Linked by Thom Holwerda on Mon 26th Apr 2010 18:38 UTC
Invented by IBM, the death knell sounded by Apple. Sony has announced it is going to cease selling diskettes altogether, with the last bastion being Japan. Sales will be ceased there too, even though Sony still managed to sell 12 million of them there last year. While Memorex and Imation still produce and sell diskettes, this move by Sony surely means it won't take long for the rest of the market to vanish, too.
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Member since:2006-01-26
3.5 floppies are perfect... and they last forever!
Correction: They used to last forever.
At some point in the last 10 years, it seems 3.5" floppy disk quality dropped to less than dismal. These days, I'm lucky if I can get a floppy disk to last two weeks after writing some files to it. I know it didn't use to be like that, but it seems like it is now.
And yet, I can pull disks out of a box from 10 years ago and read them just fine!
Maybe the drives just aren't writing the bits hard enough any more
Update: BTW, same with CD-R - I've got a ton of Kodak "gold" CD-R from the late-90s that are still readable.
Edited 2010-04-26 19:57 UTC
Member since:2006-10-08
"3.5 floppies are perfect... and they last forever!
Correction: They used to last forever. "
I still have to use 5,25" floppies for museal purposes - use, not just show them. Most of them are older than 20 years and still work perfectly - in the computers they are intended for, also 20 years and older, still in perfect and working condition, like the robotron A5120 I recently got with a bunch of 5,25" floppies, taken out of service in 1989.
For the form factor, I think 3,5" disks and CF cards (and MiniDiscs, if you still now them) are ideal - not to big (as CDs and DVDs and their successors), not to small (as USB pen drives or SD cards). Sadly, MiniDiscs haven't prevailed for purposes we have to use CDs or DVDs today.
At some point in the last 10 years, it seems 3.5" floppy disk quality dropped to less than dismal. These days, I'm lucky if I can get a floppy disk to last two weeks after writing some files to it. I know it didn't use to be like that, but it seems like it is now.
I still have to use 3,5" floppies in very few places, and today's products seem like "use once, throw away" disks. After some short time of use, errors apeear, and using fdformat on the disks doesn't "repair" them, but shows more and more errors if you continue formatting them.
Finally, I'm glad that disks are not in use anymore, but the alternatives aren't so much better as advertisement wants us to believe.
And yet, I can pull disks out of a box from 10 years ago and read them just fine!
Same here, too. Even 20 years old disk work - but finally, it's a matter of how you store them.
Update: BTW, same with CD-R - I've got a ton of Kodak "gold" CD-R from the late-90s that are still readable.
I often say, with a bit of truth in it: "The older hardware is, the longer it lasts." For example, old 16x CD-ROM drives seem to be much more error tolerant than today's modern high-speed DVD drives. Hard disks, in use since 1995, often still work flawlessly today, while you already plan to substitute a hard disk in 6 or 12 months if you buy it today.
Just try to image if CDs, burned today, stored without any packaging (just like disks) can be read in 10 or 20 years. :-)
Member since:2006-01-10
Member since:2007-12-26
Member since:2006-02-15
While I still used floppies heavily I noticed there was a huge quality difference between manufacturers; with some manufacturers the floppies would go bad in 2 weeks, and with some manufacturers the floppies would last for 10 years straight. After a while I had learned which brands to trust and only bought those. I suppose the disks would STILL work if I still had them and a working floppy drive! 
Member since:2008-08-28
CDs are too big and pen-drives are too small, 3.5 floppies are perfect... and they last forever!
It's funny, I can use my 20+ years old AMIGA floppies without problem... [..]
PS: OTOH 5.25 floppies were unreliable sh*t. I hate them so much.
It's funny, I can use my 20+ years old AMIGA floppies without problem... [..]
PS: OTOH 5.25 floppies were unreliable sh*t. I hate them so much.
I've got quite different experiences: my floppies for Commodore 64 (the oldest ones from 1985) are still readable, while 3,5" diskettes I've found as unreliable. Not sure, maybe DD 3,5" (you mention "Amiga floppies") were a bit better, but not HD ones. The exception again are 5,25" ones... my 200 diskettes 5,25" HD from 1990-95 are still readable.
Member since:2009-08-26
CDs are too big and pen-drives are too small, 3.5 floppies are perfect... and they last forever!
So duct tape a pen drive to a floppy.
Writable optical media sucks, I've lost tons of data with CD-R and DVD-R.
Well now you know why there's still a tape drive market.
Blu-ray is supposed to be better in this area though.
http://www.delkin.com/products/archivalgold/archival-blue-ray-delki...
Member since:2006-02-22
My experience is that 5 1/4" disks lasted for ever but 3 1/2" you'd be luck to get 2 writes out of them. Gosh makes me feel nostalgic for the day when Norton was actually useful.
I find that although flash drives are vastly superior to floppies, students are still adapt at loosing their coursework etc.
"We have a file server why have you carefully avoided using it?".....sometime it makes you want to weep
News
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
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Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2005-07-06
CDs are too big and pen-drives are too small, 3.5 floppies are perfect... and they last forever!
It's funny, I can use my 20+ years old AMIGA floppies without problem... but my 5 year old DVD-Rs are unreadable. Writable optical media sucks, I've lost tons of data with CD-R and DVD-R. 3.5 floppies aged really well.
PS: OTOH 5.25 floppies were unreliable sh*t. I hate them so much.