A question about burning USB stick

[Basil Chupin]

On 09/01/2011 16:09, Doug wrote:
> On 01/08/2011 11:48 PM, Basil Chupin wrote:
>> On 08/01/2011 20:38, Nils Kassube wrote:
>>> Colin Law wrote:
> /snip/
>>>>> stick". One burns a DVD or a CD but not a flash drive.
>>>> I do not understand what you really mean by doing a "burn to a USB
>>> Basil, you don't really "burn" a CD / DVD either or do you set it on
>>> fire? (SCNR)
> /snip/
>
> As I understand it, you actually _do_ burn a CD or a DVD--or at least the
> little laser diode in the drive does. I believe that it burns off an 
> extremely
> tiny bit of the coating on a layer of the disk, so that it imitates 
> the tiny
> dimple or pit that a commercial CD or DVD has in the track.
>
> Over time, depending on the quality of the disk, that coating tends to
> migrate back and fill up the hole, making the disk have an error at
> that point. This is the reason that governments are still seeking a way
> to create high-density permanent records. (The only thing that seems
> fairly permanent is chiselling in stone! Phonograph records work pretty
> well too. Like the record we sent to the stars on one of the probes
> which will leave the solar system. Only neither format is high-density.)

This last para is most informative, thanks for this. As to the rest, 
Nils was simply trying to be a smart-bum :-) (SCNR stands for Sorry, 
Could Not Resist).

BC

-- 
"Opinions are like assholes - everyone has one."
            Inspector "Dirty Harry" Callahan