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The floppy disk refused to die in Japan - laws that forced the continued use of floppies have finally hit the chopping block (www.tomshardware.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago (2 children)

10 to one they weren't, look how oddly this article is phrased. I'd guess there was a rule government offices had to accept floppy discs, have the equipment to read them, but the clients weren't actually submitting that way anymore.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Like, the first paragraph explains.

Until last week there were about 1,900 official governmental application procedures that stipulated businesses must submit floppies or CD-ROMs (specifically) containing supplementary data.

Not "the government had to accept them", but "businesses were required to submit them".

It's not a hypothetical problem, there was even news a few years ago about how businesses were complaining they had to send in a dozen+ disks at a time because of file formats.

The laws were written at the dawn of the digital age, in the 70s and 80s, stipulating specific storage media, and just never got updated because the government didn't view it as a problem.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Upvoted because proper'ish use of 10 and one. :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Is there another way to express it except : ?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

10 to 1. Many style guides require numbers lower than 10 to be spelt out. Many people think that what style guides say is "correct"

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I will never accept spelt nor smelt, unless we're talking about grains and ore refining, respectively.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That's fine. Spelled vs spelt is different regionally in the UK. I was taught "spelled", I say it as spelled, but more often than not I type it spelt because it's easier on a glass keyboard

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Hahaha I can respect that. I do have a pretty big chip on my shoulder when it comes to language, semantics, syntax, whatever, but I will always let it slide if the counter argument is based around instrumental favorability.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Oh. Yeah I've never read a style guide.