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Coming Soon, 250 DVDs In a Quarter-Sized Device
Several readers have remarked on a new technique developed by scientists at UC Berkeley and University of Massachusetts Amherst that has the promise of achieving storage densities of 10 terabits per square inch. "The method lets microscopic nanoscale elements precisely assemble themselves over large surfaces. ... Xu explained that the molecules in the thin film of block copolymers — two or more chemically dissimilar polymer chains linked together — self-assemble into an extremely precise, equidistant pattern when spread out on a surface... Russell and Xu conceived of the elegantly simple solution of layering the film of block copolymers onto the surface of a commercially available sapphire crystal. When the crystal is cut at an angle... and heated to 1,300 to 1,500 degrees Centigrade... for 24 hours, its surface reorganizes into a highly ordered pattern of sawtooth ridges that can then be used to guide the self-assembly of the block polymers."
f- coming soon
coming soon should be only be able to be used if it in on shelves in 90 days or less.
...and heated to 1,300 to 1,500 degrees Centigrade... for 24 hours...
I certainly hope they can improve those figures. From a manufacturing standpoint, that sounds very expensive.
I have a bad feeling about this...
This technology should kick-start the backup market as people will have to continually restore all their photos, music and movies every time they leave the last chip somewhere they forget about.
Hopefully the backup/restore device will be bigger (and static) so that it, too, doesn't get easily lost.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
This growing trend of announcing lab discoveries which _might_ hold commercial promise _sometime_ in the future, _maybe_, are really kind of annoying.
What do these accomplish ? Do they show the people supplying the research $ that something is being accomplished and that the researches aren't just sitting around the lab smoking fatties ?
Vaporware just doesn't do these "discovery" press releases enough justice.
Could some clever person out there think of a nice derogatory term for them ?
Something to do with flying cars, maybe.
Absolute statements are never true
MPAA/RIAA lawsuits against anyone who buys these devices, because obviously you can't afford to fill that device with legitimately purchased content or you'd be as bankrupt as they're going to make you with the lawsuit.
perl -e "eval pack(q{H*},join q{},qw{70 72696e74207061636b28717b482a7d2c717b343 637323635363534323533343430617d293b})"
I hate it when someone uses "coming soon" in the title of a story when production of the technology is at least 10 years off and industry adoption isn't even in sight. Oh, and don't forget there are a half dozen other nanotechnologies promising the same thing as this one, such carbon nanotubes and scanning tunneling microscopy, atomic force microscopy, holographic storage, heat-assisted magnetic recording, and quantum dot technology.
Well, say what you want, right here with me, in my wallet, I have a horse. Smaller than a quarter.
Precisely, the complete genome sequenced and sorted. On a 2GB MicroSD card.
"A lot of books" is an odd abstract that doesn't really impress me. But the idea of a full, unabridged, complete set of information which describes a real lifeform in full, contains the program of all the life functions, all the complexity of neural system, all the mysteries of instincts and social behaviors, the complexity of senses, the strength, immunity, lifeforce of a powerful creature - all this potential, described as a bunch of files consisting of rows upon rows of letters AGCT (gzipped).
Sure we have no technology to reproduce a living creature from this data alone. But that looks like a really small problem compared to all the incredible knowledge achieved through billions of years of evolution, to solve all these problems of creating a standalone, self-repairing, self-replicating, self-defending, and quite pretty to that, piece of "biotechnology" - actually, the solution to re-creating it from that data (only on different media) is right in that data. We just can't really use it.
250 high quality movies, in some future? blah.
A horse in my wallet, now and today, that is what impresses me, really.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
In other words, he lost it. And that's the problem with all these high density storage devices.
Micro SD are smaller than a fingernail - what next, dustMoteDisk, the storage device you can fit under a fingernail? OMG, I just scrubbed my hands and lost all my holiday photos!eleventyone!!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You have to keep the substrate heated to 1500 degrees Centigrade for twenty-four freaking hours? That's a LOT of expended energy to create the doggone thing, isn't it? Something tells me it takes less energy to make those 250 DVDs.
I don't think this process is going to be qualifying for an Energy Star rating any time soon. Here we go again... using MORE energy like there will never be a Peak Oil event tomorrow.
More than likely no one will ever know of anything we did if humans are extinct. If you read up on time capsules, data retention, and info on what would happen to the earth if mankind disappeared it is an sobering realization that after only 50,000 years most traces of humanity will be gone. And after only a few million years, which is minuscule on a galactic time frame, every trace will have vanished, even our weapons grade plutonium will have decayed to its normal state, and all of this long before the sun will obliterate our solar system.
http://images.thetimes.co.uk/TGD/picture/0,,351113,00.jpg
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/videos/player.html?channel=1797&category=5487&title=05068_00