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

mainichi.jp

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

#211

Post by evilDagmar »

aww_dang wrote: post #23
spicybright wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The typical reasons costs a lot to upgrade tech for large organizations, existing supply lines to get the equipment, the pro/cons being well understood at this point, etc. Oh, and of course our good old friend "well we've always done it this way!"

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2019/10/22/us-nuclear-weapo... "US nuclear weapons command finally ditches 8-inch floppies" >And yet, such a computer system ranks as one of the most important in the world – so critical in fact that nobody has wanted to change or upgrade it since it was built nearly half a century ago.

Luckily for well, everyone, those 8-inch floppies didn't really see a lot of use.

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

#212

Post by evilDagmar »

laumars wrote: post #203
WalterBright wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd cut a notch in the floppies so I could turn them over and use them. The back sides worked fine, too!

I’d have still expected them be writable because unlike CDs, writing a magnetic field isn’t destructive. But what I meant was whether cheap blank disks used a slightly different (cheaper) magnetic alloy with a shorter read/write limit than commercial software where they maybe spent a little more knowing it needed to be read often? I do remember cassettes had different quality magnetic strips but I don’t know if the s…

It depended on which brands of floppies you bought. Some vendors were more profit-oriented than others and would skimp on the binding agent or just the amount of magnetic material without which the signal can become so weak they could become corrupted by being the the same room as a Wooly Willy.

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

#214

Post by bobthepanda »

neom wrote: post #40
qmarchi wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese culture is very strict about being being precise and having high expectations of each other and of companies in general. Some may not know this, but trains, and railcars in Japan are accurate _down to the second_ and if there's any deviation from that, the management company for the line will generally offer an apology to the riders. The easiest one I could find was from 2017 where a train left the station 2…

I presume then they are computer controlled? If so, how does one actually leave early or late?

Japanese train drivers are trained to the extreme, with periodic auditing by the trainers that involves being timed with a stopwatch as they cover the speedometer. https://youtu.be/xzkU6tmdImY?t=205

The high punctuality isn't necessarily without its faults; it creates a high-stress environment to adhere to schedule. 106 people died in a train crash that is hypothesized to have happened because the train was 60 seconds late. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amagasaki_derailment

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

#215

Post by Overtonwindow »

jmercouris wrote: post #77
Overtonwindow wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I must commend the Berlin transit system. Except for the occasional strike, I found it to be extremely efficient, clean, and rather polite. Especially the trams.

Did you and I live in the same Berlin??? The S Bahn is literally always late.

I have a strange compulsion to leave for things much earlier than I need to, and I arrive early always. I honestly didn’t notice, looked down of the platform and checked when the next train was coming, and wait. The tram was fantastic, I took it every day and really liked it. I was there for three months in the fall.

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

#216

Post by jeeeb »

silverpepsi wrote: post #66
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? This is Japan, no pretending needed. They're waaaay backwards, internet there tends to be 20 years behind the times for starters ... Thought this was common knowledge.

Not sure what you mean by the “internet” being 20 years behind. Maybe website design? Certainly not connectivity which is generally world class.

Japan has a great culture of precision engineering and quality (although software is a bit of a different story). On the other hand decision making is very conservative and change is often blocked by vested interests.

Also they invested heavily in a lot of cutting edge infrastructure during the bubble, but now have been slow to replace it.

The most likely answer as to why the MPD still use floppy disks is there is no funding for a total system upgrade. The most likely reason there is no funding is a combination of conservative decision making combined with a politically well connected vendor that makes big bucks of supporting the existing infrastructure.

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

#217

Post by anticensor »

jrockway wrote: post #57
neom wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume then they are computer controlled? If so, how does one actually leave early or late?

Computer control is nice but it's one tiny piece. If wayside infrastructure fails during rush hour, trains are going to be delayed, so they have to assure that won't happen. Station dwell times are another big issue that computers don't have any control over (the train can't leave when someone's backpack is caught in the door). Computer control is more of a safety issue than a reliability enhancer. Computers are pret…

> the train can't leave when someone's backpack is caught in the door

It can, if the door slam shuts instead of attempting to reopen and close.

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

#218

Post by reaperducer »

easrng wrote: post #206
reaperducer wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also remember plenty of floppies that I’ve written data to not even surviving the 30 minute cycle to college back in the 90s. I think stray magnetic fields were more of a problem back then. Fridge magnets, magnetic clasps on wallets and bags, magnetic clasps on notebooks and binders, etc. There were lots of hidden opportunities for corruption. These days, nobody worries about the mag stripe on their credit card get…

To be fair, basically nobody uses magstripe anymore.

Plenty still do. The Home Depots near me don't do chip. They're magstripe only.

I'm more annoyed when a store doesn't take Apple Pay. The clerks always seem embarrassed when I ask because I'm sure I'm the 900,000th person to inquire. I find it so odd that the Krogers in two cities I've been to recently don't do contactless payments at all.

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

#219

Post by jmercouris »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #215
jmercouris wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you and I live in the same Berlin??? The S Bahn is literally always late.

I have a strange compulsion to leave for things much earlier than I need to, and I arrive early always. I honestly didn’t notice, looked down of the platform and checked when the next train was coming, and wait. The tram was fantastic, I took it every day and really liked it. I was there for three months in the fall.

I see. I lived almost a decade in Berlin, and both in west and east. I cannot say enough good things about the trains. However I will not say they are always on time!

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

#220

Post by DJBunnies »

pklausler wrote: post #169
DJBunnies wrote: post #29

1.44MB?

You mean "1.44MB", not 1.44MB :-) since they hold 1440 KiB (1474560 bytes), not 1509949, despite the name. Those disks sat on a throne of lies. And the disks in this story were most likely Japanese "2.88MB" disks, whose true capacity I do not know.

Great.
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