SCI/TECH: 25GB PAPER Disc

This is an awesome new breakthrough, Recordable DVD's made from paper. Traditional disks use crude oil in their manufacture the new disk is a combination of paper and a polymer and can hold up to 25 gigabytes of data! It will be safer for the environment to dispose of the new disks and it won't rely on oil, seems like a good thing. They can use recycled paper in their manufacture.






NewScientist

[Edited on 19-5-2004 by Zion Mainframe]

[Edited on 19-5-2004 by Zion Mainframe]

[Edited on 20-5-2004 by SkepticOverlord]

paper is made of wood or a similar organic material...and i imagine it would break down faster than the stuff discs are made out of now...wouldnt they?

what if you got one wet???

Originally posted by ThePrankMonkey
what if you got one wet???

Floppy Disk!

If its anything like current CDs and DVDS it wont be worth crap. It seems the overall quality of DVDs and CDs have gone down in the last year or so. They can't take even normal use without beginning to skip or have corruped files in the case of data.

Originally posted by ThePrankMonkey
i imagine it would break down faster than the stuff discs are made out of now...wouldnt they?

what if you got one wet???

Yes definitely if the disks were shredded and placed in a landfill the paper would dissolve like any other paper product.

The disc doesn�t have any exposed paper that could be harmed by water; it has a thin coating of polymer to protect the disc from this type of damage.

but people arent exactly careful with discs...i imagine they'd be easily warped, bent, etc.

something about this just doesnt seem right to me.

i have my reservations about this.

whats next? a boat made of sponges?

and if it has a polymer coating it isnt exactly 100% biodegradable is it??? its just a disc with a paper core.



[Edited on 19-5-2004 by ThePrankMonkey]

I think we should hold off on judgments for the time being. This advancement is in the development stage; they know the concerns of the user and wouldn�t put out a commercial product that would not perform well. It�s in their interest to produce a �solid� product because they are in the media storage business. Personally I think it�s a great idea.

they know the concerns of the user and wouldn�t put out a commercial product that would not perform well.

obviously you dont know how automotive manfacturing works...its a pretty universal concept most corporations share. produce a cheaper product for the same amount or more money than the previous version. the fact they found a cheaper way to make a disc doesnt necessarily make it better. and it is cheaper otherwise they wouldnt fiddle with it. its not about the invironment, ever notice how just about anything environmental is not for profit? there's a reason.

i think its BS but that doesnt mean i've dismissed this. just means i'm a little skeptical is all.

Personally, I do not see it taking off. I mean it is paper... what if it gets wet? I am sure there will be come special coating on there and all, but I would or 'wood' guess that it is alot more delicate.

Im sure the product when marketed will not be harmed by water. What ever you may think 25 gigabytes is an amazing amount of information to store on one disc, the market will realize this and buy them up.

Yes...

I think 25gig on a CD is amazing, but one thing I'm curious about is, will you need a blue ray laser to read it ?

Or will a standard red laser read it ?

I don't know, maybe stupid questions...

Hrm, that is true, it will require new devices with a laser capable of reading the information, since it uses a different wavelength to fit more on the disk. Not to sound like I'm intentionally busting on the idea, but if its using wood, then temperature will also be a factor. Ive known friends who left their guitars in their car over night, and the cold actually harmed it and sent it way out of tune, so I wonder if the disks would also be in the same boat?

I've seen speculation on a blue laser media in the past (on more "typical" materials such as plastic/metal). Look @ the visible light spectrum and the comparable wavelengths. A red laser would be too "wide" to read a narrow pattern etched by a blue laser. This difference in wavelength is what allows such large amounts of data to be represented in the same amount of space, like writing in a smaller font.

If engineered properly, a blue laser should be able to read a disc created with a red laser, since the blue laser would be the more precise of the two.

(Someone might want to check me on that, it's been a while since I've studied the electromagnetic spectrum)

[edit] Took out some redundant info [/edit]

[Edited on 20-5-2004 by Just1Man]

it sounds neat and all, a disk that can hold 25gb , and if it isn't harmed by temperature or water, the paper disk, may not be so bad. but i do have one concern. it uses a blue laser right? to store more info? im not going to buy a new laser for my computer, nor am i going to buy another new computer for that matter (i have four). i also don't see everyone rushing out to get the blue laser, just to use these paper disks. although i still like the idea of being able to store a ton of information on one single disk. it would definatly make backing up some of my files easier!

I think this is one we're going to have to wait and see on. To me the biggest drawback would be damaging the disk by creasing it or sitting on it. It seems to me there's no way it would be as rigid as a conventional disk.

if the surface of a bare cd/dvd disk is not entirely 100% smooth the reflexianlayer will not attach properly !!
so the layer will burst or detach or just holes will show up in no time...loss of data by unreadable blocs,sectors or corrupt bytes.

for people who are using cd/dvd as kinda digital archive it is very important that the archive is kept in good condition,also at a longer time periode!

Originally posted by Jonna

Originally posted by ThePrankMonkey
what if you got one wet???

Floppy Disk!

that is the funnyest thing ever, that had me crying.. i bow down to you jonna..

Guys! I'm sure that the team of highly skilled (yeah, riiight...) engineers can find a way to protect the bloody disk. Maybe some sort of plastic shield?