Looks nifty, but being able to hold that much data means it's expensive.

That's nice.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/05/sony-announces-specs-for-2tb-memory-stick-xc/

>>3475
That thing is not a USB key. That thing is a slow external hard drive.

Every day they're able to figure out ways to put more data in less physical space on a harddrive...but is anyone else worried about this? The marginal returns on developing like this are huge but there's got to be a plateau at some point and then what?

>>3498
Aren't you big on the singularity, or something?
I suppose once we get to the end of Moore's Law, we'll be ready to implement quantum computing, or whatever those doohikies are.
Until we can switch over to nonsense-computing, I suppose making use of assembly would reduce the size and increase the performance of everything software related by double to one-hundred times.

Another fringe benefit to reaching the maximum possible space and density for flash and optical data storage is we'll finally be able to start pouring full bore into R&D for resilient electronics.

My new machine has a 120GB SSD for system stuff. It's amazing.

So much porn and lossless classical music, on such a little thing...

>>3763

What always amazed me is how much WRITTEN material you can put on a freaking flash drive, courtesy of how small .rtf (and similar) files are. I have one .rtf file that is what basically amounts to the beta revision of an ENTIRE NOVEL (~165,000 words) that is about 990kb.

I have a flash drive, it's a pretty small one by today's standards — just one gigabyte. On that flash drive is the COMPLETE COLLECTION of my written works. Dozens of full-length stories and half-completed ones, fanfictions and one-shots, little ideas that may one day develop into something more. Along with it, hundreds, possibly thousands of other word documents, supplemental materials, beta chapters, revision timetables, character information, etc. In essence, the full breadth of my creative life-work as a human being.

Given a situation where I am away from the home, and the house burns to the ground, my computer included, that flash drive will be the only place those files EXIST. Holding it in my hand, with what (if printed out) would fill several bookshelves, contained inside, it certainly feels a great deal more precious and heavy than it is.

You know, the entire print collection of the Library of Congress is about a terabyte. Were it all put into digital format, you could hold it all in the PALM of your HAND in a 1tb disk drive. Imagine that.

>>3764
Yes, for the writer it's a miraculous haven. I can imagine Dostoyevsky with a little laptop while he was serving prison time in Omsk and jotting down his accounts of The House Of The Dead during the heavy snowstorms and long endless nights of inmates' talking and fighting.

Or think of how much one of those flash drives of say a gig would be worth if J.D. Salinger had been writing up storms all those years in seclusion in his backyard bunker? Single sentence letters from him fetch up to tens of thousands of dollars--but another Glass story, or a series of works, not to mention he might have razed paper copies as part of his weird karmic beliefs and yet it could all remained perfectly digitized.

Or, since the planet can be destined for destruction, eventually we send out drives capable of gigantic data storage into space as some sort of last vain archive if everything here has to be destroyed, everything from the finest music to world history.

Anyway I've thought about being in just your position, using technology to better myself, but I really just turned into crap and only use technology to satisfy base urges and also store other peoples' work I treasure. We're all librarians these days with these cool gadgets.

>>3765

Yeah, the Pioneer and Voyager probes with their sad little "golden CDs" and whatnot were so pathetic. In 50 years we're going to have book-sized yottabyte drives... we can put on those basically the entire compendium of human knowledge, shoot them into space in all directions by the billions, and be secure in knowing that (if there is intelligent life out there) they will find it, and humanity will have achieved immortality.

>>3486
What you are looking at is a 2 TB Memory Stick. Yes. A 2 TB Memory Stick.
Is it not nifty?

>>3844
It is certainly nifty.
Also, want some dazzling reading?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memristor