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[Max White]

He watches over us all, always. Even those who don't know of his existence are but playtoys of the god of dick moves.

[Flying Dice]

Space lab in space. That won't be my future home. I would rather have a space lab underwater.

So... a sea laboratory of some sort? In the future?

[Knight of Fools]

Hard drives will be massive by then. So, put a space lab in a hard drive, put the hard drive in space, and now you have a Space Lab in the C:\ !

[Descan]

Especially if DNA data storage becomes commercial. I mean, it won't be good for like a computer hard drive, unless we figure out a really quick way to decode and encode it... But for set-it-and-forget-it storage? Exabytes in a thumb-drive.

[Max White]

DNA is interesting because it works it uses quaternary instead of binary, thus a single base pair can be used to represent two bits.
If we made a molecular structure like DNA, but utilizing more types of base pairs, the amount of data it could hold would increase exponentially.

[Descan]

This is my ignorance shining through, but I thought all data storage had to boil down to 1s and 0s? Wouldn't more base pairs muddle that? o_o I mean AT as 1 and CG as 0...

Okay >w> I really know nothing about data storage. x3

[Aklyon]

Hard drives will be massive by then. So, put a space lab in a hard drive, put the hard drive in space, and now you have a Space Lab in the C:\ !

You...gah. That pun. >.<

This is my ignorance shining through, but I thought all data storage had to boil down to 1s and 0s?

Currently, yes. In the future, no. Quantum computers have Qubits, for example. Those are 1, 0, or both (superpositioned).

[Max White]

This is my ignorance shining through, but I thought all data storage had to boil down to 1s and 0s? Wouldn't more base pairs muddle that? o_o I mean AT as 1 and CG as 0...

Okay >w> I really know nothing about data storage. x3

In a computer, yes. Digital computers can only handle 1's and 0's, but that dosn't mean that is the only form of data storage man kind has ever known.
Take for example a book. It stores data as a series of markings that form shapes. No even close to binary! If you then scan each page and safe as a .pdf your computer will then translate that into a binary format.
DNA is a molecule (Two, if you want to be specific) that has its own way of storing data in chemical base pairs, of which there are four types, thus it is base 4. While a computer only knows on and off, and we express this as 1 and 0, DNA knows guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine, and these could easily be expressed as 0, 1, 2 and 3.
A chemical compound like DNA but with more pairs can express greater range, thus less is used to show more.

[Reelya]

This is my ignorance shining through, but I thought all data storage had to boil down to 1s and 0s? Wouldn't more base pairs muddle that? o_o I mean AT as 1 and CG as 0...

Okay >w> I really know nothing about data storage. x3

It does boil down to 0 or 1, but when you have e.g. 4 possible letters, each letter repesents 2 bits. With 8 possible letters, each letter stores 3 bits, 16 letters = 4 bits per letter, etc.

There doesn't necessarily have to be a 1:1 relationship between letters and bits. e.g. with a 3-value system (base 3 numbers) you can still represent every possible number. The same with base-10. There is no exact between binary and base-10, but they can still both represent the same range of values.

[Knight of Fools]

Y'know, talking about DNA and data storage really adds a whole new meaning to "thumb drive".

[Lagslayer]

This is my ignorance shining through, but I thought all data storage had to boil down to 1s and 0s? Wouldn't more base pairs muddle that? o_o I mean AT as 1 and CG as 0...

Okay >w> I really know nothing about data storage. x3

It does boil down to 0 or 1, but when you have e.g. 4 possible letters, each letter repesents 2 bits. With 8 possible letters, each letter stores 3 bits, 16 letters = 4 bits per letter, etc.

There doesn't necessarily have to be a 1:1 relationship between letters and bits. e.g. with a 3-value system (base 3 numbers) you can still represent every possible number. The same with base-10. There is no exact between binary and base-10, but they can still both represent the same range of values.

Binary is used because it is a simpler system. Either it is there or it is not there. For our current computer structures, it's easier to use this system. Humans use different structures to carry out calculations (chemicals and the like). This causes us to perform calculations in a different manner from computers. But I'm starting to get off on a tangent.

[Mego]

Y'know, talking about DNA and data storage really adds a whole new meaning to "thumb drive".

I read an article about a guy who lost one of his fingers in an accident, and got a prosthetic with a flash drive in it.

Especially if DNA data storage becomes commercial. I mean, it won't be good for like a computer hard drive, unless we figure out a really quick way to decode and encode it... But for set-it-and-forget-it storage? Exabytes in a thumb-drive.

Mutation would be a bitch. "Oh shit, my hard drive has cancer."

[Knight of Fools]

Adds a whole new meaning to "giving someone the finger".

_{I'm on a roll tonight.}

[TherosPherae]

Adds a whole new meaning to "giving someone the finger".

Yea and truly, humanity will have reached its pinnacle only when one can give someone else three thousand cat gifs and flip them off at the same time.

[Mego]

Adds a whole new meaning to "giving someone the finger".

Yea and truly, humanity will have reached its pinnacle only when one can give someone else three thousand cat gifs encoded in cat DNA and flip them off at the same time.

FTFY