

      --
      This space available.
    12. Re:but... but... but... by Salamander · · Score: 2
      Big tape drives are slow and very expensive.

      It's not too hard to find a modern tape drive for about three hundred bucks that will sustain 2 MB/s (equivalent to 12x) and store 20GB per cartridge (equivalent to 30 CD-Rs). That hardly seems to fit your image of "slow and very expensive".

      Most home users don't do tape backups.

      Utterly irrelevant. The reason has more to do with the convenience of random access (which, I admit, is a compelling feature) than anything we're talking about.

      Tapes are absolutely not good long-term storage.

      Please, study the work done by professional archivists and such. Manufacturer's claims are worthless. When we're talking about home users, "ideal conditions" studies are almost as bad. From what I've seen, the life expectancy of a CD-R under typical conditions is about two years; for tape it's two to five. CD-RW and all flavors of writable DVD are even less durable.

      All that said, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with using optical media for backup. I do so myself. What I said is that it's not what they're *for* - i.e. not *designed* for. CD and DVD formats were designed for distribution, and recordable versions originally for copying, but backup is neither of those. MO is actually the most durable type of storage that's anywhere near affordable (ion-beam-etched nickel plates don't count) and could be said to've been designed for backup, but media are expensive and I don't think that's what you were talking about.

      Hmmm. I wonder why there's no MO tape. Seems like it'd be extremely durable with a reasonable media cost. Maybe nobody's come up with a flexible MO material/coating.

      --
      Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
    13. Re:but... but... but... by dildatron · · Score: 2

      Damn you are lazy! do you HATE typing?

      --


      If you had nuts on your chin, would they be chin nuts?
    14. Re:but... but... but... by Jafafa+Hots · · Score: 2

      not lazy. I just hate STUFF. Clutter. Possessions. Hate them.
      I hate our consumer culture where owning physical things is considered success. I see the need to own as a sickness.

      I want only my clothes and my PC. Maybe a blanket.

      --
      This space available.
    15. Re:but... but... but... by spike+hay · · Score: 2

      I would much rather have a better hard drive than a better optical drive. I HATE hard drives. They are slow, unreliable, and get corrupted all of the time. We need a better solution than this. Perhaps mram (very fast and non volatile, but somehow I doubt it will have the storage capacities to be used for anything more than ram) or holographic storage. (Very fast, large capacity)

      As for chips, I hope that by '10 or '15 we'll have multi-core spintronic processors to speed up Quake 5.

      --
      If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
  22. Re:well thats all well and good but... by docbrown42 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Porn never gets outdated.

    --
    Ed Wedig
    Graphic design services
    docbrown.net
  23. HDTV compatible DVD players? by El+Puerco+Loco · · Score: 2

    this could be cool, it would allow uncompressed 1080p video and uncompressed sound too. hopefully there will be players and TV sets capable of taking advantage of this by that time.

  24. Yes, but will it be recordable? by jridley · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm sure a lot of people see this and say "Finally, I'll be able to back up in a reasonable way!" but it needs to be recordable.

    Even current DVDs are only recordable in one layer. You can't record directly to multiple layers, you have to master two layers separately and then wafer them together in the manufacturing process.

    While a > 1TB disc is a cool idea, if it's only usable on commercially duplicated, mass-distributed data, it's of very, very limited use.

    1. Re:Yes, but will it be recordable? by terrymr · · Score: 2

      Pre-recorded dvd's aren't recorded at all they're pressed like vinyl records and cd's. Then the layers are sandwiched together.

    2. Re:Yes, but will it be recordable? by SectoidRandom · · Score: 2

      Err, even if we assume as you did that the pace of technology will stand still over the next 7 years, you seem to have missed the fact that when it comes to the "[something]x" speed measurements on DVD's, a 1x DVD-R drive is equivalent to I think 20xCD-R. So your figures are a little off..

      Considering also the standard CD-R now is 52x with DVD's not far behind, well enough said..

  25. oh, thanks a lot by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 5, Funny

    supposed to deliver a 1.5 TB (that's a terabyte and a half)

    This reminds me of a quote from an old Sports Night episode. They were talking about Mt. Everest, I think.

    Guy #1: "Twenty-nine thousand feet. Can you imagine how high that is?"

    Guy #2: "It's 29,000 feet."

    Guy #1: "Yeah, but you've got to put it in perspective. Compare it to something you can visualize."

    Guy #2: (beat) "It's 29,000 rulers."

    Thanks for the clarification, guys.

    --

    I write in my journal
  26. Re:not that amazing by Helter · · Score: 2

    I've been noticing that too...

    7 years ago a friend of mine had an 11 Gig hard drive (I remember his exact quote "I can copy *ENTIRE CD's* to my drive"). Now 11 Gigs was impressive as all hell, but it's a far cry from the 200 meg drive the parent poster was claiming.

  27. what? by BarrettAnderson · · Score: 2, Insightful

    BY 2010, according to senior Intel architects, a CPU will have processing power equivalent to the brain of a bumble bee

    now that was random...

  28. Re:not that amazing by benzapp · · Score: 2

    Do you think 1.5TB will be such a big deal in 7 years? I don't think so. We'll have 1TB hard drives in 4-5 years from now.

    no, I agree. I think 1000 gigabyte hard disks will be around in five years guaranteed.

    --
    I don't read or respond to AC posts
  29. Re:Porn Vs Internet by AndroidCat · · Score: 2

    If it's R/W, then it could be used to buffer all the incomming spam. (Might need a RAID cluster by 2010.)

    --
    One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
  30. Re:Bad for RIAA by NorthDude · · Score: 2

    With 1.5 Tb of available space, I swear i won't compress my music to MP3! it would be like compressing a 10 K file today which is stored on 40GB hd...

    --


    I'd rather be sailing...
  31. Bah! by Strange+Ranger · · Score: 3, Funny


    Can't fool me. If they were serious they'd have said 1.44 TB.

    --

    Operator, give me the number for 911!
  32. Re:Okay.... by Helter · · Score: 2

    I remember when geeks weren't cool, no matter WHAT size their hard drive was.

  33. In 10 Years..... by jwilcox154 · · Score: 2, Funny

    It would take that whole disk just to hold the M$ Window$ Installation files.

  34. Soundthing sounds wrong? Resolution? by phorm · · Score: 2

    Ummm... something sounds wrong here. A terabyte for 90 minutes of video? Ummm, I'd have to ask - what resolution is that at, and what's the BPS rate for the encoded video? At 10MBps it would imagine it looks pretty damn good, and 10x60x90=54,000MB (36GB). At 100Mbps it's 540Gb. It is roughly a rate of (a little less than) 200MBps, because that's what it would take to be able to use use 1 TB on 90 minutes of movie. That being considered... I know of nothing that plays movies at 200MBps. DVD-ROM's could not spin fast enough... and I think the processor/memory load would be astronomical.

    Also, why would it be better in film when a lot of these movies are starting to be being RECORDED in digital? I'm guessing even the movie studios aren't using hundred-thousands of Terabytes of digital video. Going from a digital medium to an uncompressed digital medium... loss should be low if not null.

    My calculations may be off... but something still sounds fishy about this

    1. Re:Soundthing sounds wrong? Resolution? by phorm · · Score: 2

      Ahh yes. I believe that they do record at rather huge resolutions though, before they dump it down to something TV-friendly. I was calculating as if the were using a (for example) big one like 10240x7680@32bit... but I forgot to multiply for the 30fps (rea..ly sl..ow ex..plo...sions that would be).

      So, you could still get several (almost 15) hours of DVD (at 104.3gb/hour) on the actual presentation DVD. Less at a higher res - or for a large screen - but you should still be able to get more than 90.

      I'm still wondering at what rate those cameras record though... at high res it would still have to get in the >=100MBps area. And for such resolution to be displayed at 100+MBps would be beyond the capabilities of modern players max speed. You'd have a virtual helicopter in your DVD-ROM otherwise... lots of power use too.

  35. Backward compatibility by Salamander · · Score: 2

    I don't think backward compatibility to current DVD technology is going to count for a lot in 2010 because nobody will be using current DVD technology (for data) by then. Backwards compatibility with Blu-ray, or its successor, or whatever comes along and supplants both five years from now, is what will really matter. Compatibility with a by-then obsolete standard will actually turn out to be a handicap in 2010, and they probably know that, but here in 2002 maybe it helps them get funding.

    --
    Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
    1. Re:Backward compatibility by Salamander · · Score: 2

      Here's a clue, "buddy": not all technologies have the same life cycle, and in general tech life cycles have been decreasing. Your apples-and-oranges comparison is utterly worthless, like you.

      --
      Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
  36. Help by limekiller4 · · Score: 2

    prostoalex writes:
    "...that is supposed to deliver a 1.5 TB (that's a terabyte and a half)..."

    Is this for all the people who think that 1.5 means "one and a third"?

    --
    My .02,
    Limekiller
  37. Re:not that amazing by NineNine · · Score: 2

    I know that I'm not the oldest one here, but I'm probably relatively old... I'm still gateful for hard drives. I probably had 4-5 PC's before I got one with a "hard drive". It was pretty amazing to have a 10 meg hard drive (that's almost 30 5 1/4 disks!!! wow!!)

  38. Think of the scratch damage! by dnoyeb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    1 scratch and you can wipe a whole movie! whoopee!

    Essentially less fault tolerant, and less ability to make backup copies.

    Who wants that?

  39. Re:not that amazing by Blkdeath · · Score: 2
    Ok you're right, after I submitted and did more remembering, I remember my friends having 1GB hard drives in '95. But in '92 when we purchased a 486DX/33 it had a 120MB hard drive that was big for its time. Still, 7 years ago we had 1.6GB hard drives. Do you think 1.5TB will be such a big deal in 7 years? I don't think so. We'll have 1TB hard drives in 4-5 years from now.

    Based on the proportionality the computer industry seems to maintain, hard drive capacity will, in all likelyhood, outstripe removeable media capacity by atleast ten-fold.

    Right now I can burn 4.7 (or, I believe, 9.4) GB onto a single disc. I can also purchase a single hard disk drive that will hold 200GB. That's more than twenty times the storage capacity.

    Following that (grossly over-simplified) logic, by the time I can store 1.5TB on a single disc, my hard drive will hold a modest 30-60TB.

    While the notion of RAID'ing a group of 5 30TB hard disk drives sounds way more than phoenominal today, it'll most likely be fairly common-place in a decade.

    I'm not sure if the content and magnitude of growth of knowledge/information we have will grow at the rate of technology, so it's difficult to say whether we'd need "Data Centres" in the not-so-distant future, or if the network server will be a standard ATX (or equivalent at the time) case sitting under somebody's desk.

    Then again, if full-motion 3D imaging comes to pass as a commonplace technology (hard to envision, what with regular video conferencing being so niche (ie; not mainstream), we could see requirements for fields upon fields of 100PB storage arrays.

    --
    BD Phone Home!

    Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.

  40. Re:not that amazing by Blkdeath · · Score: 2
    7 years ago a friend of mine had an 11 Gig hard drive (I remember his exact quote "I can copy *ENTIRE CD's* to my drive"). Now 11 Gigs was impressive as all hell, but it's a far cry from the 200 meg drive the parent poster was claiming.

    7 years ago? As in 1995-1996? Your friend must have had a pretty decent source of income to purchase such an astronomically large drive.

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    BD Phone Home!

    Shameless plug. Like you weren't expecting it.

  41. Re:90 minutes of uncompressed HD video by JKR · · Score: 2
    Yes, he's right; HD is ~ 1400 x 1200 (1050 in the US) pixels, and 10 bit resolution means 30 bits for the three channels, YUV (we're in video land here, your RGB don't buy nothing). Therefore, you're looking at

    1400 x 1200 x 30 / 8 = 6 MB

    for a SINGLE FRAME OF HD. Multiply up by 25 or 30 FPS and that's about 0.93 TB for 90 minutes.

    Not so hard, really, now is it? Of course, that is uncompressed...

    Jon

  42. Re:not that amazing by Helter · · Score: 2

    It was early '96 if I recall correctly, and his father had gotten it through some amazingly fortuitous circumstances for a good price. I think I had an 800 Meg HD at the time.
    Considering that I was still running Windows 3.11 (I was morally opposed to Windows '95) still, it was more than enough.

  43. perhaps less impressive than it sounds by g4dget · · Score: 2

    At current growth rates, I suspect that harddisks will be surpassing that capacity quickly at around that time. So, we'll probably still have disks that are much bigger than DVDs. And that means that 1.5TB DVDs will probably not bee too different from the way DVDs are today: a slighty too small and fairly slow medium for storing data for a few years (since they are not guaranteed to last much longer).

  44. Why wait till 2010? by Eric_Cartman_South_P · · Score: 2
    make love to your frigid wife, baby-sit the kids, wash the dog and the car.

    I'll do all that right now for free! Just pay for the plane ticket and tell the Mrs to slip into something more comfortable. And for the car, one coat or two?

  45. I don't want to be the one... by delcielo · · Score: 2

    Oooooh, I don't wanna be the guy that leaves that database backup on the dash of his car.

    --
    Hot Damn! It's the Soggy Bottom Boys!
  46. Yes but this is SneakerNet by redcliffe · · Score: 2

    You need a higher capacity sneakernet to fill the 50,000 TB hard drive.

  47. err.. by SectoidRandom · · Score: 2

    That's kinda the idea.. You see at the rate we're going by 2010 hard drives 1TB in size will likely be tiny, that presents many of us here a serious problem, serious as opposed to; "wow, see how much hdtv porn i can store now". That is of course:

    Backups.

    Offline storage has to keep up HD storage for this reason most of all, and with the current exponential price increase with each incremental tape storage size increase, optical technologies like multilayered DVD's look like one of the best possibilities.

  48. Re:Okay.... by Catbeller · · Score: 2

    Geeks are cool? I don't think that is a situation that will long obtain. When the salaries start dropping, the coolness of being PC-bound will abate, sadly.

  49. Maybe, maybe not by Goonie · · Score: 2
    HDTV may have arrived, but whether it's moved in or is just a temporary guest isn't clear.

    At current prices, it'll be quite a while before Joe Sixpack will choose it over a standard TV.

    --

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
    --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
    1. Re:Maybe, maybe not by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 2

      At current prices, it'll be quite a while before Joe Sixpack will choose it over a standard TV.

      Look more closely. Most of the TV's at the local Best Buy have HDTV tuners built in already, and are capable of displaying an HDTV picture. The picture may not be as good as you'd expect, depending on the quality of the tube or projector in the set, but it works.

      I did a little last-minute Christmas shopping yesterday, and I out of my own curiosity I did a quick count. I didn't add up a total, but on each aisle there were more HD-compatible TVs than otherwise, except when I got down to the sub-20-inch models.

      --

      I write in my journal
    2. Re:Maybe, maybe not by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 2

      I was under the impression that they weren't yet certain that today's HDTV tuners would be able to handle tomorrow's HDTV broadcasts.

      That's not actually true at all. All the stuff related to HDTV signaling, from picture formats to audio encoding to the 8VSB transmission system, is defined by SMPTE standards. These are the same standards that govern old-fashioned TV. You can have the same degree of confidence in a new HDTV that you had in your old-fashioned TV.

      Does it suck that we're forcing old-fashioned TV's into obsolescence? Yeah, kinda, but it's better than the alternative. And remember that you don't have to buy a new TV. You can get an HD set-top box for $90 today-- prices, of course, will drop over the next couple of years as demand increases-- that lets you watch digital broadcasts on your old-fashioned set. You won't get improved picture or sound, but you will at least get better reception than you get via analog TV today.

      But the digital transition is set in stone; old-style television will cease to exist in the US in 2007. I wouldn't be surprised at all if we started to see PSA's from the FCC starting in the next year or so telling people that old-style TV is going away, and explaining the options.

      --

      I write in my journal
  50. Uses for 1.5 terabyte optical discs by MtViewGuy · · Score: 2

    Right now, there are obvious uses for such a high capacity optical drive, especially if they can produce at the same time a one terabyte re-writeable drive too.

    For a re-writeable drive, one obvious application is personal video recorders (PVR's). Imagine by 2010 instead of recording shows on a TiVo or Replay TV unit on larger and larger hard drives the PVR will only sport a 20-30 gigabyte hard drive to store the program code for the PVR and program indexing information; the actual program itself will be recorded onto re-writeable and removeable 1 TB optical drives that will store nearly 1,000 hours of standard-format digital video or circa 300 hours of 1080i 16:9 uncompressed HDTV video. It is this technology that will finally end the reign of VHS VCR's for good.

    For non-writeable 1.5 TB media, there is one application that needs it now: theatrical quality digital projection of movies. By 2010 digital projectors will have picture quality equivalent to 2000 lines non-interlaced, and that will mean massive storage requirements. Imagine storing the entire movie in uncompressed 2000-line digital projection format on just ONE DVD-sized disc, including multichannel audio in 6-7 languages and 7-8 languages of subtitles! Such a change will make it possible to have true simultaneous worldwide release of theatrical features, and just the savings in shipping costs between a movie on these new digital discs weighing well under half a pound (including the shipping package!) and a 35 mm print that weighs 105 pounds per hour of film is tremendous, to say the least.

    1. Re:Uses for 1.5 terabyte optical discs by alannon · · Score: 2

      A back of dc calculation shows that 2000 * 4000 video at 24fps and 32 bit color depth would work out to about 2.6 TB per hour.

      Throw in some decent compression and a 2 hour movie would squeeze quite comfortably onto a 1.5 TB disc.

  51. Will it be consumer technology? by Eric+Green · · Score: 2
    I am aware of two different new optical technologies that are scheduled to hit in the 2nd quarter of next year. The first is a new DVD-RAM technology that is supposed to double the current density, allowing close to 20gb per platter. This one is aimed at the consumer market.

    The second is in a traditional MO form factor, aimed at the archival storage market. The manufacturer claims that this one will hold 20gb per platter too, but has laid out a schedule that will get it to 100gb per platter by 2006, and they feel they can get to 1tb per platter by 2010 by using the multi-layer optical technology. It is altogether feasible to think that they could make a read-only version that would fit 1.5tb on a platter, though obviously they don't intend to do so (since they are a vendor of traditional MO drives).

    In short, while I'm dubious about the 1.5TB claims, they are credible, and the guys in the archival storage industry are going to be *VERY* interested in these guys. Optical media has the ability to be randomly accessed, unlike tapes, but right now is a bit too expensive (at about $63 per 100gb, vs. under $30 per 100gb for LTO tape). But tape technology is approaching its limits, and the new media for the drives coming out in 2003 is supposed to be the same price as the current media, which would halve the price of optical storage. I have not seen tape drives making these kinds of advances recently... the leap to 120gb LTO was more of an extension of the DLT concept to its logical extremes, and there is not much of anywhere to go there. Given the general scuzziness of tape (and as the architect and head designer of a tape backup product I think I'm qualified to talk about tape being scuzzy :-), I applaud the thought that optical media may *FINALLY* be coming down in price to the point where it can be cost-competitive to tape...

    --
    Send mail here if you want to reach me.
  52. The funny thing... by Eric+Green · · Score: 2
    is that these robber baron "no intervention" types are all so eager to have government intervene -- but only on their own behalf!

    A patent is a government grant of limited monopoly for a particular point in time. Ask these people how they'd feel about there being no government patent enforcement, and then ask them if, having been granted a monopoly by the government, surely government has some interest in making sure said monopoly is not abused?

    Whatever you do, do not get sucked into arguments about "intellectual property". There is no such thing. Ideas cannot be owned. The government can grant a monopoly ("patent") on use of an idea for a limited time, but it is the monopoly, not the idea, that is owned. The whole reason for the Orwellian phrase "intellectual property" is to trick people into believing that ideas can be owned, when there is nothing in the Constitution, U.S. law, or in the history of humanity that supports such an assertation. A patent or copyright (government-granted monopoly rights) can be owned, but the ideas themselves are no more ownable than the notion that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." (an idea stated by some crazy commie terrorist sympathizer by the name of "Thomas Jefferson", but no more owned by him than any other idea).

    -E

    --
    Send mail here if you want to reach me.
  53. Re:not that amazing by spike+hay · · Score: 2


    CD-ROMs hold 650M? Your home drive array is going to be 180G.


    Not necessarily. When CD drives first became commonplace, they were much larger than HDs. However, this is still going to be much smaller than hard disks in ten years. HDs should be around 50 terabytes by then.

    --
    If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
  54. Nonsense by Eric+Green · · Score: 2
    Multi-layer disks are no more succeptible to scratch damage than single-layer disks, and the same error-correction codes and protocols work fine. You sound like the guy who said of 1gb hard drives, "Can't be done, why, one head crash would wipe out hundreds of files!". It HAS been done, in case you didn't notice!

    I will also point out that there are companies like Plasmon that have a game plan to create writable optical disks of up to 1TB by 2010 using the same technology. So your notion of it being "hard to back up" is less than apt. So there (pffft!).

    --
    Send mail here if you want to reach me.
    1. Re:Nonsense by dnoyeb · · Score: 2

      " I will also point out that there are companies like Plasmon that have a game plan to create writable optical disks of up to 1TB by 2010 using the same technology. So your notion of it being "hard to back up" is less than apt. So there (pffft!)."

      And their technology will disable DRM?

  55. 20gb tape drives for $300? No panacea. by Eric+Green · · Score: 2
    If you're talking about the ones I'm thinking of: The average speed of those in actual backups is more like 1mb/sec, not 2mb/sec like you claim, and the average cost per tape is $30. They're not cost-effective, in other words.

    I use a 6-tape DDS-4 DAT changer to back up my network, but that cost considerably more than $300.

    Regarding long-term storage, LTO and DLT are expensive but should be considerably more durable than DAT technology was. LTO is currently the cheapest per-gigabyte archival storage mechanism, storing 120gb of data onto a $35 tape. DVD-RAM disks, wholesale, hold 9.4gb for $5 apiece, meaning that they're nowhere near being cost-competitive. HOWEVER: Tape technology is reaching its limits. Densities have gone up, but the biggest issue is that they're reaching the limits of the physical tape mechanisms -- you can't make the actual tape skinnier to cram more tape into the tape because you're reaching the limits of plastics technology. At the moment they are increasing density by making the tracks skinnier, but they are reaching the physical limits of tape registration (i.e., the tape moves up and down slightly as it passes the head, and the issue is that they are reaching the limits of their ability to control and compensate for this limit). Thus even though linear bit densities can increase somewhat, the primary method used by DLT and LTO to get their amazing capacities (putting more tracks onto the tape and stuffing more tape into the same form-factor cartridges) is reaching the end of physical capability, unless you actually imbed a head in the cartridges -- and at that point you are talking about very expensive cartridges.

    Optical media, on the other hand, has not yet begun reaching its limits, and has the advantage of random access -- useful when you have to actually retrieve data or are writing data incrementally and do not want to have to wait for the tape to whiz to the end to start writing. I suspect that when we have the 1TB read-write optical media, we will see tape go the same way as floppy disks (i.e., as a rarely-used media mostly used for backward compatibility purposes rather than actual storage).

    -E

    --
    Send mail here if you want to reach me.
  56. Re:Bad for RIAA by kesuki · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You might want to concider using the Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC).
    Especially since your oggs already support FLAC
    "libOggFLAC and libOggFLAC++, which wrap the encoders and decoders of libFLAC and libFLAC++, respectively, to allow access to FLAC streams in an Ogg container"
    At just slightly over 2:1 compression it's enough to turn that uncompressed best-quality 2304 kbps (48khz stereo 24-bit) .wav into a ~1220 kbps .ogg. Keep in mind that DVD-quality 1536 kbps (48khz stereo 16-bit) would reduce to ~814 Kbps, in a FLACed OGG. BTW where did you come up with 1024? CD quality is 1411 Kbps (~605kbps FLACed).
    just for fun, that's ~5916 hours of FLACed CD audio per 1.5 TB DVD. Just under 247 days worth of audio. Mathematically lossless Audio+video compression possibly in HD format could finally be realistically possible. At 63.1 Mbps (Hufyuv+FLACed 720x480 30 fps) you can fit ~50-55 hours of DVD resolution, lossless quality audio+video on the 1.5 TB dvd (depending on audio quality). 1920x1080 HDTV is 380Mbps so expect 8-9 hours of lossless full-resolution HDTV.