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The Weight of an e-Book

Posted by samzenpus on from the because-he-can dept.

whoever57 writes "According to Prof Kubiatowicz from Berkeley, each time an additional book is downloaded to an e-reader, the mass of the e-reader increases. The effect doesn't really make the devices more difficult to carry: the professor calculates that 4GB of books would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram— about the mass of a single virus or DNA molecule."

163 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. So it turns out.... by TheInternetGuy · · Score: 4, Funny

    So it turns out, pirating is stealing after all?

    --
    If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
    1. Re:So it turns out.... by RoFLKOPTr · · Score: 1

      So it turns out, pirating is stealing after all?

      Well yes... but not because the weight of your e-reader increases. See... you're not taking the publisher's e-reader weight from them... you're merely cloning their e-reader weight onto yours.

    2. Re:So it turns out.... by siddesu · · Score: 2

      Not if you pay for the electricity that is used for all these writes onto the media.

    3. Re:So it turns out.... by TheInternetGuy · · Score: 2

      So if I understand this correctly. If I were to copy , (using the cp or copy command) some copyrighted files from friends PC to my USB.

      That would be mere cloning / copyright infringement?

      While if I were to use the mv or move command that would be stealing?

      OK, got it. Thanks.

      --
      If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
    4. Re:So it turns out.... by TheInternetGuy · · Score: 2

      My mom pays for all basement electricity, you insensitive clod!

      --
      If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
    5. Re:So it turns out.... by siddesu · · Score: 1

      True dat. But then, since she lets you use it, you're still not technically stealing.

    6. Re:So it turns out.... by RoFLKOPTr · · Score: 1

      While if I were to use the mv or move command that would be stealing?

      Still not quite, as that will only remove the file's listing from the index.... the data will still be on the drive. Seems like you are gonna have some trouble legitimately stealing these files.

    7. Re:So it turns out.... by TheInternetGuy · · Score: 3, Funny

      You mean, she knows I'm down here?

      --
      If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
    8. Re:So it turns out.... by justforgetme · · Score: 1

      real pirates use scp

      --
      -- no sig today
    9. Re:So it turns out.... by TheInternetGuy · · Score: 2

      Is that some new brand of wooden peg legs?

      --
      If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
    10. Re:So it turns out.... by matunos · · Score: 1

      I don't know about you, but I pay my electric bill. Usually.

    11. Re:So it turns out.... by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      The obvious method is to steal the drive itsself. If you want to be a purist and steal only the data, you can leave an empty drive of the same model in it's place.

    12. Re:So it turns out.... by beelsebob · · Score: 2

      Not only that, even if it were deleted, then the electrons that make up his copy are clearly different electrons. He's not stolen, he's copied, and then caused criminal damage.

    13. Re:So it turns out.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      #!/usr/bin/bash

      # steal.sh

      cp $1 $2

      dd if=/dev/zero of=$1

    14. Re:So it turns out.... by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Only if you draw that energy you use to trap the electrons without permission. Then, while pirating, you are stealing from whoever supplies that energy. Of course that theft will remain even if you acquire a copyright license for the work.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    15. Re:So it turns out.... by rgbatduke · · Score: 2

      Ah, but the information theorist would argue -- with absolutely impeccable reasoning, mind you -- that both empirically and theoretically, information is strictly conserved in all physical interactions: no new information is ever created. In fact, existing physical laws strictly conserve information. Leonard Susskind has a lovely book about his "Battle with Stephen Hawking to make the world safe for quantum mechanics" that demonstrates that even black holes conserve information (and even if they didn't, nobody ever argued that they create it.

      Consequently the information content of any book was, in fact, not created "by" anyone. It was inherent in the Universe itself from the non-existent oxymoronic "beginning of time" (or rather, the four-dimensional Universe itself is a static entity unless/until proven otherwise). Therefore, one cannot "steal" it (or "pirate" it) as it was not created by the author -- that is strictly an illusion -- and indeed the so-called "theft" is as inevitable as the original appearance of the bizarre and highly unstable patterns of electronic, molecular, and neural state that represent the ontological entities we call "a book".

      Damn shame about the inevitable and eternal appearance of those same evanescent patterns that represent the "DMCA", wot?

      rgb

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    16. Re:So it turns out.... by Compaqt · · Score: 1

      I'm no pirate, no siree. That's why I stick to ln -s.

      --
      I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
    17. Re:So it turns out.... by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Looks like crime really does weight.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    18. Re:So it turns out.... by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

      So what you're saving is that we would need to copy the file, erase the drive then nuke it from orbit since it's the only way to be sure.

    19. Re:So it turns out.... by RoFLKOPTr · · Score: 1

      Precisely.

    20. Re:So it turns out.... by gstoddart · · Score: 1

      Do information theorists get beat up a lot for saying things that people find to be random and not very helpful? ;-)

      Because, really, you can't use the "all information was pre-ordained by physics" defense to fight yourself against copyright infringement cases. It just won't work.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    21. Re:So it turns out.... by cellocgw · · Score: 1

      Not only that, even if it were deleted, then the electrons that make up his copy are clearly different electrons.
      Depends: if you subscribe to the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-electron_universe theory that there's only one electron in the universe which exists all over the place in different quantum states (hence Pauli exclusion), then you're only creating new quantum states of the One Electron.

      --
      https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
    22. Re:So it turns out.... by rgbatduke · · Score: 1

      Not just copyright infringement cases. It implies a completely deterministic Universe, absolving you of fundamental moral responsibility altogether. So I had no choice but to reply to you even though you are quite right, this wouldn't work in copyright infringement cases which in turn have no choice but to exist whether or not they are truly morally justified.

      rgb

      P.S. -- beat up a lot for saying things people find to be random? How can they? Nothing is random. No we get beat up because it is our destiny to get beat up, just as it is yours not to be helped...;-)

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    23. Re:So it turns out.... by Babylon22 · · Score: 1

      Like we didn't know that before? ~~ Babylon Lingerie http://www.babylonlingerie.com/

    24. Re:So it turns out.... by tchall · · Score: 1

      Oddly enough it appears (to the most casual observer at least) that COPYright is about copying....

      So it's NOT about "stealing" rather it's about copying...

    25. Re:So it turns out.... by RockDoctor · · Score: 1
      Nope, that would still be theft.

      Try the same logic with the 'Mona Lisa' and an accurate-to-the-nanometre copy of the 'Mona Lisa'. The law would recognise that the uniqueness of the original thing is important.

      I'm sure that there is abundant case law about (say) someone whose wedding ring gets lost when being repaired by the jewellers being compensated in addition to having a similar ring given to them "because it not *the* ring that X gave to me".

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  2. Re:The most pointless /. post evar... by TheInternetGuy · · Score: 2

    Not really.
    It prevented me from posting "First Post!!! suckers!!!" and instead post something semi-meaningful.

    --
    If my comment didn't sound as good in your head as it did in mine, then I guess we all know who's to blame
  3. Is this news? by neonv · · Score: 2

    I want my 30 seconds back ...

    1. Re:Is this news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Only your wife can do that, sorry mate.

    2. Re:Is this news? by beelsebob · · Score: 1

      Don't read the site aimed at nerds if you don't want to read articles that are cool, interesting, fun and ultimately meaningless. This is what slashdot is for ;).

    3. Re:Is this news? by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 1

      I want my 30 seconds back ...

      Yeah! Let's get back to the smartphone flame war!!

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    4. Re:Is this news? by Pieroxy · · Score: 1

      Yeah! Let's get back to the smartphone flame war!!

      Yeah! Apple Sucks/rul3z.

      Pick yours and let's fight!!!

      --
      Write boring code, not shiny code!
    5. Re:Is this news? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      articles that are cool, interesting, fun and ultimately meaningless.

      Well, one out of four's better than nothing.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    6. Re:Is this news? by Smallpond · · Score: 1

      Yes, it is. Obviously these people have discovered a way to teleport. Recreating mass where mass was not before. Or even better, a way to transfer ones self into the interwebs! /s

      This is bullshit in reality. 0s ans 1s got flipped in flash storage. No new mass was created. Perhaps, rebalanced, but not created.

      Way to not understand the article at all. The weight is from the additional energy need to store the data, not from mass.

      I added one inverter to my kindle so now it gets lighter when I store an eBook.

  4. Not true at all. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    From TFA:

    Although the electrons were already present, keeping them still rather than allowing them to float around takes up extra energy – about a billionth of a microjoule per bit of data.

    No matter whether any bit is currently being used or not, it still has a value. It's not allowed to "float around".

    1. Re:Not true at all. by AdamHaun · · Score: 1

      I think they're talking about flash memory, which does involve confining excess electrons in an isolated piece of material (the "floating gate") to produce zeros.

      --
      Visit the
    2. Re:Not true at all. by niftydude · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think they're talking about flash memory, which does involve confining excess electrons in an isolated piece of material (the "floating gate") to produce zeros.

      Yes - but if the flash memory is formatted - it would be all zeros already.

      So if the book is downloaded - all the extra ones created should release the excess electrons, and actually make the book lighter!!!

      However - if the memory was quick formatted - unwritten memory would be randomly 1 or 0, and adding an ebook would typically keep the same average of 1s and 0s - meaning the reader would on average stay the same weight.

      --
      You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
    3. Re:Not true at all. by rdebath · · Score: 3, Informative

      Flash memory cannot be 'quick formatted' each block has to be properly erased before use because writing can only turn 1's into 0's. (Obviously, the filesystem on a flash device can be quick formatted; but a recent OS will tell the flash about this, using the "TRIM" command, and the flash will erase all the blocks anyway.)

      Some flash drives even understand the NTFS filesystem well enough to erase unallocated blocks without help; but that seems a little dangerous to me.

      BTW: What Kubiatowicz seems to be saying is that pulling electrons from the substrate into the gates of a flash drive makes it heavier. So erasing the blocks, ie shorting them to ground, makes them lighter. So while downloading a book could make the device lighter, erasing the device will make it lighter still.

    4. Re:Not true at all. by rgbatduke · · Score: 2

      Actually, I was about to post the same, but then I thought about it. Suppose the medium is magnetic. "Erased" it is in a homogeneous state, which is actually a lower energy state than when there are patterns of 0's and 1's on it. Every 0/1 boundary costs energy. For magnetic media, then, writing any detailed data to the drive costs energy (most of which is expended shifting the state in a bit in a way that conserves the final energy of the state in a symmetric way) BUT there is a very slight increase in the energy associated with neighboring bits when they conflict. As you use the drive you approach an equilibrium average energy slightly higher than all 0's on the drive and slightly lower than a drive full of 01010101...s

      For flash memory (if I understand it correctly, open to doubt) a bit is basically a capacitor with an RC time constant of years and a double-gate MOSFET hooked up that permit the passive reading of capacitor state. The default, energetically ground state of a bit is 1. Writing a 0 to a bit "flashes" electrons across a quantum boundary to invert the capacitor state, and the inverted state is very slightly higher energy (and increases the interbit energy as well in a manner similar to the HDD platter).

      Note that one should not confuse (in either case) the energy required to switch a bit's state with the energy of the final state. The former is quite large but doesn't add energy/mass to the storage medium. I'd have to read TFA to see if the author actually confused this, but if I read the article then my head would probably explode and I have other more useful things to do -- like almost anything. Indeed, the design of flash memory looks like it might well be (almost?) completely energy-symmetric -- I'm really assuming that the 1 state is energetically stable because of the way the device is hooked up to ground -- the actual structure of a bit is two N-type "plates" separated by a P-type insulator/substrate and looks completely symmetric. If the true ground state is symmetric neutrality, then the author is incorrect -- flash memory, as you say, has the same energy over ground once initialized/formatted in ANY state, and the only increase in energy is a second order interbit interaction energy. For ferromagnets that energy would be minimum in the aligned state. For flash memory, I'd actually expect it to be antiferroelectric -- lowest energy when an equal number of 0s and 1s are written to the device, so that pairs of bits could neutralize each other and enter not-0 not-1 with no net charge (asymmetry) on either N-type plate. But I rather think that 1 is already this neutral state.

      rgb

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    5. Re:Not true at all. by k8to · · Score: 1

      Pretty sure he means the filesystem would be initialized, which is done with various filesystems which are sometimes flash aware and sometimes not. Either way a minority of pages are touched, as you say.

      As for TRIM, it's certainly a good thing to do, although not everything supports it, and there's no guarantee it results in the pages being zeroed. In fact as one of the purposes of TRIM is improving wear levelling, zeroing out the pages would seem to be counterproductive. Instead the device should just add them to a free list. OR maybe you're right for performance reasons? (one has to zero a page before writing to it).

      --
      -josh
    6. Re:Not true at all. by rgbatduke · · Score: 3, Informative

      Just to be picky -- the default state is 1's, not 0's. NAND in particular has to start out all 1's and then "writes" turn some bits in a block into 0's. And the issue is whether or not the 1/default state is the ground state of any given bit (first) and whether or not there is some interbit interaction energy (second) and what the sign of that interaction energy is (third). One could in principle write a very simple model hamiltonian for the system that looks like:

      H = - \sum_i (A b_i +/- \sum_j B_{ij} (b_i - 1/2) (b_j - 1/2))

      where the first term represents the additional energy gained turning a 1 into a 0 and the second one (probably summed only over nearest neighbors) the energy gained or lost when neighboring bits are the same or different states. b_i is bit state, 1 (default) or 0.

      The real question, then, is whether or not A is zero or if it should be e.g. A(b_i - 1/2) (symmetric) and whether B_{ij} is positive, negative or zero. If I didn't make any algebra mistakes in writing this down. If A and B are known, of course, one can easily estimate the cost of writing 4 GB of data, and I'm guessing that's what TFA does (without reading it, of course, what would be the fun of that!).

      rgb

      --
      Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
    7. Re:Not true at all. by mr1911 · · Score: 1

      Actually, NAND is "erased" to a 1.

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    8. Re:Not true at all. by mr1911 · · Score: 1

      For flash memory (if I understand it correctly, open to doubt) a bit is basically a capacitor with an RC time constant of years and a double-gate MOSFET hooked up that permit the passive reading of capacitor state. The default, energetically ground state of a bit is 1. Writing a 0 to a bit "flashes" electrons across a quantum boundary to invert the capacitor state, and the inverted state is very slightly higher energy (and increases the interbit energy as well in a manner similar to the HDD platter).

      You do not understand it correctly.

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  5. this is the most retarded thing i've ever read by mug+funky · · Score: 4, Informative

    in other news, ipods get heavier as you fill them.

    maybe "the singularity" will happen when the internet gets so heavy the Earth collapses into a black hole?

    1. Re:this is the most retarded thing i've ever read by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 2, Funny

      Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

      --
      Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
    2. Re:this is the most retarded thing i've ever read by Zouden · · Score: 1

      "in other news, ipods get heavier as you fill them."
      Yes, they do. This is clear to anyone familiar with Maxwell. This professor has come to the answer a different way, via Einstein.

      --
      "A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
    3. Re:this is the most retarded thing i've ever read by gmhowell · · Score: 1

      Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

      Trying to accelerate the process I see...

      --
      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    4. Re:this is the most retarded thing i've ever read by X3J11 · · Score: 1

      Add me too!

      (Thank you parent for the wonderfully nostalgic flashback to 1990's Usenet, intentional or otherwise).

    5. Re:this is the most retarded thing i've ever read by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 1

      On an e-reader, the energy used to write the flash has to come from the battery. It would seem to me that the losses due to heat would more than negate the added mass on the flash chip.

    6. Re:this is the most retarded thing i've ever read by Andrewkov · · Score: 1

      in other news, ipods get heavier as you fill them.

      Yes, they also accumulate pocket lint and finger grease.

    7. Re:this is the most retarded thing i've ever read by Bucky24 · · Score: 1

      In that case wouldn't recharging the battery offset the original offset of heat loss?

      --
      All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
  6. Hmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    So in the far future 1 x 10^18 GB of data is a gram.

    That's interesting?

    Also, if the, I guess electrical signals? add mass the earth keeps getting a tiny tiny bit heavier every time new data is made?

    Grasping at straws here, people. I think that's vaguely interesting though.

    1. Re:Hmm... by sourcerror · · Score: 1

      It's not that information has weight, but the fact that information has to be physically stored somehow, and the way we do it now is messing with electron states (flash memory), but there's no theoretical limit on how much energy we need to store one bit, the limit is our current technology.

    2. Re:Hmm... by maxwell+demon · · Score: 2

      There is a theoretical limit on the amount of energy you need to erase a bit (in order to store new information in). It depends on the temperature, though. At room temperature it's about 2.8×10^(-21) joules, or the energy equivalent of 3.1×10^(-38) kilograms.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  7. Real units? by GreennMann · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "billionth of a billionth of a gram" That is painful to read. How about scientific notation? 1*10^-18 grams Or the use of a prefix? 1 atto gram

    1. Re:Real units? by whoever57 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Blame samzenpus. My submission said 1e-18.

      --
      The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
    2. Re:Real units? by iamhassi · · Score: 1

      "billionth of a billionth of a gram" That is painful to read. How about scientific notation? 1*10^-18 grams Or the use of a prefix? 1 atto gram

      I don't understand, how many library of congresses is this?

      --
      my karma will be here long after I'm gone
    3. Re:Real units? by perpenso · · Score: 2

      "billionth of a billionth of a gram" That is painful to read. How about scientific notation? 1*10^-18 grams Or the use of a prefix? 1 atto gram

      I fear you have just validated the original author's choice. :-)

    4. Re:Real units? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      Neither makes really intuitive sense. Both just tell you intuitively "extremely little". The only difference is that the "billionth of a billionth" says "extremely little" to a lot more peoppe than "1e-18" does. For me "1e-18" is the easier one, but then, on one hand I'm a scientist who is used to such, and on the other hand, I'm non-American, therefore "billionth of a billionth" for me includes an extra step of "scale correction" (i.e. recognizing that "billionth" means what I'd consider a "milliardth", and therefore "a billionth of a billionth" is far more than it initially sounds (a million times that, indeed). Indeed, with the long scale, this would be accurately described as just a "trillionth" which actually is much easier than both alternatives. Of course with the short scale, one could say a "quintillionth", but I guess few would understand that.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    5. Re:Real units? by Bromskloss · · Score: 1

      Blame samzenpus. My submission said 1e-18.

      So editors aren't just too lazy to shape up submissions, they actively make them worse? This is really disappointing. What are you doing, Slashdot editors?

      --
      Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
    6. Re:Real units? by ynp7 · · Score: 1

      I'm more interested in how many licks to the center of a tootsie pop it is...

    7. Re:Real units? by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

      The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. - Albert Einstein

    8. Re:Real units? by X0563511 · · Score: 1

      Is it really hard to understand that 1e-18 is a 1 with the decimal moved "left" 18 times? In other words, 0.[17 zeros]1? Not terribly hard to grasp.

      --
      For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
    9. Re:Real units? by ari_j · · Score: 2

      In a legitimate publication, the editor is a person responsible for ensuring factual accuracy and good writing style before an article is published. On Slashdot, an editor is a person responsible for taking factually accurate, well-written submissions and ensuring that they lose at least one of those attributes before publication. So we can't really blame samzenpus--he's just doing his job.

    10. Re:Real units? by mapkinase · · Score: 1

      "That is painful to read" not.

      --
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    11. Re:Real units? by sconeu · · Score: 1

      Three.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
    12. Re:Real units? by prograde · · Score: 1

      Oh, the irony. The parent posted as an AC. 37892084 is the post ID. Thus, I refute your assertion that Slashdot is for smart people, you must be new here.

  8. Where's the actual claim? by White+Flame · · Score: 2

    This just links to a Telegraph article talking about something that was talked about in a New York Times article, with no link to either that or the original source. Come on, Slashdot.

  9. Oblig by AlienIntelligence · · Score: 1

    How many Library of Congresses is that?

    -AI

    --
    For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
    1. Re:Oblig by DrVxD · · Score: 1

      Don't you people understand dimensional analysis?

      LoC is a measure of information content - this guy is talking about mass. They're different.

      --
      Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
    2. Re:Oblig by zAPPzAPP · · Score: 1

      It's a billionth of a billionth of a billionth of the mass of a car.

    3. Re:Oblig by ynp7 · · Score: 1

      So how much weight does it add to my Kindle when I put a Library of Congress on it?

    4. Re:Oblig by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      There are some units that don't have fixed dimensions. Pint, for example is, conventionally a unit of volume - but it can also be used for time, currency or sexual unattractiveness.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    5. Re:Oblig by colesw · · Score: 1

      The LoC has no mass? No wonder they can store everything!

    6. Re:Oblig by dilvish_the_damned · · Score: 1

      About 0.28 Ayn Rands by weight.

      --
      I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
  10. Wait a minute... by BluBrick · · Score: 1

    If I delete an e-book off my reader, I actually destroy matter? And no energy is released in its stead?



    It seems that E != mc^2 after all!

    --
    Ahh - My eye!
    The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
    1. Re:Wait a minute... by Anonymous+Cowar · · Score: 1

      matter != mass.

      energy stored (and accounted for as mass) goes to heat, as soon as your ebook reader cools down, the added "mass" is dissipated as entropy.

      You're saying that because you can calculate the wavelength of a mac truck barreling down the highway, that it should behave as a wave when meeting an oncoming "wave" that is barreling down the highway. Which it doesn't, thus disproving a photon's behavior as a particle on the quantum scale.

      Thus successful "troll" (attempt at humor) is successful and this reply is WOOOSHed...

    2. Re:Wait a minute... by ttong · · Score: 2

      That's not how woosh works, you don't woosh your own reply.

    3. Re:Wait a minute... by DrVxD · · Score: 1

      If I had mod points, that'd get a +1 for the quantum Mac truck...

      --
      Not everything that can be measured matters; Not everything that matters can be measured.
    4. Re:Wait a minute... by GrumblyStuff · · Score: 2

      You mean the iTruck?

    5. Re:Wait a minute... by HarryatRock · · Score: 1

      oh yes it does. the result of adding the two waves is in simple terms a large bang

      --
      nec sorte nec fato
    6. Re:Wait a minute... by CrackedButter · · Score: 1

      http://www.macktrucks.com/#/home

      --
      Jonathanjk.com
    7. Re:Wait a minute... by Darfeld · · Score: 1

      Ah, but what about if it's wooshed by a FTL neutrino?

      --
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      (='.'=) copy it in your sig
      (")_(") so it can take over the world
  11. Apologies to Benicio del Toro... by Empiric · · Score: 1

    So, at 21 Grams, how many terabytes would our souls contain? ;)

    --
    ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
    1. Re:Apologies to Benicio del Toro... by mark-t · · Score: 1

      Bah. Your soul is weightless. It is not matter, nor energy. It exists, but is a name for something that is entirely metaphysical, rather than physical.

      Your soul is your personhood... or your "youness". It is not your personality, nor any aspect of your consciousness in particular, although it is frequently thought of as intrinsically coupled with these. It exists from the time that you could be equally said to exist, and will exist eternally - it can no more be destroyed than the past itself could be changed from the perspective of anyone living in the future. Like mathematical axioms, it has no physically definable properties, but to assert that your soul does not exist is equivalent to asserting that that you don't even exist yourself, because your soul *IS* you. It can't die with your body because your death will not alter that you will have existed, and your "youness" will inherently exist into perpetuity.

      --
      File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    2. Re:Apologies to Benicio del Toro... by RancidPeanutOil · · Score: 1

      But why do ghosts wear clothes?!

      Also, metaphysical == not real. Your entire second paragraph makes my soul hurt.

    3. Re:Apologies to Benicio del Toro... by Empiric · · Score: 1

      Also, metaphysical == not real.

      I'm curious as to where this notion originated, if it wasn't simply someone saying there's a certain class of things I don't like that I'll refer to as "metaphysical" and assert not merely that they aren't real, but that "metaphysical" -means- "not real".

      I'm not suggesting you are alone in this, but that "metaphysics" exists, and therefore "metaphysical things" exist, is true according to the entire history of Western Philosophy up to the present day. Try telling a philosophy professor that there is nothing "metaphysical", I'm sure he'll have a few objections to taking away one of the core branches of philosophy existing all the way from Plato and Aristotle all the way through to his current exams, and every philosopher in between.

      If you prefer an opinion of someone that you may be more aligned in worldview with, "memes" are absolutely metaphysical and fully endorsed as real by Richard Dawkins.

      Saying "there is nothing metaphysical" is exactly equivalent to saying "there is nothing political" or "there is nothing ethical", according to all historical usage I'm aware of. From where are you deriving your usage?

      --
      ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
    4. Re:Apologies to Benicio del Toro... by RancidPeanutOil · · Score: 1

      Dawkins' memes are more like the information carried in waves - they're emergent properties of physical constructs, suites of nerve impulses conveyed to other organisms through purely pedestrian physical processes - nothing like the hocus pocus the op is getting at. Same with politics and the formal metaphysics of professors. I only take issue with all the ridiculous "soul" stuff, up to and including soul patches.

    5. Re:Apologies to Benicio del Toro... by Boronx · · Score: 1

      The soul isn't metaphysical, the soul is a verb.

      --
      Play Command HQ online
  12. Woosh by walkerp1 · · Score: 1

    I think I'm missing something here. Is there a state besides 1 and 0 in the memory? A null maybe, or an "I don't care"? Suppose for example that my e-Book's memory is a random jumble. I can query it twice and get the exact same jumble yes? Now I go and publish that jumble, promoting the existing data on my e-Book to information. Does the weight suddenly change?

    1. Re:Woosh by artor3 · · Score: 1

      The thing that you're missing is that 1s weigh more than 0s (or perhaps the reverse, I don't care enough to check). Since the memory will be initialized to all 0s, when you write some of those bits to 1, the mass increases.

    2. Re:Woosh by Mia'cova · · Score: 1

      Empty space isn't a random jumble. Flash memory needs to be erased before it can be written to. So in this case, yes, there is a 3rd state. For more info, do a quick search for the trim command. Reading up on that will give you a general idea of what's going on here. That said, I don't know what makes up the difference in weight. I'm guessing either some states have a few extra electrons or it picks up a few simply by performing writes, kinda like it's getting dirty over time. I don't know enough about the physical mechanics of flash though to say...

    3. Re:Woosh by walkerp1 · · Score: 1

      Agreed artor3, if that is the case then I can buy it. I didn't see an indication of that being the thrust of TFA though. I got the impression from this section, "Although the electrons were already present, keeping them still rather than allowing them to float around takes up extra energy – about a billionth of a microjoule per bit of data", that something rather more subtle was being discussed.

    4. Re:Woosh by gmhowell · · Score: 1

      1s are obviously skinny, and 0s fat. It should be clear which one weighs more. The 0s also use more pixels on a display, again proving they are heavier than 1s.

      --
      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    5. Re:Woosh by gmhowell · · Score: 1

      Sigh... Ok, in the null state, some electrons will have an up spin and others down. They will be close enough to each other in count to cancel out. BUT, when you assign a state, the electrons will have up spin. Up is away from the Earth. This force will decrease the weight of the e-Reader. Conversely, if the electron has a down spin, it will push the e-Reader towards the Earth, increasing weight. You cannot correct this as electrons are like little gyroscopes. Down spin is down spin.

      Doing my best to dumb down America.

      --
      Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
    6. Re:Woosh by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

      But mass and rest energy are equal. And since the energy in the stored information is in the rest energy (it doesn't depend on the movement of the observer), it indeed adds to the mass. If you had a sufficiently precise scale, you could in principle even measure it.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  13. Science? by No,+I+am+Spratacus! · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This belongs in the Idle section, at best, but probably not at all on /.

    1. Re:Science? by pz · · Score: 1

      Agreed.

      Since Taco left, the downhill slide has accelerated. It looks like I might have to block yet ANOTHER editor's crap.

      --

      Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
  14. Re:There's always a catch by justforgetme · · Score: 1

    it's that last billionth of a billionth of a gram that I just can't loose...

    --
    -- no sig today
  15. Ratio of 1s to 0s? by gnetwerker · · Score: 1

    Everyone knows that "One" bits are heavier than "Zero" bits. Now Amazon will have to tell us what the ratio of '1' bits to '0' bits is for any given e-book.

    1. Re:Ratio of 1s to 0s? by dohzer · · Score: 1

      What about if you use an inverted logic file format? Does your e-reader get lighter when you download something?

    2. Re:Ratio of 1s to 0s? by wvmarle · · Score: 1

      And how about the evil bit? How much does that weigh?

    3. Re:Ratio of 1s to 0s? by witherstaff · · Score: 1

      that matters on the ebook and the date. If you have a copy of the necronomicon on Halloween it's going to be really heavy. Christmas? It's light reading.

    4. Re:Ratio of 1s to 0s? by zAPPzAPP · · Score: 1

      It depends on the bit's position.
      Obviously a 2^7 bit is heavier than than a 2^0 bit. This is also the reason why there are few handheld 64bit devices. They would get too heavy to carry around with ease.

  16. Ahah! by Pence128 · · Score: 1

    Data does weight!

    --
    404: sig not found.
  17. Re:Does he not know how flash memory works? by iamhassi · · Score: 1

    He's Probably wrong

    Probably, but "Berkeley professor wrong" doesn't make as nearly as interesting a title as "E-readers get heavier with each book". Even if he's right the title is so horribly misleading that it's wrong. Next up, butterfly causes hurricane

    --
    my karma will be here long after I'm gone
  18. but the CO2 footprint is similar by ericcantona · · Score: 1

    The CO2 footprint is, surprisingly, similar (to within one order of magnitude)

    --
    When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown in to the sea
  19. We need some new scientists here. by Narmacil · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure they're understanding how anything works, it seems like they just figured OH HEY ELECTRONS HAVE MASS I MUST BE SMRT. Here's why.

    When you download an E-book from amazon, electrons aren't directly transferred to your tablet, a memory chip is burned, or bits are flipped, to represent the book in memory. (so either a magnetic or optical piece of information is stored by changing the configuration of mass that is already present) This would if anything remove mass from the e-reader, because electrons from the battery that are used to change the configuration of the memory would be lost as heat energy.

    now when you charge the battery it might gain a little mass, but electrons don't just hang around once they flow in from the interwebs (that's not how it works :D)
    I'm fairly certain some people need to go back to school, and then those people who wrote an article need to go back to journalism school.

    Sincerely, your friendly neighborhood rocket engineer :D

    1. Re:We need some new scientists here. by Hentes · · Score: 1

      But if it uses flash memory then electrons are indeed stored. It's basically a sequence of capacitors, where the right bits get charged.

  20. 0 is heavier than 1? by Dwedit · · Score: 1

    In freshly-cleared flash memory, data starts out as FF bytes, all 1s. Then bits are "programmed" to turn them into zeroes. Then when you need to flip them back again, you erase an entire block of memory to all 1s again, then program new 0s onto it.

    So is this just an example of 0s leaving more electrons on the system than 1s would? The only weight difference is due to number of electrons, so this is really small.

    1. Re:0 is heavier than 1? by wvmarle · · Score: 1

      No, it has to do with the idea that one state of memory has a higher energy than the other state, and that storing an e-book (or any data for that sake) on a non-volatile memory increases the energy state of that memory. And since energy is mass according to Einstein, the mass of the memory increases.

      You can not just increase the number of electrons on a device, as that would result in a net negative charge. Same for batteries: there are no electrons added, just electrons are moved from one atom to another while charging, and moved back when discharging. With the same reasoning one could argue that batteries increase in mass when charged as they take up energy - a probably much larger quantity of mass as the energies involved are so much greater.

    2. Re:0 is heavier than 1? by Tuqui · · Score: 2

      With the same reasoning one could argue that batteries increase in mass when charged as they take up energy - a probably much larger quantity of mass as the energies involved are so much greater.

      But when you charge batteries the temperature of the appliance will climb few points. If we take account of the molecules of air displaced out of the appliance by the raising in the temperature an expansion of the air inside, the total weight of the appliance will decrease.

    3. Re:0 is heavier than 1? by Prof.Phreak · · Score: 1

      Everything gains mass whenever more energy is present, e.g. E=mc^2. Applies to *everything*. Take a rubberband, measure its mass... then stretch it... and it will *gain* mass. Yes, batteries are heavier when charged :-)

      --

      "If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy

    4. Re:0 is heavier than 1? by samwichse · · Score: 1

      That's why you need to imagine a frictionless, spherical ebook reader in a vacuum.

      Sam

    5. Re:0 is heavier than 1? by synaptik · · Score: 1

      Interestingly, that same stretched rubber band with also warm up, and then gradually return to ambient by radiating away that heat. Then when you release the tension, it will get cold... sucking up the heat it had previously released.

      --
      HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
      NO CARRIER
    6. Re:0 is heavier than 1? by Richy_T · · Score: 1

      Careful, you might get sued by apples. That's just rounded rectangles taken to their logical conclusion.

    7. Re:0 is heavier than 1? by Richy_T · · Score: 1

      Uh, Apple, of course.

  21. Related article: by 6Yankee · · Score: 2

    Under TFA: "Amazon Kindle review: the e-reader for the mass market"

  22. Keeping them still instead of moving around... by djsmiley · · Score: 1

    Well... no, because if i had electrons just "moving" around on my storage, with their varying negative and positive powers of persuasion surely I'd be experiencing data loss?

    And I'm not.... therefore I can conlude that both the 0s AND the 1s aren't moving. No weight change

    Someone care to explain why I'm not correct? (And do I now get to call myself a Professor too?)

    --
    - http://www.milkme.co.uk
  23. Dwarfed by gesture effect by mattr · · Score: 1

    For those who didn't TFA, some guy trying to be educational or humorous is reaching to convert energy to mass via e=mc^2 and say that's a significant amount of mass being used to maintain an electron in place to represent a "1" bit.

    What about the weight of the energy that was stored in the battery's chemical compound and was used to power the device to download the ebook? Part is dissipated as heat and light emission. So is this scientist assuming a perfect battery, a perfect reversible computational device, and an ESP-driven interface with no visual display? Those photons are heavy too..

    What I'm saying is the memory chip is not isolated from its imperfect power source and CPU, and the bits do not magically appear they have to be calculated. Besides which, all this weight is surely dwarfed by the weight of the atoms being rubbed off the device by finger gestures. And lint.

  24. Re:There's always a catch by Oxford_Comma_Lover · · Score: 1

    The point that they are effectively massless, though, is huge for big collectors or collectors in expensive real-estate areas (NYC or Tokyo).

    --
    -- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
  25. As a physicist by drolli · · Score: 1

    The value depends for sure on the technology used and the temperature. If you use spins aligned in a weak magnetic field which store information e.g at a transition frequency of 1GHz and accept operation at temperatures of some milliKelvins , then you will find that the same information takes only 2*10^-28g:

    octave:20> 6.62e-34*1e9*(4e9*8)/(3e8^2)*1e3
    ans = 2.3538e-28

    This should not be confused with the fundamental limits which are involved.

    But constructing the formula for an applicable system Energies as a function of required reset speed, generated field strength, readout speeds, error rates as a function of temperature and available nonlinearities would be an interesting task for an exercise in a physics course on thermodynamics (and in the limit: quantum mechanics).

  26. Or a lot more than... by v1z · · Score: 1

    say - the weight of a single fingerprint? No need to read TFA - the idea that the weight of the reader would predictably change based on the difference beteween a random pattern of bits compared to the almost-random pattern of a compressed binary file... come on!

  27. one books weighs like a virus? by gadget+junkie · · Score: 1

    [...]"each time an additional book is downloaded to an e-reader, the mass of the e-reader increases. The effect doesn't really make the devices more difficult to carry: the professor calculates that 4GB of books would increase its weight by a billionth of a billionth of a gram— about the mass of a single virus or DNA molecule."

    Damn. I'll never be able to take all my biblioteque with me, it would weigh a ton.

    --
    "If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
    1. Re:one books weighs like a virus? by samwichse · · Score: 1

      Assuming a 700kb average ebook size, and 4gb of ebooks weighing 1 attogram, there would be about 5.18 * 10^26 ebooks in a short ton.

      Sam

  28. Re:Energy is not mass by Sockatume · · Score: 1

    Mass-energy equivalence is exactly what it sounds like - the rest mass and total energy of a body are exactly the same thing. You know in sci-fi, when they convert something big into energy so it disappears into a little box and they can just carry it around? Doesn't work. The mass would stay exactly the same.

    --
    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  29. Re:Conservation of mass/energy by Sockatume · · Score: 1

    I don't even know where to start. There is no such thing as "a relativistic device". Everything experiences relativistic effects - even your hypothetical ice cube - it's just that under most circumstances they are so small that you can neglect them. The ice cube does indeed weigh less when it has less thermal energy, albeit by such a small amount that you probably couldn't build a conventional scale to measure it.

    --
    No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  30. Been there, done that by atrocious+cowpat · · Score: 1

    The polish science fiction author Stanislaw Lem describes this (in a humorous fashion) in one of his Ijon Tichy / Professor A. Donda short stories.

    Prof. Donda has the theory that information = mass, proceeds to create a new field of study as a pretext to cram the maximum amount of information into the smallest space possible. He succeeds, creating an information singularity that makes all of the fixed, stored information in the universe go kablooie. Tichy and Donda end up somewhere in the jungle, looking at old copies of Playboy magazine.

    --
    sig? Oh, that sig...
  31. 21 grams by zerociprocal · · Score: 1

    The results of experiments by DuncanMacDougall, who tried to measure the weight of the departing soul, have been theorized to have a basis in some sort of "information erasure" at the moment of death (though in a tongue-in-cheek fashion it appears): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duncan_MacDougall_(doctor)

  32. Re:Energy is not mass by maxwell+demon · · Score: 1

    It does attribute mass to rest energy. For example, while the single photon has no mass (and no rest energy), a photon gas does have mass. And it indeed adds to what you see on your scales for the containing box (although in reality you'll never be able to actually measure such a small contribution).

    Yes, this also means that mass doesn't just add up.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  33. If you read the source article at NYT... by xded · · Score: 5, Informative
    ... (which the editors should've linked to), it states:

    “Although the total number of electrons in the memory does not change as the stored data changes,” Dr. Kubiatowicz said, the trapped ones have a higher energy than the untrapped ones. A conservative estimate of the difference would be 10^(-15) joules per bit.

    As the equation E=mc^2 makes clear, this energy is equivalent to mass and will have weight. Assuming that all these bits in an empty four-gigabyte Kindle are in a lower energy state and that half have a higher energy in a full Kindle, this translates to an energy difference of 1.7 times 10^(-5) joules, Dr. Kubiatowicz calculated. Plugging this into Einstein’s equation yields his rough estimate of 10^(-18) grams.

    Of course Kubiatowicz also says that:

    [10^(-18) grams] is only about one hundred-millionth as much as the estimated fluctuation from charging and discharging the device’s battery.

    Which is a far better comparison than the one obtained from The Guardian where Graeme Ackland of Edinburgh University stated:

    "If Prof Kubiatowicz is really struggling with the extra weight, he is welcome to come to Edinburgh where it's cooler, and the lack of thermal energy in his Kindle will more than compensate."

    Slashdot, home of crowdediting.

  34. but on the other hand... by jamesh · · Score: 1

    wouldn't the outgassing of the plastics that the thing is made of reduce its weight by more than any change in electron configuration?

  35. Don't tell the cheap airlines by asdf7890 · · Score: 2

    I can see RyanAir and friends using this as an excuse to add a new "eBook reader carrying charge" to all flights.

  36. And who cares? by pjbass · · Score: 1

    Sorry, but this isn't significant. And to be honest, it sounds like it should be in the noise. Flash memory is flash memory. The cell can swell based on many environmental factors (air pressure changes, humidity, temperature, etc.), and TFA clearly mentions heat as a possible factor. The fact a downloaded piece of data measured at all could be the cells were heated as the gates were being used to store the data. Who knows. A billionth of a billionth of a gram for 4GB of data just sounds too tiny to be remotely significant, let alone noteworthy outside of an extremely controlled environment.

    I'd like to see more data on the experiment itself, to see if the measurements were all taken in a very controlled environment or not. TFA is really lacking any details that would intrigue people who cared.

    1. Re:And who cares? by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      Nobody cares and nobody expects anyone to care. There is no experiment. There is no measurement.

      There's a well known equation e=mc^2. An equation that lots of people who have no idea what it means have heard of. This is a simple application of it put out as a throw away joke that might just educate someone by some tiny amount.

  37. Re:The most pointless /. post evar... by Chrisq · · Score: 2

    Really...

    I agree. It was not worth the extra weight that downloading it added to my laptop

  38. massless? by reiisi · · Score: 1

    How do you know the soul is not dark matter?

    Not sure if I'm asking a reasonable question or not about dark matter, but as long as we can't qualify the soul, we don't have a way to tell whether it has mass or not.

    All we know for sure is that our attempts to measure such mass have been unsuccessful so far. And we really can't expect to get anywhere as long as we don't know what the soul is.

    If there truly is no physical "spirit" to the soul, there is still the argument that the soul would be the sum of the information collected as memories, thinking patterns, learned behavior and habits, etc. over the lifetime to the present.

    Which brings us back to the question of whether information has mass independent of the medium on which it is stored.

    --
    Computer memory is just fancy paper, CPUs just fancy pens with fancy erasers; the 'net is just a fancy backyard fence.
  39. professores by Dark+Lord+of+Ohio · · Score: 1

    I work, I pay taxes and when I read such things I am going nuts. WTF???? My tax money goes into some academic pockets so that he can sit for weeks thinking about how much does one ebook weight??? Dammit! I thought such things are over and such debates were finished couple of hundreds years ago! It is like how many devils will fit on the needle tip... gimme a break.

    1. Re:professores by Tim+C · · Score: 1

      You do realise that he probably did this in his spare time, right? That sort of calculation could easily be part of a general physics or electrical engineering exam, approximating an order of magnitude answer is trivial given the required knowledge of the subject. This is definitely not a research topic.

      --
      It's official. Most of you are morons.
  40. Professor! by paiute · · Score: 1

    The Ig Nobel Prize committee is on line 1.

    --
    If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
  41. Correct conclusion for the wrong reason by Just+Brew+It! · · Score: 1

    I believe the guy's analysis is incorrect. I believe there is a mass gain, but most of it is not related to the energy required to "[keep electrons] still rather than allowing them to float around".

    Writing a '0' to a flash memory cell involves injecting electrons into a "floating gate", producing a (permanent) net negative charge on the gate. So a flash device which has been written to contains a net surplus of electrons (i.e. an overall negative charge), compared to one that is blank. The increase in mass comes mostly from the fact that you've simply got more electrons in the chip, not from an increased energy level.

    1. Re:Correct conclusion for the wrong reason by Just+Brew+It! · · Score: 1

      ...and those electrons will eventually be replenished. So I guess if you want to nit-pick, you could say that downloading an e-Book theoretically increases the mass of the device by a minuscule amount the next time it is recharged. But the amount of stored charge in the flash memory is going to be much smaller than the error bars on the amount of charge the battery can hold, so it is of course all "lost in the noise" anyway.

  42. Re:Harddrives? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Informative

    He seems to be under the impression that the storage devices have three states: one, zero, and undefined. This is not the case. There is no undefined state, when flash is erased all of the bits are set to one, when it is written some are set to zero. There is no difference in energy state between the a block that is erased and a block that is storing all ones. It is possible that the zero energy state has more mass than the one energy state, but that's not what he is claiming. Expect to see this show up in The Guardian's Bad Science column soon...

    --
    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  43. Re:The most pointless /. post evar... by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

    The most pointless /. post evar...

    And in many ways, the very best...

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  44. Mass of a DNA molecule by damn_registrars · · Score: 1

    The mass of a DNA molecule is so incredibly variable (by length) that saying something weighs as much as a DNA molecule makes no sense whatsoever. There is undoubtedly a library of congress reference that would be several orders of magnitude more precise.

    --
    Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
  45. Related anectode: software on space shuttle by schmiddy · · Score: 1

    I remembered this anecdote from the great book "Expert C Programming" by Peter Van der Linden. See the bottom of page 61, and page 62: google books.

    --
    http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
  46. Re:The most pointless /. post evar... by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

    Haha, QA has inspired trolls to imitate him.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  47. That doesn't sound right. by RalphBNumbers · · Score: 1

    Is he assuming that when a book isn't present all the flash cells are set to zero? Because that isn't generally the case.

    --
    "The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
  48. I though so by Murdoch5 · · Score: 1

    After I downloaded 100YB of ebooks my reader was hard to carry.

    1. Re:I though so by Bucky24 · · Score: 1

      I'd imagine if you had enough memory to store that many ebooks your reader would be hard to carry even before you downloaded them.

      --
      All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
  49. Small weight, huge effect by AJNeufeld · · Score: 1

    You might not think a billionth of a billionth of a gram is a lot, but when I catch a small virus, it really weighs me down.

  50. He must have failed both Modern Physics by KiwiCanuck · · Score: 1

    The guy just plugged some number in to an equation, and got an answer. The trick in Modern Physics is to know which law/equation applies in each problem. The mass of an electron is 9.11x10^-31 kg. It does not get heavier. If an electron is traveling near the speed of light, it's "effective mass", m*, increases. Effective mass is lumping gamma (c/sqrt(c^2-v^2)) in with the rest mass m (m* == gamma*rest_mass). Furthermore, both the "1" state and "0" state must be stable for storage, so the higher energy electron would have more potential energy than the lower state. It does not have more mass.

  51. Re:Harddrives? by mr1911 · · Score: 1

    His understanding of NAND flash is a bit better than yours. NAND program and erases must be verified. It is possible to have a state where you can't read it as a 0 or read it as a 1, which is indeed undefined.

    It is cleaver though, how you claim there is no difference between an erased block and a block that is storing all ones, since, as you pointed out, these are the same states. Back to what you meant to say, and what most folks would have read...

    There is indeed a difference in energy state between a programmed and erased bit. That is exactly how you can tell the difference between the two. In one state you have electrons driven to the floating gate. In the other state you have electrons driven off of the floating gate.

    At the end of the day, the only interesting thing about the professor's work is that his paper answering this unimportant question that no one asked can actually get published.

    And to the grandparent post, non-volatile memory does not require power to "hold the electrons in position".

    --
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    Any offense taken to this post is at your sole discretion.
  52. Re:you and tfa have it backwards by slew · · Score: 1

    Except that the opposite is true in flash memory.

    Erased "1"s are generated by dispersing the electrons from the floating gate using quantum tunnelling using a negative potential on the control gate. Writing data is the process of applying a large postive potential (voltage) to the control gate so that electrons can quantum tunnel (on NAND flash or inserted via hot-injection for NOR flash) to the floating gate to eventually be trapped there when the programming voltage is lowered.

    Since an "erased" sector has all of the electrons which might have been trapped on the floating gate dispersed, writing some data to an erased sector will require confining some number of electrons into floating gates (approximatly 1/2 of the floating gates for random data).

    In addition, the erased state also erases the error correcting code (ECC) data, so even if you "programmed" a sector to all ones, the ECC needs to be programmed to the correct value (that's how you can tell an erased sector from a sector that is "programmed" to all ones)...

    However, the confined electron on the gate is not actually additional "mass" per-se, as it probably originated from somewhere near the battery and when dispersed will go back to the near the battery. Those trapped electrons are not getting sucked from the environment or destroyed (E=mc^2) when dispersed. All they are doing is changing the charge distribution slightly (the electrons trapped on the floating gate merely push out electrons in atoms on nearby insulators not even near the battery). This is like storing a book mark on one page of a book vs another. It doesn't actually change the mass at all. But I digress...

  53. He is wrong by ghjm · · Score: 1

    He is assuming that the flash memory in the e-reader is in a chaotic state and is only ordered when an e-book is written to it. This is not true. By the time you get the e-reader, every cell in the flash memory has probably already been written to at least once (either when the flash memory chip itself was tested post-manufacturing, or when the e-reader software was imaged onto the device). Because it must deterministically return the value written to it, even if the new owner doesn't know what that value was, the e-reader is already "holding stationary" all the electrons in its flash memory gates.

    Also, while operating, there is a constant flow of electrons in and out of the device, with energy removed from the electrons and converted to heat (with useful functions a byproduct of this conversion). Since the flow of electrons is not perfectly constant, the mass of the device is constantly changing due to how many electrons are within it at any given moment. This fluctuation is of much greater magnitude than the alleged effect.

    5.

  54. Charging will cause larger change... by nghate · · Score: 1

    Forget the eBooks... Charging the eReader will add more energy ( => some more mass) to the device... much more significant than downloading the books! ... but I am afraid, your finger prints will add larger mass !

  55. Re:The most pointless /. post evar... by spazdor · · Score: 1

    You're just making Slashdot's server farm heavier with all these comments.

    --
    DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
  56. Re:The most pointless /. post evar... by Tharsman · · Score: 1

    Whoever wasted time doing the math to calculate this should do more productive things with his life. Like crunching the numbers of the latest WoW class balancing patch and tell us whats the best DPS class/weapon/build.

  57. I tihink I saw something like that in Dilbert. by porky_pig_jr · · Score: 1

    Dilbert tells PHB erasing the drive will make it lighter, because 1's are heavier than 0's, or something like that. Not sure I agree with Dilbert. 1 is thinner than 0, so 1 should be lighter.

    PPJ.

  58. What about heat loss by Amtrak · · Score: 1

    Ok, so I'm not an electrical engineer or a physicist but what I remember from my limited high school and college courses on the subjects is that electrical energy losses efficiency due to heat loss which is energy. If the memory on the device is using energy to hold a state, wouldn't it be loosing the excess energy that is in the form of electrons to heat? Meaning that the weight would stay the same. Also, I though flash memory held a charge for 0's not 1's so that it would by there argument not weigh more but less if a book was downloaded. Also the electrons have to come from somewhere, so I also contend that the electrons are just moving from the battery to the flash memory. So weight isn't added it is just transferred unless one is arguing that the wifi antenna is pulling electrons out of the radio signal and adding them to the device. Basically this whole argument seems flawed to me.

  59. A witch! by Arthur+Dent+'99 · · Score: 1

    (Monty Python mode ON)

    So, if 4GB weighs the same as a virus, it's therefore...
    ...a virus! BURN!! BUUUURN IT!

    (Monty Python mode OFF)

  60. Stanislaw Lem by Rui+del-Negro · · Score: 1

    According to Prof Kubiatowicz...

    It's fitting that he has a polish name, but surely all this (and more) was discovered ages ago by Professor A. Donda...

  61. What about the viruses I transfer by touch\sneeze? by ab_aditya · · Score: 1

    I wonder whether they considered the actual microbes, dust particles that get attached\detached to the reader with continued use. I also wonder where they managed to get such precise instruments. But really, a billionth of a billionth of a gram? How on earth will I be able to lift that reader of mine after it's filled...