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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

#201

Post by abruzzi »

I still use floppies a lot. I know, why? Well there is a lot of hardware from the 80's and 90's that, unlike simple PCs, does not really obsolete.* I know this affects a lot of areas, but mine is synthesizers and samplers. Synths allows you to save sounds you created or banks of sounds, and depending on the synth, possibly other things. Samplers recorded short snippets of digital audio and then allows you to place that sound in a configuration that allowed you to play it like a synthesizer.

Fortunately, most synths no longer really need the floppy since most of what it gets you is easily replaced with MIDI SYSEX, and dump requests. Samplers on the other hand, while many did implement MIDI SDS, dumping digital audio at 31.25kbps is an exercise in boredom. Some of the later samplers have SCSI, so saving off to SD cards is easy (thanks to the SCSI2SD boards) but for some, I still have to save off to floppy.

* While there are newer devices of this type available without the floppy dependancy, each musical instrument is a unique creation with its own sound, so just because there is something new it doesn't mean that new thing is a replacement for the original thing (just as a trumpet isn't a relacement for a violin.)

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

#202

Post by silverpepsi »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #157
silverpepsi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

Japan isn't backwards. It's more accurate to describe them as "sideways". They just don't follow the same tech track as everyone else.

Your comment would imply they both lack certain innovations we have but also have equally big ones they're ahead of us on. I don't really find that to be the case. I think it is awesome you can board a bus with a 10,000 yen note and the machine can give you change no problem. Also, ATM machines take your coins for deposit and all. But that has been around twenty plus years, and I can't think of anything else substantial I'm jealous of.

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

#203

Post by laumars »

WalterBright wrote: post #134
laumars wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So have I. But 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. Maybe consumer floppies were of a lower quality than published ones? I don’t know if that’s true but I do remember having a really low success rate with consumer floppies (it got so bad I’d often write two floppies just in case).

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 same was ever true for disks too… so it’s probably bonkers. I’m just throwing some ideas around without much thought. :)

It might just be a case that college kid me was less careful with his disks than you were.

More recently though, I have unboxed my old collection of 3” (not 3.5” but literally 3 inch) floppies for the Amstrad CPC 464 and they almost all worked despite being nearly 40 years old. So I definitely believe you when you post about your success rate.

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

#204

Post by tandymodel100 »

iszomer wrote: post #65
scoopertrooper wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not quite obscurity given the attackers could measure the disk and do a quick Yahoo search. Maybe, security by antiquity?

Both. There was an episode in the second `gig` of GITS anime that showcased this model to secure a character's secret ledger before hackers fried his brain. For a brief period, I kept a copy of my /etc/passwd and keyfiles on a HiMD disk with an RH1.

I’m curious now because I don’t recall the episode - what was the episode title?

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

#205

Post by iszomer »

tandymodel100 wrote: post #204
iszomer wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both. There was an episode in the second `gig` of GITS anime that showcased this model to secure a character's secret ledger before hackers fried his brain. For a brief period, I kept a copy of my /etc/passwd and keyfiles on a HiMD disk with an RH1.

I’m curious now because I don’t recall the episode - what was the episode title?

Fabricate Fog

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

#206

Post by easrng »

reaperducer wrote: post #155
laumars wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So have I. But 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. Maybe consumer floppies were of a lower quality than published ones? I don’t know if that’s true but I do remember having a really low success rate with consumer floppies (it got so bad I’d often write two floppies just in case).

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.

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

#207

Post by myrandomcomment »

the_af wrote: post #88
myrandomcomment wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Japan. If someone finds an item on the street it will be dropped off at the nearest Kōban box (small police station that are everywhere). I lost a pair of sunglasses once that were $$ that I cared about them. I had a rough idea of were I lost them. The next day I went to the local Kōban and sure enough they had them. Lots paperwork to get them back as it is Japan. https://jref.com/articles/koban-japanese-poli…

> If someone finds an item on the street it will be dropped off at the nearest Kōban box Unless it's an umbrella. For some magical reason, umbrellas are excempt from this rule and can be taken from wherever by anyone. I lost a cheap umbrella like this during a trip, and read about it and apparently it's the one item it's definitely not safe to leave unattended in Japan. Go figure!

This is very true. Cheap umbrellas are a community item. :)

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

#208

Post by noizejoy »

WalterBright wrote: post #134
laumars wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So have I. But 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. Maybe consumer floppies were of a lower quality than published ones? I don’t know if that’s true but I do remember having a really low success rate with consumer floppies (it got so bad I’d often write two floppies just in case).

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

That was one of the earliest instances I remember, where superior functionality was shipped with a product but kind of locked up. And like some other such “locks” they were easily defeated.

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

#209

Post by jandrese »

reaperducer wrote: post #153
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…

They are also tremendously slow When you're only reading 1.44 megs of data, speed isn't that big a deal.

It has been many years now, but I recall a full floppy dump took on the order of a few minutes to complete. Small data sizes were countered by the incredibly slow floppy drive interface.

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

#210

Post by evilDagmar »

anigbrowl wrote: post #112

The Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) has lost two floppy disks containing personal information on 38 people Amateurs. In the USA we can do that kind of thing for 38 million people. with the advances in private sector we're on track to do so for 3.8 billion any day now.

Now, to be fair we did outsource that security clearance data to China... Why I have no idea.
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