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Floppy CDs And DVDs? 187

Posted by Hemos from the isn't-that-special dept.
tregoweth writes: "A company (with no online presence that I can find) claims to have developed a way to make 'a completely functional digital disc that's five times thinner than a regular DVD or CD' and 'is also flexible enough to wrap around soda cans and be inserted into magazines without breaking,' according to Forbes.com. Does anyone else see floppy AOL CDs covering the landscape?"
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Floppy CDs and DVDs? More

Floppy CDs and DVDs?

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  • Err, 650 megs... that's what I get for only previewing once. Blah.

    --
    BACKNEXTFINISHCANCEL

  • This sort of thing is kinda cool, but I see several problems with it. Mainly :
    1. How to get manufactures to shell out the money to make these?
    2. How scratch/tear resistant are these things? They may be flexible, but don't look very sturdy. What about thermal resistance? It just seems like it would be much easier to screw up all the little pits in information layer and therefore screw the cd-floppy.
    3. They also look like they'd be a pain to print on since most paints would be thicker than that the CD-floppy. How do you know which one is which?
    4. CD's and thin cases are so cheap now, why do we need this?
    5. How do you get stupid consumers to use the plastic adapter ring correctly. I see lots of problems with people misusing it and breaking their CD/DVD players.

    I think a neat use for it might be a replacement for the magnetic disc in floppy drives. Get a new drive that reads the things and use technology to fit 1 gig or more onto a floppy. Too bad it won't be writable, but it might help with installation of certain programs on laptops & etc.

  • Ah cool, cheap Christmas wrapping paper. Nice and shiny too.
  • i had a friend that would constantly request them with fun names like Fidel Castro or Ghandi.

    The best one ever was Jesus H. Christ though, because it included a letter addressed to Jesus, thanking him for his interest in America Online.

    I think he framed it.
  • Well said. I was whinging about something quoted as being "3 times smaller" than something else a few weeks back. It's a poor use of English. Particularly because there might be a valid use for it. If a standard widget is 10 units thick and an enhanced widget is 9 units thick, then an ultra widget that's only 5 units thick might be described as "5 times thinner" than an enhanced widget, compared to a standard widget. To be "X times smaller/thinner" you need two other points of reference.

    Anyone having problems following the above now knows what the original statement does to people who actually listen to the words in a sentence, rather than just trying to divine the meaning from someone's facial expressions or hand gestures.

  • Well, you can find out what normal ones look like on a website about Data Destruction [ardant.net].
  • Isn't there one like that? In fact, I think I have it turned on. Its output is thus:
    date: 9:36pm
    uptime: 235 days, 12:21, 0 users,
    load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00
    processes: 48
    yesterday: 136329
    today: 1
    ever: 206134133
    I don't understand some of that, though... ;)

    -J

  • Actually I think you might be incorrect... bernoulli carts used to use a similar system, iirc, in which the spinning of the disc was stablized the by literal bernoulli effect created.

    Better description from here [computerhope.com]

    The Bernoulli drive was named after a Swiss scientist who discovered the principle of aerodynamic lift. The principal characteristic of a Bernoulli drive is that the flexible disk floats between the read/write heads, so there is no actual contact between the disk and the heads. With this principal the Bernoulli drive is less susceptible to head crashes.


    ----

  • Re:Practicality intervenes (Score:5)

    by pen ( 7191 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @10:20PM (#581908)
    And he can use the chocolate to feed the monkeys! Brilliant!

    --

  • I must be gettin' soft in my old age...
  • Yes, the criticisms of the whole optics of the thing are valid. I too would mod that comment up. Now, as for
    consumers must possess a little ring that adjusts the optical device in their standard CD, CD-Rom and DVD machines; it's sort of like the plastic gizmo that snaps into a 45-rpm record
    as mentioned before, even with a center support, you'll still get flutter on the outer edge. I believe any search on variations of "rotating travelling wave" will yield some information. One interesting thing being that the travelling wave can even move counter to the rotation of the CD, if I remember my Exploratorium [exploratorium.edu] exhibits correctly.

    As for the optics of it, just a quick search on "CD laser optics" ("I'm Feeling Lucky")finds this site [washington.edu] that points out that The polycarbonate itself is part of the optical system for reading the pits.

    Maybe the polycarbonate isn't really needed, maybe it's just icing on the cake for robustness. If you do the math on one of the illustrations from the afore mentioned page [washington.edu], if the polycarbonate weren't there, the CD, instead of being 1.2mm thick, would have to be (let's see, cotan(27degrees) times 1/2 of 800microns is 785microns less than the regular 1.2mm thickness- duh, I could've assumed the angle was 30degrees and made things much easier) 0.4mm thick. That's not quite 1/5 the regular CD thickness- I guess the other 1-1/2mm comes from the reinforcing ring/plate you'd have to glue the whole floppy CD to.

    Okay, someone else pointed out that the bournelli (sp?) effect could be used to keep the disc from fluttering by keeping it flying just a little bit above the read head, but is it really going to work with a head of unknown geometry and possible with other flat surfaces around? Like CD trays, caddies, slot feed mechanisms, etc.

    Not that I'm disparaging the product even before it comes out (but I guess I am), it seems like it would be a nice trick to be able to make it work in almost any CDROM drive. I'd wish the company luck, but I'm afraid of where technology will lead- my no-name peripherals are already cheaply made- can you see getting your drivers and documentation on a floppy CD that won't even last a week on my desk. Admit it- you leave your CDs in a dusty pile too. Can you imagine if you had to reinstall?

    And I thought we were through with the idea of disposable DVDs when Divx (the first one) died.

  • Actually, I don't remember AOL ever removing the write protect tab. However, they did always set the disks so that they were write protected, and most people never figured it out.

    As for autorequesting, I actually wrote a little program in Visual Basic (ah, the good ole' days... ) to simulate clicks on AOL buttons with WinAPI and then made it request disks to my house with random names and apartment numbers. Since I live in a house, they were all delivered to me anyway.

    I still get a nice 30-disk bundle with two rubber bands every now and then...

    --

  • As of posting, the counter is 490.

    LOL... good idea posting that... it's at 50966 now... :-)
    -----
    "People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
  • Bad mojo. If you mange to not seriously foul-up the optics, you'll at least have to take the drive apart to fish out the CD. Not a fun thing I'd gater.

    ----
  • AAARRRGGG, they're everywhere cap'n, and I canna break them
    Yeah but... I guess you would still be able to microwave [lordlings.com] them ;-)

    ---

  • But you can't fold them into paper airplanes... Still, the best CD trick is to get your paws on some Pop Nazi's Backstreet-Sync-Spears-whatever CD, and shatter it in your bare hands while they watch you. Just make sure you are wearing glasses instead of contacts B)

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • Look at it on the bright side (Score:4)

    by Flavio ( 12072 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @04:54PM (#581916)
    Does anyone else see floppy AOL CDs covering the landscape?

    If these new CD's are so cheap, *perhaps* free software distribution will get even simpler.

    It would be a step easier to package free cd's with ANY magazine or newspaper and perhaps cheapbytes could rename themselves to dirtcheapbytes.

    Flavio
  • It's evident in many industries (automotive is number 1) that if a low quality product is sold, customers have to spend more money on replacements.

    "Mr. Data recovery technician, I tore another floppy-cd while removing it from the drive tray..."

  • I too have developed a thin storage medium (Score:5)

    by grahamsz ( 150076 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @04:57PM (#581918) Homepage Journal
    It's paper thin
    It stores information
    You can get it in any shape or size you want
    It allows advertisers to convey information to people
    My specialized computer-less reading enables even people without a computer to read the information printed on the 'disk'
    It is thin enough and flexible to be wrapped around a coke can
    It has a gummed strip along one edge so it can easily be inserted into magazines
    Computer users can scan them to they can be fully enjoyed online

    In addition to the fantastic advertising properties I can also envisage a market where these partially gummed pieces of paper are sold in pads to corporate users. They could then be used as a digital memo system which could even be accessed without a computer, by using a special digital pen to write messages on them.

    Just call me Mr 3m.

    On a more serious note, we've already lost the ability to use AOL disks to save buying those pesky 3.5" floppies and we are now about to loose the ability to use them as coasters :(
  • Sigh.

    Now I'll need to find some other way to keep the post office from mangling my magazines when they stuff them into my P.O. Box.

    What? There was data on those discs?

  • Another useless technology. (Score:3)

    by caryw ( 131578 ) <carywiedemann@@@gmail...com> on Monday December 04, 2000 @10:52PM (#581920) Homepage
    I'm pretty sure this is the last we'll ever hear about "ThinDisc" or whatever on slashdot. The idea is absurd. If a company wants to supply their software to magazine readers, they'll supply a web address, not a ThinDisc. If I ever came accross one of these items "wrapped around a coke can" or in a magazine, I'd do what the rest of the world would do with it as well; see how good of a frisbee it makes (hey, maybe AOL does have a calling for these things)!

    Anyway, I'm still waiting for indestructible credit card sized storage devices that can hold 6 terrabytes by means of optical pulses.

    At this rate something tells me I'll be waiting for an awfully long time.
  • is also flexible enough to wrap around soda cans

    Huh? Most modern CDs are flexible enough to wrap around a soca can. Try it.

    and be inserted into magazines without breaking,

    Exactly! Ever found a broken CD in a magazine? Didn't think so!

    Roger.
  • Given that x times thinner doesn't mean anything, how about we redefine it to mean 1/x as thick?
  • "Just what the hell does 'five times thinner' mean anyway?!?!?"

    Well, as "five times thicker" would be equivalent to 5 CDs stacked on each other, I'd guess that "five times thinner" would be 1/5 the thickness of a CD.
  • I remember them. You could supposedly drop one off the roof of a building in the middle of a read/write operation and not loose any data or damage the media from the impact.

    A few years ago (probably '91 or '92), an Iomega rep brought a Bernoulli drive and some disks to a user-group meeting. He took the disk (with his demo) out of the drive and tossed it out into the audience, and encouraged the audience to throw it around for about a minute (in which time it hit the floor and bounced off the walls a few times) before asking for the disk to be returned. Once he had it back, he popped it back in the drive...and it still worked.

  • :

    You could theoretically rotate this at infinite angular speed in vacuum without deformation.

    :

    Hold on, wait... think about that for a minute... if you can spin that thing at infinite speed who cares about deformation?

    What I'm saying is this: if the inside of this disc is moving at infinite speed, that would mean that the outside is moving at faster than infinite speed...

    Woah, what if only the outside moves at infinite speed? Just how fast would the inside be moving??

    OK, I think I need to sit down...

    J. T. "Mac" MacLeod

  • I find it hard to believe that this be all that viable, especially for data. Imagine spinning a CD-ROM at 40x, when it is flexible enough to be curled around things. I sure wouldn't want any high speed flutter (which is already a problem with some of my CD-ROMS), or warping from being curled around things, to mess up the insides of my CDROM drive.
  • What does it mean to be five times thinner ? To me, it means nothing. Five times thinner than what? Why can't people say, "One fifth as thick..." Hell, I'd even settle for "One fifth as thin"
  • 12.04.00-22:37EST - 51173 Hits

    This is a useless line because the lameness filter dosnt like 4 upper & 3 lower chars

  • Of course it's handling it nicely - there isn't anything really TO the site yet

    Which makes it all the more puzzling why they had to use Frontpage to make it...

    meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0"

    Can you say notepad.exe?
  • Semms nice, and cool, but it reeks of vaporware. I wish these were real. But they probably aren't, and I'm not gonna wait for them(like I did for FMD...they said october and it is december)

    -------------
  • Thickness doesn't matter for the capability to withstand rotating at high speeds. As the thickness is reduced, the mass of the disk, and therefore the forces on the material will be reduced by the same amount. This compensates the decreased strenght of the material.

    Of course, if there are small imperfections in the disk, those will become more problematic as the disk gets thinner, so the production process needs to be designed carefully so that the material has even thickness and strenght throughout the entire disk.
  • That soft of defeats the purpose of including them in the magazines in the first place - what about skeet shooting? :)

    This sounds vastly like vaporware to me. No web site, for a company that is supposedly developing new technology for mass distribution?

    Also, I wonder, if in fact it were real, if current cdrom/dvd drives would be able to read the format? (might the flimsy nature of the media also cause for misreading of information?)

    -------
    CAIMLAS

  • 'a completely functional digital disc that's five times thinner than a regular DVD or CD' and 'is also flexible enough to wrap around soda cans and be inserted into magazines without breaking,'

    Does anyone remember Bernoulli drives? they had a floppy that that got stiff (i can just see the replys to this post with tons of euphamisms) when it spun up. They weren't teriffically fast, but lots of mac people swore by em

  • grahamsz said:
    "On a more serious note, we've already lost the ability to use AOL disks to save buying those pesky 3.5" floppies and we are now about to loose the ability to use them as coasters :("

    What do you have against flexible coasters?

    Fear my low SlashID! (bidding starts at $500)
  • If the disk had any bend in it when it was being read by the CDROM drive, I don't believe the laser would be reflected at the angle needed to read the disk. This would cause slow, unreliable data transfer at best, and make the format completely useless at worst.

  • Re:High speed flutter (Score:3)

    by Kyobu ( 12511 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @06:47PM (#581936) Homepage
    No, his point was that "thinner" measures thickness. So "five times thinner" is actually five times thicker. To say what they really meant, you'd have to say "one fifth as thick." Incidentally, as long as I'm being pedantic, five times thicker would be actually equivalent to 6 CDs stacked, not 5, because it's the comparitive form of the adjective, meaning you're adding, not replacing. Five times as thick would be equivalent to 5 CDs.

  • Re:Two points - weight and disposability (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    AOL bulk mails their CDs and they pay less than $.05 per cd to get it to my mailbox. The weight does not matter to them at all.
  • So these are like the little floppy records you used to get as a kid? Those were always really good quality.

    Seriously - this is really not a great idea.
    Always looking for your little ring-thingy to make the disc not damage your hardware when it wobbles off the platter (will it play in vertical mount drives..?)... about as fun as the stupid codes for prizes inside Spite(TM) bottle-caps that ask you to go to a web site and then hand out personal information to get an ID just to check the code.... dumb, dumb, dumb.

  • did it ever mention how much it holds? it said thinner then cdroms/dvds.. but it never said if he even neared the volume cdroms could hold... maybe it doesn't even hold 1.44MB :)
  • This is a great idea but they got one thing wrong.

    First, it says you need to own a small ring that will hold the disc in place. Bad idea. I would just make the hold like a normal CD. Most players have a metal spindle with a magnetic free floating thing above it that will hold the CD down. The spindle spins, mag thing spins with it.

    Or if you want to gurantee compatibility, then make a ring around the hole as thick as a normal CD. Use flexible plastic. It would work better.

  • Re:Is there a point to "thin"? (Score:4)

    by Flavio ( 12072 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @05:02PM (#581941)
    I don't see much in the way of an advantage here. What do they possibly offer?

    SAVINGS! that's the brilliant part. You save on material and manufacture dirt cheap CDs.

    I believe there's not much of a deformation problem at high speeds, since the CD is supposedly uniformly dense and as flat as possible. You could theoretically rotate this at infinite angular speed in vacuum without deformation. I suppose it could bend abnormally if you consider the drive's inner air circulation at extremely high speeds, but we're not there yet.

    You've got a valid point about scratches, but there are two points to cover that:

    1. error correction.
    2. this media isn't designed for very reliable storage. it's for AOL cd's and, as I suggested in another post, dirt cheap linux propaganda. if the target's interested in the data he acquires the normal CD version if needed.

    I think the idea's great, but it kind of depends on how easily these things can be pressed.

    Flavio
  • I think what they are offering is not in the area of performance, which will probably be worse, but marketing. Somewhere at AOL/Time Warner there is a guy who is responsible for designing the packaging for their CDs. Although his latest 'innovation' is to stuff them in pseudo DVD cases but I think he might be running low on ideas. But if a paper thin CD comes along....imagine opening up the Sunday paper and a half dozen AOL CDs pour out.

  • Right...four years of development, and no product demonstration..
  • Bendable is something different than foldable. The carrier of the data should be, err 'preparated' to bend back to it's original state, but we also have 'intelligent' metals which reshape themselve to their original form after being 'mutulated'. So, Why not?

  • coaster quality control (Score:5)

    by Racer X ( 140445 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @05:05PM (#581945)

    I guess this worry is obvious, but I'll say it anyway. Does this technological "advance" set us back years in terms of coaster technology? First there were the 3.5" floppy discs, which were effective against desk coffee cup ring-marks but could accomodate only a rather small amount of the surface area of a cup (at least, *my* cup). Then came the CD's, which improved coaster surface area at the expense of a condensation-permitting hole. Now where do these skimpy CD's fit in? Not only are they holed, their thinness makes me doubt their viability as an obstruction to coffee cup moisture. Further, I anticipate that the lightness of the floppy CD will make it stick annoyingly to the bottom of a lifted coffee cup--a characteristic universally recognized as the hallmark of a poorly designed coaster.

    Truly this is a sad day for coaster technology.
  • As far as I've understood it, it's a fairly normal CD if you disconsider the "adapter" (necessary for it to be read by normal drives).

    Since CD's are read from the middle to the periphery, I believe they hold exactly the same amount of information.

    Flavio
  • Think of a nice imaginary product that would appeal to the slashdot crowd.

    Register www.mycoolproduct.com

    Put an ad on the page to generate $.03 in revenue each time its viewed.

    Submit a story to slashdot about mycoolproduct and let the page hits accumulate.

    Spiffy, now I have money to upgrade. :o)
  • I and some friends had Creative Labs 52x CD-ROM drives. It always stops working after a few months.
    Now i got another one. It still works, but only sometimes :)
  • if it's not very reliable storage, i sure as hell wouldn't want to be the aol tech support monkey who will be receiving all of the calls when people can't get the software to work. (that *is* the point of it all, right? getting software to people? or is the point more just a stupid advertising gimmick?)

    tech support is hell already, there's no need to make it worse...

    eudas
  • "If they look too much like paper, there will also be problems, like data-airplanes, where they get folded up and flown across offices."

    If they can be unfolded and remain readable, this could be a fun alternative to sneakernet. As long as nobody gets an eye put out.

  • Re:I'm skeptical (Score:3)

    by xjesus ( 231140 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @06:48PM (#581951)
    You bring up some good points, i'd mod you up if i had the power. You missed one of the key point in the forbes article, where they mention one of the hurdles of the technology:
    "consumers must possess a little ring that adjusts the optical device in their standard CD, CD-Rom and DVD machines; it's sort of like the plastic gizmo that snaps into a 45-rpm record"

    I'd like to see more info on this ring (heck on the technology itself for that matter), maybe they're using the ring for rigidity and optical refraction, and the floppy stuff would just be the top layer with the data on it.
    They'll probably rely on AOL to send out the first wave of floppy CD's plus the ring, and then everything following would just be the top layer (assuming most of the human race would have one by then).
  • super glue.

    glue an aol floppy to the center of an aol cd and your drink coaster not only gains weight so that it avoids sticking to your drink in the manner described above, but it also aids with the condensation-permitting hole problem.

    eudas

    p.s. i have not actually done this, heh.

    eudas
  • smaller standard for CDs - an 8cm diameter...They're cool and tiny and should be the future

    They're proprietary and useless. Remember: the /. crowd can smell a cash-grab like a fart in a car, and sony is universally noted for stinkers.

  • Read the article. You'll need a little
    "ring" to use it in a regular CD-Rom.
    I wonder why you'd get yourself this "ring"
    given that this would only allow you
    access to junk mail.
  • "And if it's true, that plastic is not degradable, well! the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: the Earth plus plastic."

    -- George Carlin

    "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
  • I just went to the media cabinet here at the office; our current stock of CD-R's are Sony CDQ-74CP's.

    These particular discs are allegedly 'Full Colour Printable', and say on the back of the jewel case 'Full colour printing possible with ink jet printers with water-based ink'.

    Erm. right. We have seven different types of inkjet printer here in the office, but none of them have a sufficiently straight paper path to avoid snapping the CD, or scratching the data face to death, not to mention what taking those expensive ink cartridges for a scrape across polycarbonate would do for the budget.

    Flexible CD's? Now you're talking. With any luck, these will even go around the bends in the Deskjet 690C.
  • On a more serious note, we've already lost the ability to use AOL disks to save buying those pesky 3.5" floppies and we are now about to loose the ability to use them as coasters :(

    actually, it seems to me that if it is flexible, it is also stickier (like seran wrap.) I think that adds to the worth of the coaster. Now we god AOL coasters that don't slide around. Just think of the possibilities.

  • Re:Practicality intervenes (Score:5)

    by phutureboy ( 70690 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @06:50PM (#581958)

    Well if you will spin things at infinite speed, what do you expect? Hang on a sec, just how are you proposing to spin them up to infinite speed? With an infinitely powerfull motor, driven by an infinite watt power supply?

    Don't be absurd He's going to use an infinite number of monkeys banging on an infinite number of DECWriters, all hooked up to a big Willy Wonkaesque machine that not only produces an infinite amount of chocolate, but drives a spindle as well. It's all quite simple, really.



    --
  • Uhm, yeah, mmh,
    Alas I only have 5,25 inch bays available for drives.
    Oh Wait! That's why those things are flexible, aren't they?

    ---
  • I thought MS already had a patent on the Vaporware Generator.
  • I wish I had an infinityX Cdrom drive.
    -------
  • That's okay. Soon we'll be able to glue them to bubblewrap and use them as insulation.

    We may just need that this winter.

    But it's a little hi-tech for this old house -- when we moved in, the wall betwen the garage and kitchen was covered with those little styrofoam meat trays -- presumably for insulation -- the previous owner's ``frugality'' was well known :)

  • Yeah, I had a Bernoulli 230. The last of the really good things that Iomega made.

    The reason people liked them, even though SyQuests were more common, was that they were solid as a rock. I don't think that I've ever heard of a Bernoulli failing. The disks were nigh-indestructable.

    Given how much hard disks cost in the early 90's, I loved 'em. OTOH, the cartridges cost ~$100 a pop which was affordable at the time. However, Iomega brought the cheap Zip media, the large Jaz media, and CDRs became commonplace, with cheap, large, easily portable media. The Bernoullis never had a chance. Sniff.
  • Is that a way of indirectly yelling "First post!"? *grin*
    --Fesh
  • i don't know about AOL CD's, they'll be everywhere no matter what media is introduced, but, i do see kids using floppy CD's to come up with inventive new ways to hide their CD's that are full of JPEGs.

    think about it... they could keep in in their shoes, in their wallets, in pez dispensers, i see the porn industry making a killing here among the 15-17 industry (because once you turn 18, porn loses it's novelty because you can buy it)

  • and it is now well over 10,000......
    Slashdot - the ultimate advertisement.

    but, the server seems to be withstanding this quite nicely.
  • Um. The data on a CDROM is not exactly stacked on top of itself, you know.

  • "On a more serious note, we've already lost the ability to use AOL disks to save buying those pesky 3.5" floppies and we are now about to loose the ability to use them as coasters :("

    That's okay. Soon we'll be able to glue them to bubblewrap and use them as insulation. :^)
  • The principal characteristic of a Bernoulli drive is that the flexible disk floats between the read/write heads, so there is no actual contact between the disk and the heads.

    So, just like a conventional hard drive, then...

  • I remember them. You could supposedly drop one off the roof of a building in the middle of a read/write operation and not loose any data or damage the media from the impact.

  • Aging CD Market (Score:4)

    by Gefiltefish ( 125066 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @07:09PM (#581974)
    I think I see what's happening here.

    CD-ROM's have been around for some time now. The market is aging.

    With the aging market, the formerly rigid disks have more trouble. Sometimes, they go flaccid without any clear cause.

    The good news is that this may liven up a market for Viagra.
  • When tape was still a valid media? These were the first demo discs, i guess. You had to dub the record to an audio tape, then use it on your computer. And it never, ever, worked.

  • Re:coaster quality control (Score:3)

    by Saminu ( 114473 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @07:20PM (#581993)
    While CDs work well as coasters, I remember fondly the old days of the 8" floppy, which worked perfectly as placemats, or with a bit of string, as a bib.
  • Coming soon to tree branches everywhere...complete with silk-screened pictures of clock faces?
  • This is not a particularly difficult technology, all you have to do is bond the aluminum to mylar rather than polycarbonate, but I see a couple of problems. First you would have a short life span, the discs would get pretty scratched up in just regular use, but this is really not an issue for a disposable disc format. Secondly, and more importantly, the discs would not be compatible with all drives, and would be prone to read errors, and jamming drives during ejection. I can see the tech support calls already, "Hi, I installed your software, and it hosed my drive, please send me xxx dollars to replace it.

  • Re:Website.... (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04, 2000 @08:05PM (#582004)
    heh.. obvously none of you have heard of ab.

    try it out:

    ab "http://www.thindisc.com/_vti_bin/fpcount.exe/?Pag e=index.htm|Image=1" -n 2000 -c 100

    quickly add 2,000 hits to their counter
  • Whats so revolutionary about this?

    5 times thinner than a CD...

    Can be wrapped around a soda can...

    5 1/4" floppies could do this years ago!

    If it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck...

  • OT: just for interest's sake... (Score:3)

    by DJGreg ( 28663 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @05:53PM (#582007)

    They should put up a slashbox that shows the current stats for slashdot.

    • Uptime (for all machines) ;)
    • Current hits per second (1 min average)
    • Current bandwidth usage (1 min average)

    It would be interesting to see and also be a great advertisement for Open Source Software in a high stress environment.

  • Two points - weight and disposability (Score:5)

    by Fencepost ( 107992 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @05:33PM (#582008) Journal
    These aren't intended to replace your existing CDs, they're intended to be a cheaper, lighter, more convenient media for people to distribute things that don't need to be kept for very long.

    I think the main use of these will be in areas that can be considered "promotion," but there's a huge amount of money spent there every year. Ignore the possibility of these being 50% of the cost - how much would AOL save each year by eliminating the postage on 80% of the CD's weight?

    Say a CD weighs 0.5 oz (which is close), if they can find a way to get that down to 0.1 oz, they can probably get a little creative with the packaging and get a mailer that's below 1 oz (or 2, or any other integer up to 13). They're paying a bulk mailing rate rather than one-off first class rates, but if they paid the latter then going from 1.6 oz to 1.2 they'd have a real incentive to shave off that last 0.2 oz. Right now, standard first-class mail rates are $0.33 for the first ounce, plus $0.22 for each additional. If AOL sent 10 million CDs a year out at those rates, it could save them 2.2 million dollars a year on postage. Even if their savings would only be a quarter that amount, would they switch for a $550,000/year savings just on postage if it didn't have any adverse effect?

    These things are also much more disposable - if you're producing something that you want people to be able to use for a month or two but you really don't care beyond that, then these are great - less cost to produce them, and by the time the breakage percentage gets up to areas that you'd be concerned about the material on the disks is out of date anyway. Heck, if they could I suspect there are companies who'd love to have CDs that would intentionally become unreadable after a short time, the problem is that it can't be anything that might muck up someone's CD-ROM drive.

    As to the question of reliability, maybe they start to stress after a few hours of spin and become unreadable. So what? As long as they don't actually break apart, what's the problem if your disposable CD needs to be disposed of?

    -- fencepost

  • Naw.. Their best use is lusers. I have a couple boxes of them still, and you should see a lusers face when I pull one out of a drawer and say "This'll fix your problem. Just pop it in the drive and run setup.exe."

    After the 'OMG' face wears off and they take me seriously, I see them wander back into Marketing with it held at arms length. Of course, most of them have already been bitten by me, so they start prarie dogging over their cubes and laughing while said luser tries to find where to put it.
  • This new disc will be flexible and extremely thin. That also means it will be really easy to cut with scissors, if not torn by hand. If they look too much like paper, there will also be problems, like data-airplanes, where they get folded up and flown across offices. Now that I think of it, that would be cool if I could fold AOL discs like that without them shattering...

    Tell me what makes you so afraid
    Of all those people you say you hate

  • Re:High speed flutter (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    According to the article, the flutter problem has already been solved. The article says: "consumers must possess a little ring that adjusts the optical device in their standard CD, CD-Rom and DVD machines; it's sort of like the plastic gizmo that snaps into a 45-rpm record."

    But you couldn't possibly be expected to read the article. I mean, you had that first post to shoot for.

  • Yea but. (Score:2)

    by emf ( 68407 )
    Can you stick them in a microwave for a nice light show?
  • Well, the other problem is, as the disk degrades, reads will go from - good, to slightly bad (ecc compensates), to possibly read errors that don't get caught by ecc (I know that's theoretically impossible, right? but who has never hit one? nobody), where you think you've got good data, but the files are corrupt.

    This could lead to execution of bad code which causes - well, just about anything. But mainly crashes, freezes, hangs, dumps, chorks, hiccups, dr watsons, bluescreens, abends, and kernel panics. If you're lucky, you'll only lose non-critical data.

    If there's going to be an intentional time limit on the reading of a disk, it is computationally irresponsible to do it this way. It has to read fine, then just plain not read at all, preferably with an error message that states the reason (Your evaluation period has ended, please bend over for more time). And the failure has to not just be friendly to the user, it has to be friendly to the OS as well.

  • Re:Screw thinner, I want a smaller radius. (Score:3)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @08:13PM (#582023) Homepage Journal
    They're not proprietory -- they've been in the CD standards since the beginning. Go to a decent second hand CD store and you should find a couple of old music ones stashed away somewhere...
  • um - special hardware IS needed - unless you've had that special experience of disassembling a slot-loading CD ROM drive to get one of these little motherfuckers out.

    I say there should be mandatory warning labels on these non-circular CDs.

    I know they don't fit into slot loading drives,
    You know they don't fit into slot loading drives.
    But my #$)%*)(@#$!!! mother-in-law doesn't know. Well, she knows now. . .

  • Website.... (Score:5)

    by blogan ( 84463 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @04:43PM (#582025)
    http://www.thindisc.com/ [thindisc.com] Not much there now, but it was the same with Transmeta's site :) As of posting, the counter is 490.

  • Mmm...cherry.... (Score:3)

    by glowingspleen ( 180814 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @08:22PM (#582026) Homepage
    The article mentions that they can be moved around like a Fruit Rollup. Now what -I- want to see is for them to actually use them in Fruit Rollup packages, replacing that annoying cellifane wrap!

    That'd be like a snack and a movie that I could carry in my pocket. Mmmmm....

  • It seems to me that this is not really a CD project yet. Sure they can make it in the shape of a CD, but until they can make the thing spit out of a front loaded CD changer, or make a CD-ROM read it at all (as it seems they still have not from the article) this is just a pretty circle that you can read with their own special drive...

    Soon, however, I hope to see guys doing good work like this make some money, and then I can play frisbee with something that doesn't hurt my hands quite as much as those AOL coasters I use now...

  • Is there a point to "thin"? (Score:5)

    by WarSpiteX ( 98591 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @04:44PM (#582029) Homepage
    I don't see much in the way of an advantage here. What do they possibly offer?

    I'll concede perhaps a faster spinup time since they're lighter, but will these flimsy CDs be able to withstand rotations at 70X without deforming? What about scratches? Most of the thickness of current CDs and DVDs is a protective coating. The real disc itself is extremely thin. Anyone can remove lacquer, it's just making sure that the disc is still worth using afterwards that's important.

  • all we need (Score:5)

    by cydorg_monkey ( 259983 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @05:41PM (#582036) Homepage
    Now all we need is a jewel case that's 5 times as brittle as standard jewel cases.

  • I'm skeptical (Score:5)

    by DeadSea ( 69598 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @05:41PM (#582037) Homepage Journal
    The specification for CDs is very strict about what angle the laser hits the disk, how big the pits are, what wavelength the laser uses, the index of refraction of the cd material, and the thickness of the CD.

    The aluminum layer containing the pits is actually right under the label. The polycarbonate has to be a certain thickness with the right index of refraction such that the laser beam coming in at the right angle will find the pit and return at the correct angle for the detector.

    Furthermore, because CDs are so thick, the point at which the laser enters the plastic is a good ways away from the focal point of the laser (on the pit). This means that the laser enters the CD over a large surface area (many many times the size of a pit), just one factor that makes CDs resistant to dust and scratching.

    Even if you were able to play with the index of refraction of your material such that you could get the cd to work when it is thinner, your CD would be more suseptible to dust and scratches (face it, CDs aren't great now). In the applications suggested here, I'd think that might be something of an issue.

    At the very least expect it not to work in many drives just because it can't be held in place properly. My CD-ROM operates on its side. To work like that the cradle has little clips on the sides to hold the CD. That obviously relys on the CD's rigidity. Also think of walkmans that use ball bearings in the center hole to hold on to a CD.

  • Reminds me of the item in Brainstorm(1983). Imaginge a reel-to-reel tape player, but intead of a black magnetic tape, it was all reflective n shiny like a CD.

  • Me, I'd think that the business-card CDs and CD-Rs you see at trade shows and advertised in the classifieds would have become more common than they are by now; no special hardware needed to play them, while the article on the ThinDisc mentioned a need for a hub adaptor. Since I haven't seen the former taking off, I have trouble imagining the latter will actually see widespread use - and that's neglecting the notions of "vaporware" already making the rounds here on /.

  • Try www.thindisc.com [www.thindi...mtargetnew], or a search on Google [www.google.comtargetnew] which turned up the name of the company in connection with several venture capital firms.
  • That's because the business card CDs are bloody expensive.

    At [this outlet] [octave.com] they're $1.25 to $2 a pop.

    Ouch.


    --

  • Screw thinner, I want a smaller radius. (Score:3)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @06:20PM (#582076) Homepage Journal
    There is a second, smaller standard for CDs - an 8cm diameter. Sony use them in their new digital camera [steves-digicams.com]. They only store about 180MB when standard CD technolgy is used, but Sony has that double CD density [slashdot.org] technology, and if you did a DVD in that size you'd be able to fit over 4Gig in a double sided, double layered disk. They're cool and tiny and should be the future.

  • Vaporware Generator (Score:5)

    by bartyboy ( 99076 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @04:48PM (#582084)
    I can't write code, but I imagine that Slashdot editors have something that takes the following inputs:

    • Elite Company Name [FooBar Co. Inc.]
    • Elite Product Name [SuckaFoo Storage System]
    • Storage Size [1 gig | 400 cds | 1200 DVDs ]
    • Media Type [Ashtray | Spare Tire | Carbon Paper]
    • Available in [2006 | 2019 | 2495]


    and prints out a story like this one.

    Yes, the (soon to be patented) Slashdot Vaporware Generator.

    Believe the hype.

  • Wouldn't the rotation hold it stiff? (Score:3)

    by vheissu ( 229617 ) on Monday December 04, 2000 @04:51PM (#582086)
    I would think centrifugal force (ok, intertia for all you refrence frame nitpicks) would have some stabilizing factor. I'm not sure what the plastic adapter disk looks like, but perhaps that could provide stiffening as well. Anyway, the point is that these can be manufactured more easily for promotional type deals, not as a safe storage medium for important data. I can see this-there are zillions of cheap CDs kicking around that you wouldn't use more than once or twice--video game demos, etc. What I want to know is: Do they still spark in the microwave?

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