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Japan declares victory in effort to end government use of floppy disks (www.reuters.com)

submitted 4 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (1 children)

When I was in Japan a decade ago, email was still rare, the electricity bill requires someone to come to your home and calculate it each month, the ATM wouldn't work on weekends after certain hours or on holidays, a lot of paperwork to do anything, and other little gotchas like that, that made it feel far behind at times.

They are still far ahead when it comes to baths and toilets though. The infrastructure is also superior to anything anywhere else except perhaps China.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

huh? I'd say email was quite popular there, it was just tied to the mobile operator (and has then been replaced with Line)

[+] [email protected] -11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Well that’s dumb.

The government can use whatever system it wants, and if there aren’t components on the market it can justify a make work program to domestically produce them.

Governments were able to run perfectly well without high density removable storage, why is it necessary now?

Why would it want to get rid of floppy disks?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

There's a cost to maintaining old technology, at some point it becomes higher than transitioning to new technology. People have known that since ancient times, that's why the Neo-Assyrian Empire chose to switch from Akkadian to Aramaic.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 4 months ago

There’s also a cost to transitioning to the new technology.

Normalizing arbitrary size removable media makes physical exfiltration much easier because no one is asking why you’re using an illegal technology in the government building.

Floppy disks are not able to identify themselves as a keyboard and release a payload of keystrokes on command, or hide entire soc computers complete with network adapters.

There is also the matter of retraining on an institutional scale, and if you think it’s as simple as “put this into the computer, not that” you’re woefully underinformed.

Just as an aside, it’s pretty fraught to compare a language transition caused by centuries of forced resettlement to switching the kind of computer thingy government employees use over the course of two years.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

They're now all using WAN facing Windows 7 machines!

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Surprising as new hardware hasn’t had a floppy disk drive for years and old equipment is probably running a non supported operating system which is totally vulnerable.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You might be surprised (or not) by the amount of fax machines still being used in germany. It's not quite the same but also an ancient technology that just refuses to die here. As IT guy it drives me crazy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

When it comes to faxes, doctors and lawyers seem to be the main supporters in Australia. They have secure messaging available but cling to the insecure and antiquated fax. I’ve integrated fax into medical practice management apps and they thought it was such a step forward (after a while).

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

We turned off our fax number at our lab, to force doctors to send via email. They weren't happy, but what was the alternative.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Wow, activists! Well done!