In case you’re sufficiently old to know what a floppy disk is, you are sufficiently old to understand how bonkers that is: San Francisco’s Computerized Prepare Management System (ATCS) runs on information that’s saved on floppy disks.
Floppy disks have been first put into widespread business use by IBM within the Seventies and have been the go-to approach to retailer information via the Nineties. Apple dropped the floppy drive in 1998 with the discharge of the iMac, and 5 years later, Dell did the identical with its Dell Dimension vary. Sony was the final firm to fabricate the disks, halting operations in 2011.
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In different phrases, floppy disks are an insanely outdated and outdated approach to handle information.
San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Company board, which oversees the Muni Metro gentle rail community within the metropolis, introduced the approval of a $212 million overhaul, which is able to eradicate the necessity to load the information saved on these floppy disks every morning, stories the San Francisco Chronicle. The system communicates the information utilizing wire loops which are “simply disrupted” and transfer extra slowly than a wi-fi modem. (In a metropolis inbuilt an space that experiences heaps and many earthquakes annually, what may go flawed?)
The brand new Hitachi system will likely be “5 generations forward” of the floppy disk system, in response to Muni Director of Transit Julie Kirschbaum. Let’s hope “5 generations” places it past CD-ROMs a minimum of.
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