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Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

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Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#101

Post by dzhiurgis »

cogman10 wrote: post #58
kyleblarson wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on a 3 hour Shinkansen trip that was 2 minutes late and the staff profusely apologized when we arrived. I have also been on a cross US Amtrak trip that was literally 30 hours late and they rationed food and the staff became increasingly rude and unhelpful.

In Wales, I've had a train scheduled for every hour that has both just not shown up and has ran straight through the station without stopping (lol). Pretty awesome watching the train you've been waiting for just sort of keep going :D. (The magic of newtown Wales!)

IIRC buses in London do that when they are overfilled.

The worst is tho running and rushing and then finally making it into train car that turns out to be going completely wrong direction.

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#102

Post by WalterBright »

onion2k wrote: post #63
egeozcan wrote: post #6

Will we pretend that the usage of floppy disks is normal in almost 2022? Or perhaps the news value comes from this fact, but then, they don't make any comment on it... Weird. I also love that they seem to be taking this seriously, even when it's just 38 people, while all over the world, governments (cough Turkey cough) don't even apologize when they leak the personal details of ALL of their citizens. Well.

Will we pretend that the usage of floppy disks is normal in almost 2022? What's wrong with them? They're reasonably robust for short term shortage, easily copyable, and you can design your own format if you want to. The space limitation is only a problem if you need to actually store more than 1.4MB or so. And if you want to lock down an environment so USB devices can't be used there aren't many other portable storag…

USB sticks are better in every respect.

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#104

Post by Zircom »

iszomer wrote: post #86
tux3 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan has been known to apologize publicly when a train runs a couple minutes late.

Japan has also been known to cram passengers into trains during rush hour. I imagine this practice has probably been fervently deprecated due to covid19. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7kor5nHtZQ

That seems like a personal decision to get into the already crowded car instead of waiting for the next one, I don't imagine someone is standing at the station platform and forcing more people into the train car against their will.

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#105

Post by ghaff »

BoorishBears wrote: post #98
iypx wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Very fun times storing your home-work on a disk, bringing the disk to school and being unable to read it. Very common problem. I never had that while growing up. Used floppies for ~6 years, since school computers were ancient, no usb, and the cd drives always struggled to read home burned cds.. Floppies worked 100% regardless of brand or drive. In 6 years I had 1 floppy suddenly die on me.. which I thought was real…

I constantly had failed floppies. I started using them as a kid, but probably after the world had moved on (I liked to tinker, and usually free computers were old computers) Part of me wonders if the quality was "A shaped", where early disks were experimental, then reliable but expensive disks became common, then cheap but maybe not as reliable disks became even more common

There was definitely a period, at least with 5.25" disks, when name brand disks like Verbatim definitely tended to be more reliable than cheap disks bought in bulk. The latter weren't that bad (usually) and it often still made sense to use them so long as you were extra-careful with backups.

In general, failed floppies weren't a weekly occurrence or anything like that. But a floppy that couldn't be read or at least developed bad sectors was not rare either.

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#107

Post by pxx »

WalterBright wrote: post #100
jandrese wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also tremendously slow, somewhat fragile, prone to media decay, and extremely difficult to source replacement media in 2021. Replacement drives are also somewhat hard to find. Most people with security constraints have long since moved on to optical media (CDr and DVDr), but even those are starting to become hard to find. Optical media has the advantage of having write-once modes which makes it easier to avo…

> prone to media decay Not in my experience. I have floppies 40 years old that haven't lost a byte.

... and I have had 3.5" floppies that have lost data by taking them for a five minute walk a block away.

40 years indicates you're probably using 5¼" (or larger!) media which is slightly better at media decay due to lower densities.

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#108

Post by notRobot »

woudsma wrote: post #60

I use floppy disks for my Akai S2800 sampler :) Originally built around 1992 it still works (and sounds) great! Modding it to support USB is too expensive, and I quite enjoy some of the limitations it brings. You have to get creative for some things.

I used to use floppies for my Yamaha synth from the early 2000s, but I recently finally did the USB mod and I completely recommend it!

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#109

Post by dfxm12 »

woudsma wrote: post #60

I use floppy disks for my Akai S2800 sampler :) Originally built around 1992 it still works (and sounds) great! Modding it to support USB is too expensive, and I quite enjoy some of the limitations it brings. You have to get creative for some things.

I quite enjoy some of the limitations it brings. You have to get creative for some things.

There really is something distinctive from the golden age of hip hop where you were limited sample size and really had to flip and combine many different samples to produce a beat. J Dilla came a little later, but he was certainly influenced by the sound and I think it should be no surprise that his Akai Sampler (MPC3000, which also had a 3.5" disk drive) would be included in the Smithsonian collection [0].

0 - https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2014.139.1?destination=/...

Re: Tokyo police lose 2 floppy disks containing info on public housing applicants

#110

Post by wolrah »

WalterBright wrote: post #100
jandrese wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are also tremendously slow, somewhat fragile, prone to media decay, and extremely difficult to source replacement media in 2021. Replacement drives are also somewhat hard to find. Most people with security constraints have long since moved on to optical media (CDr and DVDr), but even those are starting to become hard to find. Optical media has the advantage of having write-once modes which makes it easier to avo…

> prone to media decay Not in my experience. I have floppies 40 years old that haven't lost a byte.

My old floppies are great. The newer ones, starting around 2000 or so, are mostly junk.
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