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A 140GB CD-ROM?
Pete Brubaker writes "PCExtremist.com is running a story about some clever individuals that figured out how to layer data on a CDROM to achieve storage capacities 200 times over conventional CDROM's. Thats more than 30 times the capacity of a double sided, double layer DVD. "
From reading the other article (posted below someplace) it seems that the discs are made up of layers of fluorescent material that emit different wavelengths of light when stimulated by a laser beam.
It doesn't seem like there would be any problem to just print whatever you felt like on the top side of the disc. I don't know how reflections from the back of the printing surface would affect the process though (although they could use a non-reflective material).
All in all, I don't think labeling the discs will be a problem.
In fact, the discs should also be able to be used upside down, provided the motor and circutry are smart enough to realize that they need to work backwards - rotating the disc CW versus CCW or whatever.
I already went through that with 'CD-Caddies' back in the eighties, and I don't want to go through it again, thank you. Drives that require not only media but mamby-pamby media enclosures SUCK. Media enclosures are an environmental condom for AOL lusers who can't figure out that you PUT THE CD BACK IN THE CASE AFTER USING IT. You all know the AOL mentality! They look at the 'Magic Space Age Disc' and assume 'Well, it LOOKS indestructable' and proceed to use it as a coaster, a chew toy for their mongrel child or as a mirror to pop pimples. Then, when the disc is greasy, scratched, mauled and/or in little bitty bits, they call up the company and bitch that their copy of 'Ascii Spelunker 1.0' stopped working for no good reason and that they should get another copy because 'Ima good Windas user. Ah even knows how to make it do that pretty blue 'an yella screen where it makes sure ahl my disk thingies ahr spinnin' and as such know more than the company whose disc got mangled ever could, and as the superior being DESERVE the FREE disc.
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I bet that by the time this format becomes mainstream, MS will have a found a way to bloat their code so bad that MS Office and their next release of Windows will fill up an entire disk. Actually, knowing MS, they would probably make their install files total exactly 141 gigs in size... that way they could use 2 disks and charge even more... those fiendish bastards :)
Yes, and linux too installs in 7meg of HD space.
Both take lots of room , grow up.
Cds are really 740meg without FS and 384byte checksums.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=CDDD&d=t
if you acn store 140G, who cares if you cannot REWRITE, just write the data again, at least you wont go, jeez just overwrote the file, you will have a copy like in VMS
file;1
file;2
file;3
DVD's DO NOT use blue wavelengths. They are only a smaller version of the red wavelength ones. I'm guesstimating here, but something like 640 nanometers compared to 720 for regular CD's.
>>>>>> Chewie, take the professor in the back and plug him into the hyperdrive.
Grumble. I *hate* those stupid HD makers! My Maxtor "8.4" GB is a 7.9 "Real" GB Disk, and my IBM 16.8 gigger only has 16 *real* gigs... Cheap bastards, they are... That .8 GB was gonna be my extra swap space... (otoh, I liberated 2 *real* GB by axing the so-called "Win"-dows)
>Then if the disk needed a specific codec, it could simply ship with it, or the computer could grab it off the net.
Would it be legal to set up a web site a la CDDB, but which dished out DVD decryption keys or DIVX viewing keys to all comers? I think not. You would be shut down real quick.
What you seem to be saying is that, seeing as today we can crack & work around such schemes with some trouble, in the near future it will be even easier. This is an appealing notion, but only holds if the movie & music industries do not continue to try to improve thier daft encryption schemes, which benefit them but not consumers. Unless hit over the head, they will do so, which is why it is important for the makers of new media not to support them in this.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
The PAP-DVDs will use a thin layer of modified polymers while Holo-CDs (due out in 2005 with a said storage of 1500 GB) should have a layer of about 1 mm.
All of this is apparently part of the National Storage Industry Consortium. Unfortunately the access to the MORE project (Multiple Optical Recording Enhancements) is passworded.
Anyone got any more info?
________________________________
If encryption is outlawed, only
________________________________
If encryption is outlawed, only
YIE565$FF DSDNE4!MJK XMY7*fRBVM.
I didn't mention legal issues because I was talking about codecs.
As in, you don't really need to hammer out all of the possible video formats, as long as there's a way to describe the format to the player (a codec) supplied on the disc or accessible on the net, etc.
This is like a player which understands MPEG files getting a disc with an AVI (for example) on it. The disc could include the codec, or a URL to download it. The player could either cache this codec in NVRAM, or simply load it everytime it was needed.
As for the legality... pretty much everything involving copyrights is now illegal, or will be as of the new year, in the USA. The Digital Millenium act really screwed you guys over.
But, even so, if it was designed properly and players had a large secret key that they could use for authentication, yes, you could run a system where the player not only downloaded the actual decryption system, but also an encrypted (for its secret key only) key which would allow viewing of the disc.
But, I think that any form of authentication being needed to view a copyrighted work for which you paid to be able to view, is evil. It's like DIVX... you have the right to view the content only as long as the company says you can, in the way they want, and while they are in business.
Isn't fluorescence a chemical process, prone to "short" natural life?
I wonder about expected life time of the fluorescent material, especially under the office/home lighting, and also about natural aging.
Someone mentioned "organic dye". Could someone knowledgeable add some profile on that?
Injured geek wins against Mattel, Mattel still retaliates!
I think there is an easy solution to this... Just do the same thing that is used with floppy disks; that is, encase the actual media in a "protective" sheath and put a label on that.
How about something like the Sony minidisc covers? It's a thin plastic cover. Inside the player, the disc slips out of the cover and is read by the laser.
The cover makes labeling really handy....
Jedi Hacker (Apprentice) and Code Poet
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
hmm, call me stupid but they have to have figured out something entirely different from CD or dvd. You figure CD is 650mb for a one-layer disk, and DVD is what, 4.5gb? They say they're using a 10-layer disk and getting 140GB... that's 14GB per layer!! That in itself is a technological jump.
IIRC, I think CDs have a little bit of data redundancy built in.
I hope someone starts another slashdot and keeps it less political.
/. is it? Just some thoughts as I get frustrated by people implying that these guys can really control what goes on here beyond shutting it down or making it not Slashdot.
And just how do you propose that they keep it less political? Seems to me that it is the readers that are bringing the heavy political slant, not the editors. If you don't allow the postings, then it isn't a
The new part is to use one UV laser and layers that floresce at different wavelengths to accomplish the same thing. So theoretically the readers should drop in price over DVDs.
Absolutely they will. Remember the famous "Nobody needs more than 640k" quote from Bill? At that time, it might have seemed like a lot but of course in retrospect...
It's kind of like the error associated with a forward euler integration of a function. You're always extrapolating the future based on today's information. But new technologies enable things that were previously impossible. When the day comes that we have 1000GB disks, people will cram them full of full motion videos, and all sorts of other applications we haven't dreamed of yet.
Second, arstechnica has a follow up article about a british venture capital company that's working on something even better: think multiple terabytes on a single cd!
"God does not play dice with the universe." -Albert Einstein
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
'Xcuse me, but I've never heard that CD-ROMS, etc. can be affected by "powerful magnetics". Please explain.
However, I have found the reflectivity nature of the media useful in a different way, but I'd have to admit to that politically incorrect sport named "girlwatching" back in the '70s... Much more fun and doesn't gross anybody out.
Besides which it's much more easy to get away with --> "Darn CD, it's got a scratch..." (ogle ogle)
But the Write once disk they talk about is only 30mm across. So it's 5 times smaller but with similar capacity... Ideal for notebooks.
-- "Sponges grow in the ocean. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be if that didn't happen."
Note this story covers essentially identical information.. I guess Rob's too busy buying cool shit with those Andover million$ to pay attention to the stories posted to /....
you sir, are a jackass. /.
sit your ass and and take a long drink of shut the fuck up so people who have information not previously mention may be heard.
honestly, who made you lord of
Seeing as they have to develop their own CD readers, will they re-implement some security in that? (I'm referencing the DVD hack here...)
This story already ran on the Register yesterday. And, in case you didn't go read either of the sources, here's a link to the company and product in question.
LINK
It's the first one down - FMD ROM (Read Only Memory) Disk... Pretty cool how it's clear, huh?
I don't care if it's 30mm across or 5 1/4 inches across. If they don't offer a WORM device capable of matching their read-only device they don't offer it and it may be because the WORM process just doesn't work on larger disks, in which case you're stuck with DVD.
This is awesome, but have they figured out a way to ruin it by putting some shitty copy protection on it yet?
It won't be ready for prime time until they have.
And believe me, I'm sure they're already working on it!
You all know the AOL mentality! They look at the 'Magic Space Age Disc' and assume 'Well, it LOOKS indestructable' and proceed to use it as a coaster, a chew toy for their mongrel child or as a mirror to pop pimples
Well what else are supposed to do with an AOL CD? You aren't suggesting people are actually dumb enough to use AOL, are you?
--------
"I already have all the latest software."
Sounds great, but does anybody have any idea as to how much they will cost?
There does not seem to be any info on their website and I can't think of a similar product to give me a price guide.
Hi!
Imagine what Microshi*^%&t will stuff on the installation CD ROM of the Windows 2005 edition!
Wow 140 GB puts up the prospect of 120 MB dlls...
In the words of the immortal Beavis, HeheHEhehEhe, I'll be damned! Seriously though, is there or will there ever be any programs that will need that much space on an install disk?? I can see what great value it might have as an archiving device though.
Project Steve
Just a test to prove my understnding of how Slash works.. Methinks I will next grab the old 0.3 Slash code and pry about in admin.pl...
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Is it just me, or does it look like the guy's holding up the bottom of a cheap CD-Stomper?!? Anyways, if this drive were to be integrated into the PSX2/Dolphin/X-Box, it would make for some pretty bad-ass and long games...
-- Even if I stood above you, you still wouldn't understand me.
Current DVD media is home-writeable (with drives not available in the US, FWIU) at full capacity (18+GB?). Is there some technical reason the 140GB capacity couldn't be reached with a home-based "burner"? Or, are they simply caving *early* to the RIAA, and limiting their technology before it has a chance to make waves?
Gads... imagine if this technology took hold (and I can't see why on Earth it wouldn't!)... MS could even _further_ bloat their software.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
If they want to take over from DVD ROM systems it would be better if they could increase the number of layers. Unless they can come up with a reader mechanismthat will support more layers that currently is out there (unlikely).
:-).
We don't need to upgrade and then find out that our 10 Layer system is old hat and they now have a 25 or more layer system.
(rambling now)
The credit card idea would be great for things like a Gameboy. GameBoy Riven? 10 Gig. On a Z80 I'm guessing you'd have to bank switch your bank switching registers
Maybe the next generation Handhelds would be better.
I guess if the CreditCard reader device could be made small enough you could make a interface cart for handhelds. I'm not much for MP3s but the game potential is huge.
I wonder how small a reader can be?
-- That which does not kill us has made its last mistake.
To the makers of this and other such new devices: Please don't let the Movie and Music Industries convince you to buy into thier dumb-ass encryption, regionalisation, locking or content scrambling schemes. They don't work, and just waste everyone's time. Design the device as a bucket o' data files.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Slashdot without the politics is like a burrito without the peppers. borrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiingggggggggg.....
Whatsamatta son, can't handle a little jalapeno in your life??
Slashdot is ya wake up call! Stop hitting the snooze button and get up!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
The US government is said to have recently ordered a 100,000 disk RAID system, capable of holding a petabyte of data, presumably for activities like archiving Usenet, the web, stock market transactions, etc.
This is very interesting... do you have a link to an article or something about this?
Final Fantasy IX
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Reed-Solomon codes or other error correcting codes can be used to prevent a scratch or other minor defect from ruining a disk. This is already done on Audio CDs, CD-ROMs and DVDs. There is a tradeoff between the number/size of errors that can be corrected and the space consumed by error correction checkbits.
Somebody mentioned it at a local Cypherpunks meeting, where Duncan Campbell was doing a presentation on the Echelon eavesdropping system. I don't remember who it was, or whether the agency was known (e.g. Livermore Labs, though perhaps acting as a front) or unknown.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is the first time I've heard of this term, but the concept is quite old. At my old university I first suggested that binaries and config files be put on a cdrom, and user space be put on a hard disk.
Literally speaking, it would be easy to link a ton of files in
Of course the problem is there was no cd writer that we knew of, back then, and then the cd is mounted after the init process, so there was a problem. Now that I come to think of it I am going to go home tonight and work on a 'stiff linux' solution myself.....hmmmmmmm......!
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Check out http://www.howstuffworks.com/cd.htm for a few answers to your question.
Answers:
1. The maximum is 18 Gb, though you'd be pressed to find a DVD-ROM that actually used it.
2. While they are physically identical in size, there are numerous differences, the largest being their use of the UFS and micro-UFS filesystems on the discs instead of the standard ISO. DVD also uses a slightly different plastic, can support multiple data layers on a single DVD, and has a much higher data density.
3. The speed is nearly identical. I beleive a 6X DVD-ROM device is comparable to a 48X CDROM in terms of speed, but I may be off a little.
Corrections? Please do!
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That tech from Keele University that you mention sounds suspiciously like a variation on a theme to holographic storage, known colloquially as a "holostore". MIT came up with the initial idea back in the 50's but couldn't get it to something commercializable. Periodically, you get someone that comes up with a new twist on the idea that brings it closer to reality each time- but they fail to make it happen for some reason or another.
Maybe they have it right this time- it'd be cool to have that sort of storage at reasonable price points.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
The technology combined with DeCSS should have RIAA scared straight.
penguinicide... when jumping out a window just won't do.
The rotating disks don't actually get 1 gigabyte per second read rates, it turns out that only the card media does.
;-)
And as commentary at Tasty Bits From the Technology Front points out, the most outstanding claim about FMD drives is the 1 gigabyte per second read rates, a full 200x faster than a 32x CD-ROM, and 40x faster than a 10,000 RPM hard disk. In comparison, capacity only improves 25x over the 5.2 GB DVDs.
Personally, I find the large capacities C-3D demonstrates just reinforce my perception that buying into DVD technology is just setting yourself up for obsolescence once higher-res HDTV versions of videos and movies become available on post-DVD media like C3D's in a few years (probably more securely next time though!
--LP
C'mon, be honest: who here *hasn't* used a CD as a mirror to pop pimples?
Calling it a 140GB CDROM is a misnomer. It is based on completely different technology. Where CD/DVD uses a laser to reflect off of a surface, this relies on the disk itself glowing with florescence.
Spencer Ogden
If this disk is layered it must be as thick as deep-pan pizza, with extra cheese. Or are they using a different colored laser, as I read a while ago by changing the frequency you can increase storage rates dramatically.
Anyone care to find an article about HD-ROM? Its a pretty nifty technology that was talked about a few months ago in some technical journals. Basically, it takes the same approach to increased storage as DVD took. Smaller grooves and smaller laser == more data. In their case however, they couldn't get a laser small enough so they had to use an electron beam. The end result is an optical disk supposed to story 250GB. Very impressive.
...i'm wondering if the amount of data that the company who created this new type of CD-ROM format isn't just an arbitrary number. it seems like an outrageous amount of space to be held on the size of what appears to be a regular-sized CD. maybe they used some sort of quantum method. has anyone actually checked the validity of this new type of media?
I think the idea is great, but looking at the clear C3D I am forced to ask myself, "Self, how do you label the damn thing?"
What is that glowing thing?
That? It's just my MP3 collection.
Couldn't they sidestep the scratching/multiple layer issues by implementing a cartridge enclosure (a la removable Winchester drives?)
Free music from Jack Merlot.
I've noticed with most 'revolutionary' technologies, they all appear in the news, we read about them and go "That's really cool! I can't wait till that's on the market!" and that's the last we ever hear of that particular technology.
So I'm wondering when this type of technology will be available on the market, if ever? What sort of costs will be involved, and how long until the price will drop to sensible levels?
Nichia Corporation in Japan is about to start mass production of violet laser diodes, and single-layered disks using these 400 nm lasers have capacities of around 13-16 gb.. The product info page for this FMD-ROM thing specifically points out that the new drives are backward compatible with CD and DVD media (lasers of shorter wavelength can read media designed for longer wavelength) - while it's probably there to avoid scaring people off with proprietary stuff, it introduces further mystery. :)
Now, this 140 gb/10 layers = 14 gb per layer disk is announced - is this the first of the upcoming wave of violet laser products? I'm just waiting for a violet laser pointer
The story was not old enough for /. then.
Let every registered user rank every slashdot article and show the rankings in the main screen.
;)
Pretty cool idea too, but I'm hoping that by opening up the submission queue to many eyes, it should mean that the queues stay short (or can handle more submissions) and each queue moderator spends less time on wading thru them..
Just think, it's like fixing bugs of a journalistic type rather than a technical type, and as we all know, with thousands of eyeballs all bugs are shallow
Your Working Boy,
Hey, if I remembered it, he should: /. pays his rent, all I do is read the articles and occasionally mouth off.. (Though, in a manner of speaking, I _am_ paid to read /., but don't tell anyone that ;)
/.) without comment, and then released to the public, via a system of submission moderation similar to the system of comment moderation, and where submissions are then presented in user-configurable order..
/. code, I might even write it! C'mon Rob, et. al, it can't be _that_ ugly.. Or at least not as ugly as the code I inherited 4 months ago.... Couldn't be as hard as writing a mass-vhosting system that can manage tens-to-hundreds of thousands of donames and their associated websites (source available upon request, I just have to prefix all the perl files with the GPL)...
To prevent this, perhaps there should be a separate 'meta-slashdot' site where submissions are ranked by slashdot contributors (say, selected based on karma, instead of arbitrarily by the high priests of
If I could get my hands on the current running
Your Working Boy,
Layering an existing storage medium is hardly noteworthy. Until it's on your desk, who cares?
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HAHA! LAST POST! Anything following is redundant.
If a full-CD-sized disc can hold 140 GB, why do you have to make them full-sized to be useful? Just make it the same size as a minidisc, same cartridge, etc. You still get big storage without big scratch danger. The article says that their writable discs are going to be smaller than a standard CD anyway (so they're more usable on laptops, etc), so maybe this is already the plan.
impress me too much, for a few simple reasons; they don't mention anything around re-writing and this isn't really a breakthrough. This is merely an enhancement of the technology used in DVD players to real multiple disk layers. The transparent medium lets you use a large number of layers because the laser light doesn't get refracted much by it as it would by layers with a particular colour. I would be much more impressed with a re-writable system. The disk technology isn't the one you should look at for a real prize winner, it's the type of laser used. They use a pulse-diode lasers which can be much more easily controlled then dye based lasers and use a good deal less power. Lets hear it for diode lasers!
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Cool, now I can fit my porn collection in just three or four CD's. Those 12,000 DVD's were a little clumsy to work with.
The maximum is 18 Gb, though you'd be pressed to find a DVD-ROM that actually used it.
Stephen King's The Stand miniserie DVD is the first double-layer double-sided disc.
But manufacturing resources are still rare for DVD18. Heck, production capacity is already streched for RDSL...
---------- ovidius naso
Sure it's a great technology. However since DVD's have been proclaimed by so many to be the way to watch movies etc for the next 10 or so years and so many companies have put their futures into developing DVD stuff I almost doubt these new CD's will be backed by nearly as many companies and we may never see these things hit the mainstream.
The card is what looks interesting to me. I assume it doesnt spin, and I would assume (or just hope) they dont have a laser that will scan over the card like a photocopier. If theyve found an efficient way to read a high-capcity medium with little or no mechanics, it could do wonders for mobile computing. think weight, size, battery life...
I don't know about you, but I think that would probibly look too cool for words.
What is that glowing thing?
Do not look into the laser with your remaining good eye.....
I have a dvd porno cd that is double sided. They label it by writing on the inside part of the disc , near the hole. The problem I see with this is scratching. The double sided dvd-rom I have won't play the other side anymore it somehow got damaged.
Damaged, or stained?
bleh
Now I can hack up my DVD collection, and have a place to store them. Only this should fit about 20 different movies.... hah just like my mp3 collection.
: )
- passion
LAST POST! LAST POST! I'M SO EXCITED.
Back to PORN.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Another thing. Almoust all other datamedia we have can be erased by static electrisety/powerful magnetics.. this one cannot (I gues) nice to have a backupmedia that can survive this (now I whant a media that resistant to heat/fire =)
Maybe at last we could see an end to all this "this article stinks!" nonsense.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
It (hopefully) doesn't spin the card, so does the laser scan back and forth? hmm
How it works is this:
The CD consists of multiple layers which are individually pressed in the usual CD way, then stuck together afterwards. The layers have different fluorescence frequencies, and a single frequency laser stimulates all the fluorecent layers at once. If I read their website right, the pressing process makes the usual pits in the plastic of each layer, and a fluorescent material is then put into the pits. At any rate, the data is encoded by having different thicknesses of fluorescent material for ones and zeros.
Because the fluorescent layers and the intervening glue layers all have identical optical characteristics from the point of view of the laser beam, and because the ones and zeros also look virtually identical to the beam, the medium appears almost completely homogenous, and doesn't scatter or refract the laser, so only the spot you're interested in gets illuminated, and the beam remains parallel right through the medium. This is what allows the highest possible spot densities, and the very large numbers of layers.
The writable version of this probably /will/ need multiple frequency lasers, to cause photochemical changes in each layer separately.
Does this technology rely on the fact that the disc has to be totally transparent? because sooner or later fingerprints are going to get on it. if it does rely on transparency can I just clean it off with Windex?
What about shelf life? How long does this technology hold information about that laser wavelength? 140 Gb is great but I like to have it longer than 3 days to a year.
What about security? What if someone came up with a laser pointer and shot it through this disc of mine? would the laser pointer in some sense be to the disc as a magnet is to magneto-storage drives?
These are questions that definitely need some answering.
Hopefully this is one step closer to 100+ gigs of non-volitile solid state storage. the day I no longer need a motor to access my storage is the day I jump for joy.
shit.. if they're transparent we can't even do this!!! What a worthless invention!!!
Well read down and as you increase the number of applications for the device, the capacity goes down. Read only manufactured in a plant: 140 gigs. Write once: 4 gigs. Current DVD recorders for $500 can store 5 gigs on a DVD, for $5 a gig. CD-R recorders for $100 can store 800 megs per CD at $1.50 a gig. How much would FMD cost per gig? Probably more than either of our two existing formats. Really there isn't even a single working FMD device in existance today. We're talking about a theoretical device which has been simulated on a computer.
Of course the artists would play their fingers down to little nubs and scream themselves hoarse trying to fill up these disks.
I did a little math. In MP3 format, it'd contain over 98 DAYS worth of music. In straight CD-Audio format, it'd be about 9-10 days of music.
Imagine only needing 4 disks to get you through a year of solid music! {SHUDDER}
(NOTE: This is using the HD companies' 1000= formula)
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This story was on slashdot a month ago.
Prototype 150GByte Read-Only Disk Demonstrated by Hemos on 01:56 AM October 5th, 1999 EAS 73
This reminds me of something I have only heard little of....Blue Light Laser CDing. From what I've heard....laser light right now is at Red...and obviously Blue is at the other end of the spectrum....and so it is more concentrated and thinner....so you can write more data to the same CD media. Anyone know more about this?
~TruPoet
DVDR (not the usless DVDRAM) media is only single-shot writeable. There will never be a recorder for DSDL DVD because it's not physically possible to burn through one layer and not obliterate it.
it has nothing to do with slashdot.. but the fact that there has been a lot of anti-ms and anti-government NEWS lately.. go sue redhat or something.. and you might see THAT on here too.. its not the state of slashdot but the current state of whats going on
Hollywood will freak. The RIAA will freak. And they'll never let us buy this stuff unless they get a chunk.
Grr.
Later
Unfortunately by the time these drives come out I'll have about 250GB of hard disks on my PC and will *still* need to use multiple disks to back it up!
(And the answer to the obvious question is 'video editing'!)
Furthermore, are these going to have a "wrong side"? CD ROMs are vulnerable to "media scratches" because they only put a very thin coat over the reflective media on the top side of the cd. I wonder what a media scratch would do to a multi-layered approach like this. How well are the layers bonded to each other? Can chipping occur due to weak bonding?
Oh well. Just seemed like appropriate questions to ask... If the technology is durable enough that you can use it without walking on eggshells (and isn't horrifically expensive), this could turn out really kewl.
--Fesh
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
I hate to think I'm the first person to point this out, but if the disc is transparent,
HOW DO YOU LABEL IT.
I look around my place and I have various CDR's and CDRW's with backup information, install programs, etc. They all have labels - they all have labels so i can tell what's on the disc, since I can't tell by shining my laser pointer at it, and since I don't want to have to put each one in my new drive to find out. I may be jumping the gun here, but the pictures and the article sure make it look like the thing is totally see through... but i regress.
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
Maybe you have a photographic memory to remember two month old stories, but it's news to me. I'm more than a little sick of this whole "more money" == "sellout"|"poor quality"|"don't have to care anymore" line. If you'd prefer the job of filtering through dozens of submissions a day, feel free to start your own site.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Layering is an old and proven technology. DVD uses two layers. There's no logical reason why two should be the limit.
The tricky part is cost. A laser that is tunable to many wavelengths is likely to be more expensive than one that only does one or two. Creating the media is also going to be more expensive.
I know very little about DVD (as I don't have one on my computer at home, and there is no need for them at work...) I have a few questions:
#1. How much can a DVD hold? (lots yeah, but how much)
#2. What is the difference between a dvd and a cd?
#3. This shows how fast super CD (or whatever its called) can access info, but how fast can a DVD player? (ie are you really gaining a useful meadium or just a big storage device)
Thoughts?
You say you want a revolution?
Why not just forget the electron beam and build your own chip fabrication plant. Make your own silicon wafers and burn them with an ion implantation gun. Then implant not billions but trillions of bytes of data on a single silicon wafer.
This company claims to have "over forty" patents. Nothing comes up in an international search of the IBM server under C3D, TriDStore, C-Trid, and a couple other variations of the names listed in their SEC filing.
This is different tech. CD rom uses change in reflectivity because of the pits, or because of a phase change in the material. This uses flourecense, which is quite different. I suppose it is related to a local index of refraction change, but this is a different technology, with different limitations
What they are using is called a confocal microscope. The same kind of stuff which is used for single molecule detection of fluorescence labeled proteins and things like that. To get a good z-resolution for the separation of the different layers and to get a good photon detection ratio they have to use a high appertur optic. If the layers are deep enough inside of the disc the beam diameter at the surface can be much larger than the diameter of a scratch and the scratch wouldn't matter at all! As the light is detected at the same side of the disc it isn't a problem to print a label on the other side of the disc. This really should be a practical approach! To make a RW-disc might be difficult because you would need to switch the fluorescence behaviour in a permanent and reversable way. Maybe the new blue diode lasers will make it possible.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, most lasers are tunable to some degree; the emission bands that they use aren't perfectly sharp, and adjusting the geometry of the cavity and/or putting in a filter lets you select the final frequency that results. Lasers sold as "tunable" lasers are lasers that have very broad emission bands, with some piece of adjustable frequency-selective hardware (like a diffraction grating) to tune it with.
Dye lasers are the most significant example of this that comes to mind.
I've never heard of DVD drives using tunable lasers, so I'm not sure where the messages on the subject are coming from. If I understand correctly, they actually adjust the focal depth of the optical head (or just move the head up and down) to select the layer that they want. (DISCLAIMER: It's been a while since I read up on DVD technology).
Simple math tells me that this technology is not 650 MB per layer. For a 10 layer, 140GB disk, thats 14GB per layer. That blows DVD out of the water if you ask me.
here's a durability issue that i didn't see addressed on their (tech-poor) web site: they say the disks use flourescent dyes. at a guess these will be nice tunable organic dyes. such materials don't tend to live long, especially when illuminated.
are these disks going to last more than a few months?
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- A.E.
Hey, guys! I had just looked throught the www.c3d.net site, and discovered that they develop a 1.4 Terabyte CD-sized disk!
Sorta... I have to agree it does seem more anti ms, but maybe that's because of all the recent headlines as far as the trial is concerned.
I submitted a story about FMD-ROM from OSOpinion two days ago and it wasn't posted:
C olinCordner2.html
http://www.osopinion.com/Opinions/ColinCordner/
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I thought the same thing too. My guesses are either put a really really small label on the inside (where the CD snaps into a case), which of course would be too small to be identified quickly.
The other possibility is that they might use a special dye or something that is visible in normal light, but transparent to the laser.
Anyone else have other ideas?
So why are they doing this with CDROM technology? Why not do the same thing with DVD? Instead of 650M/layer, you would have 4.3G/layer.
Of course, it isn't as simple as that, because DVD uses a tigher wavelength to squeeze the data closer together. Still, in theory, the idea is sound.
I guess it's a lot like manufacturing hard drives. You can add space by increasing the density on a platter, and you can add space by increasing the number of platters.
I have a dvd porno cd that is double sided. They label it by writing on the inside part of the disc , near the hole. The problem I see with this is scratching. The double sided dvd-rom I have won't play the other side anymore it somehow got damaged
Yes, there has been a precipitous drop in the content quality over the past few months. The anti-MS, anti-government tone here is crowding out the more interesting topics. I hope someone starts another slashdot and keeps it less political.
As You have read, scientists working on this project are even from Russia. I am from Russia and already read about this project month ago in some Russian computer-related newspaper. They already developed a 8-layer drive. I seen the image - it's a deck-sized drive with disk-loader in the middle, and eight light-diodes on the front. Technology is based on the property of some material to 'remember' that it was lighted by laser of specified frequency. Laser spot is _very_ small during the recording. When we want to read the information, we may light it with the same frequency laser spot, but it may be larger than the recording. Recorded areas a fluorescenting and the area around the laser light spot is digitized by the CCD camera, and then processed to determine the layers and read the data.
After reading a ton of responses concerning the "140 GB CD-ROM Drive" a thought occured to me... What would the write speed of the WORM drive be? The writing speed on the earliest CD-ROM drives was terrible enough, not dealing with such a large amount of data... will the write speed be so long as to be measured in days instead of minutes? Scary thought huh?
Actually, I believe I read in Invention & Tech or somewhere that the reader uses multi-wavelength lasers, and each layer is recorded in different wavelengths in the same substrate. The data isn't actually in different positional layers. I also recall that the only limit to how many layers is the ablility to tune the laser and descriminate between wavelengths. They talked about hundreds of layers being easily possible.
I get one of those disks with every 50-CD spindle! And here I've been thinking that it wasn't actually a CD at all, but some kind of protective covering. Silly me!
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
With a media that doesn't have a metallic layer we
have an option for truely long term data storage..
as long as the plastic stays clear over exposure to oxygen.
How do you label it? If it is prone to scratches would a case like on the sony MD solve that sort of problem?
-"You'll have plenty of time to sleep when you're dead."
According to the story, the technology can support ~10GB WORM drives, or ~140GB ROM technology.
Cost of writeable media and drives isn't listed; 10GB conventional magnetic disks currently cost ~$100, so this may not be particularly superior for backups, but it's still in the interesting range. They say the media cost should be similar to current CD/DVD, which may be realistic for mass-produced storage. They also don't say what kind of resources you need to produce the high-density ROM versions - is it only useful for large production runs, or can it make sense for one-offs?
The US government is said to have recently ordered a 100,000 disk RAID system, capable of holding a petabyte of data, presumably for activities like archiving Usenet, the web, stock market transactions, etc. This technology means that archiving large quantities of data becomes much more convenient for regular people, and for corporations that - remember when a Terabyte of data was huge? (and before that, a GB?) What can you do if you can archive all of your company's transactions, designs, etc., and reproduce them cheaply? How do you design policies on information retention when it's cheap and hard to make sure things got thrown away?
This could be interesting for security - having large WORM drives that are fast enough to run an operating system off, with write-once capability for log files, lets you run much more secure web servers, because it's hard to trash WORMs. How does this affect operating system design? A friend of mine did some work a few years back called "Stiff Unix", trying to find out what parts of the file system space Unix needs to have writeable, and what parts can be ROM. I think this was on *BSD; it'd be interesting to see how Linux can react to this environment.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Just like 1 CD can hold 10 CDs worth of audio in MP3 format.
Region lockouts, crypto, it'd be all screwed up and maybe never make it out the door. Fucking lawyers screwing everything up.