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
Not only because the infra is bad but also because floppy is "safer". It's not "connected"amd no one can invade it.
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
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.)
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).
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.
"it's the save icon"
He thought the save icon was a printer...
It’s happening… there have been posts from time to time over the years pointing out this issue.
It was bound to happen but now I can’t remember the ideas people came up with for a new save icon.
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!
Convenience stores in Japan are much more than the cigarettes and lottery tickets of North America. They have lots of ready-to-eat food, snacks, drinks as well as some banking services, bill payments, faxing and more.
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!
You know, since e-mail is a fucking wasteland of unread messages and spam, faxing doesn't seem so bad.
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.
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.
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.
Unzipping archive. Please insert disk 34/2365
Not gonna lie, this sounds like something North Korea would say.
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.
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.
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