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Is anyone REALLY worried?
Ladies and gentlemen. You are all probably correct and all probably wasting your time. Technology moves on. Does anyone else remember the first IBM I-GB drive for the mainframe?. That was around 40 years ago and cost $75,000 for 1 GB.
Today on my PC (which is a million times more powerful than the mainframes of that era, I have over 10 TB of hard drive storage (pretty inexpensive) and my boot drive is a 1/2 GB SSD. SSD prices have come sown since my machine arrived about a year ago and they are still coming down.
I agree with the comment that mechanical moving parts is a problem and that is going the way of the dodo.
Just look at your car. Open the hood. If you can see the ground, it is probably an older car.
Technology moves on. All the stuff that is now blocking your view of the ground in your car is (I think as far as I can tell) NOT moving parts.
I don't worry about it and I view it as a temporary 'idea that works now, - but is not destined to be around forever.partially because of all the reasons mentioned, but also because it is not an issue.
IBM has recently publicly announced that they have been able to successfully write and read data at the atomic level just using a very small number of atoms. There are more than enough of those around and the read/write speed is even better than SSDs.
I don't know if and when that capability will be commonplace, but remember that your cell phone is probably more capable of processing data than the multi million dollar mainframes of a short time ago and your cell phone cost a whole lot less.
This is almost (not quite - but almost) arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin
I really think that this is a non-question. Relax. It will be resolved without depleting the currently available Helium (there is a lot more available, just costs mor to get at it) and we will probably (may already have - I am not an atomic scientist) be able to make our own sooner than you think.
Technical progress is moving at an increasing rate. Remember the story about the Patent office official who quit in the 1890s because he felt that 'everything that could be invented already had been invented and his job was irrelevant'? Well, he sure was wrong.
What we see today will be considered archaic by our own children.
People are amazing. Believe it. A couple of months ago, I was startled to watch my 3 1/2 year old granson use an ipad like he was in his teens and had been using it for years. I later found out that his mother had just picked it up that morning from the local library and had received a two minute overview from the librarian (which he had overheard because he was standing next to her) and without a single question, he wasby late morning zipping through all the kid stuff like he had been using it for years. My daughter grew up with computers in the house as both of her parents were and still are in Data Processing and we had PCs and Apple (because that's what the schools had at that time) in the house. My son who is 8 years younger than his sister was using computers before he could read and somewhat before he could really talk well.
Stop worrying. This is a non-issue.
Today on my PC (which is a million times more powerful than the mainframes of that era, I have over 10 TB of hard drive storage (pretty inexpensive) and my boot drive is a 1/2 GB SSD. SSD prices have come sown since my machine arrived about a year ago and they are still coming down.
I agree with the comment that mechanical moving parts is a problem and that is going the way of the dodo.
Just look at your car. Open the hood. If you can see the ground, it is probably an older car.
Technology moves on. All the stuff that is now blocking your view of the ground in your car is (I think as far as I can tell) NOT moving parts.
I don't worry about it and I view it as a temporary 'idea that works now, - but is not destined to be around forever.partially because of all the reasons mentioned, but also because it is not an issue.
IBM has recently publicly announced that they have been able to successfully write and read data at the atomic level just using a very small number of atoms. There are more than enough of those around and the read/write speed is even better than SSDs.
I don't know if and when that capability will be commonplace, but remember that your cell phone is probably more capable of processing data than the multi million dollar mainframes of a short time ago and your cell phone cost a whole lot less.
This is almost (not quite - but almost) arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin
I really think that this is a non-question. Relax. It will be resolved without depleting the currently available Helium (there is a lot more available, just costs mor to get at it) and we will probably (may already have - I am not an atomic scientist) be able to make our own sooner than you think.
Technical progress is moving at an increasing rate. Remember the story about the Patent office official who quit in the 1890s because he felt that 'everything that could be invented already had been invented and his job was irrelevant'? Well, he sure was wrong.
What we see today will be considered archaic by our own children.
People are amazing. Believe it. A couple of months ago, I was startled to watch my 3 1/2 year old granson use an ipad like he was in his teens and had been using it for years. I later found out that his mother had just picked it up that morning from the local library and had received a two minute overview from the librarian (which he had overheard because he was standing next to her) and without a single question, he wasby late morning zipping through all the kid stuff like he had been using it for years. My daughter grew up with computers in the house as both of her parents were and still are in Data Processing and we had PCs and Apple (because that's what the schools had at that time) in the house. My son who is 8 years younger than his sister was using computers before he could read and somewhat before he could really talk well.
Stop worrying. This is a non-issue.
Posted by sysdev@...
27th Dec
