Okay, I know that the article is refering to database, but the comments seem to have gone into the way of disc storage, so I will take the bait and go off topic.
Petabyte drives would not really be that unpractical of an application for people who like to archive stuff. I just filled up a 300 gig drive and a 750 gig drive with just stuff off of the DVR in under a year. While National Geographic HD may be compressed so badly that it barely looks better than HD, and a one hour show is under 2 gig, try archiving something with a higher bandwidth. For example, I recorded the Olympics, and saved the opening and closing ceremonies and all gymnastic events. A single 4 hour day saved is around 40 gig.
So, lets think media server for HD material. Let's just stick with HDTV for a while. Let's say that I want to archive on a media server a Blu-Ray disc. Let's for the matter of talking say that the movie takes up all 50 gig of the disc. Ten movies, 500 gig. 100 movies, 5 Terrabyte, 1000 movies, 50 Terrabyte.
Now let's say that we are an IMAX theater, and upgrading to the new Imax Digital standard. I read not too long ago that an Imax film is equilivant to 18k (most digital theaters project 2K, although some are now installing 4K systems). So, to keep from having these big massive films around of the 20 year old science documentaries that we keep in rotation, we get the digital versions of these. Does anyone want to do the math?
I am waiting for the day when neural implants can actually read the human brain, and as such, you can archive experiences to some type of storage medium. I am sure wikipedia has somewhere how much information the human brain processes a second. Now, I am sure we will find a way of compressing stuff, we can already do audio and video, so I am sure one day we will have the ability to compress smell, taste and touch, granting that we actually have a way of capturing these. Still, the amount of data would be massive, and will probably be a whole new avenue for the Porn industry.
Granted, these are extremes, but who would have thought 15 years ago when we first started hitting the 1 gig barrier, that in 2008 we would have discs used for storing movies that have a capacity of 50 gig, and we would even consider saving stuff at a resolution of 1920x1080 and have PCM sound at a bitrate of 4.6Mbps?
Give us the storage space, and we will find a use for it.
I am waiting for the day when neural implants can actually read the human brain, and as such, you can archive experiences to some type of storage medium. I am sure wikipedia has somewhere how much information the human brain processes a second.
I don't know how *accurate* this is, but I ran across this...
Current estimates of brain capacity range from 1 to 1000 terabytes! [google.com]
"Robert Birge (Syracuse University) who studies the storage of data in
proteins, estimated in 1996 that the memory capacity of the brain was
between one and ten terabytes, with a most likely value of 3
terabytes. Such estimates are generally based on counting neurons and
assuming each neuron holds 1 bit. Bear in mind that the brain has
better algorithms for compressing certain t
Granted, these are extremes, but who would have thought 15 years ago when we first started hitting the 1 gig barrier, that in 2008 we would have discs used for storing movies that have a capacity of 50 gig, and we would even consider saving stuff at a resolution of 1920x1080 and have PCM sound at a bitrate of 4.6Mbps?
Actually, very many. The infamous Moore's "law" was well underway and everything was growing nice and exponential. Though what the future needs is the bandwidth revolution, it's not "We can sto
Yawn... (Score:1, Insightful)
I could see practical applications (Score:3, Informative)
Okay, I know that the article is refering to database, but the comments seem to have gone into the way of disc storage, so I will take the bait and go off topic.
Petabyte drives would not really be that unpractical of an application for people who like to archive stuff. I just filled up a 300 gig drive and a 750 gig drive with just stuff off of the DVR in under a year. While National Geographic HD may be compressed so badly that it barely looks better than HD, and a one hour show is under 2 gig, try archiving something with a higher bandwidth. For example, I recorded the Olympics, and saved the opening and closing ceremonies and all gymnastic events. A single 4 hour day saved is around 40 gig.
So, lets think media server for HD material. Let's just stick with HDTV for a while. Let's say that I want to archive on a media server a Blu-Ray disc. Let's for the matter of talking say that the movie takes up all 50 gig of the disc. Ten movies, 500 gig. 100 movies, 5 Terrabyte, 1000 movies, 50 Terrabyte.
Now let's say that we are an IMAX theater, and upgrading to the new Imax Digital standard. I read not too long ago that an Imax film is equilivant to 18k (most digital theaters project 2K, although some are now installing 4K systems). So, to keep from having these big massive films around of the 20 year old science documentaries that we keep in rotation, we get the digital versions of these. Does anyone want to do the math?
I am waiting for the day when neural implants can actually read the human brain, and as such, you can archive experiences to some type of storage medium. I am sure wikipedia has somewhere how much information the human brain processes a second. Now, I am sure we will find a way of compressing stuff, we can already do audio and video, so I am sure one day we will have the ability to compress smell, taste and touch, granting that we actually have a way of capturing these. Still, the amount of data would be massive, and will probably be a whole new avenue for the Porn industry.
Granted, these are extremes, but who would have thought 15 years ago when we first started hitting the 1 gig barrier, that in 2008 we would have discs used for storing movies that have a capacity of 50 gig, and we would even consider saving stuff at a resolution of 1920x1080 and have PCM sound at a bitrate of 4.6Mbps?
Give us the storage space, and we will find a use for it.
Re: (Score:1)
I am waiting for the day when neural implants can actually read the human brain, and as such, you can archive experiences to some type of storage medium. I am sure wikipedia has somewhere how much information the human brain processes a second.
I don't know how *accurate* this is, but I ran across this...
Re: (Score:2)
Granted, these are extremes, but who would have thought 15 years ago when we first started hitting the 1 gig barrier, that in 2008 we would have discs used for storing movies that have a capacity of 50 gig, and we would even consider saving stuff at a resolution of 1920x1080 and have PCM sound at a bitrate of 4.6Mbps?
Actually, very many. The infamous Moore's "law" was well underway and everything was growing nice and exponential. Though what the future needs is the bandwidth revolution, it's not "We can sto
Re: (Score:2)
Give me a fast enough pipe and I'll download on demand, delete and if I want to watch it again a few years later I'll download it again.
Until the site(s) hosting (and that includes BitTorrent seeds) "it" take(s) "it" down.
It's foolish to rely on others when you can easily store "it" yourself.
Re: (Score:1)