For those who’re sufficiently old to know what a floppy disk is, you are sufficiently old to know the way bonkers that is: San Francisco’s Automated Practice Management System (ATCS) runs on information that’s saved on floppy disks.
Floppy disks had been first put into widespread industrial use by IBM within the Nineteen Seventies and had been the go-to method to retailer information by means of 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In different phrases, floppy disks are an insanely previous and outdated method to handle information.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 remove the necessity to load the info saved on these floppy disks every morning, experiences the San Francisco Chronicle. The system communicates the info utilizing wire loops which can be “simply disrupted” and transfer extra slowly than a wi-fi modem. (In a metropolis inbuilt an space that experiences heaps and many earthquakes every year, what may go unsuitable?)
The brand new Hitachi system might be “5 generations forward” of the floppy disk system, in line with Muni Director of Transit Julie Kirschbaum. Let’s hope “5 generations” places it past CD-ROMs not less than.
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