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Ask Slashdot: Do You Still Use Optical Media?
The other day at an event, public relation officials were handing out press kit (it usually contains everything the company announced, photos from the event, and contact information of the company) to journalists. When I reached office and opened the kit, I found a CD in it. Which was weird because it's been two to three years since I had a computer with an optical drive. And all these years I didn't need one. Which brings up the question: Does your work require dealing with CDs and DVDs anymore? An anonymous reader asks the same question: I still use optical discs for various backup purposes, but recently I developed doubts as to the reliability of the media to last a reasonable amount of time. I have read a review on Amazon of the TDK DVDs, in which somebody described losing 8000 (sic!) DVDs of data after 4 years of storage. I promptly canceled my purchase of TDKs. So, do you still use opticals for back-up -- Blu-Rays, DVDs, CDs? -- and if so, how do you go about it?I do buy Blu-Ray discs of movies, though. So my life isn't optical disc free yet. What about yours?
I still keep optical drives on all of my machines. Not only do I need to rip CDs on occasion, but I like the durability of optical media. It can be filed away just about anywhere, resists moisture and static, and is a great cheap way to pass information on to others. I wish the recycling options were better.
Alternative Right.
I work for a law firm. We need to send data out all the time. When possible we FTP it. But for many jobs we need permanent record, so we use a mix of DVD's and hard drives.
For large jobs, we use Hard Drives. Anything less than 10 GB, we burn DVDs. We do it all the time.
Also, while I don't buy laptops or tablets with DVD players, I insist on every Desktop computer I buy to have one.
I will do so just for the ability to play my old movies and TV shows.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I still use optical media to ensure clean install of various OS, because unlike USB, it is much harder to sneak one past checksum when you burn install DVD directly from ISO.
So as a member of a public institution of higher education, Flash drives are up there in the top 3 spots of how data goes missing/copied/stolen along with Email. We have the USB ports disabled except for the 1 or 2 for the Mouse and Keyboard and have those locked to not accept new devices to prevent data from going by the by. I state this because I still use CD/DVD Media for computer deployment under secure conditions where Mass deployment software like SCCM are not practical. Closed systems are the bane of my existence. Also being in user support you have to keep a CD/DVD or 2 around for that one user who will inevitably visit your office with a 6 year old laptop with failing HDD and the USB boot doesn't work and you are forced to recover them via CD/DVD.
Creating a bootable USB stick under Windows is a hit-and-miss affair. I just find it easier to pop in a blank disc, burn the Linux ISO to the disc, and boot off of that.
I have a BD-RE drive in my home desktop. It doesn't get much use, to be honest, but I'm not quite ready to make the jump away from having an optical drive just yet.
I've got a bunch of old backups still on optical discs; everything from CD-Rs to Blu-Rays. Admittedly, this is only low priority "nice to have" stuff. Anything it would actually hurt me if I lost (which is only a couple of hundred megs of data when I get right down to it) is backed up by other, more reliable methods.
I do still have a handful of games on disc that I never bought . Some of these I'm clearly never going to play again and could easily throw out, but there are a couple, such as Warcraft 3, that I'd still like the option to play from time to time.
I will (very occasionally) watch a DVD or Blu-Ray movie on my PC rather than TV. This is particularly true in the summer months; my living room, where the TV lives, can get brutally hot, while my study, where the desktop lives, is cool and shady.
In addition to the above, while boot-from-USB is a lot more reliable than it used to be, I've still had more issues with it than boot-from-optical-disc. So I still like to have an optical drive for those occasions when I need to boot from external media.
This is pretty common for medical records too. When the hospital gives you results of cancer screening/X-Rays, it's often a bunch of files or images/videos on a DVD
All the time, as disposable media. Give some data to someone, don't care if you get the disc back.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
USB sticks have been effectively banned on DoD networks. We regularly use CD/DVD media to burn software and patches to then transfer it to the classified networks. The optical drives on the high side are almost always read-only to avoid issues with transport of classified off the servers.
Unless someone starts producing USB flash drives that have a hardware write protect switch that can't be countermanded by software, there is, in my opinion, still a need for optical media. Otherwise there is no way to truly protect your data from being altered or deleted by bad actors. The polar opposite woudl be cloud storage, which is about as 'volatile' as you can get; companies offering cloud storage could suddenly go out of business and screw you out of your data, or if they're being bad actors, futz with your data or delete it. There has been more than one news story over the years of people's digital purchases either being altered or deleted, even though they were stored on their local machines, because of either conscious decision or error on the part of the IP owners and their DRM. Recently there was even a case of a songwriter/musicians' own personal works being deleted by iTunes, even though iTunes/Apple had absolutely NO rights whatsoever to the content that was deleted! Nope, there is still a need for some sort of write-once-read-many storage medium, or something that can be made read-only on demand in a way that can't be overridden. Even removable semiconductor or rotating storage is still read/write, and for all you know the next time you plug it in, something will get deleted by some DRM action or malware.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Oh they have no volume knob, so I figured in case one is too quiet, I'll add a second one, hook them up in parallel and make sure I play everything in sync.
That way I cut the output impedance in half AND (via constructive interference) double the amplitude!
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
I have experience with this. I'm not just pulling this out of my rear end.
CDs - Honestly, they're all pretty much the same now. If you really worry a lot about these, Taiyo Yuden makes high quality discs and Verbatim made ones that use AZO dye may have superior longevity. Maybe. By the time we know if they do or not, nobody will probably care. But honestly any name brand is almost identical in quality to Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim for CDs. That does not apply to other types of discs though.
DVDs - You can buy Taiyo Yuden and you can buy Verbatim. Everything TY makes is great. Most of Verbatim's stuff is great except their cheap Life series of discs which is the same landfill grade crap that everybody else in the industry makes, including TDK. Note that Verbatim also makes DataLifePlus which is top notch and not the same at all as Life series. Skip everybody else here. And nobody knows if dual layer consumer burnable DVDs will last as long as single layer ones do. Again, by the time we figure it out, nobody will probably care to know. In the earlier part of the previous decade most name manufacturers made really high quality DVD media, but the US marketplace demanded lower price, so almost everybody switched to cheap crap. TDK was actually really good at one time, using Taiyo Yuden as their manufacturer, but that hasn't been true for more than a decade now. I specifically mention TDK because the top article does. Note that Sony sometimes does and sometimes does not use top notch manufacturers for their DVD media but you'll never know which they've used until you buy it. Not worth the trouble in my opinion since you know what you get with Verbatim (non-Life series) and Taiyo Yuden. Note that Verbatim uses AZO dye on all their DVDs except the Life series, even though they don't always say so on the packaging.
BluRays - I pretty much stick to Verbatim (again, avoid Life series) and Panasonic here. Taiyo Yuden barely makes BD discs and last I checked they only made a single layer LTH type that some burners and some players may have problems with. LTH discs are a way to leverage existing DVD pressing plants so they can also make BD media and because these discs actually are written and read from backwards from normal BD media, some burners and some players have problems with them. Verbatim also makes some LTH BD discs and some regular BD discs. I advise avoiding the LTH media unless you are sure you can burn it and play it.
Not all change is good. Much of the change we see is harmful to the language as it introduces ambiguity and causes confusion, which makes it harder for the language to do its only job - help people communicate.
Languages are highly ordered systems. Retards like you are "literally" running about spouting off about doing things "ironically" and are, "for all intensive purposes", entropy endangering the system "irregardless" of your dumbass "language changes" excuse.