floppy era ended in December 2015 Bashny.Net

2500 floppy disks (3, 5 "), or about 3, 5 GB. Norway. 2015.
Mass production of floppy ceased in 2010. But as it turned out to work with some disks almost every day.
Viking Programmer Finn Espen Gundersen of solar Norway said on its website why Norwegian doctors receive by mail each month on a 3, 5 "floppy disk from the Norwegian Government (Norwegian Directorate of Health). Finn Gundersen works in a small IT-companies working under contract Norwegian Ministry of health.

For a long time, all Norwegian doctors received monthly from the floppy government. In the last decade there was an alternative to obtain the same information online. But many doctors like their MS-DOS electronic journals and because of the obvious incompatibility of MSDOS and the WEB, they did not use this opportunity.

Why diskette, rather than flash memory or CD-ROM? The reason is partly historical and partly economic.
Floppy disks are much cheaper flash drive, and the necessary amount of data is written to a floppy disk is much faster than a CD-ROM. And taking into account the existing historical limitations to deliver the mail and the amount of data is less than 1, 44 MB - floppy disk is a logical choice

. Why is sent monthly diskette? In Norway, each citizen chooses a doctor (by functional analogy - native district physician). The government maintains a catalog of patient-doctor. Because Each patient is free to change doctors (to any doctor having the opportunity to take another patient) at any time, the government should continuously transmit their lists the doctors' basic patients. " This list is classified as confidential information related to health, although it is essentially just a list of names, which leads to some restricted distribution.


1500 floppy disks, about 2, 1 GB. Beautifully composed before the visit of the national broadcaster (NRK).
This work is IT-company Finn received in mid-2014 from a large US company. And initially it was funny. Since then, they had to buy tens of thousands of floppy disks by most local stocks online stores, after which they began to buy stocks from the previous floppy companies working under this contract.

Their job is to write the necessary files on a floppy disk, which will be sent to a specific doctor. To this end, they have developed two applications. From the monthly files received one program generates labels for diskettes and envelopes. On the label is applied to the barcode.


«Photocopier station»
The photo shows "copying station" - left under the barcode scanner is USB drive
. The second application reads the bar code labels inserted a floppy disk to a floppy disk and writes the "right image" corresponding to this label.
An interesting fact that the drive resource proved to be about a few thousand records. Luckily they can still be purchased online.


Art installation "Resistance to change" in the office of Finn Gundersen made of empty boxes from under the floppy disk (about 12, 000 drives).

Finn Gundersen published record in September, and in December 2015 has added that the Norwegian government to stop the spread on floppy disks list. Therefore, all described to be read in the past tense.





Source: geektimes.ru/post/263828/