Slashdot Mirror


Ferroelectric Storage Density Tops 20KDVDs/Cubit^2

DeAshcroft writes "As reported in Technology Research News, researchers from Tohoku University, the Japanese National Institute for Materials Science, and Pioneer Corporation have demonstrated a prototype ferroelectric (as opposed to ferromagnetic) storage mechanism with density of 1.5 trillion dots per square inch. No word on why Japanese researchers are using square inches, but the new storage benchmark is the DVD. This is 47 DVD's in a square inch, or over 20KiloDVD's per square cubit. Original paper appeared in the Applied Physics Letters." In related memory news, an Anonymous Coward writes "It appears the the ever present pause between photo's on a digital camera might finally be fixed. A company now claims http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/102/C1396/ ) to have kicked up the write speed on a compact flash card up to 4MB/sec. This means we lesser photographers can now get the right action shot just by volume alone ;-)"

296 comments

  1. and just how many... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    libraries of congress per cubic mile is it?

    1. Re:and just how many... by Scaba · · Score: 1

      I dunno....I still measure everything in football fields.

    2. Re:and just how many... by ShavenYak · · Score: 1

      That's fine as long as you know how many rods to the hogshead your car gets!

      --

      Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
  2. Those Japs love their cartoon porn. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yeah, who else who measure in inches except the US and porn stars ?

    1. Re:Those Japs love their cartoon porn. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I measure the length of mine in light years.

    2. Re:Those Japs love their cartoon porn. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You must really like seeing a zero and then a decimal point and then a whole heap of zeros ;)

    3. Re:Those Japs love their cartoon porn. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't worry, yours will never see the light of day.

  3. Is this really important? by Blaine+Hilton · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At least right now what type of applications would this be good for? Do we really need that much storage? Perhaps if programmers wrote better code........... Then again remember when 2megs of memory was "the bomb" ?

    1. Re:Is this really important? by isorox · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Do we really need that much storage?

      $GENERIC_QUOTE_640K

      Video takes up a lot. Try storing multi-channel (multiple camera angles) uncompessed HDTV, gigs soon add up. Mix in some form of holographic projection and a dash of libraries of congress and you eat up terrabytes.

    2. Re:Is this really important? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Articles like this are always interesting because I think "Wow 47 DVD's on a little coin sized disk I can slip into my walkman... that's really useful!" But then I know that the retail product utilising this tech is probably years off or may never be practical at all.

      I prefer to have an article like the one about new sensors for digital cameras that are being put into products NOW. This way I can go make use of this new useful technlogy.

      As for storage, I'm still waiting for my serial ATA solution... never mind the ferroelectric version.

    3. Re:Is this really important? by Max+Romantschuk · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Most people don't. Anyone doing video or audio stuff do.

      I make music in my spare time. All the source files, sample libraries and raw audio of one single track won't fit on a CD anymore, even though the final track will only be something like a five megabyte mp3/ogg.

      Storage is like money, if you have enough you don't think about it too much. That way you end up with more time to do what you really want to :)

      --
      .: Max Romantschuk :: http://max.romantschuk.fi/
    4. Re:Is this really important? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wish people would leave that Bill Gates 640K comment alone... it's been said time and time and time again that it's an urban myth, Bill Gates never said it. Here, I'm saying it once more: it's an urban myth. Happy?

    5. Re:Is this really important? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yes, it is. Films shot in the 70's are rotting away. Preservation is pretty important.

      Film scanned at 4k per frame at 48-bit color (16 per channel RGB) at ~173,000 frames for a 120 minutes flick = gonzo storage. And that doesn't include the raw mag stock or DATs which contain original audio recordings.

      Several preservation artists have retrieved original 50's musicals *just* before the oxide left the substrate. Time is running out.

      So you do a restoration on HD, and maybe never get the chance to do it again. With cheaper gonzo storage, you no longer have to choose what to lose; you archive it all.

    6. Re:Is this really important? by gbjbaanb · · Score: 1

      I'd say absolutely you do want that much storage.
      I wouldn't think of it as a replacement for disk drives though - a more practical application for that is for backup storage. Some companies have to back up a tremendous amount of data and you usually have to decide what is and isn't important enough to backup. If you have unlimited storage, that was fast enough (and it did write very quickly), then a company could backup all of its worker's computers, every night, just in case the burglars came in a nicked them all.

      Personally, I'd like unlimited storage for all the stuff I've even had, that goes double nowadays where I'm starting to store music and video. One day I'll store TV programmes too, and the storage requirements will spiral out of my control!

    7. Re:Is this really important? by Grizzlysmit · · Score: 1

      Does someone really always make one of these lame comments about do we need that much, blah blah, or does slashdot pay someone to do it? :-)

      --
      in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that :-D
      Francis Smit
    8. Re:Is this really important? by i+chose+quality · · Score: 1
      eat up terrabytes
      caution: those huge bits of earth's material are not suitable for human digestion

      oooh, you mean terabytes ?
      damn me... ;-)
      --
      the computer is online
      i am not at it
      what a waste of ressources
    9. Re:Is this really important? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While I still do appreciate good programs in small packages, I also wouldn't mind having as much storage space as possible. Short answer, yes, we really need that much storage, and if you don't think so, feel free to continue using an old machine with limited memory.

    10. Re:Is this really important? by Mac+Degger · · Score: 1

      full 4d graphics for a 3d representational system. I'm not talking about simple computational 3d models or 2 layer 3d monitors, I'm talking about fully 3d displays and the data needed to display a full model on them...no matter how many voxels you use, you need a shitload of data.

      --
      -- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
    11. Re:Is this really important? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have Carl Sagan's Cosmos. It occupies no fewer than 7 DVDs, which is quite cumbersome. So yes, I'd love to see a storage medium that can hold more than a few DVDs.

    12. Re:Is this really important? by random_me · · Score: 2

      > At least right now what type of applications would this be good for? Do we really need that
      > much storage?

      Yes, we really need that much storage. I am currently working on a data mining/analysis project. We currently are looking at multi-terabyte datasets from astro and climate simulations.

      Three dimensional super nova explosion simulations take around 50 terabytes at the current resolution. This is small compared to the petabytes of data needed for biological simulations.

      Look at http://sdm.lbl.gov/sdmcenter/tasks.htm for some discussion of why we need huge storage capacities (and some of the other problems involved).

    13. Re:Is this really important? by Bobman1235 · · Score: 1

      what type of applications would this be good for? Do we really need that much storage

      Density is always important in certain applications, especially in government markets. The company I work for makes small multicomputer boards, 4 procesors in a 9U VME slot, but for actual storage, we can only reasonably fit 128MB of flash, due to size restrictions. So to have something this compact... it would help a lot of people.

    14. Re:Is this really important? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      a 120 minutes flick = gonzo storage

      Is that anything like gonzo porn?

    15. Re:Is this really important? by Xerithane · · Score: 1

      At least right now what type of applications would this be good for?

      KaZaA (Lite)

      Do we really need that much storage?

      Average movie: 800MB

      Perhaps if programmers wrote better code...........

      Perhaps if pigeon hole theory didn't exist, we could compress everything down to one byte and it wouldn't matter.

      Then again remember when 2megs of memory was "the bomb" ?

      No, I remember still having to be conservative with memory usage and what I could do with it. Preloading? Don't think so... now playing memory tricks such as precaching in code is possible. Before hand, it wasn't. 2MB was maybe the bomb for people who didn't code anything past a text editor. Even then.. don't edit large documents.

      --
      Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
    16. Re:Is this really important? by jafuser · · Score: 1

      I wonder if this new storage medium may even be more volatile. Is it vulnerable to EMP attack?

      --
      Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
    17. Re:Is this really important? by Pep · · Score: 1

      Umm... LOTR? It would be nice to have all those discs in the expanded version on one disc. You can never have enough space. I can't wait until its virtually infinite.

      I want to be able to store the worlds data on my wrist watch 10 times over!

      Trakker

    18. Re:Is this really important? by MrResistor · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Some other responses have mentioned video, but let me add some real numbers to that. I'm a technician doing customer service repair on storage systems for high end digital video production systems.

      One of our high end systems uses 10 73GB drives. Yes I know that there are bigger drives out there, but for video bandwidth, and therefore rotation speed, is very important, as is stability. Tons of storage space is pretty meaningless if there are hiccups in your video stream.

      Anyway, these are arranged in 2 RAID-3 LUNs, which basically means 8 drives for storage and 2 drives for parity (error-correction). That gives 584GB of storage, which translates into just under 25 hours of high quality standard definition (NTSC) compressed (MPEG-2) video with stereo sound. How's that for eating up storage?

      At the moment I don't deal with HDTV, but I would estimate of the cuff that HD would cut that space down to the 8-10 hour range. Even though my company now offers a solution based on 181G drives (for about 1.5TB of storage!) that only brings that up to around 24 hours worth, which really isn't much when you consider that for many productions one hour of source material for 2 minutes of final product is considered a pretty good ratio. That means that 1.5TB could be eaten up with just the source material for a single one hour show!

      --
      Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
    19. Re:Is this really important? by isorox · · Score: 1

      I never mentioned Bill Gates. Plenty of people have said the 640k thing, in erronously quoting him. I'm quoting them.

    20. Re:Is this really important? by Atzanteol · · Score: 0, Flamebait
      At least right now what type of applications would this be good for? Do we really need that much storage? Perhaps if programmers wrote better code........... Then again remember when 2megs of memory was "the bomb" ?
      *ahem*
      Fuck Off!

      There. I just know everyone else was thinking that, and someone had to say it. I'm so incredibly sick of all these "why do we need anything better?" morons that I could just scream. Sure, troll, flamebait, whatever. Just gotta release every-now-and-then! :-)
      --
      "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

      - Charles Darwin
  4. this is old technology by it0 · · Score: 1

    Once it gets available to the public.

    I mean this is useful yesterday and won't be available in years. Not even taking into account everyone bitching about standards.

  5. Square cubit? by NetDrain · · Score: 1, Funny

    ...and you question the Japanese use of inch?

    1. Re:Square cubit? by Tet · · Score: 2, Funny
      The obligatory Abe Simpson quote:
      "The metric system is the tool of the devil! My car gets forty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it!"
      Not that I agree with him, of course. Why the US still clings to imperial units is beyond me.
      --
      "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
    2. Re:Square cubit? by hcdejong · · Score: 5, Funny

      Why the US still clings to imperial units is beyond me.

      Duh. It's because Americans still measure everything in shitloads.

    3. Re:Square cubit? by gbjbaanb · · Score: 1

      because they're a handy way of measurement generally. think of the quarterpounder and measure that in metric (a twopointfivether?)

      Here in the UK, the EU is mandating we go metric for measures, but we can still keep our pint.. a very important measurement all things considered.

    4. Re:Square cubit? by i+chose+quality · · Score: 1
      think of the quarterpounder and measure that in metric (a twopointfivether?)
      this topic has been completely covered in pulp fiction : it is called "royale with cheese".
      --
      the computer is online
      i am not at it
      what a waste of ressources
    5. Re:Square cubit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Here in the UK, the EU is mandating we go metric for measures, but we can still keep our pint.. a very important measurement all things considered.


      Hey switching to a half liter is not that hard. You just spill 68 ml (mili liters) or 2.3 oz away.
      (only if 1 pint = 0.568 l)

      After this conversion even drinkers can be noramlized.

      BTW are you sure that the bar keeper did not convert already?
    6. Re:Square cubit? by GMontag451 · · Score: 1

      I don't know where you got 0.568 L from, a pint is actually 0.47 L. I'm not sure about pint glasses in bars, but usually when you buy hard alcohol in a liquor store and you get a pint, its really 0.375 L. A fifth is 0.75 L, which is almost dead on. I don't know about gallons though (I never buy alcohol in that quantity). They could be accurate, or they could be 3.5 L or 4 L.

    7. Re:Square cubit? by Malc · · Score: 1

      What you're referring to is the undersized American pint, which is 16 fl oz versus the British/International/Imperial pint which is 20 fl oz. This is also why the American gallon is considerably smaller. Why some Americans claim they use the English or Imperial system is beyond me, especially considering the other common measure, the ton, is also lighter in the US (also called the short ton). People around here complain about MSFT reinventing standards... it's obviously a cultural thing!

    8. Re:Square cubit? by signifying+nothing · · Score: 1

      US and British pints are different sizes. If we were using 0.47l pints, I'm sure the switch to metric would have occured a long time ago.

    9. Re:Square cubit? by NoMoreNicksLeft · · Score: 1

      The europeans use the metric shitload measurement. So quit picking on us, gd.

    10. Re:Square cubit? by Malc · · Score: 1

      It was kind of annoying at first having to constantly do conversions. People just don't like change, and whine at anything that will cause any kind of bother, even if it's minor and short lived. Why do you think the Aussies call us "whingeing pommes"? Just a lot of negative people with nothing better to do than whine. I don't miss that all.

      I moved to Canada a few years ago which isn't just metric, but ISO too (that means the weatherman uses kilo-Pascals rather than the metric sounding milli-bars.) I've got to say I rather like it, and it does make it much easier to converse with people around the world. Canada changed systems 20 or 30 years ago (I think), and nobody seems too upset about it, although some of the older people still talk in miles. Familiar and more personal things are still measured the old way, such pints or people's height. I guess building materials metric either, but that's probably economic as it allows them to participate in cheap American market.

    11. Re:Square cubit? by olman · · Score: 1

      Hah. That's one to remember..

    12. Re:Square cubit? by dublin · · Score: 5, Informative

      Why the US still clings to imperial units is beyond me.

      Actually, for the simple reason that they're what the technological world was built on, and also the not-inconsequential fact that English units often tend to relate to the real-world better than thier Metric/SI counterparts.

      This is NOT just an artifact caused by familiarity: For ordinary use, the English units are often just more convenient because thier sizes are more applicable to the problem at hand. For instance, in machining and design of precision parts, thousandths of an inch turn out to be considerably more useful than metric units, just simply because of the mechanics of material removal using common machining processes. This is one reason almost all machining in high-precision industries like Aerospace and Oil/Petrochemical/Energy is still done in English units. (Note that the recent NASA Mars probe debacle only happened when one group deviated from accepted industry practice of using English measurements and switched to Metric. (And without even telling anyone, at that!) The simple reason the error was not caught is that no idiot (except maybe a French idiot, they still haven't got over thier Napoleonic pride in the moronic Metric system) would use metric measurements in an aerospace context - it's just not done.)

      Another good example of the oh-so-awkward size of metric units is the liters/100km unit that has to be used to measure fuel econonomy in reasonably sized numbers. Ugh. There are dozens of other examples.

      Units are somewhat arbitrary, but to be honest, in my engineering career, I've seen many more errors with Metric units (decimal point errors, imagine that!) than I have with the English system.

      HELP STAMP OUT THE METRIC SYSTEM!

      P.S.: Of course, what we really need to adopt is a correct measurement system based on Dublins, that perfect unit of length between a yard and a meter, where the acceleration of gravity here on earth would be 10 Dublins/s^2. Physics and engineering students worldwide would celebrate my birthday with fireworks and parties. :-)

      --
      "The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last ./ post
    13. Re:Square cubit? by hcdejong · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Actually, for the simple reason that they're what the technological world was built on, and also the not-inconsequential fact that English units often tend to relate to the real-world better than thier Metric/SI counterparts.

      Actually, this is a typical case of YMMV. If you've been using Imperial units all your life, SI units will seem awkward and unnatural. But it's the same the other way around. Your story can be reversed, situated in a Metric country, and it'll still be true.

      Another good example of the oh-so-awkward size of metric units is the liters/100km unit that has to be used to measure fuel econonomy in reasonably sized numbers

      Incorrect. It's perfectly feasible to use the 1 liter in x kilometers metric (abbreviated to 1:x). Which even yields an easy rule-of-thumb conversion to/from mpg: 10 mpg = 1:3.

      And talk about awkward. How many feet go into a mile? How many lbs into a ton? With a bazillion conversion factors to choose from (rather than the trivial move-the-decimal-point operation needed with metric units), it's a miracle the Industrial Revolution got off the ground at all.

      the recent NASA Mars probe debacle only happened when one group deviated from accepted industry practice...

      This isn't an argument in favor of using Imperial measurements, it's an argument in favor of standardizing. The US is one of IIRC three holdouts [*] on adopting the SI (the acronym isn't accidental). Give it up!

      *: Talk about the Axis of Evil...

    14. Re:Square cubit? by Guppy06 · · Score: 1

      "People just don't like change, and whine at anything that will cause any kind of bother, even if it's minor and short lived."

      We'll change to using metric-only just as soon as every other country in the world changes their national language to English.

      "I moved to Canada a few years ago which isn't just metric, but ISO too (that means the weatherman uses kilo-Pascals rather than the metric sounding milli-bars.)"

      Does your bathroom scale tell you your weight in Newtons, or "kilograms?"

    15. Re:Square cubit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, the acceleration due to gravity isn't a constant 9.8. It depends on where you are on the planet, among other things. Here, it's 9.811 (actually it's more accurate than that, but you get the picture)

    16. Re:Square cubit? by bmalia · · Score: 1

      You failed to answer the question on why the Japanese used inches.

      *patriotic music begins*
      Oh beautiful, my spacious disks.
      May pr0n fill up the RAID.
      For purple plastic magically
      gives j00 a really pimpin' case.
      America,
      America,
      ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
      And crown they l33t
      with phat pipes, yeah sweet!
      So we can fill up japanese disks with DivX and MP3's!
      Cue the humming
      I have a dream... That the world will realize that US Measurements are better than metric. This way, I will never have to pull out my T-85 and have it convert numbers for me ever again. It just wouldn't be the same if I recieved spam saying I could increase my penis size by centimeters. Even though, saying its 8 centimeters does sound much more impressive than 3 inches^H^H^H^H^H^H^H...NM! The Japenise have come to this realization and are leading by example to all the other countries who foolishly go with the standard measurements in a US measurement revolution!

      I don't need a spell checker, I have an error correcting modem!

      --
      There's no place like ~/
    17. Re:Square cubit? by Malc · · Score: 1

      "Does your bathroom scale tell you your weight in Newtons, or "kilograms?"

      My bathroom scales don't measure weight, they measure mass. They correctly measure my mass in kgs, and they also conveniently have a scale in pounds (which I can easily convert in my head in to stones and lbs for my English friends and family ;). To be honest, I don't think I've ever encountered a set of bathroom scales that measure weight. The only thing I have with a Newtons based scale is my torque wrench that I use on my car (measures Nm).

    18. Re:Square cubit? by Guppy06 · · Score: 1

      "My bathroom scales don't measure weight, they measure mass."

      Unless your bathroom scale is a beam-balance scale, it measures weight. If it measured mass, it would read exactly the same on the surface of the moon (as well as any latitude on Earth) with no adjustments necessary.

      Scales ordinarily found in typical consumer bathrooms, grocery stores, etc. measure the amount of tension or compression placed on a spring (or some electromechanical device). It measures the force put on the spring, therefore it measures weight, not mass.

    19. Re:Square cubit? by ducman · · Score: 1

      I think it's one of the few things our eductional system is still doing correctly. In this country you _have_ to memorize lots of facts and learn basic math just to figure out whether your beer will fit into your glass.

      --
      "We have nothing in common, your attitude annoys me, and your political views are appalling."
    20. Re:Square cubit? by Malc · · Score: 1

      Good reposte. I suppose they measure weight but inform you of your mass, which IIRC is a simple linear calculation.

    21. Re:Square cubit? by Tet · · Score: 1
      the undersized American pint, which is 16 fl oz versus the British/International/Imperial pint which is 20 fl oz.

      Oh, it's even better than that -- they redefined the fluid ounce as well. An Imperial fluid ounce is defined as the volume of water that weighs 1 ounce. Except in the USA where someone saw fit to redefine it so that 1 fluid ounce weighs approx 1.04 oz. Maybe America has more gravity than the rest of the world, but I somehow doubt it...

      --
      "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
    22. Re:Square cubit? by GMontag451 · · Score: 1

      The American fluid ounce and the Imperial fluid ounce are probably just measured at different temperatures.

  6. Hey...where's my quantum storage? by Phoenixhunter · · Score: 1

    Get back to work you slackers...I want my data to be stored neither here nor there...but here just now!

  7. What?!? by trotski · · Score: 2, Insightful

    They measure storage density in DVDs now?!?

    --

    "Entropy is the bad-guy, and he is everywhere"
    1. Re:What?!? by mirko · · Score: 1

      Well, it seems...
      Might be some marketing-proof measurement unit.
      BTW, are these 4.7GB DVD or bigger ones ?

      --
      Trolling using another account since 2005.
    2. Re:What?!? by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why not? Remember when we measured everything in terms of floppies? I still remember being told that a CD could hold as much data as 444 floppies. (A number like that tends to stick in the old brain.)

      --

      I write in my journal
    3. Re:What?!? by haedesch · · Score: 2, Funny

      Those Japanese have no respect for our standards! What's wrong with our good old Library Of Congress unit??

    4. Re:What?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, forget metric. Multi-national corporations have hijacked measurement standards. All storage devices will now be in in relation to marketable material. No more megabytes, gigabytes or bits. Use DVD in reference to storage of any data. Use Micky to refer to any copyright material. Use Howard Stern for all reference of egomania.

    5. Re:What?!? by mizukami · · Score: 1

      Yeah, and apparently data transfer rates are now measured in books/sec. :-)

      --
      CC-licensed translations of Japanese fiction: http://tonygonz.blogspot.com/
    6. Re:What?!? by trmj · · Score: 1

      And a LS-120 disk holds as much as 88 floppies, takes up a 5.25" bay and can use regular floppies in the same drive if you want!

      These might actually make a comeback if any of those legacy free motherboards ever get big enough. No more floppy drives. Yeesh. What would I ever install AOL 2.0 from?

      --
      Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
    7. Re:What?!? by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 1

      Speaking as a Mac user, I haven't had a floppy drive in any computer I've either owned or used since 1998. How much have I missed it? None at all.

      "Legacy free" is just a new-fangled buzzword for what the rest of us have been doing for four years now.

      --

      I write in my journal
    8. Re:What?!? by trmj · · Score: 1

      I guess I masked my sarcasm to good.

      Personally I've been using CDs and Sparq disks for the last 5 years.

      The only time I use floppies anymore is when I'm at work.

      --
      Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
    9. Re:What?!? by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 1
      Why not?

      Because there are at least 4 capacities that can be meant by DVD. Even ignoring DVD-R's of limited size we still must choose among:
      • single-sided, single layer
      • single-sided, double layer
      • double-sided, single layer
      • double-sided, double layer

      The first to the last is a 4x difference, or almost half an order of magnitude.
      At least with a floppy, at any given time one knew what the current capacity of a floppy was.
      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    10. Re:What?!? by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 1

      At least with a floppy, at any given time one knew what the current capacity of a floppy was.

      Sure, it was 400 KB. Oh, wait, I mean 800 KB. No, wait, it was 720 KB. Or was it 1.44 MB? Or 2.88 MB?

      The capacity of a floppy was even more a variable than the capacity of a DVD. And yet we all standardized, for purposes of conversation, on the 1.44 MB high-density floppy disc. Just like we've all standardized, for purposes of conversation, on the single-layer, single-sided DVD-5, with a capacity of 4.7 GB. If recorders that can write dual-layer DVD-9's ever become widely available, we'll revise the collective opinion of a DVD's capacity to be 8.5 GB.

      --

      I write in my journal
  8. Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of macs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is the mac the choice of the child porn viewer?
    He had about 4 of them too, couldn't he just buy bigger hard drives ;)

    Heh.

  9. shz/in^2 by violently_ill · · Score: 5, Funny

    sure, that sounds like a lot of storage, but how many full-length german sheizer films can it hold? when will we start setting standards that are actually meaninful?

    1. Re:shz/in^2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that's Scheiße, or Scheisse.

  10. Cubit^2 by GMontag · · Score: 5, Funny

    Cubit^2

    This sounds like an achievement of biblical proportions!

    1. Re:Cubit^2 by Eros · · Score: 1

      For those of you that don't follow Western religion and even for you slackers that do, but don't read much. A cubit is a commonly referred to method of measurement in the Bible. Generally thought to be the length from the tip of a man's middle finger to the tip of his elbow.

      Just thought someone should clarify.

    2. Re:Cubit^2 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      so why are they using bible measures in the title and inches in the story?

    3. Re:Cubit^2 by Djinh · · Score: 1

      Probably because it's written by an American. We all know Americans are a bit confused about units...

    4. Re:Cubit^2 by SEWilco · · Score: 1

      This is certainly the greatest non-DNA information density per square cubit ever reported.

    5. Re:Cubit^2 by surprise_audit · · Score: 1

      A cubit is roughly 18inches...

    6. Re:Cubit^2 by RockyMountain · · Score: 1

      This is certainly the greatest non-DNA information density per square cubit ever reported.

      Probably because it's the only information density "per square cubit" ever reported.

    7. Re:Cubit^2 by ameoba · · Score: 1

      I just hope it doesn't have access times measured in fortnights.

      --
      my sig's at the bottom of the page.
    8. Re:Cubit^2 by SEWilco · · Score: 1
      "Probably because it's the only information density "per square cubit" ever reported."

      "75 grains [of seed] to a square cubit"
      It is also widely noted that a square cubit is the space occupied by one person (put right fingertips on left shoulder and see that you're about one cubit wide).

  11. Cubit by Old+Wolf · · Score: 1

    Isn't a cubit the length of your forearm? that's a bit big for storage isn't it?

    1. Re:Cubit by Dominic · · Score: 1

      Funnily enough, the length of your forearm is exactly the same length as your foot. Try it!

    2. Re:Cubit by Enzondio · · Score: 1

      Funnily enough, the length of your forearm is exactly the same length as your foot. Try it!

      I did. It isn't.

    3. Re:Cubit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A cubit is eighteen inches.

    4. Re:Cubit by buck_wild · · Score: 1

      I don't know which is more depressing: the fact that you just coined the term 'funnily' or that you've just taken the hands of 90% of the /. world off of their keyboards.

      --
      If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
  12. Cubits? by MrYotsuya · · Score: 5, Funny

    What the hell, is God telling them to build an ark?

    1. Re:Cubits? by csnydermvpsoft · · Score: 3, Funny

      "... and He told Noah to put on the ark every kind of web page, two of every kind."

    2. Re:Cubits? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Didn't you ever hear of Noah's Archive?

    3. Re:Cubits? by Old+Wolf · · Score: 4, Funny

      And so Noah's Archive was born

    4. Re:Cubits? by Xenographic · · Score: 1

      "There had to be two, because the other would be wiped out in the Great Slashdotting if there were no mirrors..."

    5. Re:Cubits? by operagost · · Score: 1

      I never have mod points when one of these gems come along ...

      --

      Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
    6. Re:Cubits? by ice+cream+koan · · Score: 1

      Nononono...

      And God told Noah to put every story on Slashdot, two of every story...

      =D

      --


      "When I was in school, I cheated on my metaphysics exam: I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me"
  13. Inches? Cubits? by cperciva · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those of you using sane units, this is about 250 gigabits per cm^2.

  14. Read speed a bit low by renoX · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I hope that they could use several head in parallel at the same time to increase the reading speed and also (why not?) the writing speed.

    If I remember well, a company has already done this for CD-ROM, it was reading several track at the same time, they had a commercial product but I don't know if it sold well.

    I wonder why it hasn't be done with HDD?

    Note that I'm not talking about multiple heads (too expensive), but using one head to read/write several tracks at the same time.

    1. Re:Read speed a bit low by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With harddisks, synchronizing the heads to read and write correctly proved very difficult, and the drives, although boasting a huge transfer rate, were much more expensive than normal drives, and you can achieve just as good results with RAID.

    2. Re:Read speed a bit low by sheepab · · Score: 1

      It was Kenwood that made this CD-ROM, and it didnt sell at all. I believe Maximum-PC gave it a shitty rating too, the drives kept breaking.

    3. Re:Read speed a bit low by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey, from what I read in the referenced article itself, it doesn't look like we are talking about discs and reading heads at all. More like a new version of the memory stick or something like that.

      Anyway the read/write speeds don't seem to be up to par with the harddrives (currently 25KB/s read and write speed 2.5MB/s), however, the extremely big volume per inch could make it a valuable replacement for DVDs CD-ROMs and of course all kinds of digital external storage digital cameras etc)

      The question as always is with the cost and industry support.

    4. Re:Read speed a bit low by Eccles · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If I remember well, a company has already done this for CD-ROM, it was reading several track at the same time, they had a commercial product but I don't know if it sold well.

      That would be Kenwood Tech and their TrueX drives. Seems a nice idea since they probably don't sound like an airplane taking off like other high-speed CDs do, but they had a high failure rate on their first ones that I don't think they ever lived down. It's too bad they didn't license the tech rather than trying to build it themselves.

      You can find their TrueX pages on google, but their home page announces that they've stopped making the drives.

      --
      Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
  15. Continuous 360 degree video needs this. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1, Interesting


    The day will come when some people will record 360 degree video and every sound that happens around them all the time. No need for discussion about what happened, just replay it.

    1. Re:Continuous 360 degree video needs this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but what will happen when you record a replay of 360 degree video? You will never know if it is a replay or the original!

    2. Re:Continuous 360 degree video needs this. by Hittite+Creosote · · Score: 2, Funny
      Can you imagine what that would do to the art of conversation?

      Girl And then I was like.. replay..., and he was like... replay... So I was like replay of Girl saying 'duh'...

    3. Re:Continuous 360 degree video needs this. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can imagine.

      Bitchy girlfriend: You said you would do blah blah blah bitch whine!

      Boyfriend: Nothing remembers better than a digital recording. (presses play, rewinds back to last week)

      This will make it easier to catch lies and bullshit, and settle arguments.

  16. My DVD... by istartedi · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I like it.

    Really now, the Japanese are using square inches because Americans know what a square inch is, and they do a lot of business with the USA. Seems pretty obvious to me.

    Also, they just happened to reach a "milestone" of 1.5 when measured in square inches. 1 square inch = 6.4516 square centimeters, so this is only about 0.235 per square centimeter. Maybe they should have a press release at 0.3/cm^2. But if it's less than 1, it's just not very good.

    To resolve this issue, I propose the introduction of a new unit based on the meter and corrected by a factor based on Moore's law or whatever it is that governs storage density. The correction factor should be adjusted to allow for press releases oh... say... every 3 months so that stock traders will have something to speculate about. I propose that the new units be called "Horcs" in honor of no particular person, place or thing.

    --
    For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    1. Re:My DVD... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ahh.. if only you'd let me, this tech I would Horc.

      See the brunching shuttlecock's bjork song if you don't get the reference http://www.brunching.com/bjorksong.html

    2. Re:My DVD... by oliverthered · · Score: 1

      Ok for those who don't know what a square inch is, it's about the length from the top of you thumb to the first joint.

      For those who don't know what a CM is ummm...... fuck um...... um..... um.... it's um.... um..... Well you couldgoto france or measure the earth and work it out that way.

      The Japanise also use tangable measurements when selling houses, the floor space is measured in tatami mats.

      --
      thank God the internet isn't a human right.
    3. Re:My DVD... by rockola · · Score: 1

      Speaking of density and a new unit, the dord would be most appropriate.

      --
      Those who don't know Lisp are doomed to reimplement it.
    4. Re:My DVD... by Alsee · · Score: 1

      inch is, it's about the length from the top of you thumb to the first joint.

      For those who don't know what a CM is ummm...... fuck um......


      The phrase you're looking for is "the width of your pinky nail".

      P.S.
      40 rods to the hogshead = 504 gallons per mile or 1183 liters per kilometer.

      -

      --
      - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
    5. Re:My DVD... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ok for those who don't know what a square inch is, it's about the length from the top of you thumb to the first joint.

      Include yourself in "those of you" who don't know that a unit of area isn't a unit of length.

    6. Re:My DVD... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fucking idiot.

    7. Re:My DVD... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your an idiot,
      Imperial measurements are tangable, you know based on real world things. number of dvd's to a CM is like chalk and cheese, DVD's are tangable(not scientific) and inches are also tangable.

      Metric measurements were invented by some weird french pesents, incidently how many bottles of wine do you get in a case? now ask why?

      well that's proof that metric is a poor system for normal people and should only be used in scientific calculations (because it has a constant base).

      Implerial measurements are the measurements of nature and who are you to question nature, idiot.

  17. Simpler units by XNormal · · Score: 5, Informative

    The recoring area of a DVD is 14 square inches. So the density of this new recording technique is 14*47=658 times greater than a DVD.

    --
    Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
  18. = 3 TB by squirmee · · Score: 2, Informative

    (assuming 4.7 GB DVD's)

  19. Re:Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You need multiple macs because they're so slow. That's how Apple can keep up their profits. They make their computers so slow that you need to buy multiple ones just to do anything ... maybe I've stumbled on some type of conspiracy here.

    Hang on one sec, some tall guy is pumping gas into my room. I'm having visions of a village and I dont know why.

  20. That happens to be the joke actually by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    but those who couldn't get it the first round surely will appreciate your restatement. In fact, one have already shown that by giving you karma.

    1. Re:That happens to be the joke actually by NetDrain · · Score: 1

      And since you, little AC with poor grammar, didn't get MY joke, that makes you even stupider.

    2. Re:That happens to be the joke actually by gazbo · · Score: 1
      Really? Grammar aside I thought his point was entirely valid. As far as I can tell, your 'joke' was simply to explain the joke in the original submission. I saw no actual joke in your comment other than a rewording of the submission in a way that is accessible to the...err...'differently abled' posters.

      If there was some specially subtle joke of yours thatI failed to pick up, then please correct me and gloat over me. Otherwise stfu.

  21. Of course: by holysin · · Score: 1

    the consumer superdvd burner will only burn at 2048k/sec for the first 6 months...

  22. Transfer speed? by tigress · · Score: 4, Funny

    What I'd be interrested in is knowing how fast it reads, preferably in another sane measurement, like 8" floppies per forthnight.

    1. Re:Transfer speed? by haedesch · · Score: 1

      25 kilobytes / sec
      thats about 10158 DeciSuperdisks / month

    2. Re:Transfer speed? by cryms0n · · Score: 1

      Oh man, there goes my tea all over my monitor.

      I'm sending you the bill, by the way.

  23. DVD? by paughsw · · Score: 1

    Are these actual DVD's or a MPAA equivelent ala. RIAA?

  24. The really interesting bits, no pun intended by Powerdog · · Score: 5, Interesting

    First, they're only currently able to read 25kB/s. Yes, 25 kilobytes per second. They think they can bump up the read speed to 3.75MB/s. But it's the write speed that's curious. The prototype writes at 2.5MB/s, and they estimate they can bump it up to 125MB/s. A medium we can write to faster than we can read!

    Second, their goal is 667 terabits per cm^2. Yep, about 2667 times more dense than the 250 gigabits per cm^2 they're claiming.

    1. Re:The really interesting bits, no pun intended by the_2nd_coming · · Score: 1

      that is realy odd, the same hardware that you would use to read from it is used to write to it.....perhaps they are utilizing a batch writing system onto blank media so the throughput is much higher that that or a read which has to search for the certain data you want and as such is much slower given the amount of information you have to sift through.

      --



      I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
    2. Re:The really interesting bits, no pun intended by Francis+Avila · · Score: 1

      A medium we can write to faster than we can read!

      Excellent for backups! Well, maybe. How fast do tape drives write nowdays?

    3. Re:The really interesting bits, no pun intended by gbjbaanb · · Score: 1

      I found the bit that said 'not accurate enough for practical applicatons' more interesting.. perhaps that's why they're getting super write speeds ;-)

    4. Re:The really interesting bits, no pun intended by cdrudge · · Score: 1

      Depending on the drive, it varies. I have SLR-style drives that get between 100-130 MB/s.

    5. Re:The really interesting bits, no pun intended by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      A medium we can write to faster than we can read!


      Sounds like my son's handwriting. The read time there is a small number of bits per minute.

    6. Re:The really interesting bits, no pun intended by vaxer · · Score: 1
      A medium we can write to faster than we can read!


      This strikes me as an apt description of US foreign policy, too...
    7. Re:The really interesting bits, no pun intended by toddestan · · Score: 0

      This may be good for Mp3 storage, or the like. MP3's need very little read speed, though more than 25k/s is needed (25k/s means no better than 192kbps quality). On the other hand, it's very easy to acquire many gigabytes of them and they take up a significant portion of my disk space. I think it's silly to be storing MP3's on ATA100 7200 RPM harddrives that generate considerable heat, noise, and aren't that reliable anyway. Maybe this new medium will be perfect for our music collections?

  25. My new storage measurement designed for Slashdot: by cliffy2000 · · Score: 0

    Goatse.cx and "frist posts" per story. Right now, we've surpassed 1.4 trillion. Take that, Japan!

  26. Confused which cubits where used by bartjan · · Score: 3, Funny

    Are those cubits persianroyalcubits, northerncubits, irishcubits, greekcubits, hebrewcubits, homericcubits, olympiccubits, sumeriancubits, egyptianroyalcubits, blackcubits, shortgreekcubits, biblicalcubits, egyptianshortcubits, romancubits, assyriancubits or hashimicubits ??

    1. Re:Confused which cubits where used by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      I believe they were goatse.cxcubits ... width-wise.

    2. Re:Confused which cubits where used by NoInfo · · Score: 1

      Sorry, you misunderstood. It's cubit zirconium.

  27. One head? by autopr0n · · Score: 1

    That would never, ever work with magnetic hard drives.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
    1. Re:One head? by kidlinux · · Score: 1

      Care to elaborate?

      --
      -kidlinux.
    2. Re:One head? by CrackersnSoup · · Score: 1

      A HD is a serial device(from head to platter). If you had a drive with 8 heads(4 platters) you could read/write 1byte in the same time it takes to r/w 1 now. I hear drives DO use 2/3/4 heads at the same time.

      You could also use a 5th platter and do 2 bit parity.

      Crackers

    3. Re:One head? by plover · · Score: 1
      Surely you troll.

      We had ancient IBM 3650s that we ditched in 1987. Had a 10MB drive in the cabinet, platters driven by a belt from a motor that looked like a sewing machine motor.

      That drive had the ordinary head mounted on the arm, but it also had an extra stationary head mounted at the edge. It was for high performance live data capturing. The write data from the live capture was always written almost immediately with the stationary head, and was later read by the ordinary movable head.

      Of course, this was certainly back in the day when a 13" platter only held 10MB (probably about 260KB/in^2). Alignment might have been less critical.

      --
      John
  28. IBM's caterpillar? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Speaking in terms of relative storage density, where does this leave IBM's under-development caterpillar phyical storage system? Dead, buried and obsolete long before it hits the marketplace? Or further ahead?

  29. They got you covered. by autopr0n · · Score: 2, Informative

    Using the prototype, the researchers were able to read 25 kilobytes, or thousand bytes, of data per second, said Cho. This is relatively slow -- it would take 10 seconds to retrieve a 250-page book at that speed, assuming 1,000 characters per page. It is possible to increase the read speed to 3.75 megabytes per second, said Cho. This would make it possible to retrieve the information contained in about 150 books in 10 seconds. Current disk drives have read speeds of about 20 to 50 megabytes, or million bytes, per second.

    So about 36 novels/hour.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  30. bad journalism alert by Stanley+Feinbaum · · Score: 0, Redundant

    20KiloDVD

    I really wish slashdot would stop using non-scientific made-up measurements, educated people such as myself laugh at this nonsense.

    Then again, I have noticed a trend of bad journalism on this site, which is unfortunate. Or maybe I should say a KILOTREND.

    --

    Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!

    1. Re:bad journalism alert by Afrosheen · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      Well, at least you can get rid of Jon Katz in your preferences, that kills about 75% of the bad journalism.

    2. Re:bad journalism alert by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Educated people? Since when are humourless pedants "educated people"?

    3. Re:bad journalism alert by uspsguy · · Score: 1

      Hey! Guess what? It' supposed to make you laugh. I'm pleased you recognized it as funny.

      --
      Profanity - The sign of a small mind trying to express itself.
  31. Re:Inches? Cubits? by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 5, Funny

    For those of you using sane units, this is about 250 gigabits per cm^2.

    That's 2,412.1 petanybbles per acre, for those of you who prefer units with a little character. ;-)

    --

    I write in my journal
  32. OT: karma by autopr0n · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Sorry for posting this OT, but I just noticed that no karam information is displayed on my user page, and my +1 bonus seems to have dissapeared. Has anyone else noticed this?

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
    1. Re:OT: karma by Wee · · Score: 1
      Sorry for posting this OT, but I just noticed that no karam information is displayed on my user page, and my +1 bonus seems to have dissapeared.

      It's there. Look in the upper right. As far as the posting bonus, I don't know. I think they aim to being the signal out from the noise a bit, give new users a chance, that sort of thing. I'll post this w/o mine and see what I get (my other post, with the bonus, was scored a 1).

      -B

      --

      Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.

    2. Re:OT: karma by Wee · · Score: 1
      I'll post this w/o mine and see what I get (my other post, with the bonus, was scored a 1).

      That got a 1 as well. Looks like a bug or something.

      -B

      --

      Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.

    3. Re:OT: karma by hcdejong · · Score: 1

      Looks like it. My bonus's gone, too.

    4. Re:OT: karma by sulli · · Score: 1

      Testing 123 testing. Testing 456 testing. Hahaha.

      --

      sulli
      RTFJ.
    5. Re:OT: karma by mark_lybarger · · Score: 1

      interesting

  33. Make your mind up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    The dots are as small as 10 nanometers in diameter and store one bit of information each. A nanometer is one millionth of a millimeter, or the equivalent of a line of 10 hydrogen atoms.,

    then followed by

    The researchers' prototype storage device packs 1.5 trillion dots per square inch, and so could store 1.5 terabits in one square inch of material, said Yasuo Cho, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Tohoku University in Japan. That's the equivalent of 48 million 250-page books, or 47 DVDs.


    lets hope they make their mind up which measurement system to use , we dont want another space shuttle style discrepancy

    1. Re:Make your mind up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "we dont want another space shuttle style discrepancy"

      For the record, I believe the discrepency you are refering to was with one of the mars landers.

  34. many applications by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It's not so much the amount of memory that is important but about how small a package we can fit it in. This will allow tablet PCs and other PDA styled devices to have what the desktop PC world takes for granted. Also imagine the costs savings from application like outer space computing (every pound going up costs a fortune right?). Give people time and you'd be surprised what uses they'll come up with.

    Me, pr0n.

    1. Re:many applications by the_2nd_coming · · Score: 2, Insightful

      to make it able to be considered for secondary storage they have to increase the read speed.

      --



      I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
    2. Re:many applications by MyHair · · Score: 1

      This will allow tablet PCs and other PDA styled devices to have what the desktop PC world takes for granted.

      <sigh> I'll sure miss the whine, heat and gyroscopic resistance of my HDD, though. Oh, and the clatter of thrashing heads, and the rare treat of crashing heads. These are the days my friends. Remember them well.

    3. Re:many applications by WeaponOfChoice · · Score: 1

      Have to be worried about sensitivity to damage - your average CD is reasonably resilient to scratches (provided they're small and your EC is good) but once you start really pushing the data densities a spec of dust could occlude gigabits.
      May have to bring back caddies - new hermetically sealed vacuum caddies...

      --


      It's not that I'm Anti-American - I'm Pro-Freedom
  35. I/O Speed? by Wee · · Score: 1
    How fast is read/write access? I'm guessing it can't be less than 0x1B CEN TC224 sets per femtofortnight.

    -B

    --

    Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.

    1. Re:I/O Speed? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      i too did some calculations and worked the access speed was 7.0234 potatoes per furlong divided by the week number multiplied by the doritos per cheese straw height

      simple

  36. Re:Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    Apple make profit ? currently they are losing money at the rate of $8,000,000 a 1/4

    o sorry, your new around here arn't you ?

  37. Re:Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Apple make profit ? currently they are losing money at the rate of $8,000,000 a 1/4

    *Sigh* See, this is what's wrong with the Internet. Kids with too much free time can read the first paragraph of a news story and think they're analysts.

    Apple posted a net loss of $8 million on gross revenues of $1.47 billion. That's a loss equal to one-half of one percent of their sales. In the current economy, and with a total of $19 million in after-tax restructuring charges and adjustments, that's really, really good.

  38. Re:Inches? Cubits? by forgoil · · Score: 1

    What is a nybble? I know about nibble (4 bits, right?) and nipples (2 bits ;)). Is it a simply misspelling or is it a real unit? It is kind of hard to know in these times when we get idiotic crap like MibiBytes (Yes, I have 671.08864 MibiBytes in this computer... need I say more?).

    And to second a bunch of other people, stop with the inches. I seriously have a hard time taking someone scientificly serious when they don't use SI units today. And why are we still using inches for speakers and tires still?

    But regardless of the dumb units, being able to save all that on a single unit (disc?) means I could get uncompressed video in high resolution with uncompressed audio. But I guess they will put something even dumber than regions on it and screw it up.

  39. Ferroelectricity by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I'm not familiar with ferroelectricity. It sounds as if the pickup device is like a scanning tunneling microscope, with an AC field on the point to measure the impedance of an adjacent ferroelectric domain. They claim that there is a change in the impedance of the domain depending on its electrical orientation, and that they can flip these domains electricaly (presumably with the same device that reads them, I guess by putting a higher voltage pulse through it). They claim that ferroelectric materials are piezoelectric, and that they are distorting the crystal lattice to store information.

    So, is all this for real?

    Thanks

    Bruce

    1. Re:Ferroelectricity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Ferroelectricity is quite analoguous to ferromagnetism (they borrow the name even, there is no iron in typical ferroelectrics). Ferroelectric is a subset of piezoelectrics; ferroelectric's polarization can be switch by either applying an electric field or mechanical stress. OTOH, piezoelectrics' polarization is unchangeable. Piezoelectric effect refers to the behavior when the material is under stress, charge appears in the surface of the material (piezo comes from pressure in Greek). It sounds like they are inducing 90 deg domain switching as storage. One problem I can already see with this is fatigue; because of polarization of the material, there is a dramatic change of sizes of domains undergo 90 deg switches (on the order of 0.001). So they either got a material that is very soft, like PVDF or something like that, or the macroscopic behavior of all these bits just even out the stresses.

  40. comments on the not-as-much discussed by lingqi · · Score: 1
    This means we lesser photographers can now get the right action shot just by volume alone ;-)

    now there are two problems with this:

    1) without knowing how to set up exposure / apature / focus / whitebalance / and most importantly - general image composition - your chances of getting the right shot does not improve all that much with volume.

    2) moreover, assuming that you are an amature and want to actually have some control over your images afterwards (i.e. store it in a raw format so you can adjust the exposure and stuff - btw it's very useful I seriously encourage anyone who can spare the space to do this), the transfer-rate is worefully inadequate. one raw 3Mpix image is usually some 6-9Mbytes; that's some 1.5-2 seconds per image. Considering that in the real world, 3fps is considered mediocre, continue to rely on your SDRAM buffers (for the ones who have the luxury of them) for a little longer. For JPEGs, high quality 2Mpix is still usually about 1M a piece - so don't expect too much if your camera actually have a decent pixel count.

    anyway - not that it's not good news, or that I am humorless and don't get the joke - but I think microdrives will be around for a little longer for good reason.

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

    1. Re:comments on the not-as-much discussed by WeaponOfChoice · · Score: 1

      Need a specialised camera bus for data transfer from CCD -> Buffer -> CF Card. 64-128k lines by a couple of hundred MHz should help a bit...

      --


      It's not that I'm Anti-American - I'm Pro-Freedom
  41. Re:Inches? Cubits? by ItsBacon · · Score: 1

    IIRC, nibbles and nybbles are the same thing, the latter being used by some people to distinguish the smaller-than-a-byte from the smaller-than-a-bite.

  42. Future devices by nukey56 · · Score: 1

    Why is it that we keep hearing about these great newfangled technologies which will 'revolutionize the storage industry', but we have remained content on using basically the same technology for the last 40 years? Are we ever going to see real applications of holo-cube or ferroelectric storage, or are the current industry giants just going to keep producing slightly bigger and slightly better magnetic drives for the next 40 years?

    1. Re:Future devices by MtViewGuy · · Score: 1

      The reason why we're still using spinning hard drives is the fact the mechanical technologies of hard drives are pretty much mature and drive reliability is pretty good.

      However, I believe that IBM is right now working on high-density non-volatile storage that uses non-mechanical means; once the technology is mastered we maybe talking 50 to 60 GB of storage on something the size of a Type II CompactFlash card, more than enough to accommodate Windows XP Professional, several applications and application data. Since there is no speed delay caused by the mechanical read/write process of hard drives, imagine the complete boot process of WinXP Pro completed in around five seconds! The limitation at this point will become the I/O interface between this storage device and the motherboard; this is where Serial ATA and UltraSCSI 160/320 connections really becomes useful.

  43. Density expanded by dietlein · · Score: 4, Informative

    Ferroelectric density: 1.5Tb/in^2
    8 bits to a byte -> 187.5GB/in^2

    Hitachi's (formerly IBM's) 180GXP line packs 60GB to a platter. According to their data sheet, that is 45.5Gb/in^2. Convert to GB, and we have ~5.69GB/in^2.

    When common HD technology reaches Ferroelectric technology, we'll have about 6TB in a top-of-the-line IDE drive.

  44. Re:Inches? Cubits? by robbyjo · · Score: 3, Funny

    If you want a little character, that should be 2.035e-2 Library of Congresses per cm^2. ;-)

    --

    --
    Error 500: Internal sig error
  45. Re:Inches? Cubits? by forgoil · · Score: 1

    Ah, kinda like Tires/Tyres ;)

    (British English in school, American English with girlfriend, BE/AE in books. I won't ever be able to speak/write just one of them)

  46. Congratulations! by brandonsr · · Score: 1, Funny

    This story definately wins the most Obfuscated Slashdot Headline award.

  47. Riiiiiiiight, what's a cubit? by kfg · · Score: 3, Funny

    Let's see,I used to know what a cubit was. Well, don't you worry about that, get some wood, build it.

    When cubits get to small we can start measuring things in "arks".

    KFG

    1. Re:Riiiiiiiight, what's a cubit? by haroldK · · Score: 5, Funny

      "Noah! Both of those DB9 connectors are Female, you have to go back and get another one!"
      "Aw, come on! Can't you just use a gender changer?"
      "You know I don't work like that."

    2. Re:Riiiiiiiight, what's a cubit? by TheMidget · · Score: 2, Funny

      Now, if both had been male, it would've been somewhat easyer. (Man can make a hole, but only God can make a tree...)

    3. Re:Riiiiiiiight, what's a cubit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A cubit is what I have in my trousers (...and an inch is what the Japanese have in theirs...)

    4. Re:Riiiiiiiight, what's a cubit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, Thats a first for me, I never thought I would see a Bill Cosby reference on Slashdot.

    5. Re:Riiiiiiiight, what's a cubit? by Smidge204 · · Score: 2, Informative

      A 'cubit' is the distance from your elbow to your fingertip. It's about 20 inches.

      Of course, he didn't specify what kind of cubit. (Biblical, Babylonian, Mexican/Aztec, Greek, Chinese, etc...) So a 'square cubit' could be anywhere from 324 to 707 square inches!

      (And people were bitching about the meter being arbitrary?!)

      Oh yeah... and cubits have nothing to do with the Imperial system, at least not that I know of. Bits/in^2 makes a lot more sense. (As opposed to square meters, then your numbers get ungodly huge!

      =Smidge=

    6. Re:Riiiiiiiight, what's a cubit? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was a Bill Cosby reference. From the album "Bill Cosby, Himself," IIRC.

    7. Re:Riiiiiiiight, what's a cubit? by euxneks · · Score: 1

      "Noah! Both of those DB9 connectors are Female, you have to go back and get another one!"
      "Aw, come on! Can't you just use a gender changer?"
      "You know I don't work like that."



      Deus Ex Machina eh?

      --
      in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
  48. never see it by JeremyALogan · · Score: 0

    it's all great and wonderfull, but how is it usefull? we'll never see it (at least in the forseeable future) in any sort of medium that we could possible use... anyone remember the optical drives that were supposed to get hellacious amounts of holographic data in little cubes or the 200 MPG carburator???

    I won't be interested until there's a story that says "Ferroelectric Storage Density Tops 20KDVDs/Cubit^2 and is available in 3.5" form factor from NewEgg.com for 195 USD"

  49. Cubit^2 by Kynde · · Score: 1

    "One of the earliest types of measurement concerned that of length. These measurements were usually based on parts of the body. A well documented example (the first) is the Egyptian cubit which was derived from the length of the arm from the elbow to the outstretched finger tips. By 2500 BC this had been standardised in a royal master cubit made of black marble (about 52 cm). This cubit was divided into 28 digits (roughly a finger width) which could be further divided into fractional parts, the smallest of these being only just over a millimetre."

    And someone reports the information density using this kind of a measure?

    Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to flame here, but without reading the article, due to the very same reasons, I'm willing to bet my right testicle that it's made by US "scientist".

    --
    1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
  50. There just is not, nor will there (hopefully) ever by sanermind · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    ...be that much pr0n in the world.

    --

    ---
    the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
  51. Funny units often originate in the Marketing Dep. by NKJensen · · Score: 1

    In marketing, bigger is better. Any unit which produces higher numbers therefore is better.

    That's why we'll be using horsepowers and not kilowatts for car engines forever.

    This also explains the use of cubic inches in this text.

    --
    -- From Denmark
  52. 'cause they're /idiots/. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... as Jay Leno would put it.

  53. Re:Inches? Cubits? by Tet · · Score: 1
    And why are we still using inches for speakers and tires still?

    Tyres are inexplicably measured in both metric and imperial units. Tyre width is measured in millimetres and profile as a pecentage of width, but rim size is in inches. Which moron thought that one up, then?

    --
    "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
  54. Cho Lab Homepage by mattr · · Score: 4, Informative

    His lab is here. Please try to stagger your access so you don't slashdot him.

    The Japanese side of the main Phonon Device Lab has pdf'd scans of newspaper articles from September 10. The Japanese also uses 1.4 Terabits/sq. inch.

    A drawing on the bottom of this page shows that his ultimate goal of 4 Petabits/square inch is based on a bit being stored in a 0.4 nanometer square, the size of one BaTiO3 crystal.

    Interesting experiment on his page tells you in English how to make piezoelectric ceramics(in collaboration with Washington U.).

    It looks like there are a whole raft of people from Tohoku U. at U. Washington doing nano-bio research, mems, piezoelectrics.. maybe sq. inch came from Washington. Their Center for Nanotechnology looks neat.
    I wonder if they were involved in this storage technology development.

    1. Re:Cho Lab Homepage by jandrese · · Score: 2, Funny

      His lab is here. Please try to stagger your access so you don't slashdot him.

      Ok, I'm planning on connecting at 16:29.27 GMT, please choose some other time. Thanks.

      --

      I read the internet for the articles.
  55. Re:Inches? Cubits? by Tet · · Score: 1
    For those of you using sane units, this is about 250 gigabits per cm^2

    Of course "cm" isn't a sane unit no matter how you look at it. It's not an SI unit, and "centi" is not a standard SI prefix. SI acknowledges the prefix, but recommends sticking to the standard "multiples of three" prefixes. So it would be better expressed as 2.5 Pb/m^2 (assuming your calculations are correct, which I haven't checked).

    --
    "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
  56. Okay... by jaavaaguru · · Score: 1

    For those who have moved on from imperial measurement (and considering that DVDs are 3-dimensional objects) can someone give this measurement in DVDs/m^3 please?

  57. Re:Funny units often originate in the Marketing De by Thanatiel · · Score: 1

    They could have used the Parsec then.

    --
    Irrelevant news and morons using moderation to mod down what they disagree on. 2018 resolution: so long.
  58. Ferroelectric... by Ligur · · Score: 1

    has nothing to do with little critters running in wheels with generators, does it?

    Damn.. there goes my midterm paper...

    I'm sure glad there isn't a "really boring" mod option!

    --
    Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
  59. Re:Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    *Sigh* See, this is what's wrong with accounting today. Apple posted a fucking loss... and "that's really, really good." I bet you are still looking for a new accouting job after the Enron collapse, aren't you?

  60. Re:Inches? Cubits? by martyn+s · · Score: 1

    Yet the entire field of chemistry uses CGS units. As in, centimeters, grams and seconds.

    Even if your units are more standard, they just don't have any meaning to anyone. 2.5 Pb/m^2? That really has no meaning to me. (For a second I thought you were talking about lead.)

  61. Holy Density, Batman! by TygerFish · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Holy Density, Batman!

    God, I've always wanted to say that...

    --
    To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
    "Yeah. It smells, too..."
  62. Arcane units by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sorry, my head can't get round the concept of KDVDs Cubits ^ -2.

    Can anyone give the result is something sensible like Commadore analouge tape cartridges per average female thumb area?

  63. Sqaure Inches spin. by psychofox · · Score: 1

    I would have thought its fairly obvious why they are using sqaure inches rather square centimetres... It enables them to say they've broken through the 'trillion barrier'.

  64. Re:Ferroelectricity (the Hegelian approach) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    You're right, they use something like an STM, from the article ...dubbed scanning nonlinear dialectic microscope (SNDM) ...


    Don't know why noone of the pun-addicted /. crowd picked up on this misprint: surely they mean dielectric, or they have read too much Hegel...

  65. ferro? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    what's the difference between ferroelectric and ferromagnetic?

  66. Screw it... by XJoshX · · Score: 1


    I shudder to think how much good drool has slipped into my keyboard reading hundreds of similar headlines over the years.. Put it in a CD/DVD size (or smaller) format that is cheap, (re)writeable, and durable (Right now all our opticle formats leave something to be desired in this department). Until then STFU. I'm still waiting for a DVD[+|-]R format whose media costs less than $0.50 a disc and can be burned in less than ten minutes.

    So please, until something like this is available at Newegg spare us.

    Kthx.

  67. Re:Inches? Cubits? by Alsee · · Score: 3, Funny

    Or about 70,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bits per square parsec.
    That's 31 zeros.

    -

    --
    - - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
  68. dots not bits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The story talks about dots, so they must be
    referring to Morse code for storage. Dashes
    probably take a larger about of area so less
    Dashes could be stored then dots.

  69. What a great idea! by bryanp · · Score: 1

    We should use bizarre measurements in everything, just to mess with people. How about the speed of light expressed as 1798639627696 furlongs per fortnight?

    --
    "An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
  70. length != surface ! by makapuf · · Score: 1

    Maybe it's time to know that a SQUARE inch is .. um ... fuck ... about the length from the top of your thumb to the first joint SQUARED. Which really is a sensible unit, isn't it.
    C'mon, open, free standards are good, no ?

  71. Re:Inches? Cubits? by mashx · · Score: 1

    Same one that decided on changing Irish road signs for distance into Km, but left the speed limits in Mph perhaps?

    --

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~
  72. Re:Inches? Cubits? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That should have been 0.25 terabits. To me, mm or cm makes more sense for measuring bit density, just because we don't measure disk size in m.

  73. And really... by athlon02 · · Score: 1

    20K DVD per cubit^2 is wrong anyways...
    1 cubit = approx. 18 inches
    (1 cubit) ^ 2 = 18*18 sq. inches

    47 DVDs * 18 * 18 = 15,228

    Or is it considered acceptable to round up by 1000's when the number is only in the low 10,000s? :)

    1. Re:And really... by PowerKe · · Score: 1

      According to this page, cubits can range from 12 inch to about 39 inches. It seems like their cubit is more like 20.6 inches.

      "Cubits" range from less than 12 inches in the case of Pygmies, to more than 36 inches, in the case of Giants. The cubit of the king of Bashan was estimated to be 39.37 inches. (A Meter-long Cubit! :)

      The "1992 World Almanac and Book of Facts" gives a Roman Cubit of 17.5 inches, a Greek Cubit of 18.3 inches, and a so-called "Biblical Cubit" of 21.8 inches.

      Collier's Encylopedia (Weights and Measures, pages 394,395) gives an Arabian(black) cubit of 21.3 inches, an Arabian(hashimi) cubit of 25.6 inches, an Assyrian cubit of 21.6 inches, an ancient Egyptian cubit of 20.6 inches, an ancient Israeli cubit of 17.6 inches, an ancient Grecian cubit of 18.3 inches, and an ancient Roman cubit of 17.5 inches; The last two agree with the 1992 World Almanac ones.

      Webster's unabridged dictionary gives a Roman cubit of 17.4 inches, and an Egyptian cubit of 20.64 which is about the same as Collier's. And, (of course,) Webster's ENGLISH dictionary for english-speaking people in the U.S.A., gives a modern ENGLISH CUBIT of 18 inches.


      Guess they're going for the Egyptian one. Next quarter all they have to do is increase the size of their cubit instead of improve their technology to get a higher "density".

    2. Re:And really... by WebMasterJoe · · Score: 1

      A slashdotter is quoting an AOL member's web site? Please, remember that just because it's on the web, that doesn't mean it's true. Case in point: this article claims that a cubit is over 46 feet long. :)

      --
      I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
    3. Re:And really... by PowerKe · · Score: 1

      Ok, maybe that was a bad reference as a primary reference. Still, I was only pointing out that there are lots of lengths you can choose from when you're using a cubit. The standard English cubit is 18 inches, but there are lots of references to other lengths as well, not only by aol members. 1 2 3 4.

  74. Bye-bye bonus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No bonus for me. Bug or feature?

  75. I get it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A cubic rube.

  76. moot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    this is completely moot, we'll never see this technology. people are still using cd-rs and dvd-rs are becoming bigger....i can't remember the last time i saw holographic storage or this insane "cubit" (wtf?) sized storage....gee i'll probably be gray by the time that happens, and then i won't be able to get it up which means 250gb of german scheiza will be useless!

  77. Because the existing tech *has* radically improved by Goonie · · Score: 1
    Hard drives have been squeezing more data in a smaller space at lower cost with lower seek times and higher transfer speeds for the past 40 (actually about 50) years.

    CSIRAC (1st generation computer that went online in 1949) had a storage drum that initially held about 1KB, so approximately 2^10 bytes. You can now buy 200GB hard drives off the shelf - roughly 2^37 bytes. So a contemporary hard drive is now 2^27 times bigger than that original device, and is probably about 1/100th the size and mass (so you could, if you were really trying to prove the point, throw in another factor of 2^5). Hardly "slightly bigger and slightly better". We haven't even discussed transfer rates...

    --

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
    --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
  78. End user implications? by gmuslera · · Score: 1

    What kind of devices/information could be available when this comes to market?

    Full time cameras? You can even use that kind of cameras as an enhanced agenda. Very good resolution earth maps? some kind of universal library? a personal google? or even a big percent of files shared in kazaa? :)

    With this kind of things the future could bring some nice gadgets, like brain upload devices or holographic technology a la Star Trek

    Anyway, the read time seems to be very slow for that much information, and even if the write speed is a bit better, could take years (?) to fill one.

    And, of course, size of devices needed to read/write in that kind of memory also could matters.

  79. Takes an afwull lot of time to write... by giel · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Please correct me if I'm wrong:

    3TB = (aprox.) 3.000.000.000.000 (12 zero's)
    25kB/s = (aprox.) 25.000

    3.000.000.000.000/25.000
    = 1.200.000 seconds (to write a DVD sized medium)
    = 20000 hours
    = 833 days
    = 2 years and 4 months!!!

    WHAT!?

    Well sounds kinda usefull...

    --
    giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
    1. Re:Takes an afwull lot of time to write... by Mike+Monett · · Score: 2, Informative

      3.000.000.000.000/25.000
      = 1.200.000 seconds (to write a DVD sized medium)
      = 333.33333 hours
      = 13.888889 days

    2. Re:Takes an afwull lot of time to write... by giel · · Score: 1

      Ah see I knew I missed something, well if I then did mixup bits and bytes we might end up with something like two days.

      Pfff.

      --
      giel.y contains 2 shift/reduce conflicts
  80. Flashy and useless... by Kattana · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    this kinda storage might be the future of computers but unless they improve the read speed fast it will be useless. According to my calculations it would take more then 2 years to back up your 1 inch^2 drive! I rather have a drive i can actualy use.

  81. Benchmark... by EpsCylonB · · Score: 1

    but the new storage benchmark is the DVD. This is 47 DVD's in a square inch, or over 20KiloDVD's per square cubit

    Well that may be the benchmark your using but I want all my vapourware data storage anoucements in Libaries Of Congress please.

  82. Must have Bill Cosby reference..... by ArthurDent · · Score: 1

    Riiiiight. What's a cubit?

    1. Re:Must have Bill Cosby reference..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hummm... a casual reading of the thread (yes, this one that we are both posting to) reveals this informative gem. Maybe you missed it as it was the first response in thread and it was posted over an hour BEFORE you asked the question to the ACs answer.

      Alas, it was wasted on souls such as yours.

    2. Re:Must have Bill Cosby reference..... by ArthurDent · · Score: 1

      You missed the reference. There's a Bill Cosby routine where he's reenacting the Biblical character Noah talking to God about the flood, and God tells him to build an ark with these dimensions in cubits, and Noah responds "Riiiiight. What's a cubit."

    3. Re:Must have Bill Cosby reference..... by Taldo · · Score: 1
      You missed the reference. There's a Bill Cosby routine where he's reenacting the Biblical character Noah talking to God about the flood, and God tells him to build an ark with these dimensions in cubits, and Noah responds "Riiiiight. What's a cubit."

      ...at which point God responds with 'Uh... let's see... a cubit... I used to know what a cubit was...'

      Sheesh these kids today.

      I'm still confused as to why the parent is talking about cubits. I mean... this is a unit nobody's used for... what.... 1500 years? Give or take?

      Here's a thought....

      Non-technical journalist heard 'qbit' and wrote out the nearest term he could think of maybe?

  83. Measurement differences? by videodriverguy · · Score: 1

    So instead of losing a mars probe because of miscalculations, we now lose a percentage of the data?

    Of course, if it's measured in units USAians understand, it will be 'those other people' who will get it wrong, which is probably alright, yes?

  84. Oh please! by GMontag · · Score: 1

    Obviously they are Japanese cubits! They are a bit smallet than the others you listed.

  85. Which would be... by kcb93x · · Score: 1

    Which would be 3,092.6 GB, or roughly 3 TBs. Now, let's see them make this, and this will probably replace current tape drives (being slow and all, unless they can make it read/write really fast) I think that at this density, it better be able to read/write at LEAST 750 MB/sec, if it's to be used as a backup drive, or over 1 GB if it's to be used as a common drive for whatever, games, encyclopedias, etc.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
    1. Re:Which would be... by beef3k · · Score: 1

      Now where did I read about that new SATA 750 interface... or was that USB 10.0? Oh well...

  86. Re:Is this.. Damn straight it is. by gosand · · Score: 2
    At least right now what type of applications would this be good for? Do we really need that much storage? Perhaps if programmers wrote better code........... Then again remember when 2megs of memory was "the bomb" ?

    Yes, it is important. Because applications won't grow to fit the need if there is no room to grow. Yeah, I do remember when 2MB of memory was the bomb, I paid an extra $200 for that extra MB when I bought my 386DX-33. I had the best hard drive too, 80MB. Now I have 3x+ that in memory.

    I see your point, but look where things have gone in the last ... damn, has it been 12 years already?! I don't think you can blame programmers for writing worse code. Look at what the code of today is capable of, versus the code of 1991. Wolfenstein 3d vs Return to Castle Wolfenstein.

    No, we don't need the space right now, but we will find new and interesting ways to fill it if it is there. Imagine not having to uninstall your OS, just create a new 100GB partition, install the new OS to it, and boot to that one instead of the old one. We have gotten used to having to uninstall software because we have limited space to deal with. Think of all the things we wouldn't have to do if we had "unlimited" nearly instant-access disk space.

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  87. Re:Inches? Cubits? by Skiboo · · Score: 1

    Originally, a cubit was meant to be the length of your forearm (from the elbow, to the base of the hand).

  88. Grandpa Simpson quote by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...he RULES!!!

  89. 50 Years Per Square Inch? by jetkust · · Score: 1

    According to their figures (and some bad math), it would take 1 to 50 years to write a square inch at what they said was their desired maximum capacity (4 petabits) considering the write speeds they gave (from 2.5 MB/sec to 125 MB/sec). It also claims the current prototye is "not accurate enough for practical applications" but will be possibly in 5 years. I don't know, but possibly, by that time, another technology will arise with simular or better capacity and a write speed to fill it in minutes or hours though.

  90. The RIAA and MPAA are gonna hate this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So I can fit 47 DVD's into a square inch... So at $20 per dvd, that's $940 cost of video (note I said "cost" instead of "worth" ) since by the time this technology is available, the Microsoft Hitler DRM OS will by mandated by the Seeing Eye Pyramid Corporate Patriot Act of 2016. :(

  91. with that much storage space... by utexaspunk · · Score: 1

    ...perhaps we would just never have to delete anything again? maybe the computer can just keep a log of everything that's happened since it was turned on... ...on second thought, that might not be such a good idea...

  92. You also switched the numbers by fizbin · · Score: 1

    The 25 kB/s figure is the read time; the write time is 100 times faster than that.

    So accounting for the correction in the other post, it would take 13 days to read (as much data as) a DVD, but only 13% of one day to write one. (a bit over 3 hours)

    13 days to read a DVD's worth of data is a bit problematic.

    1. Re:You also switched the numbers by jafuser · · Score: 1
      This would still be very useful for storing a *MASSIVE* amount of data, which is indexed on a faster medium (hard drives).

      The more variety of speed/storage density tradeoffs we have, the more capabilities we have to find uses for them.

      --
      Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
  93. Impressive? by photon317 · · Score: 1


    It may be impressive in the sense that ferro-electric might have decent seek and transfer times, but it's certainly not very impressive in terms of raw storage capacity. 47 DVDs in a square inch. Think of how thin the actual storage layer on a DVD is (not the plastic cover), and it seems pretty easy to reach that number or higher with DVD storage technology recnofigured into a cube of layers.

    --
    11*43+456^2
  94. Article writer gots problems by twofidyKidd · · Score: 1

    He's talking bytes where he means bits, bits where he means dots, inches along side with cm, and cubits where...god only knows (no pun intended.)

    I thought he was going to use the 14.7 higmadoos in a wingwong measurement that's to commonplace with the schientiphic society, but he let me down.

    --


    Hades, PoD: Official Advocate
  95. Has Japan passed US? by fdisk3hs · · Score: 1

    Quite a coincidence, I was reading a two-year-old Wired yesterday talking about how far ahead the US universities were on what they were calling "moletronics". It seems a lot of people are caught up in the DVD/video aspect, but in the article they were talking about storing a terrabyte in a matchbook-sized piece of fabric and such. Putting a "black box" IN the skin of the airplane every few inches, etcetera. The scoop here for me is, does it mean that Japan has passed us in molecular electronics?

    The Wired article was US-centric, and I wondered where Japan fit into this picture.

    Does anybody know?

    Also you have to remember that speed is a small concern at this point, this is VERY young technology. The main thing is that for $.10 you can make a vial of molecules. That vial of molecules will contain like 6 X 10^23 molecules capable of being used in place of transistors in electronic circuits. Imagine the new Transmeta 14BillionJigaHertz laptop. With the entire internet cached in RAM that only has to refresh power every 8 or 10 seconds, rather than 60ms like DRAM. Power usage, computing power, and storage amounts go through the roof. No moving parts either.

    HP is using their redundant self-diagnosing design along with this technology, so that even if there are some reliability issues with the molecular "switches" giving up after a while, the system will be so redundant that it will turn off that bank of switches and continue on.

    Anyhow, this topic really struck me yesterday and I was trying to shed some light. Anybody know the current state of affairs on US "moletronic" technology?

    P.S. When this happens, they are going to need a LOT of software... Maybe GCC 23.5.1 will get ported...

    LR

  96. Cubits? by boatboy · · Score: 1

    Just to think, years ago, it took 450,000 cubits just to store the genetic sequence of the known animal kingdom...

  97. Re:Inches? Cubits? by RichardX · · Score: 2, Funny

    The full specifications are:

    Storage: 195.7 decabytes per 3.3 twips

    Rotational velocity: 948 furlongs per fortnight
    Weight: .5 a small child per coffee-table

    Operating temperature: As warm as a large cow.

    Operating noise range: Approx that of a dyslexic peg-legged mime performing an impromptu street rendition of Macbeth using a small matchbox containing 12 red ants as his only prop.

    --
    Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
  98. Cosby's Noah by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 1

    Riiiiiiight. ...What's a cubit?

  99. Re:Inches? Cubits? by jandrese · · Score: 1

    That's because the academics who complain about stuff like that are the ones who only use them in trivial examples. People use cm because it is about the right size for a lot of applications (inches too). Metric still suffers from the too small/too big syndrome, where the units are spaced too far apart for convienence (3 orders of magnitude difference is a lot). Of course it's too late to complain now I guess.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  100. encoding by nightsweat · · Score: 1

    Of course the 20KDVD media is protected so it only plays in Region 1

    --

    the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
  101. Crabby moderator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    LOL.

    Some crabby moderator modded the original post down.

  102. It's now a user prefrence... by autopr0n · · Score: 1

    Go under prefrences/comments, they now have a 'karma bonus' option where you can set however much of a bonus you want for 'elevated' users. It's set to +0 by default.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
    1. Re:It's now a user prefrence... by Wee · · Score: 1
      Good catch. Weird thing is they still have a "No Score +1 Bonus" checkbox as well.

      -B

      --

      Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.

    2. Re:It's now a user prefrence... by charon_on_acheron · · Score: 1

      That checkbox is still there so you selectively not use the +1 bonus you chose on the other page, for when you want to totally flame someone, but don't want to lose more than 2 karma points doing it.

      And actually, looking at mine just now, it says "No Karma Bonus", not specifically "No +1 Bonus" like before. So I guess we can set our bonus to +1, +2, or more depending on our karma amount. Cool.

  103. Re:Inches? Cubits? by Tet · · Score: 1
    Metric still suffers from the too small/too big syndrome, where the units are spaced too far apart for convienence (3 orders of magnitude difference is a lot).

    I couldn't disagree more with this. Any number in the metric system is between 0 and 1000, with an appropriate prefix added to the units, which makes it convenient for just about every application. I don't see why measuring in millimetres is a problem. I routinely say "that gap's about 50 mil". Is that so much different to "that gap's about 5cm"? Can't see it myself. Contrast that with Imperial units, where people tend to say a vehicle weighs 3500 pounds. Surely that suffers from the "too big" syndrome far more than metric units?

    --
    "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
  104. Reading the Metric vs Imperial arguments . . . by fr2asbury · · Score: 1

    I'd say:
    1 Molehill (Imperial) = 1 Mountain (Metric)

    Cheers,
    Jonathan

  105. Fortnights by pclminion · · Score: 1
    Not so weird.

    The VMS operating system had (still has?) a configurable boot-time delay which is specified in microfortnights.

  106. Shwoopah by Esion+Modnar · · Score: 1

    Shwoopah... Shwoopah... Shwoopah... Ding!!!

    --

    They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
  107. Colossal Storage Corporation Invented/Patented by fedrive · · Score: 1

    ferroelectric molecular optical storage nanotechnology many years ago.

    I am sure the company is in talks with the Japanese as we speak.

    The website for those interested is

    www.colossalstorage.net

  108. Re:Inches? Cubits? by Guppy06 · · Score: 1

    "For those of you using sane units, this is about 250 gigabits per cm^2."

    Closer to 270 GB per cm^2. If you're using "sane" units, then there's 1000 bytes/kilobytes/megabytes in a kilobyte/megabyte/gigabyte, not 1024.

    SI is base-10 only. If you're going to insinuate that SI is the "one true measuring system," you had best get it right.

  109. Re:Takes an awful lot of time to write... by soulsteal · · Score: 1

    The parent said it writes at 2.5MB/s and reads at 25kB/s. You've reversed those numbers.

    Also, when you did your calculation your quotient from the storage size/read speed equation ended up with the storage size/write speed answer. You then proceeded to divide by 60 to get the number of minutes it would take to write the media. You incorrectly convert that to days by dividing by 24 hours. You should have converted the minutes to hours first.

    Granted, it'd still take 13 days, 21 hours and 20 minutes to write the full 3 TB at 2.5MB/s, but that's a better number than yours.

    Cheers.

  110. Gonzo Storage? by LilGuy · · Score: 1

    I think I'd much rather have fozzy, or kermit storage.

    That said, personally I don't like gonzo.. Never trust anyone with a large nose who says he's not jewish. We all know they have such large noses because air is free.

    --

    You're nothing; like me.
  111. Yeah, but... by NFW · · Score: 1

    Are those metric cubits or imperial cubits?

    --
    Build stuff. Stuff that walks, stuff that rolls, whatever.
  112. Metric is better than Imperial by jimsum · · Score: 1

    Both systems have their advantages, but I'd say on the whole that Metric is better than Imperial.

    The Imperial system seems to be better if you don't have to convert units. Because there are so many Imperial units, with essentially arbitrary scaling factors between them, you can often pick exactly the right intuitive units for the job. For example: inches, feet, yards, miles. And once you except that there are only arbitrary relationships between units, you can even use metric units like litres to measure bottles of coke!

    The Metric system is definitely better if you ever have to convert between units. I'll bet you can convert centimetres to kilometres in your head, and I'll equally bet you don't know the conversion from inches to miles. Conversion between different types of units is also often nice in the metric system. For example, a litre of water weighs a kilogram.

    On the whole, as a Canadian who is regularly forced to use one system or the other, I'd say the convenience of conversion outweighs the ability to pick an intuitive unit. If you need a geeky example why this is so: I often spend my time when riding my bike up long hills trying to figure out how many revolutions of my 27 inch bike wheel it takes to go a mile. I have to convert to metric units and back to even have a chance at doing the calculation in my head; especially if I want to calculate revolutions per second of my peddles into miles per hour.

    I'd also like to point out that metric units can also be intuitive. Celsius temperatures make a lot more sense. Freezing and boiling points at 0 and 100 make a lot more intuitive sense than 32 and 212.

    I'd like to repeat the plea to Americans to switch to SI. I wouldn't need two sets of wrenches, and I could free up a whole bunch of brain space filled with trivia like: there are 12 inches in a foot, 16 ounces in a pound (or is that 12 troy ounces?), and 128 ounces in a gallon (or is that 160 slightly smaller ounces in a Canadian gallon?). Since you Imperial unit users are accustomed to arbitrary conversion factors, I don't see why you can't just learn 2.2 pounds to the kilogram, 1.6 kilometers to the mile, 3.75 litres to the (American) gallon, and leave the rest of us in peace.

    --
    -- Pot is safer than Beer
    1. Re:Metric is better than Imperial by Parad0x177 · · Score: 1

      Aren't you kind of preaching to the choir here?

      It seems to me that, of the U.S. population as a whole, the subset that makes up the /. crowd is probably the one most easily convinced to convert. (We are the ones most likely to at least be somewhat accustomed to using SI units.)As for the general population, most people would probably fall in the sheep category. They may gripe, but if you don't really give them a choice, they will eventually just adjust.

      If you want to lobby to someone, start with the moron politicians. They're the ones that keep fouling up our attempts to convert. Of course, we've tried twice so far, so good luck doing any better. Hell, we can't even pick a freaking national language for fear of offending one group or another.

      Oh, wait, Canada has that problem too.... ;-)

    2. Re:Metric is better than Imperial by charon_on_acheron · · Score: 1

      27-inch tire, 1 mile distance, How many revolutions?

      I guessed at about 200, or just under. What was the first answer you got using metric?

    3. Re:Metric is better than Imperial by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fractions are much easier in the "imperial" (a.k.a. normal :P ) measurement.

      What is 1/4 of a centimeter? it's certainly not 4 ticks on my ruler, that's for sure. Oh, you say it's 2500 micrometers? My measuring stick doesn't have ticks for that, and I'm quite sure I don't have time to count to 2500. And isn't a micrometer some sort of measuring instrument?

      Meanwhile, back at the ranch, any idiot with two brain cells to rub together can figure out what a quarter of an inch is. 4 ticks on the ruler. I rarely use tenths of anything. Halves, quarters, and eighths are much more common in everyday life.

      What it boils down to is the arrogance of the average scientific mentality. "I am doing worthwhile study. I am finding facts. I am in charge. I will know everything. I will measure things in base 10 whether or not it is the most useful way."

      Our brains are much more accustomed to working with digital information than anyone wants to believe. How fast can you multiply by 2? What about division by 2? It's every bit(no pun intended) as fast as multiplying or dividing by 10, yet our number system is base 10(therefore making it much easier to do this operation with simple visual changes rather than mathematical calculations).

      We also tend to group ourselves in twos, threes, and fours most of the time(socially). We are required by our social lives to be able to multiply and divide by 2, 3, and 4 quickly. And 3 takes a lot of practice for many people. Imperial measurements tend to work well in this range.

      Also, with regard to the Celcius vs. Fahrenheit thing, integral resolution is much greater with Fahrenheit.

      When you tell someone the temperature in Fahrenheit, you're giving them a much more accurate number. Chances are, you don't tell people that it's 32.43439034955 degrees Celsius. You simply say "32." In this case, the temperature in Fahrenheit is 90.38xxxxx, yet you just told them it was 89.6 degrees Fahrenheit, almost a whole degree different! And this example was under half a degree difference in Celsius! Accuracy, my posterior.

      Then there's the fact that you can measure things in imperial measurements without need of a ruler. Most people's thumb from the tip to the first knuckle is an inch. The length from your elbow to your middle finger's tip is about 1.5 feet. Your hand is about 4 inches wide across the base knuckles of your fingers. Now what's that in metric?

      Simply put, imperial measurements are MUCH more practical in everyday life. The only thing metric has going for it is easy conversion. And that's only because we're taught base 10 from an early age. How would it be if we all learned hexadecimal in kindergarten?

    4. Re:Metric is better than Imperial by Cletus+the+yokel · · Score: 1

      ?Huh? 200?

      (5280 feet/mile * 12 in./foot) / 27 in. = 2346.7

      --
      Wanted: One witty yet thought provoking .sig - Apply here.
    5. Re:Metric is better than Imperial by charon_on_acheron · · Score: 1

      Well, I didn't say I was right....

      Yeah, I goofed. What can I say? I should have multiplied that 200 by twelve. But can you imagine riding a bike with 27-foot tires? ;^) That would rock.

    6. Re:Metric is better than Imperial by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is the most moronic post I have read in a while.

    7. Re:Metric is better than Imperial by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The poster can't even distinguish between a meter and a metre, but that might be more the fault of American english than anything else.

    8. Re:Metric is better than Imperial by John+Bayko · · Score: 1
      I'd also like to point out that metric units can also be intuitive. Celsius temperatures make a lot more sense. Freezing and boiling points at 0 and 100 make a lot more intuitive sense than 32 and 212.
      I expect Farenheit was originally supposed to be based on the freezing point of pure water, rather than salt (ocean) water as it is. The difference between freezing and boiling points in Farenheit is 180 degrees - hence the name "degree" for the units.

      Degrees were chosen for angles becaue it approximates the movement of the constelations (about 1 degree per night), but it's also very convenien for splitting into fractions - halfs, thirds, quarters, etc.

      As for those who argue that Farenheit is superior because it's more accurate, I doubt most people could feel a difference of 1 degree C, let along 1 degree F. It only matters in situations close to freezing, such as if you're worried if ice is going to start building up on the wings of your airplane, but in that case, you could just go by half degrees C and get about the same accuracy (e.g. "one and half" vs. "thirty five" - it's also easier to visualize distance from freezing with a centigrade based scale).

    9. Re:Metric is better than Imperial by SmittyTheBold · · Score: 1

      Don't forget that 27-inch tire has a 27" diameter, not circumference.

      A wheel with a 27-inch circumference would be...tiny.

      --
      ± 29 dB
    10. Re:Metric is better than Imperial by charon_on_acheron · · Score: 1

      Just kick a guy when he's down, eh. :^)

      Although it shows why I don't switch to metric, I forget details no matter what system I use. If I sat down and wrote it out on paper, I would have caught the mistakes. The difference in conversions from inches to feet to miles isn't the only thing I didn't visualize.

    11. Re:Metric is better than Imperial by MarvinMouse · · Score: 1

      Well to fill you in... I will introduce you to metric.

      What is 1/4 of a centimeter?

      Well, let's see, that would be .25 centimeters right. So, since the centimeter is divided into 10 ticks, then it would be right between 2 and 3 ticks. Since the ticks are so small, the error estimate is equivalent to the error estimate on an ordinary imperial rule.

      Oh, you say it's 2500 micrometers?
      Well, let's test this one out.

      1 cm = 10 mm
      1 mm = 1000 micrometers.

      So, in our head we have.. .25cm = 2500 micrometers. So, yep you are correct.

      And isn't a micrometer some sort of measuring instrument?

      Yep, you use it for very exact measurements. Here's a site on it if you want. It allows for far more precise measurements of that .25 cm that you are looking for.

      How fast can you multiply by 2?

      faster then most people can multiply. But most people multiply faster by ten.. Ready let's test it. I'll do 10 and you do the by 2.

      8463764534743657834658734534*2 = ???????
      8463764534743657834658734534*10 = 84637645347436578346587345340

      What about division by 2?
      Let's try again..

      2875483278578347684367834674/2 = ?????
      2875483278578347684367834674/10 = 287548327857834768436783467.4

      I think I beat you on both counts.

      You simply say "32."

      Actually no.. we can be more accurate too. ready...

      It's "32.43" WHOA! that's amazing.

      we ready for this one..
      Then there's the fact that you can measure things in imperial measurements without need of a ruler.

      Centimeter is the width of your pinky.
      A meter is approximately one stride. (more accurate then the yard in most cases.) A kilometer is 1000 meters. Walk for 1000 strides and you'll have a kilometer + or - a natural error.

      Wow, now is Metric really that hard? Or have the scientist confused you again?

      --
      ~ kjrose
  113. Re:Inches? Cubits? by cperciva · · Score: 1

    I said *about* 250 gigabits per cm^2. 8% error is close enough here, especially given that there would be layers of ECC and formatting before the user sees anything.

  114. Re:Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No dumb fuck, he's saying in TODAYS ECONOMY the loss as a percentage if its gross income is very small, so its not as bad. Of cource taking a loss is not good, but breaking even now can be hard to do -- especially in the h/w market.

  115. Re:Inches? Cubits? by jandrese · · Score: 1

    Try to visualize 50mm in your head. If that's too hard, try visualizing 0.05m instead.

    I bet you mentally converted that to 5cm when you thought about it. Large numbers of absolutely tiny units are hard to get a feel for, as are small fractions of large units. It's not about working numbers and moving decimal points around, it's about estimating and off the cuff calculations.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  116. Re:Inches? Cubits? by Tet · · Score: 1
    Try to visualize 50mm in your head. If that's too hard, try visualizing 0.05m instead. I bet you mentally converted that to 5cm when you thought about it.

    Nope. I thought about a 50mm sized distance. Now when I thought about 0.05m, I did mentally convert that to 50mm, because that's the more natural unit. Now I'll admit that an engineering background (where everything is measured in mm) means I'm perhaps more comfortable with mm than the general public. But I don't see why anyone would have a problem with it, particularly if taught in school (rather than cm as is currently the case in the UK at least).

    --
    "The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
  117. Re:Is this.. Damn straight it is. by Banjonardo · · Score: 1
    80MB. Now I have 3x+ that in memory.

    You only have 240 mb of ram? That's so not 1337.

    /humor

    --

    -----

    Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton

  118. Re:Inches? Cubits? by Banjonardo · · Score: 1

    Or about 326.5 shitloads per half fingernail.

    --

    -----

    Score 3? For what? Being wrong, at length? - smirkleton

  119. nonono... by autopr0n · · Score: 1

    What you can set is how much of a karma bonus you want to give people when you view the page. It dosn't really affect anything, and now there's no real reprocussion for not checking the box, as your posts can't go past -1.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  120. Hegelian Microscopy by hristrdingslshdt · · Score: 1

    >The researchers' measuring device, dubbed >scanning nonlinear dialectic microscope (SNDM), >overcomes these limitations, said Cho. Guess that Cho really paid attention in his philosophy of physics course.

  121. Re:Inches? Cubits? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    did you know that barn-yard-atmosphere is a unit of energy?

  122. Re:Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    if its gross income is very small, so its not as bad.

    No MORON, he's saying that it's "REALLY REALLY GOOD." Read it again and weep, Macfag.

  123. Re:Inches? Cubits? by Cs.Ender · · Score: 1

    The numbers come out quite nicely for 1 in. stacks of IBM 90-column punch-cards per square fathom...there are 1,234 of them.

    --
    I know lots of things. Most of them are wrong.
  124. Re:Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No MORON, he's saying that it's "REALLY REALLY GOOD." Read it again and weep, Macfag.

    That's right, cuntface. I said it's really, really good that Apple was able to get through one of the worst retail years in American history with a net loss of only a few tenths of a percent of their revenues. The net loss on the stock was only 2 a share, for chrissakes! AMD lost over $800 million last quarter alone. Gateway is going to announce a 4th quarter net loss of over $1 billion. Sun lost over $2 billion last quarter! That's 72 a share!

    Compared to the market as a whole, Apple is doing very, very well. Cockgobber.

  125. Re:Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gateway is going to announce a 4th quarter net loss of over $1 billion. Sun lost over $2 billion last quarter! That's 72 a share!

    Which is really bad. Apple making a loss is not, by any normal measure, really really good. It just not as bad as some others. You are just too fucking stupid to understand this simple point. Go back to wanking over Aqua screenshots and Steve Jobs PR photos.

  126. Re:Is this.. Damn straight it is. by gosand · · Score: 1

    note the + sign. In some of my machines I have only 256.

    --

    My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.

  127. Re:Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm too fucking stupid? You're the one who is talking like "good" and "bad" are absolute terms. I can't believe you're seriously arguing that posting a loss so small it's practically a break-even in a terrible economy-- when other companies in the market are posting multi-billion-dollar losses-- isn't a good thing.

    You are a fucking idiot, and I wash my hands of you.

  128. Better Measurement through Molecule size by Snover · · Score: 1

    Why are we not using measurements that the Universe has handed to us? I am, of course, speaking of the fact that a metre (or meter, if you're like that) is "the distance traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second". How crappy a definition of a size is this? Why not create a unit that is the size of 1000 trillion Carbon-12 molecules strung end-to-end? That would make a lot more sense. I know that there is a unit type "dalton" that is 1/12 the size of a Carbon-12 atom, but that's rather ridiculous. While I would say "use Hydrogen", I'm thinking that would probably be WAY too small. :P

    --

    [insert witty comment here]
    1. Re:Better Measurement through Molecule size by hcdejong · · Score: 1

      Apart from the practical problems involved (like introducing a third measurement system and getting everyone to switch-again, for many), you mean?

      In the end, every measurement system is arbitrary. In normal life, who cares about the definition of a unit? What's the practical difference between "1/299,792,458 of a second" and "1000 trillion Carbon-12 molecules strung end-to-end"? Sure, there's a certain elegance to defining units using physics.

      Also, this already happens. Temperature (Celcius) is derived from the melting and boiling points of water. Length, weight and volume are also linked (one litre of water is one cubic decimeter is one kilogram). And wasn't the meter defined (a few definitions ago) as 1/x part of the circumference of the earth?

    2. Re:Better Measurement through Molecule size by Snover · · Score: 1

      Apart from the practical problems involved (like introducing a third measurement system and getting everyone to switch-again, for many), you mean?
      Well, yeah, of course. :)

      In normal life, who cares about the definition of a unit?
      Um...me? ;)
      Seriously though, as we build more and more things of smaller and smaller size, we're going to need a better definition than 1/299,792,458 of a second for units of measurement, and I can't imagine AMUs working that well, even modified for the express purpose of length instead of weight. We've come up with a lot of stupid, arbitrary systems. I like the metric system (and yes, I unfortunately have grown up and currently live in the United States). Multiples of 10 make sense. 12 inches per foot, three feet per yard, 5280 feet per mile... ridiculous. The argument has been made that these are better measurements for aerospace things, but I'm not so sure that is true. While the smallest units (1/12 of an inch and whatnot) might correspond better to certain things, the fact that it is 1/12 instead of 1/10 is, well, dumb.

      --

      [insert witty comment here]
  129. Re:Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since when is losing money good, you dimwit? It's just not as bad as it could be... and that's all that can be said.

    Like I said originally, you obviously live in an Enron fantasy land of high-powered jerks who've forgotten what the real world is like. Just fuck off back to your 'economics for the internet age' class, you asshole.

  130. Re:Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    *hold up hand and looks away* I said good day!

  131. Re:Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since when is losing money good, you dimwit?

    Fucking idiot. Losing a little money is good when everybody else is losing a lot of money. Fucking idiot.

    Like I said originally, you obviously live in an Enron fantasy land of high-powered jerks who've forgotten what the real world is like.

    And you're obviously a moron who never owned a single share of stock in his life. Why don't you go back to your hippie commune?

  132. Re:Square cubit? the AFM storage is 2D Storage by fedrive · · Score: 1

    the atomic force microscope only writes on the surface 2D ( x by y dimensions).

    Imagine if they could do 3D Volume Holographic Optical Storage Nanotechnology,
    the data density, capacities, and bandwidth would go thru the stratisphere to ISS space lab.

  133. Re:Did you notice how he seemed to have a lot of m by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fucking idiot. Losing a little money is good when everybody else is losing a lot of money. Fucking idiot.

    No it's *NOT*. It is simply not as bad as what is happening to others? How many times do you need to be told. The only circumstances in which losing money is "really really good" is when you are trying to launder drug money.

    So what is it? Are you fucking retarded or something? Do you define a hippy as someone who thinks that losing money is bad? You, sir, are a deluded fool... and I strongly suggest that you take a break from the bizarro world of stock reports and rejoin the real world for a while. It might restore some kind of perspective to your life.

  134. Last Post! by alpg · · Score: 0

    An engineer, a physicist and a mathematician find themselves in an
    anecdote, indeed an anecdote quite similar to many that you have no doubt
    already heard. After some observations and rough calculations the
    engineer realizes the situation and starts laughing. A few minutes later
    the physicist understands too and chuckles to himself happily as he now
    has enough experimental evidence to publish a paper. This leaves the
    mathematician somewhat perplexed, as he had observed right away that he
    was the subject of an anecdote, and deduced quite rapidly the presence of
    humour from similar anecdotes, but considers this anecdote to be too
    trivial a corollary to be significant, let alone funny.

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...