The Mystery of the Mega-Selling Floppy Disk

osullish writes "People have been proclaiming the death of the floppy for years, yet millions are bought around the world. Who is buying them?"

Comments

I know

[Anonymous Coward]

Cowboy Neil buys them all and archives inane Slashdot comments, like this one.

Re:I know

[Anonymous Coward]

Cowboy Neil buys them all and archives inane Slashdot comments, like this one.

20 stories a day.
400 posts per story.
99% are inane.
Average post size? 850 characters (thanks to gnaa c&p trolls)
---
6.4 megabytes per day
1.4 megabytes per disk
---
4.5 disks per day
365 days in a year
---
1642 disks per year
100 disks for $25 = .25 per disk
---
~$411 per year on backups

Max write speed: 1000 kilobits / second (7.7 megabytes per minute)
Time to fill storage:
314 minutes + 1 minute to toss each disk in an unsorted box (hey, they're using low paid interns of course) ~ 2000 minutes
---
33 hours
$8.00 an hour
---
$264 per year
Grand Total: $675.00, or about 3.375 hours with a decent, geeky prostitute

Seems economical.

Re:I know

[baegucb]

It's what we tell all our relatives to do, but don't do ourselves.

I use them every day!

[karcirate]

I have AOL and Windows 3.1 disks all over my desk, always ready for use as a coaster under my coffee.

Can't remember the last time I bought one, though. But if anyone needs a coaster, I am happy to sell you some.

Ugh..

[krnpimpsta]

stopped reading after (emphasis mine):

The truth is the 3½-inch, 1.44 megabyte floppy - the disk that made it big - has always defied logic. It's not floppy for a start. The term was a hangover from its precursor, the 5¼-inch floppy, which had a definite lack of rigidness about it. However, its smaller successor held 15 times as much data.

1) so, what is the proper term for this then? "hard disk"? ARGHHH
2) 15 times as much data in a 3.5"? ARGHHHHH
ok, fine, i didn't stop reading. i only continued reading, but irritatedly.

Re:Ugh..

[idontgno]

2.88 MB? That's like.... mythical. That's a Bigfoot riding on the back of a unicorn.

But assuming they were using the...mythical... 2.88MB format, then, yes, 1/15th is approximately the capacity of any number of single-sided single-density 5.25" formats.

But 2.88MB? That wasn't even the same media as the classical 3.5" DSHD diskette. Special drive, special medium, special BIOS or driver support. Hell, by that standard, the 21 MB Floptical falls into the same category.

If TFA was seriously thinking about the 2.88MB diskette, they need to start passing around whatever they were smoking.

OK, I admit it.

[gestalt_n_pepper]

It's me. I've been buying those millions of floppy disks. No. I don't know why. I just like them. You got a problem with that?

Re:OK, I admit it.

[JiffyPop]

I am just imagining a stack of 34,000 floppies... used to back up 1 blu-ray disc.

At an eighth-inch a piece (rough estimate) that would be a stack more than 350ft tall!

Re:Oscilloscope

[vlm]

Couldn't you write a real quick program to "pretend" to be a parallel printer, hook a PC up via parallel to it, and then when you "export to printer" from the scope, the PC saves the file directly?

So, the electrical engineer and the civil engineer walk into the bar, and the EE says... Anyway the CE solution would be to place the in-basket for the scanner directly underneath the slightly modified out-tray of the printer. Because if there's one thing CEs (and plumbers) know, its sh*t flows downhill. I'm sure there's a ME solution in there somewhere involving a medieval catapult.

Angelina Jolie

[clintonmonk]

well duh, it's the hackers that are buying them.

Floppies are like tribbles

[shadowrat]

They seem to multiply at exponential rates. I'm constantly throwing the damn things away yet more and more keep showing up in my desk drawers. Worse, some people seem to get incredibly attached to them. Maybe it's the pleasant purring they emit when nestled snuggly in a floppy drive.

Some people at work seem to adopt them. I say there can't possibly be any data of significant value in 1.4mb, but these floppy analogs to cat ladies just can't bear to get rid of the disks.

I can't wait till a Klingon warbird shows up and we can simply beam the lot of them to their storage holds.

Re:Some hardware needs them

[SethJohnson]

You put that thing on the network, soldier, and if my boys fail to contain Skynet, your >$500,000 CNC machine becomes a Skynet factory for building T-1000's. That's why we keep it on floppies.

Seth

Re:Some hardware needs them

[Jonny_eh]

Isn't there also a medium that a resume can be put on that doesn't even require a computer to read? I can't recall what it is at the moment...

Re:We need standards, good ones too. For Linux, to

[Mister Whirly]

I agree! Now if I could only get this 40 year old FORTRAN payroll program to compile...