Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Japan has officially killed off floppy disks!”.
About Japan declaring more on floppy disks – or this is this – is actually pretty interesting. Uh Japan declares war on floppy disk Japan’s digital Minister, Taro Kono has declared war on floppy disks and other retro Tech used by the country’s bureaucrats. Japan still has roughly 1900 government procedures that require the use of disks, including floppy disks CDs. This is the best. I was very surprised to see mini discs on here.
I know right kind of awesome, um the U.S government uh had had been using floppy disk. As recently as 2019 to receive new nuclear launch orders from the president, that is awesome to be clear. I’M not suggesting you know that it’s on the internet, like I’m, I’m just saying we could do something a little more robust than floppy disketts. That’S! Okay! I just want to make that very clear: yeah uh, more than 20 000 typical disks would be needed to replicate an average memory sticks during 32 gigabytes of information. This is pretty epic. You guys did a video fairly recently yeah uh building like a Windows 98 machine.
We bought it. Oh you bought one yeah, there’s a vendor online that sells Windows 98 computers for like a grand, yeah yeah. I have like new manufactured hardware and stuff. No, Oh, I thought they did.
No, they just well. They might have some, but a lot of it is refurbished. That makes sense yeah because there’s a lot of it out there and it’s it costs nothing. But what cost is spending the time to validate it and make sure that it’s all working and ready for deployment? Because they’re, as as Anthony explained in the video, there are many industries that still rely on extremely old soft tons of manufacturing and stuff. Where, like it, does as much as this might annoy some people in like software development and stuff. What they have does enough in a lot of these situations, 300 megahertz a lot of that’s millions of Cycles.
A second like it’s actually fine, a lot of very specific situations. You know running a conveyor belt yeah who cares yeah, it’s fine yep, and the cost of updating that Hardware that it’s running is Monumental. It could be, could potentially be catastrophic depending on the size of the business like so compared to you know, updating this giant. This giant kind of machine or whatever it is, you know just going out and buying another Windows – 98 computer.
Even if you are being charged an obscene amount of money, for it sure, makes it’s an obscene amount of money for what you’re getting. But it’s still a grand which to individuals is going to seem like a lot to a company. That’S churning out millions of dollars worth of product every day and they need that freaking machine running isn’t going to be a huge expense.
It is amazing how different the calculations for the worthwhileness of a purchase are for a business compared to a consumer see. I was even talking about okay, what, if you’re a smaller business – and you just can’t afford to update the Machinery? That’S one way of thinking about it, but then Luke’s like well what? If, what, if they’re churning out millions of dollars worth of equipment? Well then, they’re clearly not starving for money, but let’s talk about opportunity cost what if they had to turn off that machinery for some period of time in order to perform this, this maintenance to upgrade it so that it can run Windows Vista or so it can Run Windows, 10 or whatever the case may be. What is it costing them to have that not running so it could be literally, it could be hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to turn it off and upgrade it versus what I just spent a grand, and I can go get a new Windows.
98 computer. It’S wild right and so as much as it feels counter-intuitive, for you know as a as an 80s 90s kid right I feel like Japan is like the land of Technology yeah. That’S that’s the kind of the brand that Japan has to me right. You know the the first time that I ever saw a USB thumb drive it was, it was a friend bringing it bring it back. I believe from the trip to Japan, yeah or the first time I saw a mini disc. Oh it’s it’s Sony. You know Sony was like the premium. The premium right, Samsung and LG were still like Lucky Gold Star like cheap crap right. Nobody, nobody respected those Brands back then, like Japan, the land of video games and technology, and, like so for me to read that the Japanese Chinese government is still using flop. I mean CDs, oh okay, fair enough, I guess, but minidisc minidisc was never even you like.
I I wasn’t even aware of it as as a as a medium for anything other than you know, listening to mp3s off Napster right like I did, I don’t know I. That was the only thing I ever knew it to exist for, and it was also a lot of people back then, for certain sir, I mean it still is common, but not on the same scale. I would argue because the internet has connected people very closely, but it was very common back then for certain Technologies to actually take off in certain areas. So maybe minidisc was just used for other stuff. In Japan I mean it was. It was sick.
It was cool right compared to the other things we had at the time you got to understand. Usb thumb drives not a thing yet, okay, and even though, and even when they were a thing, they weren’t necessarily convenient like uh. If you went to a library or something like that, it’s not like it would support you plugging in your USB drive, and I’m talking like the library at school like you would have to. You would have to carry sometimes a floppy diskette with USB drivers on it and then the USB drive that had your like your PowerPoint presentation or you know something some kind of multimedia thing that wouldn’t fit on a floppy disk. Even once I had a USB drive. I would often still use floppy disks, not in small part, because my first USB thumb drive was either eight megabytes or 16 megabytes like it actually didn’t.
Have that much more capacity. People thought it was weird too um. Jax in Philippine chat said minidisc was much more popular in Japan, I mean yeah.
I guess I guess I get it because the capacity compared to the things we had at the time was massive. Apparently you can copy rented music in Japan, and that was a big push for minidiscs. Oh, oh interesting! Okay, I mean Japan has all kinds of stuff that I just like. Never even saw, or never heard of before, like the kinds of stuff you can get in vending machines over there and stuff. Unfortunately, the one time we went to Japan, we didn’t really get a chance to stay very short period of time and it was awesome for that really short period of time, but it was awesome yeah anyway um.
So that’s hilarious. I guess it’s finally time for floppy disks to uh to to head out right out into the sunset. I I shouldn’t be that surprised I mean, I remember, being I remember feeling this exact same emotion like you ever get that where it’s like, like a Deja Vu kind of feeling, but you don’t actually feel like this thing happened before, but you feel like you’ve had This you’ve experienced this feeling before the day I found out that one of our major competitors at NCIX still submitted their POS via fax, I’m sitting here, going what you can’t you can’t walk into the warehouse and grab a computer. You can’t send a email like what do you mean? Why would you submit them via fast that one I genuinely you would actually you would actually send your rep, an email to say, hey check your fax machine yeah. That’S like leaving your voicemail to ask if you’ve checked your text messages like what what are you, what are you doing yeah? I can’t fathom it it’s very weird, it’s very, very weird. I it does make me a little bit sad, and I know this probably just like makes me old, but I always really liked the physical nature of things sure, like there’s, there’s an Animorphs book that might be dating me as well uh, but there’s an Animorphs book Where they have these, like data cubes, like even Star Wars, has the whatever they’re called the the pyramid – things that have knowledge of that for sure yeah. These, like physical mediums of information, just because I know that doesn’t mean Star Wars, isn’t dead to me. Carry on we’re always, I always thought they were really cool.
I thought it was cool. I that’s one of the reasons why I like physical games as well. I’Ve always really enjoyed physical media um, and it is like better sure that things are becoming more digital and and and and whatnot, but I do find it more boring, so I think it’s like kind of cool in a not good way. I guess maybe that some of these things still run on this old hardware and run on these old systems and stuff.
Like that, I think yeah. I think it’s kind of neat .