GE Bets On Holographic Optical Storage

Lucas123 writes "Years after announcing they had developed holographic optical disc technology that could store 500GB of data, GE this week said they're preparing to license the technology to manufacturing partners. At the same time, InPhase, which failed to actually get its holographic disc product out the door for years, says GE's product is nothing more than a 'science project,' and its own optical disc is almost ready to go to market — again. But, as one analyst quipped, the old joke about optical disc is that 'there's more written about optical disc than stored on it.'"

Comments

So what

[Anonymous Coward]

GE is outsourcing a big chunk of it's business to China, and invest 2 billion in new factories over there.
They get huge tax breaks too from the American government, some jobs czar this CEO is.

Re:So what

[couchslug]

China is a huge new market. Better American companies exploit the opportunity to enter it than not.

Want to make money? Invest in GE.

Re:So what

[clonan]

Ohh, so you are against the free market!

You must be a SOCIALIST!!!

But honestly, I still have yet to have one person explain how limited socialism is a bad thing. Every time it has been tried it tends to improve standards of living, improve access to free markets and improve economies

Re:So what

[scamper_22]

Find me the society that began poor, implemented socialism and became well off.

Most socialism works like this:

Country is rich to begin with.. typically via the free market or if they're lucky oil or natural resources. Europe and America was wealthy and far ahead of the rest of the world long before socialism.

Then they implements socialism.

The jury is still out on how long the mixed market socialism can last. At best it's been around for about 50 years in the western world. Not even long enough to see one generation from cradle to grave.

Re:So what

[clonan]

I said limited socialism.

Pure socialism lasts for about a generation. The next generation will generally not follow in the same footsteps and productivity dropps dramatically

Pure capitalism last for about 5 years. It then degrads into anarchy and is reborn as feudalism.

But Limited capitalism with some socialist aspects is the ONLY form of government that has actually lasted any length of time.

Please find me an example of pure capitalism that lasted more than a few years.

Re:So what

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry you have no skills or work ethic, wait, no, you should apologize for that.

Re:So what

[scamper_22]

There is nothing 'pure' about anything.

Historians have long document societies rise and fall. There doesn't appear to be any real stable form of government that always leads to prosperity.

What really matters is how a society is able to change and adapt. This is really where socialism falls as it is much harder to change than a freer society.

But America before big socialism has lasted almost 300 years. It was really only in the 1960s that you started to see real socialism in America.

Re:So what

[Grishnakh]

IIRC, many European countries were not at all "wealthy" just 60 years ago. Instead, they were bombed out and completely devastated. They've all managed to adopt a limited form of socialism (really a hybrid capitalist/socialist system with free markets but significant government regulation and social services) and rebuild into countries with the highest standards of living in the world.

Meanwhile, America which resists much of this on ideological grounds, has social services that are extremely wasteful and inefficient (because one side wants to throw tons of money at any social ill they see with no oversight, and the other side wants to let everyone fend for themself and starve if they're not lucky), and probably spends more for these social services while getting less benefit from them.

Re:So what

[cusco]

Cuba. China. Vietnam. Nicaragua before the Contras destroyed it. Venezuela.

Re:So what

[clonan]

Actually, no.

If you want to see real socialism you really can't find it in the US. You never could. The closest we ever got was a presidential candidate that in the 20's that advocated a 100% tax on anyone making over 100K. We also had some communists elected in the 30's to state government.

Now since the 80's we have had a dramatic push to pure capitalism in the form of 'trickle down economics.'. The current debt crisis is a direct result of the tax policies of the early 80's.

Now, the proper level of government influence is:

#1 protect individuals rights from abuse by others
#2 support individuals to the point where they cna thrive if they work at it (this is a very low threshold of about 60K in income a year)
#3 get out of the way of anyone making more than that (so long as they respect #1)
#4 manage public resources for the public interest
#5 Cover the activities necessary for a growing society but which can not create a profit and are too large for non-profits. (The best example is funding basic research but utilities, FEMA and other emergency services also fall under here. Remember, companies very rarely have future horizons greater than about 7 years. This is due to CEO life span. If an investment takes more than that to turn a profit then no company will invest. There are project that are longer than 7 years but these projects have very low risk {since they aren't basic research} and so the new CEOs tend to buy-in and maintain the projects)

Now we may be tripping over deffinitions.

Pure socialism means there are no personal assets and all assets are assigned by the society.

Pure capitalism means there are no public assets. All assets are owned and managed by the individual.

Pure socialism leads to stagnation once a generation has passed since the next generation didn't agree to the system. Pure capitalism leads to anarchy when everyone realises that they can own anything by taking it. There is zero security and zero ability to cooperate (which involves pooling assets which is no longer pure capitalism). This leads to a 'strong man' essentially taking control of everyone around him and making them into serfs.

Now personally I am a 'Social Capitalist'

This means that the free market and capitalism are the best methods of producing an excellent standard of living for everyone better than 99% of the time. However capitalism MUST serve societal aims. If a company or individual is doing an activity that contradicts the greater good than the society they live in has the right to stop them.

It is in society's best interest to NOT have people starving in the street. To NOT have random epidemics sweep through the population. To NOT have poisoned water and air. Etc.

Since capitalism (with charities) has proven time after time that it is incapable of feeding everyone than society as a whole acting through government has to ensure basic food for everyone to avoid food riots and extreme graft which would hurt capitalism as well as society.

Since capitalism (and charities) have proven time and again that it is incapable of providing health insurance for everyone (in the 60's virtually all senior citizens were denied coverage by the private market which promted medicare) society through government created medicare which prevented a huge drain on financial and time resources as families no longer had to pay for senior care of out pocket and it enabled private industry to actually cover some seniors at a profit.

Since capitalism (and charities) have proven time and again that it is incapable of preserving natural resources for the long term (do I really need to provide a list here?) society acting through government created the EPA and other agencies to ensure that private individuals do not destroy public property without consequences.

I could go on but I hope you get the point.

We don't have socialism. We NEVER had socialism.

If you actually compare the policies of Obama against the policies defi

Re:So what

[clonan]

btw, in many early towns in the US for the first 100-200 years or so the entire town was pure socialism.

Pure socialism, like Pure capitalism can not survive in large or fast societies. This typically means agrarian societies of no more than about 1000 individuals.

You know what else is a science project?

[Anonymous Coward]

Geeks that know every single Linux kernel variation, can compile any code, are very accurate when it comes to their knowledge, but somehow can't tell IT IS from ITS. I think it would take a few decades of research, but if we could raise an entire generation that could understand the apostrophe, it would be worth it. The same people who have no problem with operator overloading don't seem to grasp the simplicity of the possessive pronouns.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[omnichad]

Technically an exception with the apostrophe. Apostrophes are used to denote possession AND contraction. Any other possessive noun does include an apostrophe. I agree, everyone should know, but it's not like they're missing a basic rule - it's an exception.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[derGoldstein]

std::string reply = "your wrong.";

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Anonymous Coward]

std::string reply = "your wrong.";

is that like std::string reply = "my bad."; ?

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Baloroth]

Aw, common, its' to hard to always remember all the rules of written language. English sure has it's exceptions which we just have to put up with. Me and you might find it annoying, but you're point is not relevant sense we all know what the summary means. Addressing just this minor point to the summary writer might be a bit insensitive to he.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's common, but wrong, to assume that people who make grammatical mistakes are ignorant. In my experience most people actually know the correct word: they've just made a mistake. We have a custom scripting language at work and every now and then I'll slip up and try to close an "if" block with a "fi" (as if it were bash) instead of "endif". It's not that I don't know it should be "endif": it's just that I wasn't concentrating properly and made a simple mistake. Don't assume that because someone doesn't do something 100% perfectly every single time that they're ignorant.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Anonymous Coward]

Geeks that know every single Linux kernel variation, can compile any code, are very accurate when it comes to their knowledge, but somehow can

database error: invalid parameter

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Trepidity]

It's also an exception that's only become fully standardized relatively recently. Thomas Jefferson uses "its" and "it's" in a much more interchangeable way, for example.

(Though I also happen to dislike the misuse, because I seem to mentally expand "it's" to "it is", which throws me off.)

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Anonymous Coward]

Any other possessive noun does include an apostrophe.

You mean like "his" and "hers"? Fail.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Anonymous Coward]

well good thing we dont lack grammar nazi's..

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Phreakiture]

Posessives: His, Hers, Its.

Contracted with "is": He's, She's, It's.

The pattern is brick-stupid simple when it is pointed out.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[cp.tar]

You mean, miner point and summery writer.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[omnichad]

Ok, the exception applies to all posessive pronouns, but it doesn't apply to all nouns. It's still an exception to the general rule. A arm's length vs. My arm's on fire shows that all other nouns are ambiguous with their apostrophes.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[silas_moeckel]

Because the English language is a huge cluster f of exceptions, It's to programming equivalent of nestled if else goto all over the place. There is little simple about it. Spellings are derived from how some guy though it was spelled years ago with a local accent. Grammar is a nasty mess of contradictions that can lead to ambiguity of meaning.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Bengie]

silly silly person. English doesn't have rules, it just has a few coincidences that look like rules. The rest of the language is just learning "exceptions"

In English, rules are the exception and exceptions are the rule.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[jameskojiro]

Silly Poster, Apostrophes arent used for talking, they are used to strong quote something in code. Silly Poster.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[dgatwood]

AFAIK, using 's to form a contraction between a noun and the word "is" isn't considered acceptable in formal written English, so an apostrophe on a noun is not ambiguous except in fairly informal writing.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Anonymous Coward]

is that like std::string reply = "my bad."

No, actually (std::string "my bad") == - (std::string "your wrong") once you have all your overloads in place.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[deblau]

I have an easy solution. English teachers should start immediately returning the student's papers with a grade of 0%, and a note attached that reads

paper.c:5: error: apostrophe unexpected after "it"
paper.c:7: error: apostrophe unexpected after "it"
paper.c:13: error: apostrophe unexpected after "it"
paper.c:18: error: apostrophe unexpected after "it"

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[CSMoran]

Pronouns are not nouns. Fail.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Xtifr]

The pattern is brick-stupid simple when it is pointed out.

Except that the pronoun "one" breaks the pattern: One's first instinct might be to write "ones first instinct might be to write", but one's going to be wrong if one does that.

Oh, and the possessive is "her", as in "her lamp". "Hers" is a pronoun whose antecedent is an owned thing, as in "hers was the brightest lamp." It even has its own (very ugly) possessive form which also uses an apostrophe: "hers' cord was the longest of all the lamps." But you knew that, since pronouns are "brick-stupid simple", right? :)

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[newcastlejon]

Which student's papers? It seems unfair to pick on one of them. Did you mean students' papers?

I'm not trying to be picky (well, I am) but I'm beside myself seeing all the mistakes in replies to the parent!

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[remote_wsx9]

Can~t we just use a different symbol for contraction and possession? My keyboard has a few laying around. I~d like to see the tilde symbol put to good use. It even makes a kind of visual sense, and fits in well with it's numerical meaning. That way, "it's" can be unambiguously used for the possessive.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Grishnakh]

That's why you look for patterns in their writing. If they only wrote one sentence and it had a single mistake, you can give them the benefit of the doubt. If they wrote a long post, and the very same mistake occurs in it multiple times, then it's obvious that they're either ignorant, or relying too much on automated checking tools (which means they're sloppy).

Everyone makes a mistake from time to time. It's human nature; we're not perfect. But you don't make the same mistake over and over and over again unless you're stupid, ignorant, or lazy.

So when you see someone write a long post, and they consistently use apostrophe-s for plural nouns, it's same to assume they're a moron.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Grishnakh]

English is a weird language. It has all these contradictions, because basically it's a mish-mash of several other languages that differ greatly from one another, namely German, French, Latin, and Greek, with plenty of words from other languages thrown in. English started out as a derivative of an old form of German; just read Beowulf (which is in Old English) and you'll see the similarity if you're familiar with German. Some Germanic tribes moved to Britain, and got involved a little with the Celtic tribes there. Then, the Normans from France invaded, and infused a lot of French influence into the language (and French is derived from Latin). Then, somewhere along the line, we borrowed a lot of stuff from classical Latin and Greek, especially technical words.

Unlike German, for instance, English is a totally irregular language because of its diverse roots. This can make it hard to learn, because you have to learn so many exceptions, so much that you might as well just memorize everything instead of trying to learn any real rules. However, this is also a strength of English: it's far more expressive than other languages; there's many ways to say the same thing, and there's far more words in the language, so there's many words with very small shades of difference between them (this is why we have Roget's Thesaurus). And because of its nature, English is very quick to borrow new words from other languages, constantly adding to the available vocabulary.

My biggest gripe about English (I'm a native speaker) is that we have the same words for "you" in both singular and plural forms: you, yours, etc. This leads to a lot of confusion when you might be addressing a group, or talking to a person who is a member of a group, and there's no easy way to differentiate between referring to a single person or the group without some dumb hack like the southern English "y'all". It wasn't always like this. In Middle English, "you" and "your" were a plural words. To address a single person, you used the word "thou" or "thine". It sounds weird when you read ME texts (like the KJ Bible), but it actually makes a lot of sense and I wish we'd go back to that.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[PARENA]

Which student's papers? It seems unfair to pick on one of them. Did you mean students' papers?

Please mod this up, come on! :)))

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't say they were ignorant. Comprehension fail. It just boggles the mind that people who have no problems learning ENTIRE NEW LANGUAGES every six months and can make sense of [0-]A-Z%^#!, are somehow unable to see the difference between its and it is.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[DeathSquid]

This leads to a lot of confusion when you might be addressing a group, or talking to a person who is a member of a group, and there's no easy way to differentiate between referring to a single person or the group without some dumb hack like the southern English "y'all".

I've never heard anyone say "y'all" in the south of England, although I imagine some tourists might.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Anonymous Coward]

your gay. go get fucked in the ass by an aidsnigger and die of aids.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[tyrione]

Bingo! We have a winner!

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I think their wrong.

Re:You know what else is a science project?

[Anonymous Coward]

return lmfao;

The old joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever made that joke is an idiot. CDs and DVDs are optical discs.

Re:The old joke?

[derGoldstein]

TFA's using the phrases "optical disc", "optical storage", and "micro-holographic" in a way that makes you wonder when they're talking about which.
When they write "optical disc originally had an advantage over tape media", do they mean CD/DVD/Blu-Ray or the new holographic technology?

Re:The old joke?

[tenco]

I bet there was more written on GMR than stored with it, too.

Re:The old joke?

[Osgeld]

no shit fuckwad, care to explain to us other forms of media that come on a disc and is read optically

the OLD JOKE is from the early 80's where everyone was going ape shit bonkers writing about all the endless possibilities years before they even came to market, and a decade before they came cheap enough every pc had one

the only thing more dense than the media in this story is you

Re:The old joke?

[Anonymous Coward]

When they write "optical disc originally had an advantage over tape media", do they mean CD/DVD/Blu-Ray or the new holographic technology?

Yes.

Interesting times

[Artraze]

What's interesting about these systems is that they're being developed for backup purpose by the computer industry, and not by the movie industry. That means that hardware will be in production and quite probably in place before the media groups start to even think about their next DRM / license encrusted format. Sure, they'll probably still try to compete, but given the initial cost of Bluray and the rather long time it's taken to come down they may well not be able to if even a few major studios start releasing on one of these holographic formats.
Time will tell, but at the least, it'll be nice to be able to actually make a backup that doesn't require swapping out media all day (it's starting to feel like using floppies again!)

Re:Interesting times

[h4rr4r]

Swapping out media? Tapes have hit 1.5TB raw and if you are too poor/cheap for tape, like most folks, use hdds.

Re:Interesting times

[Phreakiture]

I think that the problem is that BluRay was the wrong thing at the wrong time, coupled with being involved in a format war with HD-DVD for several years.

I'm not saying Blu-Ray is good or bad. I don't own the gear, so I can't comment there, What I can comment on is that DVD looks good enough on my HDTV, even though it does not look as nice as the broadcasts do. It also sounds good enough, as AC3, despite being lossy, is a pretty darned good codec. I gather that a lot of people have taken this point of view, and so have had no drive to upgrade their relatively-recently-upgraded-from-VHS movie collections to Blu-Ray.

Maybe if SVCD or VCD had caught on, then Blu-Ray might have had a better chance, because of catching things at a different stage of the market cycle. SVCD is a slam-dunk against VHS (VCD not so much) for picture quality, and DVD, while it looks better than SVCD, it doesn't look that much better.

Then there was this unnecessary format war. Blu-Ray might have fared better if, instead of duking it out, the HD-DVD consortium had agreed to allow players to be built that could read both formats. I think that the transport mechanism wouldn't be much different than that which is found in Blu-Ray players anyway, which carry both blue and red lasers so that they can read DVD and other legacy disc formats as well as Blu-Ray.

I think that there were a few combo players, but they don't count because they were rare and ungodly expensive. You need to put that in the hands of the audience and then convince them that it's worth the upgrade. If he still likes what came before, then it isn't going to work.

Re:Interesting times

[wagnerrp]

Optical media has a couple things going for it over tape:

The media is composed of 20 stacked layers of 25GB each. It is conceivable that with sufficient focusing, they can simply continue stacking layers as needed.

Despite images floating around the internet, optical disks can be accessed randomly, and there is no need for a 'DVD Rewinder'. You don't need to spend time spooling to the specific location you need before you can read the data.

They are very thin, meaning you can store half a dozen or more disks in the space used by one cartridge. Their size lends them to carousel storage. A 400-disk carousel could have a double entry reader located in the center to allow for dual sided (1TB) disks. Or you could have four readers stationed at each corner for increased concurrency. Or you could have four carousels placed around a single center reader for reduced cost. In any case, it would be drastically cheaper than the robotic loaders found in existing tape archives.

Re:Interesting times

[h4rr4r]

But they are damn slow in linear writes compared to tape.

Re:Interesting times

[wagnerrp]

True. 5MB/s access speeds is painfully slow compared to the 100MB/s+ that linear tape and hard drives see. Presumably they will improve this before sending to market. There is no much use to a medium that takes 28 hours to fill.

Re:Interesting times

[hitmark]

BR should have been sold for computer storage first, home video second. So far HDTV have been a marketing flop, and a replay of the flop that was high bitrate audio discs. Said discs used DVD as the physical layer, but was otherwise the same as a CD in its logical layout. Same number of tracks and so on, only higher encoding bitrate pr track. Likely few have ever heard of it.

this because first of, CD was "good enough". Second, because they did not give a physical benefit over CD. By this i mean that when CD was introduced it most apparent benefit was that you could jump directly to a track with the push of a button. No FF or REW to get the right song, or trying to find the correct groove on a record. Insert, hit the number, play.

DVD gave the same physical jump over VHS. No need to rewind after a showing, being able to instantly jump to a specific scene one wanted. And when TV Series started showing up boxed, one could have several pr disc and jump to a specific one. Best way BR could top that was by stuffing more onto a single disc, perhaps whole seasons.

Add to this that people would have to fuss with getting a new TV, new cabling, new player, and things just add up. In comparison the DVD was a drop in replacement, using the same connectors as the VHS it replaced. And the same with the CD, players connecting right alongside existing playback equipment present.

And the less is said about the HDCP the better i suspect. I wonder how much weird behavior i have seen or read about regarding one device refusing to talk to another because of DRM issues. DVD in comparison JUST WORKS! (at least once the joke that was CSS was broken)

Hell, i am willing to bet that Mini-Discs tanked because of the hoop jumping one needed to do to get music onto the format, while at the same time any dollar store MP3 player could be plugged into a computer and accessed just like any other storage device. For most people out there, convenience overcomes just about any other consideration (except perhaps basic survival).

Sounds like they may be too late...

[jellomizer]

500GB, but considering years old Blue-Ray stores 50gb and magnetic drives, and flash drives which can store a lot of data and now are relativity small and cheap, and more and more people are use to saving and retreading Data via "Cloud" or network type storage, It may be dead on arrival.

Re:Sounds like they may be too late...

[Thavilden]

Maybe too late for consumer use, but I can see companies that wouldn't want to put their information in the cloud using them for backup. If their shelf life is longer than other optical media it may also be put to good use for archival in libraries and musuems.

Re:Sounds like they may be too late...

[Hythlodaeus]

In the "cloud" there is still physical media somewhere.

Re:Sounds like they may be too late...

[derGoldstein]

You mean datacenters. When you need additional space, are you going to install new hard drives, or install optical drives with those robotic disc swappers? What's going to cost more and is more likely to fail? Which one's faster and more flexible?

Re:Sounds like they may be too late...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about massively fault tolerant of-line backup, with a shelf life closer to centuries than years, another poster said tapes have a 1.5 tb capacity, so 3 disks = 1 big tape but with holographic levels of fault tolerance (very high) and less mechanical strain on the actual medium.

Re:Sounds like they may be too late...

[earls]

Optical media is definitely more flexible than hard drives. ;)

Re:Sounds like they may be too late...

[EraserMouseMan]

I know for a fact some startups are trying to make optical hard drives. Identical form factor to a typical hard drive but it's got optical disks instead of magnetic platters. Personally I think it's DOA. Magnetic HDs are super cheap and SSDs are super fast, durable and are very versatile. I'm just not sure where the demand will come from for optical HDs. Any ideas?

Re:Sounds like they may be too late...

[wagnerrp]

While I agree with you completely, you would only need relative cheap carousel loaders, not the big robotic loaders you see on tape archives. Sony makes a handful of them for DVDs that store between 200 and 400 disks, around a central reader.

Re:Sounds like they may be too late...

[c6gunner]

Depends on the price and durability. If I could get the discs for $5 a piece or less, and if they managed to write properly and survive sitting on a shelf for a few years (unlike all my old DVDs) I'd certainly buy them. I could back up my 13 terabyte file server with 26 discs - well worth it for the added redundancy.

Re:Sounds like they may be too late...

[columbus]

Sounds like it would be useful to store OS & programs for a kiosk based computer. Plenty of space. (presumably) cheaper than a magnetic drive. And (presumably) read-only media could actually be a plus.

Day late and a dollar short

[localman]

I consider myself one of the last holdouts - I still use my optical drive occasionally - but even I'd have to admit that it's a dying technology. By the time they get this to market everything will be solid state and/or in the cloud. Oh well, I was excited about these high capacity optical disks five to ten years ago. Now I just feel bad someone's wasting their r&d time and money on it.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[tonywestonuk]

So, tell me where you subscribe to a cloud based backup service with 500gb of storage, and you can push data to at 20mb/second.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[afidel]

500GB is 2x the highest capped home data plan in the US right now. Unless something radical happens to open up the last mile in the next few years (which is VERY doubtful given current economic and political realities) I don't think this kind of technology is without a market.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[earls]

Google and Amazon both offer those levels of storage - it's really just finding a decent connection.

Home and Business uses need to be separated.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[AJH16]

I use my optical drives for some output, but the main killer of optical drives is not the cloud, but rather the low cost of HDDs. When you can get a 2TB HDD for $100 it really isn't worth spending $1 per 25gb optical disk ($80 for that same 2TB and far more of a nuisance to work with). Give me an optical solution that is 1/4 the price again like DVDs were back in the day and I will switch back to optical backups in a huge way. Small files move on reusable USB sticks or the cloud and backup is just straight HDD or web depending on the amount of data. Large quantities of data still require HDDs as they are the most cost effective way and the cloud isn't really a good option at 100gb+ levels.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[alen]

blu rays in the cloud? even itunes is a niche for movie purchases.

$30 for a blu ray/dvd/digital file combo plus a bunch of extras is a good deal. the whole home server rip everything to NAS and stream over wifi is niche as well

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[earls]

If you're pushing 500GB a month to and from home, you're doing something wrong.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[ZenDragon]

Except what they are talking about is not your typical old opitical disk technology. They are basically talking about storing data in a 3 dimensional photosensitive material. I read an article in Wired a while back that was talking about something like a 500GB capacity in a 1cm square block I believe. Its much more efficient than magnetic storage, and more resilient than non-volitile solid state storage. The technology holds a lot of promise I think if they can make it affordable. GE is appears to be intent on preparing it in a disc configuration, but if this technolgy becomes readily available I would imagine we might start seeing things like the crystals in Supermans fortress of solitude with terabytes of capacity. I really dont understand enough about the technology to speak on its limitations and roadblocks, but the possibilities are fascinating to say the least.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[afidel]

Glad you're the arbitrator of what is the correct way to use the internet.....
On a more specific note, 1080P video can be up to ~14.4GB/hour for current standards so that's just over 1 hours of video a day, hardly an extravagant usage.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Really. I can probably get close to that in a few days. I do a lot of mapping and GIS work in my spare time and have been known to run things in a batch mode late at night to gather or send off entire state wide data sets. Now add in that all of TV viewing in my house (wife and child mostly) is done over the internet and 500GB is a trivial amount.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[hedwards]

Considering that it would take ~32mbps to stream that I'd say that it's extravagant. There's plenty of places around here where streaming an hour of video would take nearly an entire day. I know of a few neighborhoods around here where you'd be looking at 1.5mbps max bandwidth.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[TheRaven64]

The advantage of optical disks is that they are cheap and easy to post. If (and that's a big 'if') 500GB disks can be made cheaply, then you can just burn one and pop it in the post every week, and you've got off-site backups for the cost of one stamp. If you need them back, first class post will get them returned to you the next day, very cheaply.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[earls]

I see. Because you use a petabyte of data a day, everyone must, so cloud backups are impractical for everyone.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[NatasRevol]

How is that any different than a 500GB hard drive? The box is slightly bigger, but so what?

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[Anonymous Coward]

even itunes is a niche for movie purchases

There isn't a company out there that would like to have the niche that iTunes movies does.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[earls]

Yet somehow you've been able to operate to date without issue? Are broadband data caps causing a problem or was this simply "look how many GB my dick is!"

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[TheRaven64]

Try posting a 500GB hard drive every week, then try posting a CD-sized letter every week, and see what the difference is. Aside from cost, there's also the fact that the letter will be slipped through the letter box without any problems, while the hard disk needs someone in to receive it.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[afidel]

What of that did I say? I said that there is probably a market for physical storage media with a large amount of storage and that someone saying there is not because they think 500GB/month is an extravagant amount is probably wrong about there being no market.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[wagnerrp]

No. What he's getting at is the market for a device like this is limited to people generating large volumes of data. Large volumes of data cannot be readily transferred across the internet on a consumer grade connection. People generating that large quantity of data are going to come up with their own storage solution (or purchase one to have on premises) rather than farm it out to some other company over the internet.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[wagnerrp]

And yet... that's what you get on Bluray. Some of us prefer something better quality than 5Mbps Netflix and 2Mbps Hulu streams.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[Anonymous Coward]

The European market is larger than the US market and there are plenty of European countries where there is no problem to get relatively cheap 100/100Mbps connection without cap.
I decided to stay at 30/30Mbps since.. well, I didn't really need 30/30 either but it was less than $10 more than the 10/10 one so why not?

Not that there will be a market for them anyway unless they are significantly cheaper than the 2TB HDD's.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[NatasRevol]

Everywhere I've ever worked that was big enough to want offsite data storage, there's been a shipping/receiver position. Cost? Maybe $100/yr. Not enough to be meaningful.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[localman]

If you re-read my comment, you'll notice I made a point to mention local storage too. I do not believe the cloud will completely replace local storage in the foreseeable future, but by the time these optical disks get to market something like a 500GB USB3 thumb drive will be commonplace and will most likely outperform them in speed, price, and reliability. Even if they released this tech right now, it would have a hard time competing against cheap traditional HDDs.

If you'd care to wager whether this tech will ever be mainstream, I'll be happy to take that bet.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[hedwards]

Yes, but you don't typically stream full Bluray discs.

Sure you might prefer higher bitrate, but it's still extravagant considering that only a small portion of the US can get download speeds that high.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[Anonymous Coward]

20 millibits per second? OMG, where the fuck do you live? At the top of Mt. Everest?

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[TheRaven64]

Sorry, I was talking about home users. If you're a company, then your off-site backup will usually be taken by an employee to a safe somewhere. For a home user, popping an optical disk in the post is much cheaper than shipping a hard drive. Especially if you're posting them to a relative who doesn't live nearby, because then you can use the cheaper WORM disks and not need to worry about getting them back unless you have to do a restore. If you're using hard drives, you'd need them to post them back for reuse periodically.

Re:Day late and a dollar short

[Thing 1]

This is OT, regarding your sig: "There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now."

How am I supposed to use the Jury Box? Last time I went up, the judge asked me "how believable is a police officer's testimony?" I thought for a moment (likely my downfall) and then said "they're trained to observe, so probably a little better than the average, perhaps 55%, 60%?" I was dismissed as a juror.

Perhaps the case was one in which the judge wanted his friend to get off, and thus needed a jury of people who don't believe police officers. Or something else; I was dismissed, and I have a day job, so I have no idea how the case went.

A risky bet

[whiteboy86]

Mechanically driven spinning disks technologies? Are they easy to manufacture? Nope. Cheap? Nope. Simple? Nope. Future proof? Nope. Bug free? Nope. Patent free? Nope. Fast and solid state? Nope.

Re:A risky bet

[mswhippingboy]

You forgot:

Going away anytime soon? Nope.

Re:A risky bet

[Anonymous Coward]

Mechanically driven spinning disks technologies? Are they easy to manufacture?

Yes.

Cheap?

Yes.

Simple?

Reasonably

Future proof?

Given the history of CD-R, I'd say more so than other technologies so far.

Bug free?

See previous answer.

Patent free?

Show me a storage technology that was at introduction.

I make that 1/6. Must try harder.

Re:A risky bet

[orange47]

reusable? probably not.. at least not like flash drives because of scratches and dirt. plus you'd have to wait a long time to write the tiny file because of leadin+leadout.
and plastic is not environment friendly..

Re:A risky bet

[Anonymous Coward]

a circuit board with heavy metals in it surely is then.

Cap

[tepples]

more and more people are use to saving and retreading Data via "Cloud" or network type storage

As I understand it, this product is designed for applications that wouldn't work with the kind of monthly transfer cap that comes with a home or small business Internet plan.

Re:Cap

[derGoldstein]

Unless we're talking about areas with no infrastructure at all, then broadband and data caps will increase long before this is commercially viable. Consider how much CD burners cost initially, and it was the same for DVD and Blu-ray. Not to mention, the first ~2 generations of each were A) slow, and B) unreliable. Broadband is already here and there's already a legislative push in most countries to get it to every home. This really is a "science project".

Re:Cap

[Bob the Super Hamste]

The problem is the "legislative push" aspect of it. Now if you have a strong dictator that isn't an issue but given how fickle the political winds are I wouldn't bet on a legislative push being the solution.

Re:Cap

[derGoldstein]

How about market demand? Numerous large corporations need the end-user to have broadband so that they (the corporations) can make more money off them. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon -- they all really want you to have hefty pipes. And Walmart just added streaming rentals. The fickle politicians can be as fickle as they want -- the economy demands broadband, it's inevitable.

Re:Cap

[wagnerrp]

As I understand it, this product is designed for the kind of companies that don't have monthly transfer caps to worry about, and can spend millions on a large data vault.

Home business

[tepples]

Home and Business uses need to be separated.

Citation needed.

Re:Home business

[earls]

Home class data usage = home class connection.

Business class data usage = business class connection. Regardless of where the business is located.

So the production and consumption of new physical optical media is needed because cloud backups are impractical because (ab)users don't want to pay for business class internet for a home business?

Re:Home business

[fast turtle]

I'd gladly pay for a Business Class connection if I could get one for my Home Business but since it's based out of my home, I'm limited to what is actually available to my home, which is either a dial-up AOL connection or Cable as DSL is not an option and to get even a fractional T1 line will cost me $10,000 just for the line itself. Now tell me another story please. I don't like this one.

Optical media replication

[tepples]

Cheap? Nope. [...] Fast and solid state? Nope.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. How much does it cost to press 1000 DVDs for distribution to end users, compared to storing the files on 1000 8 GB USB flash drives? Or 1000 BDs compared to 1000 32 GB USB flash drives? Sneakernetting large data to end users is where optical media still shines.

Re:Optical media replication

[whiteboy86]

Replication or mass distribution? That is what the net and the cloud is for. Apple has ditched the optical drive already and for a good reason, all digital content we buy should be in the "cloud" and then downloaded only when needed to some local memory (flash). I can delete any game in my Steam account for space reasons and download it quickly again next year including cloud stored saves.. Why would I want to keep some unreliable physical media around? That is so last century. This tech. might help in some niche storage market perhaps, but no longer as a general "digital goods" distribution channel. Another example is that next-gen Sony VITA console, no physical media could be found there too.

Re:Optical media replication

[Anonymous Coward]

So then the answer is to rely on Apple's, Amazon's or Google's unreliable physical media?

Re:Optical media replication

[Anonymous Coward]

The holographic technique used here cannot be mass-produced with a traditional "press" method. However, the criticisms of the write speed are also possibly off base, as the drive can employ parallel writes to different layers simultaneously (at higher drive cost, of course).

Re:Optical media replication

[Anonymous Coward]

I can delete any game in my Steam account for space reasons and download it quickly again next year including cloud stored saves.. Why would I want to keep some unreliable physical media around?

And what when the service is gone?

I will have access to all my physical media games until they pry it from my cold dead hands.

Re:Optical media replication

[TangoMargarine]

I remember back in the old days, when there was this crazy assumption that someone might EVER not be connected to the Internet...

Re:Optical media replication

[wagnerrp]

How much does it cost to press 1000 DVDs for distribution to end users

Can you actually "press" holographic media? I thought the whole purpose of using holographs as proofs of authenticity was because they were difficult and expensive to produce.

Re:Optical media replication

[Anonymous Coward]

good luck pulling 500GB from the cloud when needed. Even if you have a connection speed that makes that a bearable timespan, you most likely will have a data cap that makes it an unbearable cost.

Re:Optical media replication

[tepples]

I remember back in the old days, when there was this crazy assumption that someone might EVER not be connected to the Internet...

Then download while connected and use while disconnected. Boycott Ubisoft and other publishers whose products effectively amount to extended rental services.

Re:Optical media replication

[tepples]

Can you actually "press" holographic media?

Even if not, DVD-R duplication is still cheaper than flash memory duplication.

Re:Optical media replication

[Anonymous Coward]

Because in 10 years I can still access software that I originally had on such media, but stuff in your 'cloud' will probably disappear or become nearly impossible to access.

Re:Optical media replication

[TangoMargarine]

Plus if you don't have a very fast connection. It could be easier to just buy a box with a dual-layer DVD than to download 9 GB over a slow connection.

Re:Optical media replication

[Anonymous Coward]

What about people with less-than-optimal internet connections? It's not just grannies on dialup and developing nations anymore, low-end DSL, satellite, and line-of-sight last-mile connections don't have the bandwidth for constant multi-gigabyte movie/music/software downloads, or the low latency to cope with web applications.

Re:Optical media replication

[DMUTPeregrine]

Most optical media shine when you reflect light off them. Or scatter light through them, in this case.

Re:Optical media replication

[benthurston27]

It's interesting I don't disagree that DVD-r is cheaper, but look how cheap flash memory has gotten, here are 8gb microsdhc for 2 dollars a piece: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220493&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&PageSize=10&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&IsFeedbackTab=true#scrollFullInfo And they are smaller than the stamp needed to send a DVD through the mail.

Mobile broadband

[tepples]

broadband and data caps will increase long before this is commercially viable

Optical discs can be used in a vehicle. To transfer one dual layer BD's worth of data over mobile broadband would take ten months.

Re:Mobile broadband

[derGoldstein]

Ok, that's one example. How much media consumption takes place in vehicles, of any type? You can't give the general "mobile/smartphone" example because these devices don't have optical drives, so we're left between the not-at-home and not-walking-around space. How large is that market?

Re:Mobile broadband

[yodleboy]

i'd point to the people with kids market. It would be great to be able to put 500GB of ripped Barney, Sesame Street etc DVDs on a single disk for playback on the car media system. There are other people in the car not engaged in driving that would like some entertainment.

Re:Mobile broadband

[NatasRevol]

I already do this, but it's compressed down to about 15 GB, which works just fine for the screens in a car/van. And it's on my ipod, plugged into the A/V port in the van.

Re:Mobile broadband

[wagnerrp]

Why not stick those on a shock mounted mobile hard drive? Your application doesn't seem like it needs the decades of media lifetime, or the costs it entails.

Re:Mobile broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you don't have 4G yet. 35 Minutes (real world testing) to download 50Gb on Verizon 4G.

Re:Mobile broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess you don't have 4G yet. 35 Minutes (real world testing) to download 50GB on Verizon 4G.

Fixed

Re:Mobile broadband

[tepples]

Then how do you get the videos from the publisher to your mobile hard drive in the first place without running up against ISPs' caps?

Re:Mobile broadband

[tepples]

How much media consumption takes place in vehicles, of any type?

Let me guess: you don't take airplanes, buses, or family car trips often.

Re:Mobile broadband

[wagnerrp]

By purchasing much smaller capacity pressed optical disks.

Re:Mobile broadband

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of shitty mobile broadband do you use. Even with a poor 0.5 Mbps data rate it would only take 9.5 days to download 50GB.

Jesus, just how much has been written about them?

[nedlohs]

Because judging by the local bestbuy store there's a fuckton of stuff stored on optical disc just in the bluray section.

High Efficiency Video Coding

[westlake]

That means that hardware will be in production and quite probably in place before the media groups start to even think about their next DRM / license encrusted format.

Work began on the next-generation codec in 2004:

HEVC aims to substantially improve coding efficiency compared to AVC High Profile, i.e. reduce bitrate requirements by half with comparable image quality, probably at the expense of increased computational complexity. Depending on the application requirements, HEVC should be able to trade off computational complexity, compression rate, robustness to errors and processing delay time.

HEVC is targeted at next-generation HDTV displays and content capture systems which feature progressive scanned frame rates and display resolutions from QVGA (320x240) up to 1080p and Ultra HDTV (7680x4320), as well as improved picture quality in terms of noise level, color gamut and dynamic range.

The timescale for completing the HEVC standard is as follows:

February 2012: Committee Draft (complete draft of standard)
July 2012: Draft International Standard
January 2013: Final Draft International Standard (ready to be ratified as a Standard)

High Efficiency Video Coding

Re:ISO image not compatible with Windows?

[derGoldstein]

Thanks for making my point. There's an entire discussion going up there, almost completely unmoderated, and you've just sunk 2 mod points getting this thread down. Are you going to spend 3 more mod points knocking down this post and my previous post? What if a really hideous post pops up and you run out of points?

Re:ISO image not compatible with Windows?

[jameskojiro]

Umm you can use the command line utility in the Windows 2003 Resource Kit tools to burn a ISO image in windows. CDBURN.EXE

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17657

Free to download, use "cdburn.exe" to burn your iso images, plus other cool nifty tools.

Re:Jesus, just how much has been written about the

[Svartalf]

Heh... Holographic storage has been in the making since the 50's when they figured out that they might be able to do it. And about every 5-10 years, they trot out a new big "push" to plug the new concept in the tech, this time with discs as opposed to something more akin to Star Trek's "isolinear chips", which is what they were on about some 2 or so decades ago.

Re:Jesus, just how much has been written about the

[EraserMouseMan]

Exactly. 500Gb on one disk. Even in a standard hard drive form-factor with 2 disk platters that's still only 1Tb. I can buy a magnetic HDD from Newegg today with 2Tb for $100. What problem is being solved by trading magnetic platters with optical ones? And at what cost? Just another glittery idea for VCs to waste their capital on.

You miss the point, I think

[Anonymous Coward]

Many home users generate huge data they'd like to backup (their own digital photos, videos; consumer media they want to protect from their toddler's fingers, fire, theft). At the same time, many businesses have relatively low data volumes (email, documents).

The level of reliability and predictability needed (traditional home vs. business QoS) is different than the bandwidth needed (digital media vs traditional messaging and documents).

5 years away

[jweller13]

Holographic store devices have been "just 10 years away" for the past 30 years.

Re:5 years away

[Vecanti]

Yeah, I've been reading about this since I was a kid. Holographic storage is almost here!

I did the math.

[Rhinobird]

"Stuck also pointed out that InPhase's technology writes data at 20MB/sec compared with Blu-rays data transfer speed of 4.8MB/sec.

"If they [GE] really do have a 500GB disk, I come up with 100,000 seconds to fill a disc. There's 86,400 seconds in a day. You do the math,"

Hmm... 500,000MB / 20MB/sec = 25,000 sec. =~7 hours

Re:I did the math.

[VisceralLogic]

GE says they write at the same speed as Blu-Ray. InPhase claims the higher rate.

How many such sessions per month?

[tepples]

35 Minutes (real world testing) to download 50GB on Verizon 4G.

How many such 35-minute sessions are allowed per month?

Re:Jesus, just how much has been written about the

[nedlohs]

But the claim^Wjoke was "optical" not "holographic", and I simply can't believe more has been written about optical storage than has been stored on it considering all the CDs, DVDs, Blurays, laser discs in existance.

memory in your head is not the problem

[reiisi]

The problem is not so much with whether you know the rules or not.

I know more about English spelling, syntax, and semantics than your average grammar nazi, but my fingers are always typing stuff wrong. (Okay, okay, "incorrectly".)

(This has been getting worse. The better I speak, read, and write Japanese, the more I make odd mistakes with English.)

If I notice, I correct it. If not, well, their I am post in a hurry so I can get bcak to wrok.

Lousy autonomous nervous system.

More forced upgrade cycle.

[reiisi]

Yep. Smells like it to me.

This is insane.

and how does it compare to tape?

[bored]

Doesn't seem all that great when modern versions of old technology like tape can store 4TB uncompressed and write at 650MByte/sec per drive. Actually, they will fit significantly more, as the tape drives all do inline compression in hardware. Plus, while dropping it isn't recommended, you can, and its rare to actually have data loss because of it.

Stack a few dozen drives and a few thousand tapes into a library and there isn't anything on the planet that even comes close as a backup medium in nearly any metric (TB per $, watts per TB, footprint, etc).

Re:Jesus, just how much has been written about the

[hitmark]

Well there is the, imo, often overlooked issue of the HDD being a sealed unit. Drive hardware or control board dies, and it is game over (unless your willing to fork the cash for that clean room dissection). With optical or tape, if the hardware dies you can replace it with a equal unit and still access the media.

Cool! Maybe GE can afford to pay taxes in 2012.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah! Immelt's got Obama's cock balls-deep down his throat. That sumbitch ain't paying any taxes ever!

How much pron could that store?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the 'angle' buttons on the dvd remote control were intended to change the viewpoint that you watched the movie from. Not normally interesting unless the movie is porn; you'd hate to be on the wrong end of that one!

Now with 500gb of space on a disk, they can have either 100 different viewpoints (crowdsourced?), or those poor porn actors will have to 'perform' (not 'act', never that) 100 times as long or do 99 'special features'.... won't anyone think of the children^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpornstars?!?

Re:Jesus, just how much has been written about the

[Savantissimo]

But because it's not sealed and it's being inserted, removed, handled, used as a coaster and whatnot, the optical disk will be at least a hundred times more likely to be damaged, with no chance of recovery. It's much slower than a hard disk, too.

Re:Jesus, just how much has been written about the

[hitmark]

Well a complete recovery may not be possible. But optical media, at least at present, have redundancies built into the data format. Also, back when CD-ROM was new, i think some designers considered a caddy system. Basically something similar to a over-sized diskette. Sony had a magnetoptical format called Minidisc that was used for portable music playback. And i seem to recall MO drives also being sold for backup use. Basically this is a kind of optical media that is written much like a HDD. This by heating the disc using a laser, and altering the reflectiveness of the material with the magnetic field. It can then be later read much like a CD.

wow....

[hesaigo999ca]

finally coming out with a technology i have seen 12 years ago.....when it was first developed by that indian man...and prototyped.....i bet you if a different company had bought it, it would have seen the light of day much sooner, except that this company is not really a good HDD company, they are ok at electronics...so i guess had someone like western digital or ibm bought it maybe it would have come around much sooner???

Re:ISO image not compatible with Windows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Send these moderations back. Demand to speak to the managers. Get mad ! Burn their house down.... with combustible moderations !

5 GB per month transfer cap

[tepples]

Even with a poor 0.5 Mbps data rate

A connection that can burst to 2 Mbps cannot necessarily sustain 2 Mbps. The last time I compared plans, U.S. mobile broadband providers were enforcing a 5 GB per month transfer cap on subscribers, which works out to roughly 5×8000÷(86400×30) = 0.015 Mbps sustained.