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Guinness's World's Smallest Hard Drive Record
ketbra writes "CNN reports that Toshiba has received the Guinness World record for the smallest disk drive for their new 0.85-inch HDD. (Covered on Slashdot a while back) The technology editor from Guiness made the comment that "Toshiba's innovation means that I could soon hold more information in my watch than I could on my desktop computer just a few years ago". "
It's one thing to have a book of records that's based on bar bets, and things that just involve getting a bunch of semi-skilled people together to do.
Does anyone care about corporate achievements in the Guiness record books? (other than the corporations, that is).
If they want in to the book, get 1139 people with golf carts, and break the record for longest golf cart parade.
I just think about the Guiness book being about things that are done almost solely for getting into the book, with no significant redeeming qualities other than getting someone's name in print. You know -- longest toenails. Worst smelling shoes -- the types of things that the average person could pull off with a bit of dedication, and not needing a multi-million dollar research facility, and not being directly linked to a company's product development.
How about 'shortest MTBF' for the next hard drive record?
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I mean, seriously. People used to have to really work hard at breaking records before. And Guinness occasionally had to work hard to find them. Now, it's just a natural, virtually unstoppable progression for all "records" related to technology. Truly lame. The technology secion of Guinness has become a newspaper, effectively.
Get rid of the tech companies and bring back the human freaks! Guinness has closed many really cool (and difficult) categories like "Eating a Bicycle".
An apprpriate distinction for GBWR:
Toshiba Claims First Harddrive to Float on the Head of a Guiness