Japan declares victory in effort to end government use of floppy disks
Japan declares victory in effort to end government use of floppy disks
Japan's government has finally eliminated the use of floppy disks in all its systems, two decades since their heyday, reaching a long-awaited milestone in a campaign to modernize the bureaucracy. By the middle of last month, the Digital Agency had scrapped all 1,034 regulations governing their use, ...
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The comment section is wild. So many people thinking that the Japanese government is somehow late to the floppy free party. Clearly they have no idea how dire the IT infrastructure situation is for the most critical systems of the world's major super powers
If you think the US government is floppy free, let alone capable of going floppy free in the next 5 years, I've got a bridge to sell ya
Where are floppies used in the US government? Old mainframes are all over the place but where are floppies?
Japan just got an acute case of what a lot of western governments have - IT early adopter disease. These old systems were built using (at the time) revolutionary technology that was designed without much thought given to modularity or sun-setting.
Iirc literally the nuclear launch systems? I'll see if I can find the article.
Edit: not anymore, but as recent as about 2019ish. Can't imagine they're the only ancient infrastructure still using this level of technology though. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/us/nuclear-weapons-floppy-disks.html
I'm not sure about government but I am aware of test equipment in commercial aerospace that still use floppy disks, soooo.....
US gov isn't even tape free
Linear Tape-Open (LTO) has significant advantages in certain situations, such that you have to make specific design decisions if you don't want people to use it: https://www.chia.net/2018/06/11/the-asic-resistance-of-proof-of-space/ https://chiaforum.com/t/lto-tape-drive-as-a-storage-option/12829/3
I will always remember stumbling upon this video ("HP Protecting your business data (or Disc vs Tape)"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHP_bKJx2xg
Amazon and Facebook probably aren't tape free either. Tape is crazy cheap and reliable. It's just really slow.
Its been a while since I used one but arent 3.5's unreliable? I still remember having problems with data integrity way back then. I dont remember them as some rock solid tech and I'd rather put my faith into 650MB CDs if I had to choose.
Granted I'm too young to have handed floppys but from what I understand from my dad and other people the appeal of floppys today is not reliability but rather that normal people have moved on to USB and CDs and have long since thrown away their floppy drives and some people only know them as icon buttons making them pretty good spot to hide classified documents and government secrets
3.5 inch disks only held about 2MB on a good day. Reliable or not, you won't get much on that disk these days.
Unless you are going to make your own backups and take them somewhere else, I would use a cloud solution. Yes, you have to trust the company you choose not to fuck with your data, but they are fault-tolerant solutions that will likely last longer than some random removable solution.
I somehow wouldn't be surprised if certain parts of the US government still used reel to reel tapes.
...punch cards. My money is on punch cards.
They still have a love affair with faxes though. Thank God you can fax from 7 Eleven. You can do pretty much anything from 7 Eleven.
You... can fax from 7-11? I need to know more about this!
Each 7-11 in Japan has one of those big business multicopiers. You can copy, print, scan, fax. The printing is sweet because it does photo printing on glossy paper, but also laser printing up to A3 size or even making custom post cards. They also have databases of paid content like sheet music and stuff you can print. I prefer Lawson/FamilyMart though since they also have sticker printing!
Get the 7 Eleven multicopy app. You can do all kinds of things.
I hope fax stays relevant, even if it's less used.
I drew a floppy disk as part of a workplace online Pictionary game, only to find somebody I work with has never seen one.
We work in IT.
The rest of us tried to explain what they were and he was like "did you use them in a GameCube?" and "was it like a USB stick?"
I mean it was a bit like a USB stick. Just nobody made the comparison back then because USB didn't exist. But yes it is removable storage that is read/writable.
GameCube though...
Yeah, I'm starting to doubt he'd ever seen a GameCube either.
Nintendo was planning on adopting floppies iirc, but they were too easy to copy from.
Nintendo did use them for the add-on Famicom Disk System but that was all the way back in the 80s.
Happy cake day!
Great job!
Although, using floppy disks has the advantage that everyone has to make sure their file sizes are small enough to fit on them. Which makes for much easier handling for those who don't use floppy disks.
or... you end up with more smaller files to keep track of in order to carry the same information that could've been in one large file
The best big data solution is those big boxes with 100 floppy disks. Just make sure you get one with the labels included. Not making that mistake again.
How does small file sizes in floppy disks make it easier handling for those won't use floppy disks? Genuinely curious.
I think it's because it'll promote smaller sizes in general, which is almost always better to handle. (If it can be done without significantly losing quality.)
Think if Twitter for government documents. If the pure text can't fit in a floppy, nobody's got the time to read it.
Although, using floppy disks has the advantage that everyone has to make sure their file sizes are small enough to fit on them. Which makes for much easier handling for those who don't use floppy disks.
What? How is that at all relevant in today's age?
The lack of pressure leads to absurd file sizes for silly things.
A few weeks ago, I needed a vector company logo, so I asked our graphics team for one. The file they sent me was 6MB. While working with it, I noticed it was actually quite clean, so I exported it as an SVG and it came out to 2KB. 1/3000th the size for the exact same graphic.
I opened their file up in a text editor and found font configs for specific printer models (in a graphic with only filled curves), conditional logic, multiple thumbnails, and other junk.
On to Zip drives, then?
Maybe now they can switch to the magneto-optical disks like in Mission: Impossible.
The funny thing was 1.44mb is probably enough to store a really really long list of names and codenames so...they could have used a normal floppy disk lol.
NOCLIST.TXT, 78KB
"We've got it."
ken_all.csv is 1.61MB so not enough.
Imagine if Germany tried to do this. So much crucial infrastructure would simply collapse. Bureaucracy everywhere in Germany is based on and hinges on technologies from the past millennium: floppy disks, FAX etc. Jesus
Fax machines are actually still pretty widely used in corporate America (but not in households at all). Especially insurance and medical companies. I remember having to ask my dad years ago to fax something for me from his work (a bank's corporate office) since we didn't have one in the house. (I don't remember what the fax was for.)
I think with voip you can fax again, now from computer
Jesus only in Bavaria. But otherwise you're right.
An anecdote: Back when I was studying we had the opportunity to gain a temporary full version of a specialised software. All there was to do was to proof that one is a legit student. We had to submit our proof of enrollment to the software's manufacturer. The only way to do so was to submit it via fax! It coldn't be done with email, as they told us on the telephone hotline. The software was a German product. We already have been overtaken by the rest of the world (regarding the IT sector).
As a german I can't remember, when I used a fax the last time. I think, I have sent two or three faxes in my whole life and that was long ago. But while I am pretty sure, some administrations still use that shit, I cannot imagine, anyone in Germany used a floppy after the 90th. Maybe some retro freaks or an ancient tecnological device that resist to die. But that would really be an exemption.
Fucking excel sheets, though …
rumor has it some or all of the united states nuclear arsenal is run off of floppy disks
They retired them in 2019.
I can't remember where, but I think I've seen that spun as a security benefit (probably facetiously). Simply because few people can access floppies anymore, especially 5 1/4". And there's probably like 20 people with 8 inch floppy drives.
Edit: oops... There is literally a comment in this thread saying the very same.
Buy a floppy drive off ebay == end up on a watchlist
If it works well for the job that it's tasked to perform, why change it? It's got the added benefit of being an unintentional security feature now too, as very few others will even have a drive for reading them. Sort of like how manual transmissions are much less likely to be stolen now.
This is a great point, but it probably doesn't do the job as well as more modern alternatives.
- Easy to lose, possible data leak concerns.
- Easy to retain data that should have been deleted.
- Easy to lose data if a disk gets lost or damaged.
- Likely wastes time when trying to track down the disk you need to getting someone to transfer it.
- Lack of access logs and auditing capabilities.
- Easy way for viruses to spread.
Modern IT managed file servers solve a lot of real problems when well-managed.
All of those are true of even smaller USB drives (which has been a problem here).
On the other hand, if you use an old technology that isn't being mass produced anymore, it can reach a point where it will become a big liability for a mission-critical piece of equipment.
I think there was something about the US government having to finally get rid of vacuum tubes because the only suppliers were in Russia.
Yah this is bad I run a cnc plasma table, big table 10 feet x 20 feet. It uses floppy disks. Pain in the ass to find a new drive and pain in the ass to find new disks because constant write re write emf and metal dust kills them. But despite that it's still cheaper and easier than a $15k retro fit to a more modern controler.
The most practical reasons are that both the drives and media are getting harder to find.
At a broader level, this is why I stopped chasing after the cutting edge technology for the sake of it. If it vastly improves my everyday life, sure, I'll consider adopting. Otherwise, I'll just be miserable if it's not something I'm passionate about.
And fax?
Man stelle sich vor, Deutschland würde das versuchen. Es gräuelt mir bei dem Gedanken :s
Ja, aber das war doch auch so ein Grossprojekt, das die Jap. Verwaltung Fax loswerden wollte.
there's no victory here - in the article it states that at least one still law requirse floppy disks must continue to be used.
The past persists in that regard lol
This is a headline
Not gonna lie, this sounds like something North Korea would say.
Well, at least they're trying to make their resource use more efficient in terms of technology. Big problem with society on the globe as a whole. Everything is built on top of the old. If cities were built from scratch today, well... yeah. Would be a lot different.
Than we can finally have an entire highway with parking lots build into the city. Oh, wait, that's already reality.
Next up, official woodblock stamps that every employee working on a project has to stamp every official page.
I kind of love those, but they are definitely excessively used.