Aside from a couple disks I've got floating around which I use as bookmarks for magazines and books I'm reading, I've not seen a floppy actually being used as such in years.
They are being used for exams. In the legal industry, Examsoft is gaining traction. Law schools use it to administer essay exams and California and Arizona (and probably more) use it to administer the essay portion of the Bar Exam. You take the exam on a laptop. To prevent cheating, the laptop boots in a safe mode, disconnected from any LAN or any other program.
So how do they receive the exams to grade? Floppy, of course. The files are small and giving a floppy to each student is a lot cheaper than giving each student a flash drive.
The question is what do you use a floppy for? No one uses it for storing files any more because hard drives are much faster. Floppies are useless for backups because they are too small. So the only remaining use is to transfer files from one computer to another. As more and more computers do not come with floppies, they are becoming more and more useless, especially with the ubiquity of USB flash drives and email. And blank CDs are cheaper than blank floppies and you're much more certain that the recipient will have a CD drive than a floppy drive.
CD? certainly cheap, and at a guess 50% of computers now have them, but they are BIGGER than what they're replacing. Probably not as durable for day-to-day usage, either. FAIL50%. That's obviously a made up number. When was the last time you bought a computer that didn't come with a CD drive? 10 years? Longer?
Cable ties are like $5 for a pack of 100. Since you won't be using 100 ties, you'll have plenty of ties left should you have to cut things loose. And if you do run out of ties, it's only $5 for another 100.
We all know people will go through then when using bittorrent to get the stuff for free but will people do it when they are paying cash money?
Thing is, people don't do that. Sure, most of/. know what bit torrent is and how to use it. But Joe Public doesn't. Even if they do know what it is, finding a movie is not reliable--you have to find a torrent directory site (sometimes hard to find) and hope that the torrent is seeded.
I would guess that a lot more people would download if there was a central place to get a movie, the quality was good, and they could play it on their TV.
AFAIK, Amazon does (at least for CDs). Not only that, you can't sell your own copy on Marketplace on release day (at least for big titles), though you can the day after.
Yeah, even N'Sync uses a live drummer when touring. But the point is that bands like N'Sync (and a lot of other *Hugely* popular bands) don't use real drummers in the studio.
You're right, I did get my dates wrong. My cheap 400 MHz was bough in 1999. My original argument (faster than real-time encoding was present at the Napster era) still stands, though.
MP3s didn't become big until Napster. Napster wasn't even released until Fall 1999. By then, the P3 was up to 650 MHz, a lot faster than 100 MHz. By the end of 2000, the Pentium was over 1 GHz. Napster peaked in February 2001.
Ergo, faster than real-time encoding was common by the Napster era. (I have a 1 GHz Athlon which encodes at 5x. )
That's an understatement. Fripp is King Crimson. The only person in every incarnation of King Crimson, from 1968 (or so) to today. No, he doesn't sing or even write lyrics. But it is fair to say that there is no King Crimson without him. If Belew wanted to continue with Levin and whatever drummer, they would't be King Crimson anymore, at least to any real KC fan.
OTOH, drum machines have replaced drummers, at least in the studio. Entire genres of music (rap and r&b, in particular, but some AC and smooth jazz also), have replaced human drummers with drum machines.
100 MHz systems are 10 years old. MP3s caught on a lot later than that, 98 or so, when 500 MHz+ systems were standard. (The system I bought in 96 was old (and cheap), and it was 400 MHz).
1) CD get phased out. Sorry the next release of [big name artist] is going to be on DVD-A only
I don't see this happening. DVD-A is too much of a niche format to risk losing the revenue from a platinum artist. But maybe after:
2) DVD-A's are priced $1 below their CD equivilent for 3-5 years for people to switch. Once Market has reached a critical mass do 1 for 6 months then start putting the prices back up claiming piracy etc
#1 could work if done after #2. For 3-5 years, enough people have bought DVD-A players to make it worthwhile. Then BAM, 50 Cent's new release is DVD-A only.
CDs were always intended to replace LPs and cassettes. DVDs were intended to replace VHS. HD-DVD (or Blu-Ray) is intended to replace DVD. Were DVD-A and SACD intended to replace CD? The coverage I've seen of them always discussed them as supplements to CD, for the discriminating listener. And never intended to be the primary music distribution format.
That's a silly thing to say. You have a program that will let you record sounds as they come out of the sound card. So what? It's not in DVD-A format (which, in case you didn't know, is a high resolution format, much higher than CD.). Plus, your recording is in real-time, which makes it inconvenient for users to do. One reason MP3 encoding has caught on is because it takes 10 minutes to rip and encode a CD. I doubt it would be as popular if everything was recorded in real-time.
I was always under the impression that the reason DVD-Audio was developed was *NOT* to repalce CD, but to create a higher quality version marketed towards audiophiles and HT enthusiasts with 5.1.
But the reputation of the format here on/. is that it was created because they (the RIAA) wanted to prevent ripping. So which is it?
The problem with the "prevent ripping" choice is that, AFAIK, there are no releases on DVD-A that isn't also available on CD.
What I find funny is that people will pay for PokerStars play money. Play money doesn't do any thing for you. Unlike a MMRPG, having more play money really doesn't change the way the game plays.
What's more, if you lose all your play money chips, you get more automatically.
The argument to this being, however, that under the Copyright act, copying for personal and private use is exempt from infringement.
Post the section of the copyright code that says this is so. (And don't go to Fair Use. Fair Use may allow you to make a backup of stuff you bought. But I doubt Fair Use enables you to download a torrent of Batman Begins.)
Consumers have no incentive to abide by copyright anymore. They have no benefits whatsoever.
Bullcrap. Consumer's benefits have stayed exactly the same. The only thing that has changed is that it is much easier to copy and distribute works. To many here on/., that means the artists should be giving their stuff away for free.
Yep, same thing happened to me. I have an ASUS and I could flash it from Windows. My problem is that the BIOS problem didn't allow me to even install Windows. The old BIOS calculated the CPU temperature wrong and forced a shutdown within 5 minutes of being turned on, not nearly long enough to install the OS.
So I had to flash using the floppy. I never bought a floppy drive because I didn't use the floppy in my then-current machine, so why would I use a floppy in a new machine. So I went to the old machine and tried to get the floppy out. But the screwhead is stripped! I can't get it out. It takes forever (in reality, about 25 minutes). But I finally get it out and am able to flash the BIOS.
So flashing from floppy seems annoying as hell. But if the BIOS problem prevents you from running Windows, it makes sense.
So basically, you think that there should never be a software patent. I think that is an extreme position to take. I agree with those who think that some patent applications are trying to patent the most trivial of "advances". But I don't believe creating an entire genre of software (the spreadsheet) is trivial.
The problem is that in so many cases that we hear about, it is. VisiCalc simply performed the exact same calculations an accountant did by hand (or on a calculator). This is not ground breaking, this is just doing math faster.
You don't believe that accomplishing the same thing faster isn't worthy of a patent? Before Visicalc, an account would create a large spreadsheet by hand. Then his boss would say, "what if we sold 3000 units instead of 2800" and the accountant would have to recalculate everything. With a spreadsheet, he enters in one figure and everything is re-calculated in an instant. Why isn't that useful and novel?
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They are being used for exams. In the legal industry, Examsoft is gaining traction. Law schools use it to administer essay exams and California and Arizona (and probably more) use it to administer the essay portion of the Bar Exam. You take the exam on a laptop. To prevent cheating, the laptop boots in a safe mode, disconnected from any LAN or any other program.
So how do they receive the exams to grade? Floppy, of course. The files are small and giving a floppy to each student is a lot cheaper than giving each student a flash drive.
CD? certainly cheap, and at a guess 50% of computers now have them, but they are BIGGER than what they're replacing. Probably not as durable for day-to-day usage, either. FAIL50%. That's obviously a made up number. When was the last time you bought a computer that didn't come with a CD drive? 10 years? Longer?
Cable ties are like $5 for a pack of 100. Since you won't be using 100 ties, you'll have plenty of ties left should you have to cut things loose. And if you do run out of ties, it's only $5 for another 100.
Thing is, people don't do that. Sure, most of /. know what bit torrent is and how to use it. But Joe Public doesn't. Even if they do know what it is, finding a movie is not reliable--you have to find a torrent directory site (sometimes hard to find) and hope that the torrent is seeded.
I would guess that a lot more people would download if there was a central place to get a movie, the quality was good, and they could play it on their TV.
AFAIK, Amazon does (at least for CDs). Not only that, you can't sell your own copy on Marketplace on release day (at least for big titles), though you can the day after.
Yeah, even N'Sync uses a live drummer when touring. But the point is that bands like N'Sync (and a lot of other *Hugely* popular bands) don't use real drummers in the studio.
MP3s didn't become big until Napster. Napster wasn't even released until Fall 1999. By then, the P3 was up to 650 MHz, a lot faster than 100 MHz. By the end of 2000, the Pentium was over 1 GHz. Napster peaked in February 2001.
Ergo, faster than real-time encoding was common by the Napster era. (I have a 1 GHz Athlon which encodes at 5x. )
Yeah, we'll never see the days where a drum machine would replace a real drummer. Oh wait! That happens all the time. Never mind.
Either that, or he has a sense of humor.
That's an understatement. Fripp is King Crimson. The only person in every incarnation of King Crimson, from 1968 (or so) to today. No, he doesn't sing or even write lyrics. But it is fair to say that there is no King Crimson without him. If Belew wanted to continue with Levin and whatever drummer, they would't be King Crimson anymore, at least to any real KC fan.
So you judge guitar playing ability by bowling skills? By that standard, Walter Ray Williams must be the best guitarist in the world.
OTOH, drum machines have replaced drummers, at least in the studio. Entire genres of music (rap and r&b, in particular, but some AC and smooth jazz also), have replaced human drummers with drum machines.
Here's a replica of the psychedelic SG he played while in Cream. Apparently the original is in the Las Vegas Hard Rock Cafe.
100 MHz systems are 10 years old. MP3s caught on a lot later than that, 98 or so, when 500 MHz+ systems were standard. (The system I bought in 96 was old (and cheap), and it was 400 MHz).
I don't see this happening. DVD-A is too much of a niche format to risk losing the revenue from a platinum artist. But maybe after:
2) DVD-A's are priced $1 below their CD equivilent for 3-5 years for people to switch. Once Market has reached a critical mass do 1 for 6 months then start putting the prices back up claiming piracy etc
#1 could work if done after #2. For 3-5 years, enough people have bought DVD-A players to make it worthwhile. Then BAM, 50 Cent's new release is DVD-A only.
CDs were always intended to replace LPs and cassettes. DVDs were intended to replace VHS. HD-DVD (or Blu-Ray) is intended to replace DVD. Were DVD-A and SACD intended to replace CD? The coverage I've seen of them always discussed them as supplements to CD, for the discriminating listener. And never intended to be the primary music distribution format.
That's a silly thing to say. You have a program that will let you record sounds as they come out of the sound card. So what? It's not in DVD-A format (which, in case you didn't know, is a high resolution format, much higher than CD.). Plus, your recording is in real-time, which makes it inconvenient for users to do. One reason MP3 encoding has caught on is because it takes 10 minutes to rip and encode a CD. I doubt it would be as popular if everything was recorded in real-time.
But the reputation of the format here on /. is that it was created because they (the RIAA) wanted to prevent ripping. So which is it?
The problem with the "prevent ripping" choice is that, AFAIK, there are no releases on DVD-A that isn't also available on CD.
What's more, if you lose all your play money chips, you get more automatically.
Post the section of the copyright code that says this is so. (And don't go to Fair Use. Fair Use may allow you to make a backup of stuff you bought. But I doubt Fair Use enables you to download a torrent of Batman Begins.)
Bullcrap. Consumer's benefits have stayed exactly the same. The only thing that has changed is that it is much easier to copy and distribute works. To many here on /., that means the artists should be giving their stuff away for free.
So I had to flash using the floppy. I never bought a floppy drive because I didn't use the floppy in my then-current machine, so why would I use a floppy in a new machine. So I went to the old machine and tried to get the floppy out. But the screwhead is stripped! I can't get it out. It takes forever (in reality, about 25 minutes). But I finally get it out and am able to flash the BIOS.
So flashing from floppy seems annoying as hell. But if the BIOS problem prevents you from running Windows, it makes sense.
So basically, you think that there should never be a software patent. I think that is an extreme position to take. I agree with those who think that some patent applications are trying to patent the most trivial of "advances". But I don't believe creating an entire genre of software (the spreadsheet) is trivial.
The first spreadsheet program ever was, by definition, the first program of its kind. If that isn't novel, then nothing is.
You don't believe that accomplishing the same thing faster isn't worthy of a patent? Before Visicalc, an account would create a large spreadsheet by hand. Then his boss would say, "what if we sold 3000 units instead of 2800" and the accountant would have to recalculate everything. With a spreadsheet, he enters in one figure and everything is re-calculated in an instant. Why isn't that useful and novel?