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Data Storage Security Science Technology

New Polymer Ideal For Secure Data Storage 142

Posted by timothy from the mutlifaceted dept.
aphexbrett writes "Clever geometry is the basis of a new material that is said to be ideal for secure data encryption and dense optical information storage. The material consists of a lattice of onionlike spheres in which the particle core and its layers each contain a different dye. The material can hold four or more pieces of information in one spot--not just two as in binary optical data storage. And it opens a door to high-density three-dimensional optical data storage. Read a summary of the research over at C&EN News."
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New Polymer Ideal For Secure Data Storage More

New Polymer Ideal For Secure Data Storage

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  • Every other week (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tliet ( 167733 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @02:43AM (#8926228)
    we see an announcement like this. Yet, at the shop, the harddrive is still king.

    When do we get a 100 gb solid state disk for 50 dollars?

    • Give 'em some time (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Since when do innovations become mainstream so fast ? If there's a decent demand for these products and a decent way to build them, they'll come sooner or later. But you can't just rush things like that, that'd be irresponsable, moreover concerning such a small market.

      • Re:Give 'em some time (Score:5, Informative)

        by robbyjo ( 315601 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @05:37AM (#8926809) Homepage

        That's right. For example, CD was invented in 1979 (CMIIW). Started to be introduced in 1983. Beginning of adoption is around early nineties. So, it takes 10-15 years before it's truly popular.

        But sometimes, inventions wither before they see the daylight or poorly marketed. I just hope that it will soon hits the market with the right price.

    • about when hard drives have reached several teras in size, optical media reaches its limit within the disk size (realistically, 40GB), and IOMega or some other debunked, crazy company decides to jump for it.

      don't take me wrong, the technology is great, it's just not "Out of the box, commercial ready". That is to say, things still need to be worked out on how to make them practical. I'd just be happy with seeing my next storebought computer ship with a memorystick/Compact flash/secure digital memory car
    • When do we get a 100 gb solid state disk for 50 dollars?

      When 10 terabyte hard disks are 50 dollars and the minimum space required for an OS install is greater than 100GB.

    • Re:Every other week (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @04:44AM (#8926646) Homepage
      Actually, I had a similar thought, but it ended differently. Every other week we see an announcement like this. It makes me wonder if in ages past, people took innovation and technological advancement like this for granted. Did it feel the same to live in the Renaissance? Seriously, I don't even worry about whether my computer will improve by orders of magnitude by the time I'm ready to purchase my next one.....because I've grown so accustomed to the scientists always beening 10 steps ahead.

      Whats more, the technological advances we've made have enabled us to exponentially pick up the pace of our research. Really makes you sit back and ponder what people in the Renaissance could have done if they had the ability to communicate like we do with the net.

      If anybody knows of any articles/papers on this topic, I'd love a link to it.

      • Re:Every other week (Score:2, Interesting)

        by imkonen ( 580619 )
        I don't know about the Renaissance, but if you've looked at old magazine's with "cars of the future" predictions, it's pretty amusing. I can't remember where I saw one recently...probably an old Popular Mechanics. They literally look like a cross between what we still percieve of as futuristic (wheel covors and smooth rounded corners) and what we perceive of as old fashion (50s style big fins, gigantic bodies). It's just kind of an amusing reminder that nobody has any idea what technology we'll have at o
        • around 1700s when science as we know it today really started developing.


          My physics101 professor said science started with Galileo, in the early 1600's Italy. That's when someone first started "asking Nature" for the truth, i.e. did experiments and checked the results, instead of reading what the masters wrote. It doesn't matter how "logical" it is, if experiments don't confirm it, your reasoning is wrong.

      • Every other week we see an announcement like this. It makes me wonder if in ages past, people took innovation and technological advancement like this for granted. Did it feel the same to live in the Renaissance?

        The reason you seen announcements like this every other week is funding. Grant money is drying up for research (thanks Bush), thus it becomes more important to sell your research. The C&E News is the American Chemical Society's "industry" newsletter. The last ACS meeting focused on "nanoscien

      • From:What is The Singularity? [caltech.edu]

        Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

        Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can events be guided so that we may survive? These questions are investigated. Some possible answers (and some further dangers) are presented.

        The acceleration of technological progress has been the central feature of this century. I argue in this paper that we are on the edge of change com

    • We'll get them right around the time we get 50tb magnetic disks for 100 dollars.

      Don't forget, you can now get 128MB solid state devices for pennies, and I remember when my hard disc was only that big.

  • here they come (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @02:44AM (#8926232)
    fifty comments about how good these will be for storing porn--in 3...2...1...

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @02:45AM (#8926237)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • They're finding so many new alternatives to data storage, I'm surprised none of them have hit the market yet.
    • Back in the late 90's I read about a such discovery, that time with an optical medium that was accesible/writeable in 3d, no hardware parts etc. Then I never heard of it again. It is hard for one to understand how such inventions just dissapear after they are patented etc. since as we know from the evolution of humanity that there ain't a step forward (even a wrong step) that doesn't generate other steps forward (in the right manner) eventually..
      My impression is that the peer from the extraterrestrial trea
      • My impression is that the peer from the extraterrestrial treaty is holding most of the patents already so we're prohibited to produce such things until we came up with a _really_ new universally-right idea.

        Uh huh... Explain how that theory fits in with all the different memory card formats.

        Damn... my tinfoil hat must be busted today.

    • That is because they are not cheap, easy to manufacture and dense enough compaired to investing in our current hard disk drives.

  • Almost... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ErichTheWebGuy ( 745925 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @02:47AM (#8926249) Homepage
    The material consists of a lattice of onionlike spheres in which the particle core and its layers each contain a different dye.

    Not quite as organized as a crystalline structure, but hell, it's almost the data crystal I and all of us have been promised for so many years...

    • Re:Almost... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by thesp ( 307649 )
      Entirely as organised as a crystalline. In fact, structures similar this are indeed termed crystals - see a good site [mit.edu] on photonic crystals for examples.

      This system consists of a periodic lattice convolved with a basis (the onion). This is in fact the definition of a crystal, as any condensed-matter-physicist will tell you. Any system with this property will disply many analogues of the properties of traditional crystals.
    • Lettuce of onionlike spheres.

      Yuck.
  • In 1992 I remember reading Business Week's article on Hitachi's 5, 10 and 15 year plans - their 15 year research plan (ie 2007) included having atomic level data storage. Now it is 2004 and we seem to be some way off still. So maybe these micro-stores are trickier than people think.

  • Interesting....but leads to other questions! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Paul Townend ( 185536 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @02:50AM (#8926259) Homepage
    It's great that it can store data in a three dimensional way, but the article doesn't seem to mention how robust such a material would be - will the dyes last for a long period of time, and if not, will some dyes fade before others?

    Also, I would've liked to see some metrics to give an idea of the capacity such a material has in comparison with some of the recent stuff developed by, for example, IBM. Although I appreciate that it's early days at the moment.

    Finally, making a reader for the material is one thing, but I imagine making a writer is an altogether trickier process....how do add and remove all these dye-polymer shells, or is the whole point to have a static, WORM-style data store?

    • Re:Interesting....but leads to other questions! (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @04:19AM (#8926576)
      the article doesn't seem to mention how robust such a material would be - will the dyes last for a long period of time, and if not, will some dyes fade before others?

      Given the correct photo-stabilisers, the dye layers could be made to last for "extended" periods of time. Maybe up to years? The problem lies with the light-fastness of dyes; when a dye molecule undergoes the electronic interaction with light that produces colour there is a % chance that the molecule will be damaged by that change. The higher the energy of the electronic interaction, the higher the % chance of damage.

      Blue (visible) dyes are generally amongst the most intrinsically stable as their interactions are with the red (low energy) portion of the visible spectrum. On the other hand, UV reactive dyes (such as Optical Brighteners/Flourescent Whiteners) are degraded very quickly by their high energy interactions. Put a sheet of copier paper out in the sun for a couple of days, and then hold it next to a new sheet - you'll see how quickly the OBA's have been destroyed!

      Now, photo-stabilisers can be added to the dye mix to counteract these degredation processes but in a system where you are wanting several dyes to be active at differing wavelengths it will be difficult in the extreme to arrange the system so that one of these "onion layers" doesn't absorb the wavelength required by another layer!

      Finally, making a reader for the material is one thing

      And what a thing it would be! The nice thing about silicon chips is that the access time is constant (IIRC each bit is activated in parallel?) across the storage unit. You can read bits 1, 2 and then 3 with the same latency as bits 1, 1583945856 and then 393758273589235892253. With a "three dimensional matrix" of discrete units, you first have to find your bit before it can be read! Imagine with current mass-use technology... a read head housing 4 lasers (as in the 4 dye example in the article) trying to access a bit at the "start" of the data, then one that's physically 1.5cm away, and then again, and again, and again.... the latency would be huge!! Maybe I don't know enough about

      So yes, security tagging would be OK - relying on the macro-structure of the matrix under different lighting and the good old Human Eyeball Mk1 - but data storage? I think it'll be a while before this gets used...
      • And what a thing it would be! The nice thing about silicon chips is that the access time is constant (IIRC each bit is activated in parallel?) across the storage unit. You can read bits 1, 2 and then 3 with the same latency as bits 1, 1583945856 and then 393758273589235892253. With a "three dimensional matrix" of discrete units, you first have to find your bit before it can be read! Imagine with current mass-use technology... a read head housing 4 lasers (as in the 4 dye example in the article) trying to ac
      • The random access time to get data from SDRAM (and DDR) is significantly higher than the time to get consecutively addressed data. In principal, this works fine because programs tend to access data linearly, or at least adjacently. Take arrays and structures, for example.

        And long term data storage mechanisms, like hard disks and CDROMs, all have moving parts that have to seek to get non-adjacent data anyway, just like this would.
    • how do add and remove all these dye-polymer shells

      They could learn from the Etch-a-Sketch...

      To format, merely shake the cube to remove the data.

      To save your data indefinately, don't shake the cube

    • The problem that occured to me was that your physical bit size is going to be limited by the longest wavelength of light you use...
    • Finally, making a reader for the material is one thing, but I imagine making a writer is an altogether trickier process....how do add and remove all these dye-polymer shells, or is the whole point to have a static, WORM-style data store?

      I can imagine something like this: The dyes undergo some chemical change when a specific wavelength of laser light is applied to one of these 'onions'. Until activated in this way, the various shells in the onion don't react in the specific way needed to read any data from

  • Well... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ItMustBeEsoteric ( 732632 ) <ryangilbert AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @02:50AM (#8926265)
    Somebody wake me when there's a new data storage more cost effective than a traditional hard disk, because that's what 99% of us care about for mass storage.

    *ZZZZZZZZzzzzZZzzzzzzZ*

    • Are you trying to be dense? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Squeamish Ossifrage ( 3451 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @03:16AM (#8926371) Homepage Journal
      There is a difference between new research, something that can be practically implemented, and something that's ready for mass-market production. This is obviously not in the third category, but that doesn't make it uninteresting.

      The venturi effect was discovered hundreds of years before the Wright Flyer was built, and it was 20 or 30 years after that before airplanes were useful for much. That doesn't mean the discovery and prototype (or specialized applications) were of no interest until commercial airliners appeared.

      If you only care about deployable mass-market products, I suppose that's fine, but it's not worth posting about. If you can't tell the difference, or choose to ignore it, that's just obnoxious.
      • What I'm saying is not at all that I don't want to hear about new technology; even if it doesn't have the damndest bit of a place in my life at the moment or even possibly in my lifetime.

        What I AM saying is that I don't care to hear things being touted as replacements to things which they obviously are NOT. At least not yet. Does the article tout this so? Not necessarily. Will some /.-ers? Yes.

        You're talking to someone who's going into pharmaceutical research--I damned well know the difference. It's
        • Wait a goddammed minute, this ain't right. I shall rant.

          Did you READ your original post?!

          You shoot down the article for not reporting any cost-effective solutions for mass-storage - "*ZZZZZZZZzzzzZZzzzzzzZ*" - and NO F-ING MENTION of your (later claimed) scientific interest in the research.

          Squeamish Ossifrage calls you on it - "This is obviously not in the third category [consumer products], but that doesn't make it uninteresting.". The science presented being it, NOT ABOUT ANY CONSUMER-GRADE stora
    • Somebody wake me when there's a new data storage more cost effective than a traditional hard disk, because that's what 99% of us care about for mass storage.

      Well, you took enough time to read the /. blib, click on the "read more..." link and post something. It seems like you were more interested in this story than most of us are about 75% of the stories on slashdot.

      /nova20

  • Pieces of information in a bit (Score:5, Informative)

    by Alain Williams ( 2972 ) <addw@phcomp.co.uk> on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @02:51AM (#8926269) Homepage

    • The material can hold four or more pieces of information in one spot--not just two as in binary optical data storage.

    A binary bit holds one piece of information, it has two states but is still only one bit (piece) of information.

    • from the article:
      With two dyes, "we have four different ways to write and then read on a single spot," Kumacheva says: no dye, dye one, dye two, and both dyes together. Three dyes offer eight (23) variations, and so on.
    • A binary bit holds one piece of information, it has two states but is still only one bit (piece) of information.

      It's nonsense - I'm not aware of the definition of 'piece' as a unit of information. Of course, 'spot' is undefined as well. But I'm sure you get the idea: scan once and recover two bits.
    • You're missing the point.. with this new invention 10 bits can be used to store 1024 pieces of information.

      As you say information=bits... so those 1024 bits of information can be used to store 16 million-google-google-googles (the number not the search engine) pieces of information.

      But it'd require 128bit addressing.. ick..
    • A binary bit holds one piece of information, it has two states but is still only one bit (piece) of information.


      First, "binary bit" is redundant - "bit" is short for "binary digit". Second, your implication that 'bit' is equivalent to 'piece' is flawed, for the reason above.

      Finally, the fact is that there are two states, and based on the article context, "states" is what they meant by "pieces of information".

  • So, how long until I can get a data-tooth?

  • Recycle... (Score:3, Funny)

    by PedsDoc ( 529974 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @03:10AM (#8926347)
    And, when you're done, you can use it to make a Philly Cheese Steak Sandwich, and take the data with you (well, for a day or two).

  • YAOSD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Bender_ ( 179208 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @03:12AM (#8926356) Journal
    Yet Another Organic Storage Device..

    As you may have noted, organic electronics and related topics are currently very hip. The problem is that these materials are very very instable. Great opportunity for secondary results, when your first hand research does not succeed. Just find some device the shows a somewhat reproducable instability and declare it as memory device.

    Most of the published devices have endurances (write-read cycles) in the one or two digit order. Their data retention is measured in minutes. Reading/writing is so slow that you would need really really massive parallelism to get on par with HD, CD or flash. It could not be any further from a real application.
    • You may want to check out this article [chemslash.com]. It talks about porphyrins as data storage polymers. They can stand up to 400 degrees and over a trillion cycles. Organic storage devices rock, but there current state isn't all that great.

      • Nice, but how about process compatibility of this material? Many of the promising organic materials are a mess to process...

        Btw.. nice site. But I think for many articles it is a bit of a stretch to assign them to chemistry categories. Solid State Physics = inorganic chemistry? I dont think so.

        • Yeah, I think there is a bit of a crossover tho :) Getting chemslash up and running was enough pain in and of itself, creating topics was put on the back burner and will continue to stay their until after my advancement to candidacy exam... perhaps you'd like to suggest some (with graphics)?

  • Useless for the proposed applications... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @03:16AM (#8926374)
    This process is not very useful for the proprosed applications of data storage. The main hurdle in that case is dynamic, accurate access to setting flags one way or another and then subsequently reading them. This is nothing more than a way to trap molecules in concentric shells of layers of polymer, a far cry from high performance data storage. Don't hold your breath yet.

  • New Rule (Score:5, Funny)

    by Monkelectric ( 546685 ) <[moc.cirtceleknom] [ta] [todhsals]> on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @03:19AM (#8926389)
    You can't post an article of something that sounds as cool as a multi-colored onion lattice if you DON'T HAVE ANY PICTURES!! Jeesus christ its after midnight here on the west coast all I want is something cool to look at.

  • Security through obscurity (Score:4, Funny)

    by noidentity ( 188756 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @03:24AM (#8926409)
    "New Polymer Ideal For Secure Data Storage... The material consists of a lattice of onionlike spheres in which the particle core and its layers each contain a different dye..."

    Come on, this is just security through obscurity. Somebody's going wonder why you keep an ever-expanding pile of onions next to your computer...

  • I don't see how this is ideal at all. It just seems like a multi-layered dye implementation that is convoluted by application to small spheres instead of to a flat surface. That is, why deal with nano-anything when you can just layer coats of dye on the disk itself? I don't see any way to get 3D storage out of it, either, because you have to get past any one dye layer to get to the next; no bit can be "under" another bit that blocks the same light. For that same reason, I don't see how you can even use

    • 3 bits, not 4

      Er, that should have been states, not bits.

    • The same way you can get multi-layer disks, focus or frequency. For example, one layer is blue dye, the other is red dye. If the spot is clear/white, 00. If black/opaque, 11. Blue, 10, Red, 01. Or the other way around if you prefer.

      Depending on what color lasers you use and if the material is such that you can do layers like dvds, you could easily get several bits on one "spot". I don't think you'd get an exponential progression like what they say, either, though.

      The real question is "Will this be che

  • Connection to Security? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Squeamish Ossifrage ( 3451 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @03:27AM (#8926417) Homepage Journal
    As far as I can tell, the connection to "secure data storage" is fairly tenuous. Or at least, they don't mean what computer security people would expect by that phrase.

    C&EN's summary says that such material could be used to make ID cards which show different images (data) under different light, and that this "would be nearly impossible to fake." As far as I can tell, what this means is that a card made with this material is easily distinguishable from one that isn't. This only makes faking hard if forgers aren't able to make the material themselves. There wasn't anything in the article specifically saying why that would be the case, but it's easy to imagine that needing esoteric equipment would raise the bar a bit.

    Having only read the C&EN blurb, I can't confidently say that there isn't some more direct security connection that wasn't mentioned. But no obvious candidates are coming to mind. You could store various watermarks and signatures and whatnot, but you can do that with existsing systems too.
    • One possibility (which I encountered in another context) is that you create a piece of this material, then record its "signature" under various wavelengths shining from different directions. Then you hand out the material as the ID card and publish the signatures.

      Creating a duplicate is infeasible because you'd have to more-or-less exactly duplicate the position of #bignumber of nano-scale particles inside the containing matrix...
    • Well, if they don't have a reader designed yet for the material, I would say that means any data stored in it is pretty damn secure.

  • "multiple data in a spot unlike...."? (Score:5, Informative)

    by MoFoQ ( 584566 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @03:27AM (#8926419)
    That's weird, because DVD's can be dual layered, in other words, more than one piece of data in one "spot" (2-dimensional spot that is). And so is the upcoming bluray discs. Of course, when DVDs were first developed, 10-layers was "planned". And there's FMD (prototypes only) that uses multiple layers but of fluorence not reflective optics. And there's the holographic storage technologies (which is truly 3D, unlike layering).

    But what would happen if you mix this multi-dye technique with the existing layering technique....and blue lasers....man....just think of the p0rn possibilities! Each dye can store a different angle (or an "alternate ending").
  • The material consists of a lattice of onionlike spheres in which the particle core and its layers each contain a different dye. The material can hold four or more pieces of information in one spot--not just two as in binary optical data storage. And it opens a door to

    Dude! Man! I had this crazy idea! Like, we take this, like, lattice!! And then we, like, totally, make the lattice look like an onion!

    Yeah!

    Then, no.., Wait. I SAID WAIT!!!

    Ok, yeah, I'm chillin' again... Sorry bro.

    We take each layer and c
  • Didn't they use something like this for storage in the first Star Trek? I seem to recall they different colours!
  • If this technology is for real, then my first thought is to apply it to high-density storage devices. What is this "secure encryption and identification" mumbo-jumbo, as quoted from the article. Does this technology intrinsically lend itself to encryption? -- Or is it rather a new theoretical method of data storage?

    • Re:Secure Data Storage? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AlecC ( 512609 )
      I think it is just the writer gerring carried away. It is just security through obscurity: a new technolog which will be difficult for forgets to duplicate - until 30 minutes after it bcomes possible to make a lot of money by forging it.

      The article is pretty uniformed: confusing bits and states: 1 bit-> 2 states, 2 bits->4 states.

      I don't see ut as much to write home about unless they get more than two layers. If they could get 8 bits inot 1 onion, thy might be onto something. This current implementa

  • MMmmmmm... (Score:3, Funny)

    by twenty-exty-six ( 772817 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @04:55AM (#8926684)
    The material consists of a lattice of onionlike spheres MMMmmmmm.... Lettuce and onion spheres. This will never work. Conventional hard drives, unlike this new storage medium, aren't likely to be eaten.

  • Hooray! (Score:2, Funny)

    by moxruby ( 152805 )
    Now for what I really want to know: how many Libraries Of Congress (LOCs) can I fit on a disk the size of a credit card?
    • > how many Libraries Of Congress (LOCs) can I fit on
      > a disk the size of a credit card?

      What I want to know is why we still can't get the Library of Congress on any electronic medium at all. I want my two thousand DVDs now! I am sure a pony would be able to handle them...

  • Opticom (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jabbadabbadoo ( 599681 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @05:06AM (#8926718)
    A norwegian company (I think) has joined forces with Intel [intel.com] to provide polymer storage within the decade. Exiting stuff: Opticom [opticomasa.com]

  • Here's a story... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Eric Smalley ( 561923 ) <esmalley@ernmag.com> on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @09:05AM (#8927777) Homepage
    ... with a few more details: Nanoparticle dyes boost storage [trnmag.com]

  • Is this optimal? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Muad'Dave ( 255648 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @09:14AM (#8927852) Homepage

    I'm certainly no chemist, but why would one choose to use a spherical structure that suffers from poor packing density? Similarly, why would you layer the distinct dye-bearing materials instead of coming up with a solution containing all of the dyes at once and depositing them in a solid block (or at least as a packing of cubes)? Instead of having discrete onion-shaped 'bits', you could have as many bits as your read/write mechanisms could handle, and each dye's contribution would be read from exactly the same spot in the matrix.

  • So I guess we really will have... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Zog The Undeniable ( 632031 ) on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @09:25AM (#8927947)
    Polymer records? Someone tell Artie Fufkin!

  • Density calculations (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 21, 2004 @09:30AM (#8928002)
    If they can arrange for 8 different wavelengths, each sphere becomes a byte. Then, if each sphere is 1000nm in diameter (which is a pretty large item in relation to the rest of nanotech, and therefore seems reasonable to manufacture), they could fit 100K X 100K = 10GB into a wafer 10cm by 10cm by 1um in size. Or, if you add another 10cm to the height you get a 1 petabyte cube that you can hold in your hand, like the one Arthur C. Clarke mentions in 3001. Even a little memory stick type of thing 3cm by 1cm by 1mm in size would hold 300GB, while something the size of a current HDD would be around 100TB. Not too shabby.
  • Like this. It sounds a lot like using one of those everlasting Gobstoppers for data storage.

  • Security? Storage? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by fikx ( 704101 )
    OK, I felt like I was missing somethign at first, but from the look of a lot of posts at least I'm not alone. From what I can get from this, it's an improvement on typical (optical) data storage because instead of storing one bit per dot (which as far as I know CD's and even Hard drives do) this can store several bits per dot (limited by how many distinct dyes they can put together). Sounds cool. And the mention in the article of using this to store multiple images on the same space is pretty cool. But, whe

  • I knew that learning base 4 would pay off someday (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I knew that learning base 4 would pay off someday ... until the next iteration supports octal.
  • Onion? What about parfait?
    Parfait may just be the most delicious thing on the planet. Everyone loves parfait. You ever ask anyone "you wanna get a parfait" and they say "hell no, I don't like no parfait?

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