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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.'"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
You forgot:
Going away anytime soon? Nope.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Because judging by the local bestbuy store there's a fuckton of stuff stored on optical disc just in the bluray section.
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
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.
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.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
Holographic store devices have been "just 10 years away" for the past 30 years.
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.
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