Vapourware: The tech that never was

fleurWed 12 March, 2008 3:32pm

great feature-cheers

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 11:25am

i'd hardly heard of most of these! i want rainbow storage in my life, though holographic technology is almost certainly going to be the successor to solid-state in the future.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 2:52pm

Great feature. Detailed and interesting, and i love the idea of silicon film.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 3:01pm

[quote]Google Mail is in the running, having been in beta since 2004.[/quote]

I stopped reading after that. How many M$ dollars were required to call the most advanced webmail to date vaporware? LOL.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 3:07pm

@above: I don't think it was even called vaporware, it was just suggested that i could be argued that it is.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 3:11pm

Google Mail is so incredibly functional spam filter, that it hardly fits into what i consider "vaporware". I think they just forgot to clear those 50x10 pixels off the logo :)

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 3:11pm

"So which would you back: paper or three-dimensional atomic holographic optical data storage nanotechnology?"

The paper. The advance of conventional storage is basically automatic, and not impressive. If the paper reaches a high enough capacity, it will be an excellent method of backup. Rather than dealing with the clutter of jewel cases or the expense of an external HD, I could keep my important stuff in a common binder. This would be particularly useful for sensitive information: god knows I'd love to be able to just burn some of my stuff if the feds ever bust in, rather than hoping I knew they were coming far enough in advance to do a seven-pass wipe.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 3:53pm

I worked at an outsourced tech support co in the states back in the day. Profitability was waning in the wake of the bubble, and in the early 2000s, they started trying to branch out from the ISPs they usually serviced. I remember this one big meeting in particular where managers announced with a "we are saved" look on their faces, that we had a very high probability to win the contract for the Phantom.
<P>
I just laughed. Sometimes, when I remember that place, I can't help but wonder if they'll ever learn the lessons of 1999.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 4:25pm

PowerBASIC for Linux should have his vaporware award too !!

<< Yes, as announced at Fall Comdex 98, we will have a compiler for Linux some time this year. >>

10 years !!!

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 4:32pm

Does anyone remember the proposed Indreama? That Linux based console that was simply not meant to be.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 4:32pm

"But Abideen's claims of being able to compress 450 foolscap pages of plain text into a 25mm square of paper are hilariously unimpressive. That amount of text is equal roughly to 1.47MB of data."

The guy can store a 100 megs on a sheet of 8.5x11 paper and you call it unimpressive? WTF is wrong with you?

Business does not want to archive mps and divx's. They want to store correspondence and sales data. For most small to medium sized business, this tech means their entire archives of all records for their business can be stored in a three ring binder - on a medium they trust and believe will not degrade over time. For cheap.

If a guy shows me how to store 100 megs on a sheet of paper? That about as far from hilariously unimpressive as you can get.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 4:43pm

There are different kinds.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 5:13pm

Nikons D1 was NOT the first dSLR by a major MFG, Kodak had the 460 and 420 three years earier, the 460 was something like 30 grand, As I recall, but it was a true dSLR (built around a Nikon N90 body)

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 5:16pm

Duke Nukem Whenever :D

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 5:18pm

I think a selling point of the Rainbow technology would be that the medium is future proof. When people stop making DVD drives in 10 years you'll be hard pressed to figure out a way of reading your archived data 10 years after that. If you store the data on a piece of archival quality paper then you can always just scan it in because although scanner technology will continue to improve there will always be some form of scanners. In fact it will probably be even easier because you'll have scanners embedded in your eyes...

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 5:27pm

I too think the author underrates the paper-as-data-storage concept. If the prototype can put 100mb on a page of standard letter paper, then the claim of 2.5gb per page sound plausible given time for the technology to mature.

Imagine an nth-generation form of this technology that combines data storage with human-readable text or standard illustrations -- that is, the data would be encoded, microscopically, into standard text. So you might publish a critique, of a movie or album, that actually contains clips (or even the entirety) of the work under review.

Certainly, this sort of tech would have potential uses that other storage mechanisms couldn't match.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 5:51pm

Can we please let rainbow die already? The maximum amount of information you can store on a sheet of paper is a simple function of your dpi and color depth. To get 2.7GB of data on a 22mm square your dpi and/or color depth are beyond what printers/scanners are capable of under perfect (i.e. impossible) conditions. The practical problems are many - paper is not uniform in color, fades in light, wrinkles, tears, etc... A fingerprint or speck of dust would destroy your data.

By using shapes rather than a grid of pixels, he is greatly reducing the amount of information he can store in a given area, not increasing it. It's either his attempt at error correction, or a sign the whole thing is a fraud.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 5:56pm

I think the author has been fair to Rainbow Storage. It's one of the idealistic ideas that does -- to quote the article -- look good on paper, but it would be subject to too much deterioration over time to considered a practical method of storing data.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 6:54pm

atomchip that's the great one: www.atomchip.com
These guys are increasing storage and speed of their chip, from year to year, but there is no real product to buy.
By the way, I wonder if Intel or them are going to sue for name infringement.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 7:37pm

we are anonymous
we are legion
scientology, we are coming for you.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 10:02pm

Don't ever forget Global Thermonuclear War for the Apple ][GS.

AnonymousThu 13 March, 2008 10:59pm

What about Bubble Memory!?!?

AnonymousFri 14 March, 2008 1:55am

Wow, "a type of 3.5-inch drive capable of storing 1.2 petabytes of data"? Well that sounds good, but man, that'll be a real wait when you want to defragment, but wait, with the technology involved, it sound like it won't need to be! It'd make one hell of a file index file though!

AnonymousFri 14 March, 2008 3:09am

whats with it being spread over 20 pages your deluded if you think anyone is going click that many times for one page of information learn to put it all on one page its not hard

AnonymousFri 14 March, 2008 3:28am

Paper is not a "fragile medium." How can you even write an article like this? It shows you did no research. Paper, according to, IIRC, some researchers, is far more reliable media than magnetic media.

Think Egyptian papyrus....

AnonymousFri 14 March, 2008 3:40am

Use a real filesystem and you won't need to defragment.

AnonymousFri 14 March, 2008 5:10am

[i]Paper is not a "fragile medium." How can you even write an article like this? It shows you did no research. Paper, according to, IIRC, some researchers, is far more reliable media than magnetic media.[/i]

Have you been in a used bookstore, lately and seen all the yellow, brittle books?

[i]Think Egyptian papyrus....[/i]

Papyrus isn't paper.

AnonymousFri 14 March, 2008 5:53am

Just need some Chinese Democracy to go with it all

AnonymousFri 14 March, 2008 6:29am

He never claimed the things that CNet's article claims that he has claimed. Please check your facts. The author has a disclaimer on his website.

AnonymousFri 14 March, 2008 10:06am

I remember these high-layer disks being mentioned several years ago (probably when Tomorrow's World was still running!)

I still think the idea has possibilities - so either I am missing what the problem is here or the big Blu-Ray et al players are sitting on this.

Incidentally, how do you produce those gorgeous Lissajous-type graphics you've used?

AnonymousFri 14 March, 2008 11:22am

There are several compilers for Linux. Gcc and Java for example- if it takes you >10 years to learn then I suggest you have a problem

AnonymousFri 14 March, 2008 11:59am

It's a little sad that anybody still believes Duke Nukem Forever will ever hit stores. Did you watch that trailer? It's Duke…lifting weights. Nothing else. No gameplay, which you'd think they would have started developing sometime in the last 12 years.

AnonymousFri 14 March, 2008 12:05pm

How about perl 6? I think it's the most potential to become vaporware.
Ruby 2.0 is a vaporware according to its own creator,Matz. He said that currently it's just a motivation bait.

AnonymousMon 31 March, 2008 4:19pm

Xanada hardly counts as vapourware - it's a real concept; it just hasn't been adopted by the masses, except in a bastard form as http and html