In case you’re sufficiently old to know what a floppy disk is, you are sufficiently old to know the way bonkers that is: San Francisco’s Computerized Prepare Management System (ATCS) runs on information that’s saved on floppy disks.
Floppy disks had been first put into widespread business use by IBM in the 1970s and had been the go-to approach to retailer information by 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In different phrases, floppy disks are an insanely previous and outdated approach to handle information.
San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Company board, which oversees the Muni Metro mild rail community within the metropolis, introduced the approval of a $212 million overhaul, which can eradicate the necessity to load the information saved on these floppy disks every morning, reports the San Francisco Chronicle. The system communicates the information utilizing wire loops which are “simply disrupted” and transfer extra slowly than a wi-fi modem. (In a metropolis inbuilt an space that experiences lots and lots of earthquakes each year, what may go fallacious?)
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 a minimum of.
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