Wow, 144PB in a CF card. Now, where's my flying car?

During the PMA 2010 digital imaging tradeshow, the CompactFlash Association announced that the CF 5.0 specification can now support up to 144 petabytes. If you are wondering what that means, a petabyte (PB) is a million gigabytes (GB), which means a CF card could potentially hold 144,000,000GB of data.

Instead of rejoicing at this technological marvel, this news got me slightly depressed. Just last week, my compact camera's fully charged battery was depleted in the space of one birthday party, long before I had time to fill up the 8GB card in it with photos. Imagine trying to fully utilize a CF card that is "just" 1PB in capacity. You'll need to lug around more spare batteries than your camera bag can ever hold.

We're into the second decade of the 21st century, so aren't we all supposed to be traveling around in flying cars by now? Battery power should really be the least of my concerns. Looks like the futuristic world predicted by sci-fi movies like Back to the Future Part II won't become a reality for some time to come--I just hope I'll still be alive to see it.

Well maybe not a flying car but how about if I live to see a full line of fully electric cars with long range batteries lasting for up to a 1000 miles? Maybe Global Cooling? Br-r-r-r it's cold out there this morning! Well it's time to go start Mary's car and turn on the electrically heated seats and adjust the thermostat to a comfy 74 degrees but no, it doesn't fly and it doesn't run on electricity. Just plain old global warming, gasoline.