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Linuxcare Businesses

New Business Card Rescue CDs 229

Posted by CowboyNeal from the linux-in-my-pocket dept.
Linuxcare has introduced version 1.2 of their business card-sized rescue disks, which now contain 140 MB of recovery tools, Debian install capabilities, the X Window System, PCMCIA support, and ssh. From the picture they look pretty cool, too. I remember seeing the business card CDs at a COMDEX a couple of years ago, but this is easily the best use I've seen for them, and is a needed improvement over the previous version.
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New Business Card Rescue CDs More

New Business Card Rescue CDs

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  • I've never seen anything like this before. I checked Linuxcare's site, but couldn't find more about these things, and surprisingly there's nothing on their front page about it. Anybody got a link for more info?

    PS - First Post :)

  • Actually, I have seen a few of these.
    I just received one in the mail the other
    day from ON Semiconductor.
    I was wondering where I could get writeables
    in that size. It woul be neat to make my own.

  • a misnomer. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    They aren't business card size. They are noticeably larger.

  • Perfect for Ambulance Chasers? (Score:3)

    by / ( 33804 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @11:11AM (#1244011)
    I'm getting an uncanny image in my head of linux partisans handing these out to people who've just called customer service because their windoze machines BSODed:

    "Have the data on your computers ever been hurt because of the negligent actions of an operating-system vendor? Linux could help you receive the relief that you deserve." Of course, the notion of a contingency fee would have to be revamped: "We don't make make money unless you decide to give us money instead of downloading the software separately on your own."
  • I must have missed that past article. The cd's seem to have their ends clipped off. can the cdrom read them that way?
  • I'm wondering how useful this would be. The main benefit of having it in this format is that you can put it in your wallet, right? Hopefully, you wouldn't need it *that* often, but you would need it at a moment's notice, so you'd probably have it in there for a while (possibly alongside other items with similar attributes, natch).

    So, if this is the case, how long would it hold up? It is still a CD, after all; would it need similar handling as a normal CD? How likely is it that when you actually need it, it will still be useable?

    Despite these reservations... where can I actually get one? *grin*
  • These oddly cut mini CDROMs aren't really new...

    But wouldn't we geeks just *love* to get our hands on RECORDABLES of the same size!!!

    Finally we can have some high-res pictures of our loved ones in our wallets (140MB... hmmm, quite a lot of loved ones, family, coworkers, pets, pictures of computers and whatever you want to take with you) :-)
  • Yes, ROM drives read them without a problem.
    They are rectangle with the ends rounded.
    I have seen/used a few of these. Motorola, ON semi. And some Limousine service.

  • I don't have a link for you, but I did see true "business card" size CD's at Seybold a few weeks ago. 3.5 by 2", but the CD area was maybe 1.8" in diameter. I think they said they stored 45 MB? So not as much, but so much more portable. Think of all those things you'd want on CD, but don"t want to be hassled to carry one...

    It's also really good for web types around here... you can store basically your whole portfolio on the cd, and just give it out to acquaintances as a business card.

  • Found CD-R versions (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 26, 2000 @11:21AM (#1244020)
    http://www.octave.com/551519/en/cdrmedia/businessc ard.html
  • This bozo came into my bookstore one day, trying to sell me on some sort of scheme. He found out I was a computer guy, and thought I might be interested in this Internet business opportunity.

    He handed me a CD shaped like a rounded business card. I popped it into the center groove of my tray drive CD-Rom and it fired right up with this annoying clipart-animation demo that I put up with as long as I could.

    Basically, the only good thing I found in the whole situation was the CD thingy.

    Here's a link.

    <a href="http://www.bizcard-cd.com">www.bizcard-cd.co m</a>

    Anyway, I kept telling him I wasn't interested in the scheme. I couldn't convince him that my idea for a web business had NOTHING to do with anything he was doing, but he eventually went away and I'm almost ready to launch :)

    paperbacks.homepage.com [homepage.com]

  • Re:Interesting... (Score:4)

    by dattaway ( 3088 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @11:23AM (#1244022) Homepage Journal
    I'd rather have the linuxcare version with the debian, but had a good ride through there site trying to find one. Anyhow, google shows up some vendors of these business card cd's and cdr's:

    http://www.bizcard-cd.com/ [bizcard-cd.com]
    http://store.yahoo.com/c itiscape-retail/buscarcdr.html [yahoo.com]
    http://thiscardrocks.com/ [thiscardrocks.com]
    http://www.nimz.com/mbc.htm [nimz.com]
    http://www.cds.com/shapes/default.htm [cds.com]
    http://www.mcmnewmedia.com/ [mcmnewmedia.com]

    and many more places selling them. If linuxcare is selling their custom version, I'd sure like to know! And pass a few around! :)

  • Re:so... how exactly does that work? (Score:3)

    by bonebill ( 98346 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @11:23AM (#1244023)

    As long as they're rotationally symmetrical, they should spin without any judder.

    The data track is a spiral running from the centre outwards. Since the centre portion of the "disc" is the same as a normal CD, the CD reader will be happy.

    Obviously the "square" ends of the "disc" can't contain any data because any spiral tracks would include portions of the "disc" which don't exist.

  • The only problem I see... (Score:4)

    by aressa ( 35705 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @11:24AM (#1244024) Homepage
    I think this is a really cool idea, don't get me wrong, but:

    These things don't work in mail-slot style ROM readers and they are precarious at best in caddy-readers... that is the only probelm I see.

    I have a couple of old Plextor and NEC ROM drives that use caddys that live in my Linux box, and a spankin new mail-slot DVD drive in my new computer, so I would not be able to use these. Maybe I should have thought of that! :)

    And of course the same goes for a a ton of Japanese market j-pop CD-singles that come on heart, star, and other shape (but balanced) CDs...

    A
  • Yeah, but carrying a computer and CD-ROM drive around with you could be a pain.

    Which gives me a (somewhat offtopic) idea... You know what we really need? Business card size disposable computers, with a nice little color LCD, and enough power to run a little kiosk-type browser. The technology probably isn't too far off...
  • There has got to be a HUGE market for that.... I know most CD-ROMs can read the lil' discs, but can CD-R's write them?
    ----
  • And that's what all there business-card cd-roms are for. So don't expect a link on their website or something.
  • They're mini-CDs, not full-sized CDs. CD media reads from the inner tracks outwards, so as long as the "disc" is balanced you could use any shape.

    (Well... I wonder why they left the short edge rounded. Some drives might need a smooth outer edge for mechanical reasons, even though there's no usable data there.)

  • Re:Business card sized CD-recordables? (lQQk here) (Score:4)

    by victim ( 30647 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @11:27AM (#1244030)
    Ask and ye shall be linked. Look here for your very own business card CD-R blanks [yahoo.com]. Pricy compared to regular blanks ($2-$4 depending on quantity), but I never put a price on cool.

    No affiliation. I just know how to use Google.
  • CDs are written from the center outward. The drive reads these business card CDs the same way you would read an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper with a few inches chopped off the bottom.
  • Are you making one for each company that has "Linux" in its name, or what?
  • What do you use as a cd-drive to read these things? Is it something specific to laptops, or what?

    Open your cupholder...err.. CD drive. See how there are two rings in it, the outer super-jumbo-slurpee sized ring is for normal CDs. The inner, coke-can sized ring is where these things go.

  • Re:The only problem I see... (Score:3)

    by Megane ( 129182 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @11:29AM (#1244034)
    They look like chopped off 3" CDs, so I think that a 3" CD adapter ring (the reverse of those old 45 RPM adapters) would clip onto it well enough. Of course you wouldn't be able to fit the adapter ring in your wallet.
  • From the looks of the picture, I have to wonder what sort of business card is being used for comparison. Because, assuming that the hole in the center is the same size as that of a normal disk (and it would have to be, wouldn't it?), these cd's are much bigger than normal business cards. Or perhaps I jsut have a non-standard sized implimentation of BusinessCard?
  • I think they're selling recordables that size already over here in Germany...

    I'm pretty sure I saw an ad for them the other day, I'll tell you more as soon as I find it...

    cu, rabenwolf

  • From the CD-R FAQ:

    Subject: [7-15] Where can I find CD-ROM business cards? (1999/07/18)

    You can find CD-ROMs in interesting shapes, including business cards. These are functional CD-ROMs that are, for example, the same size and shape as a traditional business card (well, a really thick business card). They can have your name and contact information printed on the front, and can hold a modest amount of data, typically about 40MB.

    As with 80mm CDs (see section (7-14)), you may have trouble playing these "discs" on CD-ROM drives that use caddies or have a "slot-in" design.

    Some net.vendors:

    http://www.cdshapes.com/ [cdshapes.com]
    http://www.pocketcd.com/ [pocketcd.com]

    Check out the second one, you can actually buy them online, though at the time of this posting, the link for pricing info is broken.

  • 140 MB? (Score:2)

    by Frac ( 27516 )
    how do they fit 140 MB of data onto this card? I believe those cards are itself trimmed from 8cm media cards, which hold 140 mb of data or 21 minutes. With the top and bottom trimmed, isn't the largest available data on the CD bounded by the shortest diameter? (in other words, much less than 140mb?)
  • > Well... I wonder why they left the short edge rounded. Some drives might need a smooth outer edge for mechanical reasons, even though there's no usable data there.

    That's easy... they're to make sure the CD stays in place...

    Think about your typical CD-ROM drive... the disc needs sme way to stay centred in the drive. Usually, there's a little "ridge" about 2/3 the way out from the center, to fit mini-CD's. The rounded edge ensures that these things will slip in and that ridge will hold them in place, rather than you having to worry about getting them exactly centered, or them "wandering" in mid-operation.

    It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think you just crossed it.
    --
    - Sean
  • Anyone know how to get ahold of one of the linuxcare ones?
  • True, they are 45mb from what I have read.
    The ones I have are like 20mb of data, 19mb, 23mb, etc.
    The disc is less than 6cm tall.
    a good cm of each end.
  • You know what we really need? Business card size disposable computers, with a nice little color LCD, and enough power to run a little kiosk-type browser. The technology probably isn't too far off..

    Not exactly disposable (quite a pricy toy in fact) and not nearly flexible enough, but still worth a look: Rex [linkmagnet.com]
  • Something tells me these things could cause problems with slot loading drives (they work like car scd players).
  • I got one of these in the mail on time, and it turned out it was a home-brewed cd, because it was a CD-R, and it still had a little room left on it, so I deleted the crap of it, and was able to fit a good 50megs on there of shareware games to give to a friend who doesn't have the internet
  • I don't know if it's all that bad. If a win box goes down, you can walk over to the owner and say, "here - the last 'rescue disk' you'll ever need!"

    Oh wait, that was partisan. Guess you were right. Nevermind ;)
  • I have been working on that my self. I found pre cut 3" cd-r media at CDR Outlet [cdroutlet.com] They also have un-cut 3" disks if your realy brave.
    I just ordered some which the site says should ship in 2 days via ups ground not great for the shipping charges but I'm not ready to cut my own.

    The description is as follows:

    • 10 Pack $15.99
    • Recording Speed : Up to 8X
    • 51.219Meg or 5Min 51Sec of Audio
    • LBA: 26224
    • free clear sleeves with each cd

  • CD-R is $4 in small quantities (Score:3)

    by Booker ( 6173 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @11:40AM (#1244049) Homepage
    Hmm... now that is pretty neat. bizcard-cd [bizcard-cd.com] has blanks for $4 each. Now where's my credit card...
    ----
  • There was an Amway daughter company that was using these type of CDs for their marketing presentations. Quixtar was the name I believe. They hold seminars every now and then, and for people that are interested, then send them a CD in a little clear plastic case (much like a sleeve for your credit/bank card).

    They can be used for much more sophisticated purposes however. Most noteable, as your business card, perhaps your entire website, authentication (probably not likely), medical/personal records, identification (probably not likely, too easy to forge/fake), Product documentation (no more bulky manuals), and many other things conceivable...
  • These miniature CDs have been around for quite a long time. As a matter of fact, I have one with a "New Kids on the Block" single on it. :b

    I think I saw an ISP using this media to distribute their software.

    Anyways, the little CDs took off elsewhere (Japan, I believe), while they were mostly shunned here.

    But, to be honest with you, unless you really dig "cool", they're a big fat waste of money. CD-Rs cost $1 a piece and these Mini CD-Rs run $2 - $5.

    `course, a Linux distro on one of these is just cool as hell. I wonder if I could pick up a couple of hundred of these and pass them out at out next LUG meeting.
  • Nope. Just pop it in a standard CD-ROM drive. Most have a little ridge in hem that will allow them to hold mini-CD's quite comfortably. Which is basically what this is -- a mini-CD, with the edges chopped off.

    Of course, if you have a caddy drive, you're outta luck...

    It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think you just crossed it.
    --
    - Sean

  • Re:Found CD-R versions (Score:5)

    by Jason W ( 65940 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @11:45AM (#1244056)
    Here are some more vendors:

    http://www.cdr4less.com/cgi-bin/web_store.cgi
    http://cardiscs.com/citiscape-retail/buscarcdr.h tml
    http://www.topexpert.de/cd_info_e.htm
    http://www.i-mediacard.com/

  • I've been a fan of single-disk distros for quite a while-- after Staroffice borked my libc a while back, its what I used to rebuild. This sounds like a pretty cool implementation of that, especially with X on-CD.

    Does anyone have any more info, or has anyone ever used this? Could be really useful as a rescue distro...


    The sun is going down, I say we follow it out of town- We've been here for far too long.

  • Almost (Score:2)

    by Booker ( 6173 )
    I seriously doubt that the little ridge holds it in place while it's spinning at god-knows-what RPM. I think the spindle clamps it down while it's spinning... but the ridge DOES make sure that the spindle is aligned correctly when the disc is inserted.

    So, I'd guess that either rounded edges or a rectangle with rounded corners would work - as long as the resulting disc is perfectly inscribed in the correct diameter circle... some of the links in comments here show some wicked looking shapes (gears, fish, etc - just gotta balance it right)
    ----
  • Hrm, you said CD-R, but you erased it... it was a CD-RW? That's even cooler, but I haven't seen any of those for sale...
    ----
  • What I really want is business card shaped CD-RW's. If the disc just has to be balanced, what is stopping someone from selling a CD-RW version?

    Or could I just go to shop class and cut my own? :)

  • LinuxCare CDs: Not so lame after all... (Score:5)

    by rwg ( 59312 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @11:54AM (#1244063)
    At the most recent Atlanta Linux Showcase [linuxshowcase.com], the LinuxCare [linuxcare.com] folks tossed one of their business-card sized recovery CDs in my bag. (Gotta love freebies.) After the initial guffawing over its size (the usable data area on the CD is only about 3/8" across), I popped it in one of my machines at home and rebooted. It turns out there's only around 32 megs of stuff on the CD, but it's enough to make a pretty usable recovery CD. (For comparison, tomsrtbt [toms.net] crams everything on a specially-formatted 3.5" high-density floppy.)

    One problem I had with the CD is that its size and shape makes it prone to "falling through the drive tray" when I use it in one of my SCSI CD-ROM drives. It's just small enough to slide through the slot in the back of the tray if the CD stops spinning at just the right position.

    I've been carrying the CD around in my bookbag and using it on campus lab machines. When I need to ssh somewhere, I reboot the machine with the LinuxCare CD in it, run dhcpcd, run the ssh installation script (which pulls a .deb of ssh from a foreign server and installs it on the ramdrive), and ssh as usual.

    As for availability, I doubt you'll find these things outside of computer shows. (Why not start a project [sourceforge.net] to create a similar recovery CD?) As for its shape, look at www.shapecd.com [shapecd.com] for all the weird shapes you can have CDs cut. As for size, it's only slightly taller than a business card but not as wide.

  • Well, I don't spin 8.5x11 pieces of paper from the center outward while spinning them at high speed, I think it's been covered from the many many other descriptions of how CD-ROMS drives do and don't work. All I know is I've had on in my 8x ad 24x and they read just like normal CDs.

    The only problem I ever had was opening the drive while the CD was reading at full speed (my 52x). It flew clear out of the drive. Could be dangerous if the CD was shaped... uniquely. And by that I mean EXTREMELY uniquely...
  • bz2 and gzip does wonders.

    certainly not for already-compressed media.

  • Business card media == subversive transport??? (Score:3)

    by Y2K is bogus ( 7647 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @11:57AM (#1244066)
    With this business card sized media, you could put literally any data on the cdrom, up to 52MB (on the true business card sized ones).

    Programs such as ssh, gpg, and other crypto sensitive stuff could be placed on here. To hide their contents, make a par-point presentation in staroffice and put that on there. That way, when you meet anyone, just give them one of these rediculously overpriced CDRs with your info on it, and they'll also get a copy of all the non-exportables.

    Actually, the export business is getting easier now, but it doesn't hurt to put something important on them. Just think, if you were Kevin Mitnick and you wanted your data back from the feds, you could've just burned a stack of these things and mailed them to your friends. When you got out of jail, just call one of them up and have them send you your card back. With a stack of 50, the sheer volume would assure you access to your data.

    Actually that brings up another idea for these, put copies of data you need to keep and mail them to people. Or how about a distributed collection of data, each person has to provide the business card to complete the library and access the data. You could make a high-tech easter egg hunt out of this.

    Even better yet, you put the secret key to get at your fortune, spread across a bunch of these. You then mail them out to all your willed partiticpants. When you die, they ALL have to cooperate to get at your money!

    How about putting a unique key on each one of these and having people use them as access cards, you could block out specific access cards and institute your own access policy.

    This would be great for a website. You send each member a card that they have to use each time they access your website, as a password substitute. This would bypass user chosen passwords and provide the ultimate security for accessing a service. If one of the cards is compromised, cancel access for it.

    Make up your own use for these!
  • Mabye I'm missing something here, but I can't find anything about them on Linuxcare's website. In there a URL where you can buy these things? :o
  • While they were giving a few of these guys out at the '99 Atlanta Linux Showcase my cohorts and I managed to sneak away with some. We tried them out when we got back and sure enough they worked great, had a cute LinuxCare bootlogo, most cd drives read them (except for the slot-load pionners...), but I thought I remember them only having 30MB (must have been version 1.1, b/c it also lacked the penguin on the left). I started carrying mine around in my wallet and got some great reactions when I used it good effect in BSOD-like situations.

    Anyway, the lesson is, dont carry the damn things in your wallet, b/c it eventually got cracked and is now useless decoration.

    ~tide
    "Linux is only free if your time has no value."
  • You bought a new brats on the block CD????

    Get out of my way... I need to back away slowly.

    --

  • I've used linux bootdisks to repair damaged FAT partitions, or in a worse case scenario to retrieve at least *some* data from the hard drive. In the old days I'd have a floppy with norton diskedit on it, but with the extensions to fat all my old dos rescue disks are obselete, and any replacements are annoyingly oversized.

    I'd like this so I can repair in style... :)
  • Notwithstanding the form factor, having a very featurful bootable rescue CD is a great idea.

    Sadly, the CD's from most of the distros are useless for rescue, since they only have the bare minimum to install the OS. Has LinuxCare made ISO images available?

    --

  • KPN Telecom (the big nasty comms monopoly folks in The Netherlands) sell so-called intern et cards [primafoon.nl].

    Essentially discs with a browser, a mini-website portal thingy and a 'free' internet deal. They are fully rectangular.. If any-one saw those in CD-R, I'd buy them! The rounded-off ones.. No thanks.
    --

  • Dammit. I've been trying to find the *old* ones for quite some time now, and now they have NEW ones!

    LinuxCare should really sell these things!

    Anyway, the easiest way to get them is to go to a TradeShow where LinuxCare shows up.
  • how durable are these things? can I stick it in my wallet and sit down without worrying about cracking my CD?
  • I was just looking at the shape CDs at bizcard-cd.com. Hmmmm. How long until we see a rescue disk shaped like a penguin? P.S. - Don't even think about it, I've already patented it. And anyway, I think Amazon just patented free thought....
  • My local LUG [beachside.net] got some straight from LinuxCare to use at a Linux Demo Day if I remember right. Had some extras at our next meeting, so everybody snatched them up of course (I remember everybody going "Kewl!!!" ;o) ).

    Well not two weeks later I downloaded and compiled a new kernel and misconfigured it to the point where I couldnt boot. I popped that LinuxCare disk in, booted and recompiled another kernel in no time.

    I think it's much nicer and easier to use then using the rescue mode in RedHat's boot disks. Also, they good to use when someone wants a quick Linux demo too... :o)


    It's sad to live in a world where knowing how to

  • These things are fun! (Score:4)

    by toolj23 ( 24597 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @12:35PM (#1244081)
    I do tech support for a company who sent a large amount of these disks out as a promotion for a new product. Well, as you could guess we got plenty of calls where people had put them in the cdroms that don't have a tray that comes in and out. The ones that just suck the disc in. I even talked to one guy who put one in his regular cd-rom drive and when he opend the tray to take it out it had "eaten it" in his words. And now it was "lost somewhere in his cdrom drive."

    I don't know how many people they had to send reimbursement checks out for their cdrom drives to be fixed but we got quite a number of calls about it.

    Imagine if AOL sent out 20million disks like these. There goes 10million cdrom drives to the repair shop. Haha!
  • Hey, Any case you could post an ISO of it somewhere? Would be a great tool for others.
    If you need a place to keep to it, email me, just remove the *nospam from my email.
    Would be a great tool for others to use, even if it isnt on a little cd / biscard
  • At RhinoCdCard.com [rhinocdcard.com] they specialize in putting custom data on custom cut cds for a very low price.

    They have one that is barely larger than a business card that holds 40mb, and they also plan on producing DVDs cut the same way.

    ----------------------------------------------

  • Buy them here.... (Score:3)

    by sliderpoint ( 147210 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @12:51PM (#1244085)
    CD-R OUTLET [cdroutlet.com] they've got the 3" mini-cd and the business cards, both writable.
  • They also used them for promoting their web portal (countdown 9/9/99 or something like that, was supposed to go online Sept. 9, 1999).
  • You are wrong, they are balanced. If you like physics, work out the force vectors acting on the spinning CD, in both horizontal and vertical players. If you don't like physics, just take my word for it.

    -jwb

  • No, you'll shatter them. I grabbed a few from LinuxCare at the August 1999 LinuxWorld Expo show, and stuck one in my checkbook (internal "pressure" is lower than the wallet). I took it out two months later, to use it, and it had shattered into twenty or so small wedges of CD.

    Maybe my mistake was to use the checkbook (which is more flexible, but has more room to move around). Perhaps the less flexible wallet would have been better.

    --
  • Probably the same uninteresting demo I saw. The idea is neat, but will always be marred in my mind by the fact that the first place I ever saw use it was AMWAY's online arm
  • When did computers that'll boot from a cd become more common than computers with floppy drives?
  • Dosn't the size and shape determine how well the material can be read from an optical standpoint? I assume that cd readers are using a circular method of retrieving the data so how do they read it when large gaps (as seen from the bottoms being sheared off in the pic)? Just a thought.
  • It has saved my butt more than once. Funny, I have used this disc to install primitive operative systems (read: ms) on a pc more than once. The single most used command is:

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/{sda,hda}

    which will wipe out the entire disk including the partition table (don't do this on a disc which contains anything useful!). It makes it possible to install NT4 on a disk larger than 8GB without hassle, and Redhat installers will partition the disc without any nasty questions when the disc is blank. It is also useful when you want to erase a disc "beyond any recognition", ie. when someone else is going to use it.

    I have used tomsrtbt to format a disc with fat, copy a win95 cd into it, booted the machine in dos and started the installation. Why? I didn't have a dos driver for the f*ing CD drive connected to a Sound Blaster controller.

    http://www.toms.net/rb/ [toms.net]

    YES !! I want tomsrtbt ++ on a credit card size cd now !!!!

    Don't leave home without it.

  • ... or any other machine that just has a slot, rather than a tray that slides out?

    And, I certainly realize that a "Linux rescue disc" probably won't work on a Mac ... I'm just asking about the physical compatibility ... flamers, cool yer jets ...

  • I've always thought, and I could be wrong, that the laser started reading on the part closest to the center of the disk and read outward. As long as there wasn't enough data to push it off the edge, it wouldn't even go to the part where the top and bottom were cut off.

    If you made a disk with one small file, the laser would never have a reason to go to the edge of the disc. I think it's the same idea here.




    --

  • You're wrong, sorry :) Ever see a propeller? (Score:3)

    by Venomous Louse ( 12488 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @01:22PM (#1244098)

    Propellers are not circular, and they are balanced. When you think about it that way, suddenly it's not counter-intuitive at all.

    (BTW, this isn't quite on the point, look up how they load centrifuges: If they have seven identical things to go in a centrifuge, they put in three things, spaced 120 degrees apart. It's balanced, and you can forget about those three things completely. Then they put in the other four things, 90 degrees apart. They're balanced too, so the whole thing is still balanced. What's cool is they don't have to worry at all about where the four things are relative to the first three: They simply don't care, because the two groups don't affect each other due to the fact that they're balanced among themselvess. If you look at it, it looks wrong as all hell, but it's balanced right and it won't freak out at high speed.)

  • They did! We got one, and my sister decided to put it in our slot cdrom drive. Course, you can just shake it out, at least on our cdrom drive. Red Storm did this with Politika, put a demo on a minicd in the back of the book.
  • No. The mechanism that grabs the cd is incompatable.
  • I've always thought, and I could be wrong, that the laser started reading on the part closest to the center of the disk and read outward. As long as there wasn't enough data to push it off the edge, it wouldn't even go to the part where the top and bottom were cut off.



    Thanks for the info I guess common sence would allow for that. Are cd's burned sequentially from the inside to the outside?

    If you made a disk with one small file, the laser would never have a reason to go to the edge of the disc. I think it's the same idea here.



    With the dimensions there what is the maxium file size that one could hope to attain?

    Also aren't these things bigger than business cards? The pictured product seemed perhaps 100%-200% bigger than the total size when I last used business cards.

  • If you shaped them as a 3-point or 4-point star you could have a mini CD that doubles as a martial arts weapon ;-) Actually, existing AOL coasters would probably slice well to that same shape (I certainly wasn't going to put one in my machine!).
  • Yeah, I think they are written the same way as they are read.

    I guess you could store 140 MB (I think that's what they said) on one of these before you were limited by the cut off part of the disc.

    They looked larger than business cards to me also, but I really couldn't tell.




    --
  • for those claimming it's balanced.. well in this case it is.but
    I think you havn't seen thier samples like www.shapecd.com. they have quite a lot of unballanced shapes. However. I doubt if there's any influence because the force of gravity is simply to small compared to the torque.

  • Re:Balance (Score:3)

    by Signail11 ( 123143 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @01:45PM (#1244107)
    Utter nonsense, Signal 11. The inertial vector of the system (and by extension the angular momentum vector and any associated torque effects that airflow may cause) is directed outward normal to the plane of the CD, just like any other CD. Please try to learn something about a topic before posting.

  • no X? (Score:1)

    by cfish ( 61161 )
    These things are too small to fit an X and a live filesystem on it. I don't quit understand why live filesystem isn't so popular. It's is the best demo format on any machines. Usually what I do is, pop a slackware 7 CD in a windows machine, boot from the CD, quickly configure network and X, then run X. Slow as it is, I still can demostrate netscape, and sometimes staroffice over the network.

    For rescue, tom's root and boot disk is pretty darn good, and you can make one anywhere.
  • you are a freggin retard - for you to possibly think that a little plastic thingie cant hold 140mb of data?

    cd-rom media of this size currently can't hold 140mb of data.

  • I've only seen two of these so far, both times I had to dig them out of a user's CD-ROM drive. Once was out of a drive that used a caddy. The second was a tray, but it had a large slot and the cd fell through. Usually you can just use a pair of tweezers, but once I had to remove the drive and "shake" it out.

    They're kinda cool, but it'd be a nightmare if all my users got them.

    jeff_C

  • Yes.
    As long as they are balanced.
    Remember, CD's can be of arbitrary size, and read from the inside out. These usually store about 50MB of data on them.

    http://www.sculptedcd.com
  • No. They do not work in slot load drives.
    They will work in any drive that can take a standard 3 inch cd.
  • Hmm. My SUsE cd seems to have a very usable "boot to linux" mode that I have used from time to time.
    --
  • Okay. I know that shaped CDs are not new.. and we hard about these CDs from linuxcare at te last show... but where can we get them?

  • More info on the CDs (Score:3)

    by sumana ( 66640 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @02:50PM (#1244124) Homepage
    Here [linuxcare.com] is the info at the linuxcare website.

  • When 3" CD-Audio singles came out, many of them came with a small adapter which was basically a hollow 5" cd with some sort of micro clip mechanism to hold the mini in the middle.

    I've never used one, and I think they might have required the mini to have a shaped edge, so that the clip wouldn't be thicker than the CD. So they might not be compatible with the mini CD-Rs and rectangular minis we're seeing now.

    If anyone has one of these things, I'd like to hear about whether it works.

  • Different ones hold different sizes. (Score:3)

    by Myself ( 57572 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @03:06PM (#1244130) Journal
    The ones that actually fit in business card holders are 50MB. The slightly larger ones, which you can still wedge into your wallet, are 140. A plain round 3" is 200 or so, I think. 250 perhaps? Then vanilla 5"ers are 650 and you can get overburn-ready discs that go to 700 and if your drive is capable of it, some of these can go to about 708. Check www.ahead.de and look at Nero, everybody's favorite Win9x-based CD authoring software, which includes overburn support.
  • First, this is a complete guess.

    You notice when you burn a disc that when you look at the data side you can see where the data was written? Like if you only write 100 mb, only the first centimeter from the center is used. Well I would guess that if you cut the corners but leave the written portion alone it would work. You'd have to make sure not to bend the CD up, too.

    But like I said, this is a complete guess and I have no reason to think this would work other than it seems logical.

    _________________

  • Well I've had the one I got at ALS in my wallet since October and its still holding up fine. It saved my ass too one day when my webserver's root drive died.

    -Lee

  • Judging from experience..not such a bad idea (Score:3)

    by uebernewby ( 149493 ) on Saturday February 26, 2000 @03:35PM (#1244144) Homepage
    I've had a number of cd's get cracked, a few even had little chips broken off. They've been perfectly usable since, however. Only the parts with the cracks or the missing bits fail.

    I'm guessing this is because the first edge of oxidation around the cut stops any further oxygen from creeping in.

    I might be wrong though, and just have been lucky, but some cracked CD's are still usable after four years. So I suppose it's ok to cut your own cd's. The absence of a protective coating around any edges will, however, ensure that any hand-cut cd doubles as an effective murder weapon.

  • I've been screaming from the rooftops for a long time now that little 3" CD-RW disks are a perfect replacement for damnable floppies. Think of it, CD-R of that size could be used in 90% of the cd-rom drives in existence. If computer companies would start standardizing on new DVD/CD-RW drives and drop 1.44MB floppies, superdisks, and zips, then these sized disks would solve the tranportability problem of normal CDs. You eliminate a drive from the computer, maintain compatibility with CD's and DVD's, you still have access to larger CD's for backup purposes, I could go on an on! Best of all 3" CD-R/CD-RW disks can be used in almost all CD-RW drives already out there. Why don't they start selling these things everywhere?! Doesn't anybody have any "vision"?

    -Frustrated Geek
  • If a credit-card sized CD holds 40MB, then maybe an unfoldable one that comes out double the size (less a bit for the fold) should be able to do a couple of hundred megs. With "bzip2 -9" you could fit a useable distribution on that (especially if you replace monsters like Netscape with something lighter). Q: "What do you know about Linux?" A: Reaches into wallet... "Here, install this!" You might need some reversible brackety bits that slid across the fold, flick-knife style, to make it rigid enough, but I'm sure there are ways. (-:
  • I got one of those mini-cds in that book. Nifty, cute... but it was a mostly just video interview with Tom C. Good stuff, but no full demo 8^)
  • I'm pretty sure we put the SVGA server on there at least.

    Rusty.
  • I hacked up a compressed loopback block device, which is used on the card.

    From the early prototypes we got around 2.5:1 compression on the stuff we put on there. I haven't seen the final ones.

    Rusty.
  • innominate [innominate.de] have them, too. It's a debian 20MB rescue disk. I think it looks cooler than the one from linuxcare, because it's orange and really creditcard size...
  • yeah. and then we'll go to Radio Shack and type into their computers

    10 PRINT "LINUX RULEZ!!@@!!"
    20 GOTO 10

    Then we'll be really cool.

  • I've had it in my wallet for a day or so and it hasn't broken, but then again, I don't always sit on my wallet (front pocket, back pocket switching). I think it'll be fine. My advice is to put it in between two other nonbending cards, e.g., credit cards or some such.

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