Slashdot Mirror
Sanyo Develops Corn-Based Biodegradeable CD
Recoil_42 writes "PC World has an intriguing article about one way to help ease a growing problem: computer waste. Sanyo, with the help of Dow, has created a biodegradeable disc made of corn. The discs take 50-100 years to degrade, well within acceptable limits, and should come to market by the end of this year. The speedbump, of course, is the projected price: 3 times that of a normal plastic disc, but that cost is expected to be reduced to 1.2 times as (if?) the discs become more popular."
Great!!! now I can eat all the old Linux distors...
Now we pay people to pick CDs-on-the-cob?
503 Sig Unavailable
The Signature could not be accessed. Please try again later or contact the administrator
Now every time I go to the local electronics shop and ask for the corn discs, they're going to assume Korn discs, and everyone who goes in looking for Korn discs will have the same problem.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
The average consumer is never going to buy a bio-degradable disc if its three times the price of a regular one. The only way to make them popular in the market is have the software and music companies use them and eventually it will trickle down to everybody.
It's not like you can use corn for anything else, is it ? - like feeding the starving millions in the third world.
Jeesh, I'm glad I got that off my chest.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Now we know what we will be doing with all those AOL discs in the future - five minutes under the grill with a knob of butter. Yum!
...my homework biodegraded...
Warning: Excessive usage of stupidity may be harmful to your health
Not only do they biodegrade on you, they cost three times as much. I can't wait to run out and buy some!
so instead of feeding millions of starving people with the corn, we are going to make CDs out of it.
You can also make biodegradable plastic bags out of corn - some people think this is good - I say take a re-usable bag with you.
Taken from Microfilm.com: "Under less-than-optimal storage conditions, digital tapes and disks, including CD-ROMs and optical drives, might deteriorate about as fast as newsprint - in 5 to 10 years. Tests by the National Media Lab, a St. Paul (Minn.)-based government and industry consortium, show that tapes might preserve data for a decade, depending on storage conditions. Disks -whether CD-ROMs used for games or the type used by some companies to store pension plans - may become unreadable in five years."
How many times have you seen CD's left to reflect the sun onto the ceiling? Long after the data is lost due to lack of care, the plastic will still be hanging about. I think CDs that have a physical life span are a great idea for the environment. Companies which do look after their CDs can still get their longer lasting ones.
So now you can just microwave the AOL discs and have a light low-calorie snack.
It was supposed to last forever, be a safe place to store your data, and now this? WTF? Pass the milk and sugar? What a crock!
So Sony has added an improvement to their degradable media... they don't only become unreadable after a year (The Sony CD-Rs I burned last year are full of read errors), now they even disintegrate after 50 years.
Why can't they come up with a disc that retains its data for at least 50-100 years instead of one that disintegrates?!?!?!
but it seems like it would make more sense to just make recyclable disks instead. I wonder what the environment required is for the disks to start breaking down is... it couldn't possibly be heat. Maybe sunlight and/or water? I'd hate to leave a disk out in my car and forget about it for a few days, then come back and find it degraded just enough that I can't access the data on it anymore.
I do thing this is a really cool idea. Those bloody AOL disks were the first good use that came to mind. Since they're corn, maybe they can go the extra step and find a way to make them edible like that one company that makes edible plates and food boxes. =)
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
This will probably be used by the record companies to let us pay more for Audio CD's. Good excuse to raise the prices more and more...
Biodegradability is nice but will somebody please check to see what percentage of our landfills are CDs (and CD cases). I've heard that in that category, yard and lawn waste is one of the leading contenders. Which I might note is biodegradable but won't because nothing biodegrades in an anaerobic landfill environment.
I guess when it comes to reliable data-storage nothing beats good old pergament yet.
What exactly does a CD made of corn smell like after 3 hours in my drive playing MP3s? Fried mush...? Microwave popcorn? Maybe sticking a little butter in the floppy drive....
If it's made of corn... can I feed spare disks to my mare?
Only problem is that once something "biodegradeable" is buried in a landfill it never goes away. There was a show on a Nova like program about it. In 1000 years you will be able to show the history of makind with garbage.
Sort of like looking at the layers of rock now and seeing fosils from prehistoric times. Instead of animals it will be cartons of milk and boxes of Hungry Man dinners.
Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket?
With ideas being thrown around for single-use, self-degrading DVD rentals this thing could make that horrible idea at least a bit more acceptable.
.: Max Romantschuk
A few years ago-- maybe ten by now, I'm not sure-- my aunt brought back some kind of candy from Japan that had an edible wrapper-- maybe made out of rice-paper or something. Well, being 13, I spat it out because it was orange-flavored (recall that physical age is not proportional to emotional maturity in the teenage male-- and besides, I really don't like oranges). But now I think that maybe if I found some non-orange-flavored type of that candy, I might have a greater appreciation or, nay, enjoyment of it. (Having become a massive anime fan during the past decade doesn't hurt my chances either.) Anyone know what this candy is? And, uh, Aunt Ruth? If you're reading this, I'm sorry and would you mind telling me?
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
Reminds me of an initiative around, oh, 15 years ago to replace plastic foam packing chips with specially treated popped corn for similar (biodegradeable) reasons. Seem to recall it worked well, but it also attracted rodents into shipping warehouses!
AT&ROFLMAO
Maybe we should make the case out of this stuff as well. And why not the monitor casing, etcccc.....? Sounds like at least one step is being made on making computers green. Except i would argue that computers are already green because they make us more effiecnt and we dont have to trave to the library to get info anymore and we can work from home.
The key information missing from this article is how long the data recorded will stay in pristine shape though - the fact the disc will decompose in 50 years when discarded is good, but if the data is gone in two years, well, that's no better than current plastics! Could be useful to make us re-buy our DVDs every few years though....
If they make one that degrades after a certain number of playbacks instead. Or maybe one that degrades within a year or some other ridiculous timeframe.
I'd be totally against it, of course, as I am with all their other DRM/IP related moves. But it's not *that* far off to imagine them seeing this as an option to prolong their current parasitic business model, instead of embracing the online world.
Black holes are where God divided by zero
They should _force_ AOL to use them.
Most waste CDs, and higher costs = less of them. Done and done.
-bZj
.sig
Am I the only one that saw
"Sanyo Develops Porn-Based Biodegradeable CD"
and thought "Wow, where can we donate!"
Does it stay crispy in milk? And which side do you prefer -- the frosted or unfrosted side?
would you eat a cotton or a silk T-shirt ? A shoe (like Chaplin... ok, his was made of licorice) ?
I just think this is a closer analogy...
it is not because it comes from a vegetal seed that it is supposed to be engineered a comestible way...
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Imagine this scenario - the RIAA, under the guise of "environmental responsibility" decides to start using these, when in fact the real reason is to justify higher CD prices.
Hey, they call a bunch of CD's now a spindle, but the article says you can get like 10 CD's out of a single cob of corn.
So now can I buy a cob of CD's?
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
Wouldn't count on that age - CD-Rs are supposed to last only 50-70 years, pressed CDs will last longer but I'm fairly certain it's well below 1000 years...
Besides, every time the CD burner gives me a coaster (not that it'd happen every day, of course), it's just as useless now as it is in 1000 years.
Maybe sunlight and/or water? I'd hate to leave a disk out in my car and forget about it for a few days, then come back and find it degraded just enough that I can't access the data on it anymore.
So beter don't leave them, because this is about what happens. I've already seen disks left by a window or heater that looked like from Salvadore Dali's images, enough sunlight may damage data permanently, some more will melt the plastic.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Say what you want, but in 3000 years those CD's will be in much better shape then a book.
The BBC project to preserve the doomsday book (onto laser disk) was rendered unreadable by advances in computer technology in less than 10 years, whilst the original has been around for ~1000 years and is still totally legible.
The British Government still archives data onto vellum (goat skin) because it has a life span of >>1000 years, but CDs become unreadable in under 10 (maybe 20 for the very best well handled media).
Now, if the data is only going to last for 10, whats the problem with making sure that the media breaks down in 50 instead of leaving it to uselessly fill up a landfil - plus these new ones wont leech industrial chemicals into the water supply, unlike the slower degredation of conventional CDs.
Beep beep.
You wrote:
Seriously, if you are complaining about the space that this takes up in a landfill then you got your priorities wrong. There are far more important things to worry about.
But the article says:
The International Recording Media Association estimates world demand for CDs at around 9 billion annually[.]
Pick up 9,000,000,000 CDs and look at them. If you're not worried about the space these take up, what are you smoking and would you mind sharing? That's not even considering how long the CD has been in existence. What, 20 years? (Google says 1981.)
Admittedly, a hell of a lot of those CDs are still in active use and may never see a landfill in your lifetime. But even if the industry switched right now, today, that's 22 years worth of old, "immortal" CDs. Let's count... We'll say the first five years, they only needed one billion per year. Then for the next five years, they needed three billion. Then five billion, seven billion, and for these past three years (2003 is almost over) nine billion.
(1*5)+(3*5)+(5*5)+(7*5)+(9*3)=5+15+25+35+27=107 billion CDs. (Yes, the math is ludicrously inaccurate.)
We have over a hundred billion CDs out there, and they're more than likely not going anywhere. So yes, this is an important problem, because 100 billion of almost anything produced by humans still takes up a shitload of space.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
This is not because we throw away things that take more space than CDs that we shall not do anything about the CDs we throw. Of course this is not the biggest issue, but doing something is always better than doing nothing.
Furthermore I don't think CDs will last for thousands of years. Whereas we still have parchment from the old Egypt. And even from an archeological point of view, I don't think these dozens of burnt CDs and deprecated backups I don't know what to do about are of any value. For what's worth it, we still have better options.
Do you usually eat silk or cotton? ;-)
Well, I do eat corn flakes every morning, but I wouldn't put silk inside my milk...
Hence, I'll eat those hard drives but not my T-shirt!
I wonder the disclaimer on the HD: "Do not eat the hard drive. Biting the HD could damage stored bits and bytes"
- "Having a clean conscience is sign of bad memory"
There are things that we throw away every day that take up a lot more space
Ah, good point. So let's just forget about the whole issue until we can find a solution for the #1 space consumer in landfills. Then we can move onto #2. It would be far too logical for each organization and technology to do what they can, quickly picking away at what is persisting forever when instead we can just brush it all aside. This is the same sort of nonsensical reasoning that is used by the useless to deride those who help the homeless, stray animals, etc : "Yeah, but what about starving people in Africa! Sure I'm doing absolutely nothing, but I'm better because I'm indignantly bringing up those Africans!"
Say what you want, but in 3000 years those CD's will be in much better shape then a book
Perhaps you missed the not-so-subtle innuendo in the submission, but normal polycarbonate CDs don't have a data lifespan any longer than the whole lifespan of these corn CDs - the data layer has oxidized and yields no information in just a couple of decades. The problem is that the polycarbonate husk hangs around pretty much forever. And to go back to your first point, this is a tremendous amount of perpetual garbage - sign up for an MSDN subscription and see what you're throwing away.
in 3000 years, you expect a CD-R to be readable? With what, exactly? "If it's more expensive, it damn well be better" - and you wonder why the world's in such a mess? Jeez.
So we can throw as many thin things away as we like, and damn the environment? No matter how full of nasty chemicals those thin things are? Just *think* before posting, that's all I ask.
This is great - make a new DRM tool and shroud it in Enviro Friendly rhetoric.
You're not against the ENVIRONMENT, are you???????
think the headline of the article asked, "Could Your CD Contain Porn?"
Man, I don't want my collection disappearing after a few years.
Exactly how much effort is your sister willing to put into reading the Papyrus documents (or whatever she is reading)?
What does it take for her to throw it in the trash and be done with it?
Of course you need to think about technology. Who will be looking at this stuff? Is it us 3 or 4 thousand years in the future? If so I would imagine that you and I have no ability to predict what is or is not possible to those people.
Same goes for any civilization that can cross the vast expanse of space or time to visit us.
I made a big deal out of the whole archeological thing and maybe I shouldn't have.
The thought that went through my mind was, 'What if all CD's in the future were made like this? Modern day CD's provide the potential (however unlikely it is still there) to tell our story in the far future. Is it possible for us to destroy this opportunity?'
Of course you pointed out that papyrus leaves have lasted for 3 or 4 thousand years. While it does blow a nice little hole in my theory, I think I can still hold a little ground. Traditional CD material has a higher likelyhood of surviving.
But screw all that, the bottom line is still the same. I throw away crap every day that is much larger by volume then a CD. Hell, for the most part I don't consider CD's disposable. I pay good money for them, why would I want to pitch them?
This is a classic case of a solution looking for a problem.
archive your sensitive data, then destroy it in seconds when the police are at the door with a battering ram... while you enjoy a meal (i know i miss breakfast quite often)!
Say what you want, but in 3000 years those CD's will be in much better shape then a book.
I have books I bought well over a decade ago, that are still in perfect working order. I have CD-Rs that were burnt around that time (a year or two more recent) that are all-but unusable now. These CD-Rs have been stored, in jewel cases, in a rack of other CDs, in a room in a country with a temperate climate (the UK).
In 3000 years time, normal CDs that have been dug-up from archaelogical sites will almost certainly be damaged beyond reading. Even if any are still readable, the hardware to read them will no longer exist and the format will have been long-since forgotten.
I'll ignore the sheer scale of the problem of thrown-out CDs, as others have pointed out that flaw in your argument.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Additionally, no current CD is going to last 3000 years. Period. Current CDs only last 50-100 years as it is before the substrate is corroded to the point that the disc is unreadable under even optimum conditions. So I'd much rather have the important ideas written down on paper than on a CD.
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
"This disk will self-destruct in five decades."
It's quite possible to recycle polycarbonate CDs back into like-new monomer. All it takes is an anaerobic environment and microwave energy. All sorts of plastics can be almost completely recycled in this way. The catch is obviously the cost. But on a large scale, there's no way it would add the kinds of costs they're talking about with these corn discs.
So, all this plan does is attempt to shift costs to the consumer. It's not like you can't recycle polycarbonate, it's just nobody wants to pick up that bill. If you create a big centralized facility and ask who's going to cover the costs the manufacturer is going to get stuck with it. So if you market an even more expensive alternative with something that the consumer can easily identify with like corn, you can try to sucker them into bailing your industry out of its own responsibilities.
But I doubt consumers are as foolish as the industry hopes.
If everyone knew that a 42-oz oatmeal silo was a
perfect receptacle for discarded CDs,
would it be feasible to collect lots more and
actually recover and reuse the ingredients?
What if the great annual computer festivals and flea
markets offered bins or shipping containers?
Would the response of the responsible justify the cost?
Has anyone run a successful recycling program?
Assuming of course they are stored in optimal conditions..
I honestly can believe that anyone will have a device capable of reading a cd in 100 years so yay for corn.
37 - what does it stand for really...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Archeologists work there entire careers for the opportunity to get a scrap of 1/3 a sheet of paper.
Say what you want, but in 3000 years those CD's will be in much better shape then a book.
Funny thet, but over here most archeologist would give their right hand for finding something like this, but then my ansestors wasn't very keen on books...
However, it was the second part of you statement I balked at. Even the the guys making CDs are only claiming a lifetime of 75 to 200 years, and that is probaly not achivable in real life. Others suggest a lifespan of 100 years, while people report that certain kinds of CD-Rs ain't readable after just 1 year. That aside, some of the riches sources of information archeologist has about life in the past is their rubbishtips - do you really want the archologists of the future to find several billion AOL-CDs?
As for taking up space in a landfill... you're right. Other things do take up more room, but a lot of what you give as examples are biodegrable anyway (espesially papar - it's just dead tree anyway), and every bit count, right? We don't have to leave the entire planet filled with waste for our children.
Still, unless these new, bidegradable CDs can be produced for the same or less cost than ordindary CDs, I can't see they catch on.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
- Tax mineral extraction where there are recycled or biological alternatives available.
- Force waste handlers to pay a rebate on all recyclable goods whether or not they are actually recycled.
- Introduce these measures gradually but firmly. Announce a schedule and stick to it. Borrow against taxes on polluting practices to subsidise green alternatives.
Now, there will be predictable opposition to the use of taxation to achieve any ends, but IMHO it is justified in this case. The main point is that The mineral resources in our Mother Earth belong to future generations, not just us. These people haven't been born yet, much less reached voting age, so we have to make some assumptions on their behalf, one of which is that they would rather we didn't force them to live in a shithole.The first idea makes virgin materials more expensive and therefore forces manufacturers to seek alternatives. Ideally, the rate of taxation should be such that it is substantially cheaper to use recycled materials, even all the way to the point where companies are prepared to buy back end-of-life goods from consumers.
The second idea doesn't directly stop anyone from putting recyclable waste in landfill, it just makes the proposal less economically attractive. It means that as a waste handler, you can't charge someone money for collecting recyclable goods {which, after all, are worth money, so it's only fair}. The only way you can cover the cost of landfilling recyclable goods for which you have paid is to charge more to landfill non-recyclable goods. Any other waste handler who is actually recycling recyclables will be getting paid for them, so will have lower overheads and can pass this saving on to customers. Similarly with incineration: if you do something sensible with the heat you liberate, you have something saleable {probably electricity, though home heating or compressed air would be alternatives; alternatively the heat could be used directly in some industrial process}. If your energy recovery rate is poor or you aren't even trying, just warming the atmosphere directly, you might as well be burning pound notes.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
They should probably just concentrate on the DVD-R market for now, so that their price does not make them be ignored. Then as they (and DVD-R) gets more popular, they can also make CD-Rs. But probably by that time, everyone will be using DVD-Rs instead anyways.
with Thermal Depolemerization, this kind of disk is pointless.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Ethonal for or gas tanks...
Oh my gawd, my friends are right I am Way TO GREEN!
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean we can make most/all kinds of plastic from renewable resources?
Can't wait to see what OPEC makes of that development.
This is bad because the CDs I buy will have turned into mould in a few years time. This is good because if there's no copies of "their" content in existence afte $N years, they won't need their bought politicians to make copyrights last longer again! Next, self-destructing books.
Pretty funny, but you gotta admit that this corn thing isn't too far off from the already accepted and popular method of creating plastics. I'm sure the CDs will be a derivative of some sort of cellulose. And celluloid is nothing more than a refined carbohydrate. This process has been in use for 100 years already.
Check it out... (C6H10O5)n
i have cd's i bought before 1989 and they still sound fine. and they've survived long island, buffalo (including 2 years in dorms), boston, dublin (ireland) and galway along with about a dozen moves - one across the atlantic. i never used them for frisbee, but they've had all the climate extremes.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
"I wrote a program that can download porn [on to corn based cds] one million times faster."
"Who would need that much porn?"
"...one million times...."
you know what is funny? you are totaly wrong.
the data on the disc will be long destroyed while a book (with today's paper making proccess) books will last many thousands of years longer than books of old did.....look at acient egypt. they have found Papirus with some writings on it.
now, think about how well perserved todays books will be.(BTW, it has been prooven in special chambers that speed up the aging of materials.)
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
I've always heard that the CD plastic is extremely high grade, and is very desireable as recycling material.
But it can't be used for CDs again for that reason. There is a steady decline, just like for paper.
from the planet/population_rescue_is_job_won dept.
morons right: "/. has an intriguing comment about one way to help ease a growing problem: unprecedented evile."
the creator, with the help of you, has created a source of newclear energy, the likes of which, has been previously unknown
this stuff is unbreakable, & works on several (more than 3) dimensions, well above known limits, and will come to us as a result of yOUR intentions/behaviours. The holdup, of course, is the ?pr? ?firm? hypenosys based georgewellian fuddite corepirate nazi execrable: 3+ times that of a normal planet, but evile is expected to be reduced to non-existence as the creator's programs become increasingly more popular."--
for each of the creator's innocents harmed, there is a badtoll that must/will be repaid by you/US, as the perpetraitors of the whoreabull life0cide against humankind, will not be available to make reparations.
consult with/trust in yOUR creator... get ready to see the light. that's the spirit, moving you. see you there.
(Voice of Beavis) I am Cornholio! I need CD for my bumhole!
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
to consume if you lock the geeks in the NOC without any food for a day.
--
... that biodegrades in a few weeks, for the RIAA..
Seriously though, how better for the recording fatcats to make nice nice than to go 'organic' and tout these discs, then get to boost the price a few $$ even though the media price differential is less than $1..
The natives call it maize :)
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
How long do they stay crunchy in milk?
stirring the pot since nineteen mumblty mumble...
IBM did this in a hard disk with the GXP75 ;-)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Interesting.... I'm not calling you out or anything, but do you have a reference for that?
Ma: How about some super-duper-butter-roasted-AOL-Corn CDs?
Me: <slurp>Great!</slurp>
The best planning can be done after the project completes.
Mankind is creative. I am certain that in two hundred years or so, there will be a vast number of creative ways to use old CD disks.
I kind of think that in a few centuries that we'll be strip-mining the landfills, which will be considered to be repositories of stored resources.
Our decendents may be saying 'I wish they'd stored more of that petroleum away in the form of plastic, and burned less of it making those useless 'corn' CDs.'
A Good Intro to NetBS
I can't see why anyone would have problems differentiating between the two. After all, one is a bland, disposable disc which is likely to be thrown in the bin and forgotten about, and the other is a disc made out of corn...
So if you microwave these CDs, do they pop?
are these things going to start breaking down by say if you keep them in a jewel case long enough? im not really sure i would like that too much.. they would probably break down as long as oxygen is present... but it would be nice if they didnt do so if you were actually trying to store them for a few years since it seems like it says they'll be degraded by 50 to 100 years which means they start breaking down before that..
Yea, These will be just as popular as the corn based bags and foam replacements.. I've received *one* package that used corn foam and scared the hell out of my boss when I started eating it. I've only seen the corn bags when a teacher brought some in to school, and that was 13 years ago.
Maybe when the costs of producing bio-degradable plastic replacments go down we'll see more of this, but until then companies will continue to say 'long live plastic'.
OTOH, the RIAA might like this, as they can go back to saying it costs alot of money to produce cd's and drive the price up even higher.
-miah
Oh, now that's just corny.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
to make a tasty nutrious nacho meal.
Well, if you can think of a better one, I'm all ears.
mmmmmm CD's arrrrghh!
- these are not the droids you are looking for -
How about a 30-day decomposing disc? What if iTMS only lets you burn to these disks? What if the disks taste really great toasted with apple butter?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/technology/2570731.stm
It's just acts of Parliament though, not all the data from the entire goverment.
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
I'm sure the record companies would LOVE to use these, particularly if they can get the self-destruction time down to 1 or 2 years.
"Hey guys, look! We can make consumers buy the same music over and over again without having to keep changing the format!"
That's "domesday book". The "doomsday book" would be something else.
A CD is a couple layers of plastic, with a very thin layer of metal. A CDR is the same, but uses a dye. Which 'industrial chemicals' are you talking about?
2003-09-26 19:56:20 - 10 eco-friendly optical discs from single corncob (articles,science) (rejected) I guess a North American magazine writing about it made the difference...
Great! Now the cup holder will be popcorn machine too!
Let's see, you can get CD-Rs free most anywhere after rebate, so, let's do the math:
$0 x 3 = $0
$0 x 1.2 = $0
Obviously we don't need to wait for the price to drop, if they are already 3 times the cost of free CDs.
It apalls me when I think of how many thousands of tonnes of AOL CDs alone there are littering our landfill sites (and other junk yards, such as the average computer geek's desk drawer!)
Making unsolicited CDs more expensive would also help us to be more sensible about how we send these things out... After all, how many AOL CDs do I actually need to get a year, considering that I will never, ever sign up with them!
...in the form of this.
----- sXe
I've been saying right along how i'll buy from indie music groups and movie groups, just to support them. And that i'll pay more for higher fuel efficiency, and that i'm willing to try to only bring home glass and cardboard food containers, so that the glass and exterior cardboard can be recycled. And that i'll buy recyclable/renewable products. *sighing and getting out the wallet* But i'll admit that you who told me that it made more sense to demand approximate equivalency in products have a VERY valid point!
But now it's a chance for me tocheer for the idea, again, and i will. Nobody's going to change ANYthing about waste management until it's a crisis, or because the market insists upon it. This is not the answer, no- this is just a start. But there are lots of things that can be done with trash other than bury it, and it has to start in my home where i decide what kinds of trash i'm going to buy in the first place. (especially since i'm one of the ones who whines about it.)
i realise that other consumers may not feel the same way, and that there's really no reason why you should have to- having the larger part of the populace hold out for a more cost-effective products is important- that steers the market, too.
Now, all i can say is- they better not package this stuff in a regular plastic case with a regular plastic spindle, or i'm going to be so bloody ticked off!!
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
I'm seeing more and more studies which indicate that CDROMs often start to decompose after 5-10 years. There's serious doubt about the longevity of the medium once proclaimed as "perfect audio forever."
So now they have these biodegradable disks which last twice as long. Bizarre.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
foo.
I'm not so sure about that... I have many cd's that are at least 5 years old, a few of which are over 10 years old, that work just fine. I am certainly not the most anal about storage conditions -- they've encountered high sunlight, dust, water, being used as a frisbee, and whatever dangers exist in the homes/offices of my friends.
The plastic quite probably does outlive the data on the cds, but I doubt it does so by as large a margin as you are suggesting.
According to data from Michigan State University and Matweb, tensile strength (it shouldn't fly apart) and Young's modulus (it shouldn't stretch too much) are comparable to materials currently used.
> In 1000 years you will be able to show the history of makind with garbage.
Like the Bart Simpson dolls in landfill!
Can I eat it once I am done ripping it? ;-)
I don't know about the rest of you, but the last thing I think about when backing up my data onto disk is if
It will biodegrade in the next 100+ years. I'm more concerned on how well it will store my data, and the reliability of the product I'm using.
Another concern is what can make the disk degrade faster? Cold, Heat, moisture, butter? Will something cause my media to degrade in, say 20 years instead of 100?
I think creating a storage type that is specifically made to fail and destroy its self (unless that is something you are looking for) does not sound very reliable.
TruePunk | Games
What a terrible thing, planned obsolescence of our information. Maybe that is what happened to Atlantis.
History records that the burning of the library at Alexandria was a horrible crime against the future of mankind.
Oh the horror of it.
We have been reduced to digging in ancient toilettes to scavange for information.
Now if you can convert your old backups to good backwoods hooch.. well then you've got a good system with controlled obsolescence.
maybe with proper genenetic engineering we can just store the codes in the kernels directly. Just look at Indian Corn. You have a higher base than binary right off the bat.
You could re-use old typewritters as readers like all our old favorite Cartoons showed was possible (prior art here SCO and Microsoft, sorry)
Conclusion: Women = evil.
/.ers have never had a real woman in bed, so you'll have to take my word for it.
Yeah, but look at it on a cost/benefit basis. There is nothing that can replace a happy woman in bed. Granted, most
Maybe you should watch the Antiques Road show more often. Just think of the fortunes your throwing away. You only have to wait 50 - 100 years and convice someone that they want to collect it. But hey, what else are people going to spend their money on? Food? really how gauche.
Enderle is only a couple of active insults away from being Scott McCollum, perhaps the king of FUD. A few years ago Scott wrote a screed about how the open source movement is ideologically equivalent to Al-Qaeda. A bit like the Scientologists asserting that their critics are ideologically equivalent to child molesters.
These guys exist, I think, to whip up the fears of conservative IT managers with their ties on too tight, and thus generate page views. Linux is a new and largely unknown phenomenon to business people, and once the hype has passed, a sinister conspiracy of Linux zealots bent on bombing the Pentagon, the Statue of Liberty, and Microsoft HQ makes for much more exciting news than the hum-drum stuff like "another Microsoft security flaw".
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
Our office has a policy of buying environmentally sound stuff. That means that 100% of our office paper is 100% post-consumer recycled. These CDs would fit in perfectly with that policy. If we could get those (as recordable CDs) and also some corn-based cases to go with them, and some solar panels on the roof, we would be petroleum-free and tree-free, which is exactly what I want to be.
It's east to get carried away with "organic" enviro-hype. Even traditional "organic" pig farming makes for a huge environmental problem because there is a quantity of by-products that shouldn't be in an area - or dumped in a river - in such high concentrations. For the "CDs made of corn", once they "remove the starch", where does that go? What else is left behind and how nasty is it? What chemicals are used to separate it and where to they end up?
This sounds like a step in the right direction but they never "close the loop" on the process in these announcements.
To say less than a year, I'm sure the RIAA would pressure goverment to make sure that all other CDs are illegal to buy and sell. On a serious note, if it could become with volume only 1.2x the cost, the goverment should write legislation to require the use of this type of disk. Biodegradeable is much better.
I'm waiting for the day they announce CD's made of Soylent Green :]
I'm trying to collect enough surplus cd's to shingle my house in shiny disks...
plse send any extra cd's to
CD shingle project
223 Bertrand St
Winnipeg MB R2H 0N5
Canada
thanx
-s
Oh, great. Now we not only have to put up with the RIAA, we'll have Archer Daniels Midland in our face as well :-) ADM is the politically-connected giant agribusiness conglomerate.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Any other starving college students remember the biodegradable corn-based packing material? Just add salt!
I hope you can eat them. Every time I have a misburned or obsolete CD-R lying around, I can just munch on it as I work. Or you could make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on CD-R's. Mmmmmm...
When you tire of the music on the CD, can you throw it in the microwave and pop it?
Tuus crepidae innexilis sunt.
if they can make it degrade in 50 years can they make it degrade in 1 year forcing users to upgrade hardware/software and buy music/movies again? "i mean.. come on" -Jimmy from South Park seriously though. i can forsee MS using this to force people to upgrade. the RIAA using this to force people to purchase the same CD again! movie makers similarly. biodegrading is nice but i wont buy it or purposely purchase a CD/DVD using this technology until the rights of the little guy (me) are considered. I.E. a law forcing it not to biodegrade for X time and a Digital right to transfer it to another media.
CDs are all ready over-priced, so what if they make a little less money on them?
The regular ones degrade to an unreadable state in 1-3 years.
You know, in "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century," they find out about our culture through archaeology. This, of course, is after the nuclear World War III.
If we keep making things biodegradable, who'll know who we were? I'm starting a new campaign: "Biodegradable harms future history."
"We would like to place this in a time capsule, but it'll be gone in 100 years."
Now from the makers of Agent Orange, leaking breast implants and poisonous PVC comes biodegradable CDs. "It's ok if we kill your family and friends if you think it's biodegradable"
In order for something to degrade in a landfill, it requires air. Take a core sample in your average landfill and you'll see that stuff just a foot or so down has degraded minutely or not at all. In the show I mentioned, there were still newspapers from decades ago that were as readable as the day they were thrown out.
Biodegradable is nice and all, but there has to be something else done. At the rate stuff is thrown out, air-insulating layers are added so fast that quite a lot of biodegradable stuff never has a chance to work it's magic.
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
enough sunlight may damage data permanently
Is there a way to damage the data temporarily??
Will they still produce that cool lightning in a microwave or should you put in a movie and grab the butter and salt?
60 percent of the time, my comments are right everytime.
I'm a relatively average customer, and I'll use 'em. CDs are a fairly trivial cost as computers go, so I'd be happy to pay a markup to reduce the waste I'm creating, since it will be only a small amount of money.
More important would be if companies used them for demo CDs, though (like the requisite "congratualtions on your birth, here's a dozen AOL CDs" we all get), but that might take legislation, or at least grassroots pressure.
Yes. Frost. On floppy.
Expose a floppy to some -10C for half a hour. Put it in a drive immediately after that - all data gets destroyed, the floppy damaged, you may discard it as it's unformattable anymore. Leave it for a hour in a mildly warm place and with enough luck (i.e. that the floppy wasn't bent before "defreezing" - that are microfractures that render it useless) all data will be perfectly readable and the floppy will work just fine.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
i've always been an advocate of edible items. what better way to dispose of CDs than steaming them up, adding a little butter and salt, and gulping them down. i've always thought utensils and dishware should be the same. i would much rather just chow down my fork and plate when i'm done with dinner rather than have to do the dishes. call me lazy. and hell, if i start storing those aol discs next to the canned beans rather than foolishly tossing them away, i could save a boatload on my grocery bill. could be great for dinner parties too.
The discs take 50-100 years to degrade into water and Carbon Dioxide, but how long can I use my discs for? 10 years?
It's not like DVD's in my collction are cheap, but I would rather they last a long time (make all those AOL discs corn based, I don't care, but keep my linux and video collections secure). I am rather suspicious about a corn-based DVD not being prone to being eaten by a bug or prone to growing somthing on it in say, a high humid evironment (an exessivlly rainy day, or somebody spilling something on it), say.
Gotta love edible media! Finally, a modern alternative to edible paper!
Would be neat if my corn-CD can be absorbed my means of consumption after I decided I have no longer any use for it... Maybe I can put it on a stove and create pop-corn of it, or would that be called... pop-cd-rom ?
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Of course in my apt. you would just leave them in the floor and let the rats finish them off overnight. Hmmm.. corn...
I once had one. Then I started reading Slashdot.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
Sounds like a great idea, until the beetles (not the fossil rock group) get into your CD collection. We once used corn-based packing material at our Museum (smelled great, made me hungry every time I had to send a package) until we discovered it was the source of a beetle infestation. The little buggers loved the stuff, and tried to spread their love around into our collections! Not good. So how about an army of beetles getting into your music and data backup collection?
Why do we care? We can just through the polycarbonate ones we have into one of these thermal depolymerization reactors and presto chango, free oil!
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
I think the solution is obvious. We need CDs made of goat skin.
I'd rather see researchers working on a way to make cheap, long-lasting media.
Newspaper degrades in a matter of weeks, if allowed to blow around town. When buried in a landfill, it easily lasts 50 years, and could last for hundreds.
Same thing with those plastic bags that degrade in the sun: bury them and they last centuries.
If the maker is quoting 50-100 years for degrade time, you can count on the discs surviving 1000's of years once buried.
could you eat it?
I thought they already were...
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
From the people who can't get plastic breast implants right (See class action against Dow for failure of breast implants), comes a new and safe method of storing data that is guaranteed not to come apart in your CD ROM drive.
Sure....
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
finally, i can put all those AOL cd's to good use and fertilize my tomato plants.
Will this be a problem for people with corn allergies?
Or how about other food allergies. "This compact disc was manufactured in a facility that processes nuts."
Yes. Frost. On floppy.
... in the car ... in the sun.
Floppy?!?! We were talking about CDs
Is there a way to temporarily damage the data on a CD via heat (or otherwise?)
On a CD - I don't know of any. But the question was "Is there a way to damage the data temporarily??" so I answer, yes, and give an example I know. The fact that I don't know any way to damage CD data temporarily (or in a recoverable way) doesn't mean there isn't any. (it's not the point though. I just meant the data gets FUBAR and there's no way you could get it back, unlike when, i.e. you get coffee on your cd, and it won't work until you wash it)
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2