I would suggest using a material that isn't write once/read many in order to save having to dispose of all those BBs. How about plastic balls that could be recycled for use by simply melting them down and reforming them. Also, how do you suggest keeping the balls properly aligned so that the laser can read them? In a liquid, the BBs will rotate on all axis due to turbulence. How about grooves so the BBs will ride on rails?
Also, larger bandwidth facilities may be represented by volleyballs, basketballs and in the near future, cageballs. :) I'm looking for venture capital for a new laser based technology called LTM. This stands for Liquid Transport Medium and it consists of lasers which holographically engrave datagrams on steel spheres the size of BB's which are then injected into the transport pipes in conjunction with a clear lubricant that serves as the liquid transport medium to carry the datagram spheres to their destination where the datagram is read from the spheres by another laser. The sphere may then be routed down another transport pipe, or, if it has reached its final destination then it is shunted off to a government data archive center in order to meet the new data access requirements that are before Congress.
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