What in the hell are they using them for? They hold so little data I don’t see how they can even be practical at this point.
this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
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10 to one they weren't, look how oddly this article is phrased. I'd guess there was a rule government offices had to accept floppy discs, have the equipment to read them, but the clients weren't actually submitting that way anymore.
Like, the first paragraph explains.
Until last week there were about 1,900 official governmental application procedures that stipulated businesses must submit floppies or CD-ROMs (specifically) containing supplementary data.
Not "the government had to accept them", but "businesses were required to submit them".
It's not a hypothetical problem, there was even news a few years ago about how businesses were complaining they had to send in a dozen+ disks at a time because of file formats.
The laws were written at the dawn of the digital age, in the 70s and 80s, stipulating specific storage media, and just never got updated because the government didn't view it as a problem.
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Older Boeing's use floppies to update their flight computer data even today
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One thing came to mind, Irreplaceable infrastructure computer systems from decades ago.
There are powerplants and oil rigs that use computer from decades ago which is irreplaceable (either due to technical or cost effective).
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I wonder if this will affect the vintage computer enthusiasts?
They're not banning floppies lol, they're just not required for submitting things to the government anymore.
I imagine such a huge drop in demand would probably lead to any still standing manufacturers to cease production though.
The last manufacturers stopped making them 10 years ago. There's basically just one guy "making" floppies these days, and he doesn't actually manufacture them, he just buys used ones for pennies on the dollar, formats and tests them, and sells them on. Not one company has made new floppies in a decade. A shocking number of industries are dependant on just like, this one random dude.
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This sort of thing is why I dislike legislation that mandates the use of something very specific. Things change and it is better to create laws that don’t become outdated as fast as tech tends to.
Without it we get a different iPhone charger every year that no other device is allowing to use
It’s just a brick with a USB socket. I still have 5W usb chargers from iPhones a decade ago that work with anything USB.
They didn’t change connectors on the cables frequently either. The old big one, lightning, and USB C are the only connectors iPhone used.
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That's a Japan thing and a legislative failure.
What normally happens in most countries is the law would say something vague like "digital means or devices such as floppy disks or equivalent".
Then the Executive makes and maintains the rules of application of that law according to the Hierarchy of Norms (things probably are organized differently in Common Law countries so I don't know the English term but the principle is the same), which dictates in more detail how the law is to be applied ("please use a web form, or a USB keys for legacy processes").
Sometimes the executive lags behind a bit but typically it's just a ministry making decisions within the margin of the law, so it's not too bad.
It's an argument of centralization vs. decentralization and there are pros and cons to each approach.
Hey, hey - you’re going to have to hotten up that take there, Bubba.
"I have no executive function, so I need the executive branch of the government to function for me."
Is that hot enough?
🔥
If the 1.44MB DS/HD floppies are too modern for your gear, 720MB DS/DD media is also available (for a premium).
they probably meant 720KB there
Are you snubbing 8" floppies just because they don't fit in your pocket?
Is that a floppie in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
I hear data in Japan is smaller and efficiently organized.
Ah man the translucent colourful floppies.. that takes me back
It was a happier time, I miss my atomic purple floppies.
—
I rewrote that several times because I have the mind of a child, but atomic purple 3.5” was even worse so I give up and you get to enjoy both.
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I still have some somewhere. One even says "DOOM" on it, of course.
Lol. I think I still have a bunch of the old Slackware floppies somewhere.
Yes, but can I still submit using a fax machine?
Healthcare worker, chiming in:
Yes please.
Ah yes, just how sensitive information should be sent. In clear text over the internet.
In principle none of that data should leave the phone line. Dunno whether carriers encrypt VoIP but in any case it shouldn't leak into the internet. Back in the days it was considered secure because in practice it's indeed similarly secure as a letter: In organisational terms, yes, in computer science terms, hell no.
You can encrypt emails, we’ve been doing it for decades. It’s easier to compromise faxes than encrypted emails
The message I was responding to uses fax.
Sure, that's never going. Why would we want to lose our technological connection to Abraham Lincoln and samurai?
I love that this is literally accurate.
Had to go check, damn.
Christ!
Scottish inventor Alexander Bain worked on chemical-mechanical fax-type devices and in 1846 was able to reproduce graphic signs in laboratory experiments. He received British patent 9745 on May 27, 1843, for his "Electric Printing Telegraph".
In 1880, English inventor Shelford Bidwell constructed the scanning phototelegraph that was the first telefax machine to scan any two-dimensional original, not requiring manual plotting or drawing.
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer or other output device. The original document is scanned with a fax machine (or a telecopier), which processes the contents (text or images) as a single fixed graphic image, converting it into a bitmap, and then transmitting it through the telephone system in the form of audio-frequency tones. The receiving fax machine interprets the tones and reconstructs the image, printing a paper copy. Early systems used direct conversions of image darkness to audio tone in a continuous or analog manner. Since the 1980s, most machines transmit an audio-encoded digital representation of the page, using data compression to more quickly transmit areas that are all-white or all-black.
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