Slowly They Modernize: A Federal Agency That Still Uses Floppy Disks
54 replies, posted
Our family company (furniture manufacturing) still uses floppy disks to transfer data from a Windows 98 PC to a CNC machine. Back in 1992 it was top of the line, but nowadays it is, as you can imagine, slightly behind.
Most of other machines are fairly modernised at this point, it's just the CNC that's behind the time. It's fine for what we need it, but every time a part fails (a few months ago it was the CNC computer) the repairs/replacements are ludicrously expensive.
Of course, a new one is an even bigger sum of cash and at this time we can't really invest in a new machine.
Though for government stuff, it's mostly contractors ripping them off. I recall a guy posting here about military helmets or some piece of military equipment: It usually costs ~500 USD but for the military to replace it costs ~3000 USD.
[QUOTE=Murkrow;43113424]Our family company (furniture manufacturing) still uses floppy disks to transfer data from a Windows 98 PC to a CNC machine. Back in 1992 it was top of the line, but nowadays it is, as you can imagine, slightly behind.
Most of other machines are fairly modernised at this point, it's just the CNC that's behind the time. It's fine for what we need it, but every time a part fails (a few months ago it was the CNC computer) the repairs/replacements are ludicrously expensive.
Of course, a new one is an even bigger sum of cash and at this time we can't really invest in a new machine.
[/QUOTE]
I've repaired an Apple II once that ran a weaving machine. Why pay $400000 for an identical machine using a rackmounted wintel piece of shit when you can pay $75 for a CFFA? It's not rocket science to weave so it's more viable to use the older equipment than to upgrade it.
people whining about old technology, christ
it may be technologically obsolete, but it's not [B]functionally[/B] obsolete
Two things with government agency people. The first is that any sort of upgrade gets the down right retarded American public's panties in a twist. Second, they then get mocked and called stupid because they don't do what armchair system management wannabes say they should do.
This reminds me of how the NSA can't search their own internal email system, which has the side benefit of giving them a great excuse to send FOIAs back with nothing.
[QUOTE=TestECull;43111406]I like floppy disks and all, but for fuck's sake why are they still using the bloody things?! I don't use any of mine, I just keep 'em around because they're history.
Win95 on six floppies! They still work, too.[/QUOTE]
Somewhere in my basement is Doom 2 on three floppies. :v:
[QUOTE=pentium;43113477]I've repaired an Apple II once that ran a weaving machine. Why pay $400000 for an identical machine using a rackmounted wintel piece of shit when you can pay $75 for a CFFA? It's not rocket science to weave so it's more viable to use the older equipment than to upgrade it.[/QUOTE]
The problem is age and spare parts. If the machine has a bigger breakdown, we're quite literally fucked, since everything pretty strongly relies on it.
There are of course machines that are pretty much permanent - the routing machine we use is I think from 1984ish. It's cast metal and outrageously heavy. Same with older log-cutting bandsaws, I've heard of a bunch being 45+ years old and still working.
[QUOTE=Murkrow;43113754]The problem is age and spare parts. If the machine has a bigger breakdown, we're quite literally fucked, since everything pretty strongly relies on it.
There are of course machines that are pretty much permanent - the routing machine we use is I think from 1984ish. It's cast metal and outrageously heavy. Same with older log-cutting bandsaws, I've heard of a bunch being 45+ years old and still working.[/QUOTE]
One of my last jobs had a row of ten die cutters (about 20 feet long, five feet wide and probably weighing a few tons each) for sheets of paper. They were all built between 1965 and 1978 in East Germany. Keep feeding them oil and I'm sure they'll never die.
[QUOTE=pentium;43113332]Same here. The government contractors will rob you blind.
My father's office machine needed the modem replaced so he could access to regional weather loggers. Contractor charged $300 to open the lid, loosen a screw and swap the PCI card.
That was ONE machine. To replace a floppy drive I can assure you will be an amazing cost.[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Murkrow;43113424]Though for government stuff, it's mostly contractors ripping them off. I recall a guy posting here about military helmets or some piece of military equipment: It usually costs ~500 USD but for the military to replace it costs ~3000 USD.[/QUOTE]
While contractor scamming does happen, it's not nearly as prevalent as people think. Keep in mind that almost every contract is a bid, so the lowest bidder (the guy not inflating his prices) will get the job.
Yeah, it sucks to pay $300 for a guy to open a lid and swap a PCI card. Keep in mind that you're not only paying his wage for the time he's working, you're paying for his transportation to your site, upkeep on that vehicle, the salaries of all the management staff needed to manage his work, the salaries of the communications staff that connect you to him, his training to be able to do his job, and all the equipment they need to maintain.
Or that helmet. Maybe it's $500 to produce. Then it has to be taken to a military facility. There it has to be cataloged, sorted, and tested. Then it needs to be taken to a processing facility. Then it needs to be flown to an actual military base. At every point along the way there are guards and security personnel needed to oversee the operation (so count their wages + their training + their equipment), trucks (driver wage + driver training + vehicle purchase + maintenance + fuel), airplanes (pilot wage + pilot training + airplane cost + maintenance + fuel). Plus logistical costs of having someone fill out all the paperwork, and then send it (so factor in a bit for the computer equipment and storage system needed, as well as the wages of those people). And then if you're working under security, oh, the fun's just beginning. Enjoy another five people analyzing and signing off on minute details of the purchase while the whole thing goes through three more levels of management. It's not a lot for each step but it all adds up [I]extremely[/I] quickly.
Driving to the store to buy milk might cost you a couple of dollars. But if that were your livelihood, and you had to charge for your time, money to recoup the investment on your car, and for gas and maintenance, plus insurance, the price for just a gallon of milk would skyrocket. That's how contracting works.
There are a lot of costs that go into even the smallest things when you're working in an environment that involves a lot of people needed to perform a task. If the floppy disks can do what they need, then they'll keep them. It doesn't matter if the technology itself is obsolete if it can do the job just as well as a newer replacement.
[QUOTE=catbarf;43114940]While contractor scamming does happen, it's not nearly as prevalent as people think. Keep in mind that almost every contract is a bid, so the lowest bidder (the guy not inflating his prices) will get the job.
Yeah, it sucks to pay $300 for a guy to open a lid and swap a PCI card. Keep in mind that you're not only paying his wage for the time he's working, you're paying for his transportation to your site, upkeep on that vehicle, the salaries of all the management staff needed to manage his work, the salaries of the communications staff that connect you to him, his training to be able to do his job, and all the equipment they need to maintain.
Or that helmet. Maybe it's $500 to produce. Then it has to be taken to a military facility. There it has to be cataloged, sorted, and tested. Then it needs to be taken to a processing facility. Then it needs to be flown to an actual military base. At every point along the way there are guards and security personnel needed to oversee the operation (so count their wages + their training + their equipment), trucks (driver wage + driver training + vehicle purchase + maintenance + fuel), airplanes (pilot wage + pilot training + airplane cost + maintenance + fuel). Plus logistical costs of having someone fill out all the paperwork, and then send it (so factor in a bit for the computer equipment and storage system needed, as well as the wages of those people). And then if you're working under security, oh, the fun's just beginning. Enjoy another five people analyzing and signing off on minute details of the purchase while the whole thing goes through three more levels of management. It's not a lot for each step but it all adds up [I]extremely[/I] quickly.
Driving to the store to buy milk might cost you a couple of dollars. But if that were your livelihood, and you had to charge for your time, money to recoup the investment on your car, and for gas and maintenance, plus insurance, the price for just a gallon of milk would skyrocket. That's how contracting works.
There are a lot of costs that go into even the smallest things when you're working in an environment that involves a lot of people needed to perform a task. If the floppy disks can do what they need, then they'll keep them. It doesn't matter if the technology itself is obsolete if it can do the job just as well as a newer replacement.[/QUOTE]
Hell, its probably a lot safer considering the internet now.
i haven't had a CD/DVD drive since 2007
come on guys lol
The problem with government contractors nowadays is that quality of work is already going to be decreasing due to restrictive government spending. I did research for a paper that highlighted that contractors who typically had long-standing relationships with the government, frequently working together, suddenly found themselves high and dry, because even though the jobs they were doing couldn't possibly be done up to standard for a lower price, the government had no choice but to take radically lower bids because of budget cuts, so not only is it an issue of being a new contractor with no track record with government work, but the contract amount being so low means there is greater potentially for a drop in quality.
This makes massive overhauls of government systems difficult.
Floppy disks are an integral part of my work's disaster recovery procedure
[sp] help me [/sp]
When my dad used to work at the NIH (National Institutes of Health) he used floppy disks in tandem with more modern equivalents.
I think the reason was that they were too lazy to transfer the older data from the disks, so they just used em. I mean according to him it all worked out and what-not so it didn't seem to hinder their work.
[editline]edit[/editline]
I should clarify here, I'm talkin the 5 1⁄4-inch ones that are actually floppy.
He still has a pile of them that have information on various rare infections and some other things I'm not sure he can legaly talk about.
So yeah, my dad has some 5 1⁄4-inch floppys at home with classified medical data about who-knows-what.
Well, if you think about it, they're pretty secure. The only person with the hardware to read them is MIPS.
There are a lot of tech problems in the government, sometimes because funding is refused. There are instances where some lobbies intentionally deny this to make the department's job harder. For example, NRA and other like-minded groups have made sure that the ATF, most specifically it's National Tracing Center which handles background checks on gun purchases, is forced to use manual records rather than update to more modern tech.
[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/25/AR2010102505823.html[/url]
[quote] MARTINSBURG, W.VA. -- Trucks filled with boxes of gun-sales records pull up almost daily to a one-story brick building nestled in the hills outside this blue-collar town. Inside, workers armed with Scotch tape and magnifying glasses huddle over their desks, trying to decipher pieces of paper to trace the paths of guns used in crimes.
The National Tracing Center is the only place in the nation authorized to trace gun sales. Here, researchers with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives make phone calls and pore over handwritten records from across the country to track down gun owners. In contrast with such state-of-the-art, 21st-century crime-fighting techniques as DNA matching and digital fingerprint analysis, gun tracing is an antiquated, laborious process done mostly by hand. The government is prohibited from putting gun ownership records into an easily accessible format, such as a searchable computer database.
For decades, the National Rifle Association has lobbied successfully to block all attempts at such computerization, arguing against any national registry of firearm ownership.
"Those who wonder what motivates American gun owners should understand that perhaps only one word in the English language so boils their blood as 'registration,' and that word is 'confiscation,' " according to an NRA fact sheet. [/quote]
A more recent one
[url]http://www.npr.org/2013/05/20/185530763/the-low-tech-way-guns-get-traced[/url]
[quote]Opponents of expanding background checks for gun sales often raise the fear that it would allow the government to create a national gun registry — a database of gun transactions. In fact, federal law already bans the creation of such a registry. And the reality of how gun sales records are accessed turns out to be surprisingly low-tech.
The trace begins after police seize a gun at a crime scene and then reach out to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W.Va. — the one place in the country that can investigate where the gun came from.
Here, in a warren of cubicles, ATF contractors are busy on the phones pursuing trace after trace. On a recent visit, they had 700 calls to make. Last year, ATF processed more than 344,000 crime gun trace requests.
Many people assume that ATF has a massive database of gun owners at its fingertips and can instantly access that information. The reality is very different. It involves lots of phone calls — and often, manual labor.[/quote]
I thought I was the only one that still used floppies on a regular basis
No wonder why they want to censor the internet, they live in the time before it was even a thing!
[QUOTE=Michael haxz;43136582]I thought I was the only one that still used floppies on a regular basis[/QUOTE]
Why?
[QUOTE=matt000024;43138538]Why?[/QUOTE]
Data Transfer for legacy machines, Operating System installs, and general storage of important documents
Pfft, peasants. I still etch my data into rock slabs
See Reuters Investigation on the Pentagon
[url]http://www.reuters.com/investigates/pentagon/#article/part1[/url]
Explains how crippled our government really is.
there are some government organizations that still use paper cards for data storage.
[QUOTE=MercZ;43136525]There are a lot of tech problems in the government, sometimes because funding is refused. There are instances where some lobbies intentionally deny this to make the department's job harder. For example, NRA and other like-minded groups have made sure that the ATF, most specifically it's National Tracing Center which handles background checks on gun purchases, is forced to use manual records rather than update to more modern tech.
[url]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/25/AR2010102505823.html[/url]
A more recent one
[url]http://www.npr.org/2013/05/20/185530763/the-low-tech-way-guns-get-traced[/url][/QUOTE]
The beautiful thing about that is, the NRA makes a huge show about never allowing the government to construct a database of gun owners. [URL="http://www.buzzfeed.com/stevefriess/how-the-nra-built-a-massive-secret-database-of-gun-owners"]The NRA has spent decades and gobs of money building a comprehensive database of US gun owners and people who've taken a gun license course (regardless of ownership)[/URL]. :v:
My university still has machines that read input from Floppies, I'm not surprised the government is still using them. Where I worked over the summer, a few machines were on Win2K due to compatibility with some Government programs and networks.
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