It's (still) a floppy world...DAMN-IT

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a_greera_greer
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Well, I am sort of glad that i didn't make the Mac switch over the summer, I still plan to but I just got home from my first day of college classes and I discovered that most papers are to be turned in and transported from class<->home on 3.25 inch floppies, when I asked my Eng. comp teacher if I could do work with a thumb drive, she said "no, we all use floppies".



My CIS teacher let us in on a secret, the school has locked the usb ports so thumb drives are useless.



Question: why are these people in the dark ages? why is there no alternative to floppies that has more stability?
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  • Reply 1 of 34
    sparhawksparhawk Posts: 134member
    thumbdrives can contain more, so maybe more is taken then is allowed? Or maybe ppl start installing software...



    but yes, floppy is darkages! Big time....
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  • Reply 2 of 34
    superkarate monkeydeathcarsuperkarate monkeydeathcar Posts: 2,407member
    what school is this?
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  • Reply 3 of 34
    jwri004jwri004 Posts: 626member
    Did you also ask where the ink-wells were in the lecture theatres?



    I can't remember the last time I even touched a floppy - maybe three years ago....
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  • Reply 4 of 34
    jwri004jwri004 Posts: 626member
    Also luckily for us, your school != world



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  • Reply 5 of 34
    superkarate monkeydeathcarsuperkarate monkeydeathcar Posts: 2,407member
    does the football team still wear leather helmets with no face-guards?
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  • Reply 6 of 34
    toweltowel Posts: 1,479member
    Why can't you email her the files? I can't believe any teacher would rather deal with a stack of floppy disks than a few emails. Handing in assignments on any physical media is a little bizarre.



    Anyway, it's no reason to delay a switch to Mac. You can pick up a USB floppy drive for a few bucks, and it will work fine with PC-formatted floppies.
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  • Reply 7 of 34
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sparhawk

    thumbdrives can contain more, so maybe more is taken then is allowed? Or maybe ppl start installing software...



    I can do mutch more damage with access to a net connection than whatever data can be stoed away on a floppy...
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  • Reply 8 of 34
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by jwri004

    Did you also ask where the ink-wells were in the lecture theatres?





    No, as we entered the cave, we were given a hammer and chisel, next year they are upgrading to slate and calcium sticks, if we are lucky, we will get the name brand, Chalk(tm) and the transportation engineers are working on a replacements for the cubes that turn to turn the buggies, they call it codename ?wheel?.
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  • Reply 9 of 34
    crazychestercrazychester Posts: 1,339member
    Aww a_greer I think you're just pulling our collective legs. Any minute now you're going to post:



    "Ha ha! Fooled all you bozos."



    Aren't you? Please tell me you are.



    Please......
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  • Reply 10 of 34
    skipjackskipjack Posts: 263member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by a_greer

    Question: why are these people in the dark ages? why is there no alternative to floppies that has more stability?



    Many state schools use floppies. Some departments, such as engineering, don't have the budget or see the need to upgrade to the newest computers. I live in the Bay Area and in the schools I've attended, sometimes the only alternatives for transferring files are floppies or e-mail. This includes Cañada College, San Francisco State University, and UC Berkeley.



    I have had no problems using iBooks because USB floppy drives are inexpensive and work well.
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  • Reply 11 of 34
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    We finally got a couple of the older faculty here dragged kicking and screaming into the 90s with email-based submission... last year.



    Me, I'm planning on setting up a Subversion server for student projects... they have auto-backup as they go, and I have timestamps. Not to mention who checked in what/when for group projects...
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  • Reply 12 of 34
    ichiban_jayichiban_jay Posts: 660member
    my college is a bit too much internet reliant in my opinion. Everything is referred to the internet, setting up classes, syllabus, everything. And the website is the horrible thing to navigate in the world!



    They upgraded all the computer labs again... Dell P4 3.0 ghz with 1 gb of ram, Who the hell needs that much power for a general computer lab, where people only do word processing and web surfing? I can understand for computer classes, but for a general lab? I'm glad they have imacs though, I wouldn't touch those things with a 10 foot pole, besides, everyone is always crowding over them, the apple section is sparse, some 20 computers and only about 5 users. Let's see what have, dells with 3 ghz and 1 gb of ram, and imac G4's at 800 mhz and 256 mb of ram... We can see where they are spending more money on, can't we? And they haven't even had their software updated (mac osx wise)...
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  • Reply 13 of 34
    jwri004jwri004 Posts: 626member
    Does anybody know if you can take a submission in .doc form, use a tablet to "handwrite" comments on the submission, and then send it back to the sender still in .doc so they can open it in Word. Currently I believe you need a special viewer to open the files......



    (and yes this is a nasty PC question)



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  • Reply 14 of 34
    greggwsmithgreggwsmith Posts: 523member
    Why can't you use a usb floppy drive for a mac? The school usb's are locked but your own computer isn't.
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  • Reply 15 of 34
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Um, I think we live in a floppy-less world, and your college is the exception. Not even 4 years ago, when I entered college, was there any mention of "floppy."



    Although my 7500 at the time did have a floppy drive. . . . Now it has a MO drive mounted in the floppy position. (You can store a shit ton of old-school games on a MO disk)
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  • Reply 16 of 34
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Haven't used a floppy in 4 years.



    Sony makes those Floppy->memory stick adapters for old 3.5" Mavicas. Wonder if those could work in computers.
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  • Reply 17 of 34
    buonrottobuonrotto Posts: 6,368member
    As a ceremonious parting of ways with my soon to be former employer, I handed over a floppy that I had saved that contained a Powerpoint presentation to another person in the firm. I got it five years ago, and we only had it as emergency backup for a laptop presentation because we couldn't connect the 'book with the intranet. I haven't actually run a "floppy" (I bet the origin of that name is lost on many now) since college.



    However, I did meet a vendor who still was carrying a stack of floppies to hand out info with rather than handing out CDs.
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  • Reply 18 of 34
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    That's just silly, when CD-Rs are cheaper than floppies now.



    I haven't used a floppy for actually transferring data from computer to computer in... um... six years?



    I don't think I've *touched* one, literally, for three.



    No, wait... there were those 5.25" ones I hauled out to play with on the \\\\gs...
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  • Reply 19 of 34
    kennethkenneth Posts: 832member
    sorry to hear.



    I been to several public colleges in the Washington State and none of them required students to use floppy disks. I see more and more students use those USB flash drive in the lab.



    It's kind of dumb to lock those USB ports in the computer labs. May be for security issue?



    I would talk to the student body or the IT department for this issue. Floppy drive is obsolete! Apple put them away since the original iMac in 1998 and DELL followed in 2003/4 (?)
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  • Reply 20 of 34
    protostarprotostar Posts: 272member
    Know what u mean. Have to use floppies at our school because the old cheap ass PC USB ports dont work.Had to spend $40 on an external floppy drive for my eMac.
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