Neglect the tapes, really too old... A Floppy Disk was convenient to carry around, it contained enough data for that years (1.44 Mb with games of 600KB average), was protected from the "room weather" and the tab just opened itself when inserted into the drive during a reading/writing process.
It had even a small lever to enable or disable the writing or read-only access type.
A Floppy was also containing two sheets of paper that better protect the data: the magnetic part in dark brown.
A floppy again, occupy a very little space and could be left unattended on the desk without doubt that your data were protected.
Among the defects, it's included the fact that it was all magnetically recorded , so a magnet could remove your data. This means that, unless you are masochists or nuclear scientist with big magnets in your pocket, there was no problem.
Now let's travel to the evolution where the Majors are throwing us: The CD-ROM.
How many music CDs, videos, data and pictures you have?
And about these, how many perfectly contain the data you have preciously stored upon ?
Here it is a CD-ROM: The CD-ROM, as they were designed, contains data using optical recording.
Their strengths are:
1) Great capacity
Their defects are:
1) Great capacity, but questionable, since over the time the large capacity becomes half, then small, then very small...
2) No fixed protection: The support, which must always accompany a CD but if not it's better (so you buy twice and someone makes the money) and it's 100% removables.
3) The magnetic recording is susceptible to magnets, the optical recording to bright light. Have You more magnets or windows in your house?
4) More space wasted: a floppy was the perfect size, not because there wasn't bigger, in fact they had been invented BEFORE the Floppy, but because it was more practical a small support. Try to keep your CDs in the car, maybe your Dimmu Borgir Special Edition!
5) Fragile and sensitive: useless to say that if you fold it you lose it, and also a minimum scratch corrupt the data irrevocably.
6) EPROM writing method - you can only write after collecting your data as better as you can,
burning them all on your CD with the same frequency as your relatives come to your home. In short, it doesn't support an flexible overwriting method, but just a big total burn (B.T.B. [tm]).
And now let's run into the years with big steps, just to see how well the Majors love us all:
ready, ladies and gentlemen, DVDs!
(picture: the same as before) - Improvements: More capacity!
Defects: the same as CD-ROM.
Okay, no problem, just an error; let's advance further galloping over the years to see the innovation...Ladies and Gentlemen, this time we got it: The Blu Ray!
(picture is the same as before but I had the decency to change it..)
Here they are! By popular demand! But that innovation, design, that enormous amounts of data...
Let's analyze them into detail!
Advantages: Even more data than before!
Disadvantages: Those about CD-ROMs. What, the CD-what? That thing about late 90's?
Yeah, sure, why?
The story, in short, "repeat and auto-justify itself"... but we haven't considered a competitive and intelligent(what a bad word!) asset as the computer scientists. This herd of tireless irreducibles, a little mistreated at the time of the Floppy, always wondered how anyone could change a bank of RAM in a portable buffer store, possibly user-friendly, with limitless possibilities of writing, large capacity, small footprint, high practicality and...oh sorry, I stop myself, otherwise the Majors lose their train of thought with this series of utopias never reached.
Ladies and gentleman this had to happen a long time ago, but I'm glad it happened anyway: USB Pens and portable Hard Disks!
NO MORE TO SAY.
Throw away all yours CDs, DVDs, BluRays and anything else open-sky-circular you have, this time we change the music. Go to a mall and you will notice some strange black towers to put on the left of your TV, and more the years will pass, more of these black towers will grow in capacity, wi-fi functions and Intranet/Internet connections... They are multi-media hard disks, with high quality cables and the opportunity to run one of the DivX/XviD movies stored... between hundreds!
But what about your precious old DVDs? What to do, maybe discard them? Yes, but just after you have ripped them all into your "towers anti-Major."
About car radio now use MP3 upon Secure Digital cards, and so for everything else in the future.
PS: Finally, I suggest you to use the USB from the metal side, because we leave the rounded side to the Majors to put it wherever they like.
Enjoy 2009!
Hello to everyone.
Lord Hol Napult
