Tag Archives: SSD

June 24, 2024 · 03:13

Reengineering an old solution

I was bending my mind over backwards to stay creative. And as I was mulling over something I read a year ago, my mind started to race towards an optional solution. You see, the idea is not novel but it has been forgotten. So if Tandon never renewed their patent, you get the exclusive option to rule there. If they have, you could file for an innovative patent, giving you still a decent payment for your trouble.

Going back 34 years
Yes, it was the height of the IT innovative time and this age had plenty of failures, but it also had decent blockbusters and whilst they all wanted to rule the world, they clamped down on their IP innovations. Tandon was one of those.

As you can see in this image the drives (both of them) look like space hoarders, it was the age of Seagate with their 20MB or 30MB drives. The nice part was that these drives could be ejected. It was a novel idea where the CFO could put its drive with the books in the vault.

Why is this an issue?
Well, last year I saw an article that well over 70% of all cloud accounts were invaded on. To see this we need to look (at https://www.cybersecuritydive.com/news/cloud-intrusions-spike-crowdstrike/708315/) where we see ‘Cloud intrusions spiked 75% in 2023, CrowdStrike says’ it comes with the text “Organisations with weak cloud security controls and gaps in cross-domain visibility are getting outmanoeuvred by threat actors and struck by intrusions” And this is not all. Captains of industry lacking IT knowledge will happily accept that free 1TB USB drive at a trade show, not realising that it also creates a backdoor on their servers. They shouldn’t be too upset, it happened to a few people at the Pentagon as well (as they are supposed to know what they are doing). So the cloud is a failing setting of security. So consider that, as well as Samsung putting their stuff online because they didn’t realise how to operate OpenAI. Just a few examples. So what is to stop their research or revenue results to be placed on a drive like the pre-cloud days?

You think I would put my IP in the cloud? Actually I did, but I have a rather nasty defence system that is a repeated action I learned in 1988 and no one has a clue where to look (and I never put it with the usual suspects), but this is me and I will not give you that trick because all kinds of people read my blog.

So back to Tandon. In stead of this big drive, consider a normal drive space and in stead of that big box. Consider a tray with enough space to fit an SDD with the connector inside the tray, going to a plug on the outside of the tray. With a simple kit that can be purchased if more than one drive is used. Now see the Tandon solution as it could be. An ejectable drive solution for many. Yes you can connect just a wire and use an external SSD, but it becomes messy and these wires can also malfunction. There is even the option of adding AES256 that could be added in the drive on one side, so even if they steal the drive (optionally with computer) the thieves lose out as a dongle could be required. It merely depends on how secure you want the data to be. A CFO might rely on his safe for the books. An IP research post might need more security. So consider if you want to be the optional victim staged in the 75%, or do you need your data to be secure.

So whomever take the idea and reengineer it (with optional extras), you are welcome and have a nice day. I just completed 12.5% of Monday, time to snore like a lumberjack.

Wakey, wakey Amazon

I had an idea, it is not my IP, even though it might be possible to create an innovation patent. You see, the original idea came from Hans Breukhoven who in the Netherlands created the Free Record Store in the early 80’s (perhaps late 70’s). His idea was that you could request a CD, any CD and it would be created on the spot. It never came to anything, because data speeds were not ready for this. He had the insight when 300KB/s CD drives were regarded as high technology. The idea was good, but the timing was wrong. Today I wanted to see/get the movie StarGate, I had not seen it for a long time and even though I have it on DVD somewhere, the Blu-ray would be preferred. At that point my mind started to think. You see in the same way that Spotify is destroying the music industry. Netflix et al are doing pretty much the same to the movies (not intentionally mind you). People are stopping to care about physical formats and that is where it soon will be at. You see when congestion hits (and it will hit hard), people will rely on anything to see a movie and that is where physical formats will come into its own right again. In that same way console games are hitting new spots and even as this is not a short term track. A system that can create games, 4K movies and so on might have a real future in metropolitan areas. There will still be a need for games and movies on disc and having it in stock when it concerns new releases does make sense. But what about a movie from 2018 and before that? What about a game that is 2020 or earlier? This sets the premise of thousands of titles. Yet in this day and age shops cannot have it all, there is no space and moreover, the money becomes scarce in their pockets. So what if a store had such a machine? You can order, you can pay upfront of online and you get a voucher and the time when to pick it up and that is when you pick up YOUR request. Now it might be ordering, but soon (within 2 years) devices can burn a 4K movie in under 5 minutes and that is when the setting changes. No longer a stage of waiting for stock, just go to the store and get what you want and considering that the stage contains thousands of movies there will be a real market soon enough. I reckon that by the time we get to PS6 and whatever Microsoft has, these systems will have the burners and when you order overnight, the next morning a quality 4K movie will be waiting for you. Optionally you can keep it on an SSD so that you can watch within minutes and the disc is created overnight (home systems will not have the high speed burners that commercial places will have).

A setting that could be here a lot sooner than we think and a man named Hans Breukhoven paved that way 30 years ago. By the way try finding some of your favourite movies, how many are still on the market? How many does Netflix (et al) have?

Marketing fools

We are at the moment getting drowned in YouTube videos on who will win the next console wars. Or the most a lot of videos are a marketing approach from both sides mind you. Even as the bungles and stupidities by Microsoft makes me go towards the PS5 alone, there are however a few exceptions, they do exist. The first is theGamer who gives us a few clear parts.

Like the BS approach we saw Microsoft had brought in the previous approach, the given fact is that the Xbox does have more teraflops, yet what does it mean? Faster is not essentially better and speed is limited to the slowest part and in the case of Microsoft that seems to be the drive. Sony has optimised gaming to such an extent, that Spiderman will play on the PS5 in 0.8 seconds (against 8 seconds on PS4). They are bringing cartridge speed to the console and that is a huge advantage. To be honest, there is something you both need to know, BOTH consoles will have the option to an internal SSD expansion, so it seems that Microsoft is repairing one of their more stupid decisions, they only needed 8 years to learn this.

Sony showed recently how their SSD works in speed and it seems that it is able to process well to close to 100% more data uncompressed and over 25% more data compressed, it seems that teraflops really don’t matter too much when your system is that much slower. Yes the initial drive on the Xbox is larger, but both can expand and so far I have seen a 3TB option for the PS5, as such there is no issue on storage, yet there is a larger issue on the setting on drive speed and that implies that the Xbox is already lagging at the start of the race. The second movie I watched was about the Decline of Xbox by the Act Man. I felt like him, mainly because I loved my Xbox 360, I only got the PS3 as it came as a free extra with my new Sony TV. Microsoft had that much advantage and they squandered it in one E3 meeting. After that the Xbox Flaws started showing up and it made me resent my Xbox. I actually only got it for 2 games, Subnautica and Elite Dangerous. The second one is a game that I have loved since the early version on the CBM 64 and what I saw on the Xbox was overwhelming. Here is a console that could have been the number one, yet they lost it on senior managers that see greed not games, revenue not fun and it showed in that disastrous E3 meeting where we heard ‘always online’, and ‘no lending games’. Greed enticements that would destroy a console from the very beginning. There is the harassment side to marketed pushes and bullying people to be online and it did not go well for Microsoft from that point onwards. The video has a lot more, including a few things I never knew, and it might not matter but they were nice to know things.

Now,as we are 6 months away from the next line of consoles, we see that Sony is taking the gaming lead again and Microsoft seems to hide behind their teraflops. Yes they have more, but consider that in the big three they are in third position, their most powerful console is behind the weakest console of them all (Nintendo Switch), which gives you an idea that those in charge are not ready to take the price home. Now to be fair Spencer is a massive upgrade, yet Microsoft had him fight the good fight with one hand behind his back for almost three years. They lost cool, they lost exclusive titles and a marketing team that had to do a 180 degree on physical games and cloud gaming twice. Yet that group has a unique view on spin.

Although some critique in that video is a little harsh, it is not that wrong, and there are still flaws that are very unlikely to be fixed at present, as such Sony is not just off to the races, it is close to be the only consideration for the upcoming console purchase, within two consoles the positions are beyond reversed and Microsoft did it to themselves.

As Microsoft keeps on focusing on power, more and more gamers are watching what they are actually getting for it, as such, I believe that Microsoft will make another mistake before the launch, we will see ‘demo’ options for 8K gaming, and how great it is. Yes, it will be good, optionally even great and if there was an 8K AC Origin, I would play it again, yet the one little part missing in all this is the fact that is the small fact that an 8K TV starts at $7000, that is a decent one, some are $10K and more, with the B&O version being mentioned at €13,500, which is almost $20,000. As such most 8K TV’s, will be in the immediate future unaffordable to 90% of the gamers.

So how happy am I?

I am not, you see Microsoft had pushed Sony to its limits in their Xbo360 era, I doubt if the PS4 would be that much better if Microsoft was not breathing in their neck. Now that this setting is gone, there is every indication that the jump from PS5 to PS6 will be a lot less appealing. Competition drives good hardware for gaming and that is what we are about to lose.

Even as we see that a lot of the damage at that disastrous E3 was repaired by
Phil Spencer, he still has a lot of work to do and the current approach of what we see marketed in the form of Gigaflops and ‘high dynamic cool’ games, all whilst we see a larger base of changes that make the claim pointless and it ends being a mere race of Microsoft fighting not to be overtaken by Nintendo even further. At present their option to surpass Sony is close to ludicrous.

Their system and OS needs an overhaul, and if I am correct, Sony will have the option to launch their (highly speculated) internal social media named GameBook, if that happens and Microsoft cannot counter it (apart from marketed pushes to your page), there will be no second round, it could mean the end of Microsoft as a gaming platform, apart from what Google and Apple brings to the next year. There is a chance that they will nibble on the market share cadaver that Microsoft brings and that leaves Sony as the big winner, which is also a little bad. As both machines were true competitors, they upped the game and both delivered cool gaming experience, now that push falls away, there is every indication that Sony will remain at the lonesome top making their need to remain on the edge of gaming also a lot less likely, so I do hope that Microsoft ups their game, right quick.

Tag Archives: SSD

Reengineering an old solution

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