Vagueness and the Aftermath - A sporadic diary

[RED-DOG]

Been glued to a yak.

[RED-DOG]

Jonny Nash was right.


After wondering about brain cell regeneration for a couple of days, I've started wondering about artificial data storage. You know what I mean, flash-cards, memory sticks, hard drives etc.

Now I understand how some data is transmitted electronically. Take a telephone conversation as an example.

Someone speaks into a microphone, (In essence, a tiny speaker) the sound waves cause a membrane to vibrate, said membrane is connected to an electro-magnet, which transforms speech vibrations into electrical impulses. These impulses travel along a cable until they reach a speaker at the other end where the whole process is reversed.

Now in the example above, everything was moving. The voice went in, the electrical impulses travelled down the cable in the correct order, and they got made into speech again before they came out.

But imagine you are storing those impulses instead of transmitting them. What form are they in then?

Are they still moving in the storage medium, or are they motionless?

What stops them from leaking out or getting jumbled up.

How do we store a mixture of data, like for instance music, pictures and text all in the same container?

Have a look at a 8gb micro sd card. It's smaller than my little finger nail, but it will hold all the photos in my family album, the complete works of Shakespeare, and Hank Williams greatest hits volumes 1 & 2.

I can't even begin to grasp it.

[Rod Paradise]

Someone speaks into a microphone, (In essence, a tiny speaker) the sound waves cause a membrane to vibrate, said membrane is connected to an electro-magnet, which transforms speech vibrations into electrical impulses. These impulses travel along a cable until they reach a piece of kit that measures the size of the impulses at regular intervals, that information is encoded into a system of 1's & 0's. That collection of 1's & 0's can then be transmitted using many methods to another piece of kit that takes those samples & reassembles them into a close reproduction of the electrical impulses, which are then sent down a cable until they reach a speaker at the other end where the whole process is reversed.

Now in the example above, the middle part is similar to (but a lot faster than) dicatating a telegram and someone reading it to the person at the other end who can do a good impression of the person who first dictated the telegram.

But imagine you are storing those impulses instead of transmitting them. You keep a copy of the telegram.

Are they still moving in the storage medium, or are they motionless?

What stops them from leaking out or getting jumbled up.

How do we store a mixture of data, like for instance music, pictures and text all in the same container? - that's more complicated WRT the pictures.

Have a look at a 8gb micro sd card. It's smaller than my little finger nail, but it will hold all the photos in my family album, the complete works of Shakespeare, and Hank Williams greatest hits volumes 1 & 2.

I can't even begin to grasp it.

A very simplified stab at it.

[RED-DOG]

These ones and zeros, there must be millions of them. How are they stored? What form do they take?

[Karabiner]

I just hold my hands up and admit that I just don't get that stuff.

I didn't get it when I could take a picture on my phone and e-mail it there and then to anyone I wanted to.

On a totally unrelated topic, one went shopping today in town and purchased two pairs of trysers in M&S and one chuckled about it all the way home on the bus.

[Rod Paradise]

These ones and zeros, there must be millions of them. How are they stored? What form do they take?

Millions upon millions. during the call in the bit between the encoders they are ons and offs of electricity. Point of it all is it's a lot easier to detect very fast ons and offs than to accurately transmit & receive the many levels of a sound wave. You've reduced the required sensitivity and accuracy but then need a massive increase in speed.

How they're stored depends on the medium, on a cd there's a little hole for a 1 & no hole for a 0 (or the other way round, as long as all the readers encoders use the same method it doesn't matter), so instead of a variable groove on a record with all the potential for damage and requirement for sensitive equipment to translate the nuances of that groove back to the listener, we have a simple yes or no for the reader to read, but it needs to do it really fast, which it can. On a hard disk they're different magnetic charges (AFAICR), can't tell you for a flash drive without googling.

[RED-DOG]

These ones and zeros, there must be millions of them. How are they stored? What form do they take?

Millions upon millions. during the call in the bit between the encoders they are ons and offs of electricity. Point of it all is it's a lot easier to detect very fast ons and offs than to accurately transmit & receive the many levels of a sound wave. You've reduced the required sensitivity and accuracy but then need a massive increase in speed.

How they're stored depends on the medium, on a cd there's a little hole for a 1 & no hole for a 0 (or the other way round, as long as all the readers encoders use the same method it doesn't matter), so instead of a variable groove on a record with all the potential for damage and requirement for sensitive equipment to translate the nuances of that groove back to the listener, we have a simple yes or no for the reader to read, but it needs to do it really fast, which it can. On a hard disk they're different magnetic charges (AFAICR), can't tell you for a flash drive without googling.

Magnetic charges. Yes. That makes sense, although my mind boggles with the thought of how many, how small, and how close together they must be.

I remember, not many years ago, when a 128mb Sony memory stick was cutting edge technology and cost about £80.

[Rod Paradise]

These ones and zeros, there must be millions of them. How are they stored? What form do they take?

Millions upon millions. during the call in the bit between the encoders they are ons and offs of electricity. Point of it all is it's a lot easier to detect very fast ons and offs than to accurately transmit & receive the many levels of a sound wave. You've reduced the required sensitivity and accuracy but then need a massive increase in speed.

How they're stored depends on the medium, on a cd there's a little hole for a 1 & no hole for a 0 (or the other way round, as long as all the readers encoders use the same method it doesn't matter), so instead of a variable groove on a record with all the potential for damage and requirement for sensitive equipment to translate the nuances of that groove back to the listener, we have a simple yes or no for the reader to read, but it needs to do it really fast, which it can. On a hard disk they're different magnetic charges (AFAICR), can't tell you for a flash drive without googling.

Magnetic charges. Yes. That makes sense, although my mind boggles with the thought of how many, how small, and how close together they must be.

I remember, not many years ago, when a 128mb Sony memory stick was cutting edge technology and cost about £80.

The speed of the advancement is phenomenal and a bit overwhelming to think of - I just bought a 32Gig micro-SD card for about £11.

[RED-DOG]

These ones and zeros, there must be millions of them. How are they stored? What form do they take?

Millions upon millions. during the call in the bit between the encoders they are ons and offs of electricity. Point of it all is it's a lot easier to detect very fast ons and offs than to accurately transmit & receive the many levels of a sound wave. You've reduced the required sensitivity and accuracy but then need a massive increase in speed.

How they're stored depends on the medium, on a cd there's a little hole for a 1 & no hole for a 0 (or the other way round, as long as all the readers encoders use the same method it doesn't matter), so instead of a variable groove on a record with all the potential for damage and requirement for sensitive equipment to translate the nuances of that groove back to the listener, we have a simple yes or no for the reader to read, but it needs to do it really fast, which it can. On a hard disk they're different magnetic charges (AFAICR), can't tell you for a flash drive without googling.

Magnetic charges. Yes. That makes sense, although my mind boggles with the thought of how many, how small, and how close together they must be.

I remember, not many years ago, when a 128mb Sony memory stick was cutting edge technology and cost about £80.

The speed of the advancement is phenomenal and a bit overwhelming to think of - I just bought a 32Gig micro-SD card for about £11.

This is just crayyyzzeeee!!


http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-01/worlds-smallest-memory-bit-stores-data-using-just-12-atoms

[RED-DOG]

I just hold my hands up and admit that I just don't get that stuff.

I didn't get it when I could take a picture on my phone and e-mail it there and then to anyone I wanted to.

On a totally unrelated topic, one went shopping today in town and purchased two pairs of trysers in M&S and one chuckled about it all the way home on the bus.

I've been laughing at your trysers recently too Ralph. I've also adopted a few Ralphisms into my everyday vocabulary.

Oy! It's shvitzing I am. Shvitzing like a khazeer.

Give it a couple a days, it'll taste like lobster toymidor.

[Karabiner]

I just hold my hands up and admit that I just don't get that stuff.

I didn't get it when I could take a picture on my phone and e-mail it there and then to anyone I wanted to.

On a totally unrelated topic, one went shopping today in town and purchased two pairs of trysers in M&S and one chuckled about it all the way home on the bus.

I've been laughing at your trysers recently too Ralph. I've also adopted a few Ralphisms into my everyday vocabulary.

Oy! It's shvitzing I am. Shvitzing like a khazeer.

Give it a couple a days, it'll taste like lobster toymidor.

I'm impressed by your memory Tom, lobster toymidor ftw.

[pokerfan]

These ones and zeros, there must be millions of them. How are they stored? What form do they take?

Millions upon millions. during the call in the bit between the encoders they are ons and offs of electricity. Point of it all is it's a lot easier to detect very fast ons and offs than to accurately transmit & receive the many levels of a sound wave. You've reduced the required sensitivity and accuracy but then need a massive increase in speed.

How they're stored depends on the medium, on a cd there's a little hole for a 1 & no hole for a 0 (or the other way round, as long as all the readers encoders use the same method it doesn't matter), so instead of a variable groove on a record with all the potential for damage and requirement for sensitive equipment to translate the nuances of that groove back to the listener, we have a simple yes or no for the reader to read, but it needs to do it really fast, which it can. On a hard disk they're different magnetic charges (AFAICR), can't tell you for a flash drive without googling.

Magnetic charges. Yes. That makes sense, although my mind boggles with the thought of how many, how small, and how close together they must be.

I remember, not many years ago, when a 128mb Sony memory stick was cutting edge technology and cost about £80.

The speed of the advancement is phenomenal and a bit overwhelming to think of - I just bought a 32Gig micro-SD card for about £11.

This is just crayyyzzeeee!!


http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-01/worlds-smallest-memory-bit-stores-data-using-just-12-atoms

5 kelvin is pretty cool.

[Machka]

Take a 32GB micro SD card.

Note the upper case GB for Giga Byte Giga=billion

as opposed to Gb as that would be Giga bit

there are 8 bits to a Byte so 1GB = 8 x 1Gb



Most of what you see is "wrapper"



The little black rectangle is the actual chip.

Now this is a 32GB chip.

1GB = 1024 MegaBytes = 1024 x 1024 KiloBytes = 1024 x 1024 x 1024 Bytes

so

1GB = 1024 x 1024 x 1024 Bytes = 1,073,741,824 Bytes

so

32GB = 32 x 1,073,741,824 Bytes

but there are 8 bits to a Byte

so this is

32 x 1,073,741,824 x 8 bits

= 274,877,906,944 bits

So this 32GB Micro SD card will store about 275 billion bits.

Each of these bits is stores in a transistor.

Assuming 1 bit is stored in 1 transistor that means this little chip has 275 billion transistors in it!

Probably.

[Machka]

If you want me to attempt to explain bits, bytes, etc and put them in the context of pictures, these words on a screen, etc, then I'll have a stab at it.

[RED-DOG]

If you want me to attempt to explain bits, bytes, etc and put them in the context of pictures, these words on a screen, etc, then I'll have a stab at it.

Oh please do. I'm fascinated by this stuff, I just struggle to get my head around it.