Philip's SFFO 3cm 4Gig Optical Discs 202
JL writes "New Scientist reports that Philips has a demonstration in Japan recently of a 3cm rewritable optical disc that can store four gigabytes. The drive is small too!"
Interesting that they note that 4 gigs can store 5 2 hour movies on the thing :)
Units of Storage (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed. How many Libraries of Congress is that, anyway?
Re:Units of Storage (Score:1)
Re:Units of Storage (Score:1)
Five two-hour movies
Re:Units of Storage (Score:3, Interesting)
When are we going to get DivX ;-) player units anyway?
I've tried searching teh web, but It's nearly impossible to search for a "DVD/DivX ;-)" player without getting tons of old dusty websites about the Circuit City DivX fiasco.
HOLY SHIT! (Score:1, Funny)
Slashdot Units (Score:5, Funny)
The disks will hold *** 10 HOURS OF PORN! ***
Now, see how simple that is?
Pics (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Pics (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm thinking they're probably just the equivalent of jewel cases, but wouldn't that be cool if it were an extension of the IBM microdrive concept.
Mmmmm... 4 Gig microdrive...
Re:Pics (Score:5, Informative)
3 cm discs and cases, CDs show scale. They are tiny! [zdnet.co.jp]
Close-up of drives. [zdnet.co.jp]
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hm (Score:5, Funny)
That Philip is a mighty smart guy. I wish I could make optical discs.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:hm (Score:3, Insightful)
Otherwise known as the "stripinator". Robertson's is clearly superior.
Obligatory pr0n reference (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, I see... (Score:5, Informative)
a) Ready for sale in two years.
b) Store only 1 Gb.
c) Expected to cost £70 / drive.
Re:Ah, I see... (Score:1)
It's £70 per drive.
Re:Ah, I see... (Score:1)
Your not paying 70.00 a disk, your paying 70.00 a drive (accoring to the grandparent). that is the price of a cgeap CD burner. Of course unless lots of people get them they are worthless.
What I really want in storage is already covered by the CD, the floppy, and the DVD (though DVD is a little expensive). This will be smaller then a DVD, but hold the same amount. What I think it needs to take off is that stuff that the CD people built into a drive to make a RW act like a floppy.
Be so cheap that I don;t care if I waste the storage, like CDs are now.
Have fast read writes (well compared to floppy)
And lastly have a built on case like a MD, I want to be comfortable tossing this thing to my buddy.
Re:Ah, I see... (Score:3, Interesting)
This would be the ideal solution to the storage problem with increasingly larger digital camera images--along the lines of the Sony CD1000 that uses mini CDs.
...And hopefully no DRM... (Score:3, Interesting)
Philips has been ok'ish in that regard (Score:1, Informative)
Of course that might have something to do with them ditching their media production divisions a long time ago and having little commercial interest in DRM.
If Disney buys enough senators to get what they want it will hardly be Philips's choice of course
how about LOTR directors cut? (Score:2, Insightful)
seriously, though. what happens to all those great storage options? it seems to me that every few months someone comes up with a clever technique, but I'm still stuck with 700mb CDr's !
Re:how about LOTR directors cut? (Score:1)
Yeah tell me about it, I am still stuck with 5 1/4" floppies! If only they invented a way to transfer the information to the newer media types....
WHY? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, I can see a small disk like this being very useful, but WHY does everything have to relate to the cellphone? "You can do this with your cellphone...you can do that with your cellphone."
How about simple things, like actual coverage?
Watching a movie on a 2.5" screen, no matter what the resolution, is simply silly.
Re:WHY? (Score:2)
Amen. Here I sit by the window in my office in downtown DC, watching my Sucks PCS phone going Searching For Service....
Re:WHY? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, most of the world has pretty good coverage. The US is the exception largely due to its vast size, but this means that unusually for a piece of technology, the US market is considered secondary. Hence, so is increasing coverage.
The rest of the world is running out of things that cellphone companies can use to convince us to buy a new phone. It's stupid, but it serves as a quick easy application for marketing types.
Watching a movie on a 2.5" screen, no matter what the resolution, is simply silly
It would be pretty cool if they could build a decent screen into a pair of glasses though. Then the portability of something this size would be a definite benifit.
Re:WHY? (Score:1)
Re:WHY? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:WHY? (Score:1)
Re:WHY? (Score:2)
The rest of the world is running out of things that cellphone companies can use to convince us to buy a new phone. It's stupid, but it serves as a quick easy application for marketing types.
How about reliable service and decent prices? I would get a cellphone if the rates were such that I could have two phones and service for rates comparable to a land line.
All I see cellphones doing for me is contributing to a reduction in the number of available pay phones. It seems much more difficult to find one now than it ever used to be.
Re:WHY? (Score:1)
I meant marketing for the new disc. True, they could try to do this, and sell the the few people who still don't have a mobile, but that doesn't help the PR people for this disc. On the other hand, they can latch on to the easily graspable concept of a video phone, even if it does turn out to be a bad idea in reality.
Re:WHY? (Score:3, Interesting)
Like this [gatech.edu]?
They havent got it quite right just yet. However, I've been wearing a version that clips onto your classes for over 3 years now.
Re:WHY? (Score:2)
Done [i-glasses.com] and done [reviewfinder.com] and done [olympusamerica.com].
One day I'll have enough throw away money to buy a pair...
Re:WHY? (Score:2, Funny)
-Heh
Re:WHY? (Score:2)
Maybe because that is one of the few places you would actually want to use discs that small. 3 cm is actually too small for convient use on PC's. Too easy to misplace, and to finicky to insert into tiny drives for people with poor vision or poor coordination.
On the other hand, can you imagine a cellphone with a DVD drive? That image is just begging to be used in all sorts of humorous ways
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Pictures to look at (Score:3, Informative)
power hungry? (Score:3)
karma sucks anyway, it's useful additions to the discussion that are valuable, dupes happen, live with it...
nice tech but when will it be available? (Score:5, Insightful)
yea i know its nice to read about it and the article says 2 years more, but that's what they say all the time. rewritable DVDs were such a hot topic once but when they actually came out all the different formats and standards adopted by the different companies made it pretty much unsuited to mass-market adoption, not to mention the price of the drives themselves, though those have dropped a bit since.
speaking of drives, the article mentioned the cost of the discs, but not the cost of the players themselves. the discs might be dirt cheap after a while, but are the drives going to cost too much for the average consumer to afford? and should it be cheap enough to be competitive with DVDs and HDTV will this get any opposition from rival companies who may view this as a threat to their products?
Re:nice tech but when will it be available? (Score:2, Informative)
Did you not read the next sentance?
Re:nice tech but when will it be available? (Score:3, Informative)
Didn't Duke Nukem Forever have a relase date at one point? My rule of thumb is that until you can actually buy it, it's just a concept.
Re:nice tech but when will it be available? (Score:2, Interesting)
DVD wasn't competatively prices compared to vhs or cd when released.
DVD-R's are just getting competative, as in price per MB, compared to CD-R.
Does that mean that they shouldn't have bothered to release the standard?
Of course not. That way, no new technology would ever see the light of day.
So if they do release this new diskformat, just wait a few years and it'll be at a price that the average consumer can afford.
And by then something new will have arrived, that is expensive as hell but it 10x better...
MP3-solutions? (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine using these small drives as cartridges, such as the minidiscs. It would be great, and probably widley used. Just look at those old walkmans and such. They where great in their days.
Wandering away...
Portable Music (Score:1)
Is the price quoted realistic? (Score:3, Insightful)
I wonder how this price compares to costs to produce a DVD.
Re:Is the price quoted realistic? (Score:1)
Manufacturing a DVD-R is cheap (I don't know how cheap, but I bought a stack of DVD-R for around 76 cents a piece) because its a cookie cutter operation. Once you have the process down you can make more inexpensively.
Making these discs is more like fabricating the DVD-R than producing the DVD. Don't expect the price of DVD on this media to drop significantly.
Re:Is the price quoted realistic? (Score:1)
But this made me think about the Manufactors cost of diffrent media.
Like which is cheaper, a Cassette tape or a CD.
VHS Tape or DVD.
It seems to me that it would be a lot cheaper to make a cd/dvd blank than anykind of tape technology seeing as there are all kinds of moving parts vs a disk with coatings...
Of course demand makes CD/DVD with content more expencive to the consumer than the tape counterparts.
Just something to ponder on a Friday morning
Value of information (Score:4, Interesting)
Btw. if RIAA catches you walking around with pocket full of these discs, and those discs contain more albums than an average music store. Can they charge you similarly as if you had robbed all albums from one of their stores?
Re:Value of information (Score:2)
Sure, Virgin has it's super-massive get-everything-you-want-here-except-toothpaste mega-stores, but I wouldn't say it's an RIAA-owned operation.
Plus, what if you happen to be a multi-millionaire, and you purchased all the music you ripped and burned to your pocket full of MP3s?
Ok, so that isn't friggin likely...
No. (Score:2)
Kjella
This Just In (Score:4, Funny)
"There will be some small loss of space on the disc itself as a result", said congressman Payme Goode, "but the disc will still have abundant free space, a good 1.44 Meg, available for the end-user's data".
Any purchaser of the disc will require a license. In order to apply for the license, the applicant must first submit to a thorough background check and will be profiled and fingerprinted by the authorities. Once granted a license to use this dangerous technology, the licensee will be required to carry the license at all times or face a penalty of 50 years in prison with no parole.
"We think that this is a very fair and equitable act", Hilary Rosen was quoted as saying, "It nicely balances the rights of the individual user against the recording and motion picture industries' rights to ensure that all digital technology is hobbled to the point of being useless".
Isn't it obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Too Risky! (Score:1)
Re:Too Risky! (Score:4, Funny)
I think that if you held a spinning bicycle wheel by the spokes you would either get sore fingers or get dizzy really fast.
Re:Isn't it obvious? (Score:1)
It is very hard to use optical discs for mobile storage, especially in consumer electronics like videocameras. They need to be highly shock-resistive.
For optical storage to work, the write head must be very stable. Unfortunately, the head of an optical storage device is order of magnitudes heavier than that of a harddisk, which makes it very hard to keep it stable. Even with this somewhat lighter head they mention in the article.
Remember the old portable cd-players, how they skipped very easily. New players read ahead now in buffers to avoid skipping. But obviously the same technology can not be used for writing.
The only thing in videocameras to replace tape, will be Flash memory. The next generation will have capacities up to 8 GB.
Re:Isn't it obvious? (Score:1)
There have been camcorders that record on mini DVDs for quite a while now.. Here's just one [epinions.com].
The only thing in videocameras to replace tape, will be Flash memory. The next generation will have capacities up to 8 GB.
Unless those 8Gig Flash memories come down below $5-$10 apiece, I don't see it replacing MiniDV or MiniDVD any time soon. I have a shelf full of videos of the kids, each one of those tapes is like 30Gigs (I'm not sure of the exact number, but 60 min at MiniDV bitrates is a lot). Those tapes were $10-15 when I first bought them, nowadays, they're less than $5.
Right now, 1 Gig of Compact Flash is upwards of $250. I'm not holding my breath..
Re:Isn't it obvious? (Score:2)
Hitachi is already doing this [hitachidigitalmedia.com] and Sony has a range of CDR cameras.
For optical storage to work, the write head must be very stable.
From the article:
The three-centimetre disc will be the same thickness as a DVD, but the phase-change material that records the data will be a mere 0.1 millimetres thick, compared to 0.6 millimetres for DVDs. Philips says this should mean there is less risk of beam distortion if the disc tilts when the portable device gets jogged. Portable DVD players will not play smoothly if jogged.
This jog-resistance is helped by making the glass and polymer lens that focuses the laser only 1.3 millimetres wide, just one-third the size of the lens in a DVD recorder. This means the optics need be only one-tenth the mass of their counterpart in a DVD, light enough for an electromagnet to keep them steady.
Flash memory won't catch in videorecorders - not that it's not possible, but there are hundreds of applications that are less cost sensitive. Flash won't scale as good as DVD's when it gets cheaper since there's still the cost of the chip fab to consider...
With new hardware formats like the VAIO Picturebook's DVD's have become the single most limiting factor for those that want a little more (I've even cut that feature from what I need on a notebook) so there will be a lot of devices waiting for this kind of storage (even though it's a total overkill for plain mp3).
Better yet: high-end digital still camera (Score:3, Interesting)
With professional digital still cameras already going past ten megapixels in resolution, even a 1 GB IBM Microdrive in a Compact Flash Type II slot ain't going to cut it especially if you store the digital still in uncompressed
not terribly impressed (Score:3, Insightful)
It is small, but Flash memory is even smaller. Let's say the drive will be commercially available in 1 year (and then I think I'm being optimistic.) By that time flash storage will already start to come close to these capacities. For instance, the successor of the proprietary Sony Memorystick and XD card technologies by Fuji and Olympus can go up to 8 GB. Flash is technically superior to optical storage (no moving parts, less energy consumption) but optical storage is far cheaper. But most people would store their flash memory on their harddisks anyway.
Re:not terribly impressed (Score:2)
They quote a technician who says it will be available in not one, but two years. And then he is likely optimistic.
And then it will only be available with 1 Gb discs at first.
Men In Black? (Score:3, Funny)
Side benefit... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Side benefit... (Score:2)
Re:Side benefit... (Score:2)
+5? My, how the moderators love their crack... (Score:2)
This new 3cm disc can indeed have very high data transfer rates, but it will not rely on absurd spindle speed in order to happen. This is going to be a very low-velocity medium.
While it certainly is physically possible to spin a smaller disc faster than a larger one of similar composition without it turning into shrapnel, there is absolutely no need to do so given the areal densities involved.
I'll use a CD-ROM for comparison, because we're all familiar with them. And I'm going to make quick work of the math, because it's late. And I'm going to use inches, because it's a unit that I'm comfortable with, aside from giving me a good opportunity to upset the more worldly readers of this text. I'm also going to make horribe blind assumptions and assertions, pull numbers out of my ass, and do all kinds of other underhanded things. I haven't even read the fucking article, and I'll probably be modded down for my effort (Note to Mods: if you think I'm wrong, either reply yourself and show me why, or piss off). Here goes:
Let's assume that our 5" CD has a hole in the midde 2" across that can't store information, for a total recordable area of 16.5 square inches. If this disc holds 700MB of usable data, it has an areal density of 42MB per square inch. And as long as I'm not showing my work, I figure this is good for a transfer rate of 19.5 megabytes per second at 28,000 RPM.
Let's assume that the 1.18" disc has similarly-proportioned hole in the center, so that it also has 16% of its area consumed by mounting surfaces. This leaves us with 0.904 square inches of usable area, or 3.6GB per square inch.
Which is to say that data transfer should happen about 85 times faster than a CD, on average, at a given angular velocity. This is also to say that it can produce data rates equal to those which causes CDs to disintegrate, at only 326 RPM.
Multiply that by 10, and you get a nice, sane, 3260RPM device which will be kind on battery life and offer a transfer rate somewhere in the impossible realm of 16GB/second.
And at a CD-shattering-but-probably-safe 28,000 RPM? 1.3 terabytes per second.
How many Libaries of Congress is that per minute?
I don't even want to bother with trying to figure out at what speed such a small disc would itself disintegrate at, given these numbers.
Thus, I submit that the format, in the unlikely event that it ever sees the light of day, will operate at extremely low spindle speeds, have fairly high latency, and excellent sustained transfer rates.
You're probably right. Here are some other factors (Score:2)
I think you're right, but linear bit density is also a factor. If the limiting factor is the acceleration experienced at the edge of the disk, then
So, the maximum velocity that can be achieved underneath the read head still decreases as we make the media smaller, as you correctly observed. By this reasoning, it looks like a SFFO would have half the maximum media velocity of DVD:However, with SFFO, the bit density has been increased. These discs are about 1/16th the area of a DVD (1/4th the diameter: 12cm vs. 3cm), and 1/5th the capcity (4.7GB vs. 1GB), so they have about triple the areal density (bits per unit area), at least if we assume that the unusable areas in the center and outer margins will be proportional to disc area.
If the density increase has come equally from shrinking the distance between bits on the track and shrinking the distance between tracks (i.e., the aspect ratio of the bits remains the same), then the change in linear density of bits along a single track will be proportional to the square root of the change in areal density. In other words, the bits are probably closer together by 1/sqrt(3). So, labelling the density of adjacent bits within one track as "linear_density", we get:Other factors that may also determine how fast the disc can be spun are when the disc media starts to ripple and buckle, which I believe is helped by media thickness and hindered by media diameter (SFFO is smaller but thinner), and frictional and aerodynamic forces, which are portional to v or v**2 respectively, which would favor spinner small media faster.
Wait wait wait wait... (Score:1, Insightful)
Hmm. x + x = 4x ? Err....
I know I'm looking forward to this new tech. Same with the holographic storage, and the other 200 new media ideas/developments which we never end up seeing, or never par up as first announced anyway. *sigh* Please let this one come through? Please?
Re:Wait wait wait wait... (Score:1)
2 sides * 2 layers = 4 surfaces.
Polite requests to media developers: (Score:3, Insightful)
Please make different sizes of media that use the same format, E.G. 3cm, 12cm, 30cm.
Portable equipment can support just the smallest disc size.
Consumer equipment can support the small and middle disc sizes.
Industrial equipment can support the large discs, for things like medical applications where you need uncompressed HDTV, etc.
2.
Please encourage use of all sizes - I have loads of CD-singles that are on 12cm media, not the 3cm media. If only they were all on 3cm media, I could have a pocket-sized discman!
3.
Please consider the possibility of, for example, 12cm media, with a push-out 3cm disc in the centre, that contains the first track, (for audio applications, for example), so that you can buy an album, and play the single on your portable player.
Why only 4 GB? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Why only 4 GB? (Score:4, Interesting)
In a circle, if I double the diameter from 3cm to 6cm, you do have a 4x area increase. But optical media, you have to consider the empty spaces left on the inside and outside edges. Increasing to 6cm could potentially more than quadruple the capacity - I esimate about 4.3g per side, 112g for a 12cm version.
What I really want to see is a 6-disc changer made out of a 12-cm CD-style plate - something like they suggest [zdnet.co.jp].
Re:Why only 4 GB? (Score:2)
Agent K (Score:5, Funny)
Will this the be like the rest? (Score:2, Insightful)
Think about it. Nothing is really as useful and standard as the floppy. Easy use, always works, no special drivers, no monopoly.
Will this drive form a new standard? I hope so, but I suspect it will do as Zip drives and the rest. If Phillips probably keeps the standard locked down like the Zip drives, then it will just be another useless Zip drive.
Nice little thing, I hope it makes it
-Rene
PC BIOS is the enemy of floppy replacement (Score:4, Interesting)
Floppy disk replacement isn't a matter of medium choice, there are plenty: zip, superdisk, orb, flash, et al. The problem arises from the lack of flexibilty of PC BIOS in being able to substitute those other mediums, which are often ATA/IDE based for the floppy disk.
A simple solution would be to create add an additional ATA connector that the BIOS would treat as the floppy drive, depending on what was connected to it. At boot time if I disk was present and bootable, the system would boot off it and present it as the A drive. Even better would be a modular BIOS that would allow BIOS-level drivers to be installed so that BIOS could boot off of other buses -- USB, 1394, and so on without an operating system-level driver.
One thing I'd like to know from BIOS experts is why this couldn't be done (especially the third "floppy" ATA connector) and what legacy OSes (*cough*DOS*cough*) would think of a floppy disk with > 2.88MB of available storage? Do they have hard-coded storage variables that can't deal with a "floppy" with capacities larger than 24 bits?
Re:PC BIOS is the enemy of floppy replacement (Score:2)
IIRC, that's exactly what Mandrake did to get their bootable CD to work in at least one of their 7.x releases: it somehow would trick the BIOS into thinking the CD drive was the floppy drive. Wierd, but kind of a cool hack since it generally worked great. The only problem was that sometimes it wouldn't change things back when it was done...
As for storage limits, I know that pre-FAT32 DOS and Windows have a partition size limit of 2GB, and I believe a physical drive size limit of 8.4GB. QNX 4.x has a partition size limit of 8.4GB, and I strongly suspect that the physical drive size limit is also 8.4GB.
Re:PC BIOS is the enemy of floppy replacement (Score:2)
Re:PC BIOS is the enemy of floppy replacement (Score:2)
The physical size limit at this point probably depend more on the BIOS.
However, the OP was asking about legacy systems. I deal with win95's fdisk and QNX 4.x on modern hardware everyday, and I am quite sure that neither of them can handle a physical drive larger than 8.4GB. BIOS support for larger drives is all well and good, but if the OS can't address the space, BIOS support means precisely dick.
Re:PC BIOS is the enemy of floppy replacement (Score:2)
But CD-ROM isn't a random-access read-write medium. Even packet-mode CD-RW will never be an adequate replacement for random-access r/w media.
Re:Who would fly on it? (Score:2)
And this matters because...? Just grab another cheap blank when you need to copy more files.
Re:PC BIOS is the enemy of floppy replacement (Score:2)
People still use floppy disks? (Score:2)
A few months ago I installed linux on an old machine without a bootable CDROM drive.
PCMCIA Type III (Score:1, Interesting)
That will be DVD+RW I guess......
Datplay (Score:2)
As for five 2-hour movies in 4 gigs, that sounds like it uses MPEG 4. Besides, most "2-hour movies" these days are really 90 minutes long. The rest of that two hours is for changing the audience.
No moving parts (Score:2, Interesting)
Solid state memory (Score:1, Interesting)
Compare & Contrast... (Score:3, Interesting)
Almost every school/University I have gone to has zip disks. This was a great Idea at the time because CD Burners were so expensive.
Now, CDRW's are cheaper than zip disks. Hell the burners costs almost as much as a small pack of zip disks. CDs are pennies.
My point:
DVD+/-Rs is a safe bet. Why would anyone want to move to a format like this 4gb optical disk. It's just another "Zip Drive" of the future.
Re:Compare & Contrast... (Score:4, Interesting)
A 3cm format optical disk will give the IBM microdrive a run for its' money. DVD+-rw won't go away, but the smaller format will have its applications.
"Philips" not "Philip's" (Score:1)
Whoever wrote that needs to read this:
http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif
Few inches across (Score:2)
you don't say? (Score:1)
No shit. You just said it was 3 cm. It's like saying: The house was 100 metres wide... and it's huge too!
Oh, you don't know the metric system? Bah!
Philips got out of the Music business befor MP3s.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Interestingly enough, Philips got OUT of the music business right as MP3s were taking off...
1998 Seagram buys Polygram from Matsushita rival Philips for US$10.4bn [ketupa.net]
Magneto Optical Disk ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Last time I checked, the 5.2 GB 5.25in discs costs about $80.00usd. I can just imagine what this would cost.
I do not think that you will see anything like this in a car stereo, just because a product like this will not hit critical mass in the marketplace.
I'm thinking that 5gb compact flash, or something like it will hit the market first. It, CF, would be smaller, faster and more reliable.
Another problem with small media is the speed. At 3cm this thing is going to be slow. Even on the outside tracks, *warning my math sucks*,
(3/2)*pi*r*d/?, shit never mind... But even if it's going at 10,000 RPM it's going to be slow.
Power consumption will suck. Look at the microdrive.. If you have a small disc spinning fast it drains batteries way too quickly. You would not be able to listen to an entire album without a recharge.
One of the few reasons that you need a disc is because its inexpensive. Inexpensive enough for content producers to sell their wares in that format. There is no WAY that the RIAA would sell a disc with 1000 hours of music on it. for anything close to $100usd.
And even if the content producers do not produce content on this format. The best hope for this media will be a backup solution, which comes back to speed and cost.
The next video disc will have to have enough room for at least 1 HD movie. With better compression this might happen on this disc, but why not use a 9gb DVD? There is not a need for ultra portable video. And again, look at the cost. My guess is that there will be something like DVD2 or something that uses the same media but uses better compression to get more bang for your buck.
For removable storage (floppy killer dev) it HAS to have to have a drive that plugs into a USB port. like key ring storage. Otherwise, it's useless for being universally excepted. And if you take the drive around with you with one disk in it all the time, why bother with a disc?
I wish that I had more positive things to say.
Ahh crapp... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:3 cm? (Score:1)
Re:3 cm? (Score:1, Funny)
Damn (Score:1, Funny)
That, or jam them into vending machines.
3cm = No Corporate Security (Score:4, Interesting)
Think, a white coffee cup, a white 3cm casing, a little rubber cement... no one would even know that 1-4 gigs of sensitive corporate information was leaving the building.
Small enough to be tucked into the 5th pocket on a pair of jeans, slid into a shoe without much (if any) discomfort, palmed, hidden inside a container of stress putty, even tucked into a person's hair.
Hey, isn't that roughly the size of the iPod's wheel?
Hell, 3cm is small enough to hide almost anywhere...
Re:3cm = No Corporate Security (Score:2, Funny)
Or, just send secret corporate data to your own computer using this really neat thing called THE INTERNET. :)
Re:3cm = No Corporate Security (Score:2)
Coming to a Congress near you: DMCCA
Digital Milennium Coffee Cup Act.
Re:3 cm? (Score:1)
I switched to 8cm cd-rw and happy with it. No data losses after subway ride, for instance. And my previous 8cm rw was badly broken in inside tracks but was still writable and readable in the outside.
You may also notice numerous complains about flash durability as well in the forums. In the same forums you will se how many peoples want to have device all in one: mp3 player, digital cam and handheld storage. One buddie even asked if his Canon D60 can serve him as file storage device
IMO up to now cd-rw kind of storage remains most durable and handy for the sane price. And device of the told size will undoubtedly become a hit when it will be offered for the told price. If any
Re:This has been covered already. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:1.44 just felt a sharp stabbing pain (Score:2)
Just like the floppy was killed by the Zip disk. Seriously, what you need in a floppy replacement:
Cheap. This should happen over time.
Random access. Not the case with current CDRW, but could happen with this Philips thing.
DEPLOYED EVERYWHERE. I doubt it will happen with this drive. CDs are just too good, and I can't see the point for home computers in having anything smaller than mini-CDs. Cellphones or cameras, maybe, but it's not like the average Joe has a camera or a bleeding-edge media cellphone. We'll see in about 2 years. On the other hand, you could make a bitching USB keychain out of these things (except for the moving parts). Maybe pocket drives will catch on, but for £70?. Whatever.
SUPPORTED BY BIOS. Not going to happen for a good long time.