IBM's announcement of an optical transceiver that can download data at an amazing speed of 160 Gigabits a second prompted me to do some math. After converting 160 Gigabits into 20 Gigabytes, I saw that a digitized feature-length film in an .avi format totals about 700 Megabytes. So by my calculations, IBM's device would allow you to download about 28.8 movies in a split second. An HD movie could be downloaded in about one second as well, IBM said.
I can hardly wait for the day to happen when you can download any film you want, when you want for a reasonable price anywhere in the world in just a fraction of a second--although now I am blocked from buying a movie download or other licensed digital content from the U.S. sites I tried from where I live in Europe--for whatever idiotic licensing reason. That same reasoning, whatever it is, helps to explain why DVDs you pay a lot of money for cannot be played on players from different zones around the world. Should I mention DRM restrictions, as well? Sadly, if and when IBM's optical transceiver does see application, the technology might just not mean that much as far as what you will be able to do with it.
