What is Digg?Sponsored by Dragon Age: Origins
Can't get enough Dragon Age: Origins? Check out new footage. view!
DragonAge.BioWare.com - EA presents BioWare's new dark fantasy epic Dragon Age: Origins. '9/10' from Game Informer.
72 Comments
- jman583, on 06/18/2009, -0/+38How to Store Data for a Million Years:
Put it in a zip file, name it "HOT LESBIAN ACTION - THREESOME" and put it on the Piratebay, Mininova, ect. - Peach3s, on 06/18/2009, -4/+40the first thing they store: porn
- breakneckridge, on 06/18/2009, -1/+25Sure, the stored data may survive, but finding a functional reader device is often the hardest part. I mean lets say that right now you had some data you wanted to get off of a 5 inch floppy disk. Do you have any idea where to get your hands on a working 5 inch floppy disk drive? And do you have any idea where you could obtain a working computer that has the right ports and software to connect to that drive? And it's only been something like 10 years ago that 5 inch floppy disks were phased out.
- morg666, on 06/18/2009, -0/+22I'll stick to drawing on cave walls. It's worked the best so far.
- inactive, on 06/18/2009, -6/+25My friend died trying to store data for a million years.
- undervalued, on 06/18/2009, -0/+19Yes!!! Now in one million years whatever species rules this planet can easily figure out the main goals of our technology.
- borez, on 06/18/2009, -0/+18A billion years, not a million.
- CTK14A, on 06/18/2009, -0/+12We haven't even figured out how the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, and that was only five thousand years ago.
- rusty0101, on 06/18/2009, -0/+11I understand the best guess is that they moved the rocks from a quarry along the Nile and stacked them in some way. Beyond that there is argument.
- la7ydub, on 06/18/2009, -2/+12what happens if you shake it :)
- techdever, on 06/18/2009, -3/+12no, but it can store it for a billion years, until computers are powerful enough to run 3 instances of Crysis at once
- coolTechno007, on 06/18/2009, -0/+9that's an awesome little memory cell :)
- ridd1e, on 06/18/2009, -0/+8Data is an android, he doesn’t need storing.
- wipis, on 06/18/2009, -0/+7In a million years when aliens or some sort of ancient race of humans dig it up I think they will be smart enough to tap into our primitive technology.
- Masterful1, on 06/18/2009, -0/+6sometimes the simplest solutions are the best, I mean if civilization collapses and we are sent back to the dark ages we will never figure out how the hell to read these things even if they do retain the data. Well maybe not never, but it will be a long arduous task that I'm sure some non-scientific political leader will put on the back burner because he needs the money to fund his catapult research.
- Masterful1, on 06/18/2009, -0/+6etch-a-sketch
- Theuderic, on 06/18/2009, -0/+6It doesn't matter, my darn kids will find a way to scratch the ***** out of it.
- digghasnoethics, on 06/18/2009, -0/+6Really?
So what's the probability that someone will hit it with a hammer/set fire to it/it will suffer some accident. I'd suggest its extremely high, making the average lifetime of the stored data quite low. Better to store these nanotube bits inside a diamond. Not only would that protect it, people are likely to take lots of care over the shiny stone. Make duplicate versions and you could push the destruction risk down below that of data corruption. - zip000, on 06/18/2009, -0/+5I came across an 8 inch floppy at work two days ago. It was amazing!
- taketheleap, on 06/18/2009, -0/+4Until 1822, we had NO idea what the Egyptians were trying to say.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone - raydeen, on 06/18/2009, -0/+4I fooled my brother-in-law with an 8" floppy once. I told him is was a new Super Floppy that could hold 10 MEGABYTES!!! He totally fell for it.
- XZanatos, on 06/19/2009, -0/+3@CTK12A
We might not know how they built the pyramids but we can replicate them with the technology we have now. Aliens might not know how exactly we built and operated various technologies but they will be able to figure out their own way to replicate and read them. - Paranor01, on 06/18/2009, -0/+2or a byte anyway...
- rusty0101, on 06/18/2009, -0/+2Well, a bit anyway...
- rhkenji, on 06/18/2009, -0/+2I'm pretty sure if you're retriving something important you'll do everything even re-research a method to retrieve the files. I mean, if somebody is taking this much research to store a very important data, then surely in the future, people will research if they have to and develop it again to retrieve it.
Not all development in technology is meant to be used personally.
Im pretty sure if something important is stored in a device from the 50's-60's then surely it can be retrieved. not by just any of us ofcourse - zip000, on 06/18/2009, -0/+2That really isn't the case. There is a ton of information that is just gone.
Also, it is much more difficult than you seem to think to :
1) Realise that the object you're holding stores data if you didn't know that already
2) Reverse engineer a method for reading the data from the object not knowing anything about the method that was used to put it there.
3) Figure out how to decipher the information.
The second 2 are ridiculously difficult to do, and will only occur if somehow cares or knows that the thing is worthwhile in the first place. - morepowerr, on 06/18/2009, -0/+2They can make nanotubes store data, make cell store data. Clone things. Make glow in the dark cats.
But still NO one can make me a 2 foot long gecko with bat wings. Or sharks with lasers on there heads. Or even a mini dinosaur. Come on people. - Elliuotatar, on 06/18/2009, -0/+2"Theoretical studies suggest that the system should retain information for a long time. To switch spontaneously from a “1” to a “0” would entail the particle moving some 200 nanometres along the tube using thermal energy. At room temperature, the odds of that happening are once in a billion years."
Putting it that way, it sounds good. But when you think about it, doesn't that mean that if you have 365 billion bits of data, that one bit will go bad each day? That seems like a pretty high error rate to me. That's only a third of a terrabyte. I have 1TB in my home PC now, and that means three files per day might potentially go bad on my PC, if this were being used for file storage. - wiggles, on 06/18/2009, -0/+2Contrary to popular belief, diamonds are not indestructible. They will burn, shatter, scratch, chip, so much so that the diamond you buy for your fiancee will not be graded the same even at your 10 year anniversary (assuming she wears it regularly).
- tedc, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1You've got a point there. I had to go dig up the original article (posted a link to it in another comment) to set things straight. If I read it correctly, it looks like the author meant that given random thermal drift at room temperature, it would take the particle over a billion years to slide out of place, so we're not talking about sudden random occurrences that could happen any time here. The Economist got it wrong (I think!).
- konebone69, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1Yeah if the scientist left it on his bookshelf or something. There are several places deep inside the earth at various locations that were created for the sole purpose of archiving things. There's places that are meant to withstand nuclear war, let alone a "hammer".
Obviously if so much effort was put into creating the storage method, just as much would be put into it's safe keeping. - joebaloney, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1It will not last one microsecond longer with or without a checksum bit.
- tedc, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1The original paper:
http://physics.berkeley.edu/research/zettl/pdf/361 ... - AZExile, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1Yeah, that wouldn't be how it would work. It isn't like "on average one bit will flip every billion years" - it's thermal variances in the room over the course of a billion years could cause a bit to flip.
- SamuelBirkett95, on 06/18/2009, -1/+2Will it be able to store all my porn?
I'm not some porno freak but...
I've got a LOT of porn! - EarthBoundX5, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1I have like 5 5 1/4s, lol...plus like 8 more for the Apple 2
- InfinitySnatch, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1'Eternity Circuits'
Almost there. - charlietuna, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1@MortalynFlux
That's what I meant... some people are into that! - austroLogi, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1Well I guess that settles it. I stand corrected.
- joebaloney, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1I'd be worried about rust.
- Scaryclouds, on 06/19/2009, -0/+1@zip
Actually I think it would be easier than you realize (easy being a relative term). Given that whoever discovered the storage device realizes what it is and has the technology to discern it's underlying workings (that is they can detect where the iron particle is located with the CNT) than it would just be a matter of determining which side is zero and which is one.
There would be a few other problems such as determining the method of how we actually store the data (i.e. a rosetta stone), but that does really affect the actual reading of the data, just the interpretation. - inactive, on 06/19/2009, -0/+1*****. Post a torrent with this hot action and i'll digg your comment!
- Remy_LeBeau, on 06/19/2009, -0/+1Umm, aren't you forgetting something?
- diggduggjoe, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1You said it! It is amazing that something similar to this,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_core_memory,
would make a revolution at the nano scale. - MortalynFlux, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1That would be like us watching the discovery channel.
- jman583, on 06/19/2009, -0/+1Boom:
http://www.porntorrents.ws/torrent-titty-mania-9-l ... - ptgrogan, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1Satellites are in no where near long-lived orbits around the Earth. The average commercial satellite has a life of only about 10 years, limited by the propellant required to maintain its orbit due to small, but non-negligible gravity effects.
- charlietuna, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1Or they can indulge in their fetish for primitive human porn.
- booststrong, on 06/18/2009, -0/+1Now my "friends" can pass on their pirated movies to 10,000 generations down the line!
-
Show 51 - 75 of 75 discussions
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is