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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."
This seems like it has some potential. Hopefully it will make it out of the lab considering how many times I've seen the promise of amazing technology only to find that eventually it isn't practical or has some sort of manufacturing limitation. Oh, and while you're at it, when you do create this "new technology" don't riddle it with DRM issues.
If they can make this technology work with solid-state re-writable memory, I can see huge leaps forward in storage for portable music player solid state memory. The possibility of storing 250 to 500 GB of media files on a portable music player the size of the current 4G iPod nano is very enticing, to say the least.
And it may finally spell the end of the hard drive, replaced by a solid-state "drive" in the 750 GB to 1.5 TB range.
We're living in the future. The thought of a library fit onto a quarter-sized device makes me think of that scene from Gene Wolfe's science fiction masterwork The Book of the New Sun where the curator of the Earth's largest and most ancient library says:
The development of such small memory is a significant step forward. Just think about how the writings of the human race can be better preserved if it all fits on a small, lightweight and easily duplicated device. It could be spread all over the solar system as protection against all manner of cataclysms. I wonder how long it stays readable though, before it succumbs to some kind of rot.
Yes, we are living in the future. I am reminded of that every time I have to reboot my toaster.
better yet, using a display that operates in multiples of 24 (72Hz and 120Hz work quite well)
It's an LCD monitor. There's no particular reason it needs to refresh at 60htz or faster.
My LCD TV is perfectly happy operating at 24hz when that's the media it's presented. I imagine that, given the right hardware and programming, the thing would be perfectly happy refreshing at any given interval between 1 and 60hz, only limited by whatever scheme is telling it the resolution and refresh rates it's supposed to be displaying.
Still - I think it'd be best for movie makers to switch from filming in 24fps to 60 or even 72fps. There's not many movie theaters left with actual film projectors; even if you have to run off some reels of film, it's easy enough to downsample 60/72 fps to 24.
Hmmm... One thing I'm thinking of is quality - while I am very annoyed by 'mere' 60hz on a crt, I've never really had a problem with televisions, and have to really concentrate to see any jumping with film. Remember, each cell in 24fps film is displayed *twice*, so you get 48 flashes a second, 24 cells. Increasing the number of frames by a factor of 3, while with any decent compression alogorithm it wouldn't increase the size of the video by a factor of 3, is still increasing the quality of video by an almost imperceptible amount, for a very real increase in size. How much, I don't really know. There's a LOT of variables.
Now I almost want to conduct some tests... Find some 'true' 120fps video, reencode at 24fps and 60fps, see how much the file size ends up. You'd want Low motion and High motion test sections as well.
I don't read AC A human right
I wonder how long it'll take us to invent genetic memory. Let's think of what it'd really require. It requires encoding memory into your reproductive packages. How many generations back would you include? Most likely as many as possible.
Thinking about it, we've got 9 months to grow and develop inside another human. I wonder how much/little engineering that it would take to have neural downloads straight into the kid's memory right up until birth. Of course you could always run into the Dune problem where past personalities want to take control of the new generation. That's one of the reasons that the memories might be useful, but entire personalities would be dangerous.
Who needs history education if you could remember it happening through your relative's view point?
Of course some things folks might want to forget or try to force future generations not to remember.
But of course... This is why we now have 32GB+ USB keys... Because the RIAA/MPAA would never allow devices with this kind of capacity and read/write access to fall into our hands! Seriously... Why don't you take off that tinfoil hat?
The reason we're not seeing any of those insanely dense holographic storage technologies and other forms of vaporware is because right now, it doesn't work. The huge claims in this article are either the result of journalists not understanding what's going on, or researchers trying to get funding.
Funny? Maybe. Unfortunately, I think it's more accurate (and sad) than funny.
LOC is a nice measurement, I want the technology to progress to the point we can digitize an entire colonization team, load them onto a ship with equipment necessary to reconstruct them and then send that ship to the farthest reaches. It's all about saving the evils of man so we can propagate.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
That's probably about 1/2 of the information required to reproduce a horse. The genome isn't everything, even if it were complete (which I doubt, because repetitive segment of codons are beyond what I believe is our current ability to sequence).
But *if* you had the complete genome, including the mitochondiral sequences, etc. it still wouldn't be enough. You also need the environment to raise the genome, which includes not only mechanisms for feeding it, but an unknown but large number of prions which are required for proteins to fold correctly. Not all proteins require such assistance, but many do, and without them you can't create a live horse...or any other mammal, probably any other chordate.
I'm guessing that the genome is half the information needed. It could be considerably less than half. (Or, of course, more. I can't even tell if I'm being conservative.)
Note that the genome carries practically all the information for the variation between horses...or between horses and zebras. But this isn't at all the same as half the information.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
That's because you aren't realistic. You are too busy raging against the machine for no particular reason to realize that things aren't nearly as bad as you seem to want to believe they are. It's a common issue amongst zealots.