Tag Archives: Storage

News: The Future of Music and DRM

 For those of you interested in the debate about copyright protection for music (digital rights management, or DRM, as it’s called) here’s an interesting article from the industry point of view — and a lively discussion on the lively Slashdot forum (some contributions are more, er, erudite than others).   Something I think hasn’t been… Read More »

News: DVDs Go To Eight GB

 Soon you can burn more than 8 gigabytes onto a DVD. Technology co-developed by drive maker Philips and media specialists Verbatim and Mitsubishi Kagaku, adds a second recording layer to a standard-thickness DVD+R disc The Register reports. That’s enough for four hours of DVD-quality material, 16 hours of VHS-quality content or two hours’ archive footage.… Read More »

News: The End To Our Compression Woes?

 A Singapore company has just launched what they say is a technology that will change the way which we compress, store and distribute digital content. MatrixView says that, compared to existing compression solutions such as JPEG and MPEG that are based on complex and predictive techniques to eliminate redundant data (JPEG is a widely used… Read More »

News: Lawsuits over Hard Drive Size

 Something I’ve often wondered about: why is a 20 gigabyte hard-drive actually only 18.6 GB? Some folk in LA are not only wondering, they’re suing. The Register reports that US PC users have banded together to protest against “deceptive advertising” of hard drive capacity by filling a lawsuit against the world’s biggest computer manufacturers. The… Read More »

Software: Retrieving CD Data

 Here’s an option to recover data from unreadable CDs. (I haven’t tested this.) CD/DVD Diagnostic “works to retrieve a consumer’s damaged files corrupted by a defective drive, bad software or from user error”. It works on unreadable, scratched, or corrupt CD-R, CD-RW, DVD+R, and DVD+RW discs. Unlike programs that use Windows’ file system to access… Read More »