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Sloppy Floppies
Reprinted from the Fresno Commodore User Group
Who would've imagined the abuse that could be heaped on a little floppy disk.
Three month's ago, Polaroid Corp. kicked off a multi- million dollar
advertising campaign in 25 publications offering to clean Polaroid disks that
get mucked up and unreadable to a computer. Polaroid, which touts its
on-of-a-kind cleaning technique, expected to receive disks with a couple of
coffee or jelly donut stains from a few clumsy programmers. What it got were
major messes from some high-tech skeptics.
Compute! Publications sent a disk that had been frozen in a block of ice,
thawed out by a microwave oven, scrawled on with a ballpoint pen and then
stapled several times. Using three chemicals to clean it and a $100,000 device
(which the company declined to describe in detail) Polaroid retrieved 90% of
the data. The remaining data was ruined because the staples had poked holes in
the disk. In all other cases, 100% of the data was saved.
A few of the other tortures Polaroid disks were subjected to:
* Trade journal PC Week dumped a hot fudge sundae on its disk.
* A Boston consulting firm sent a saliva-covered disk that was chewed by a
golden retriever
Is this the beginning of media with a memory?
((No, that was Panty Hose with a Memory))
How about disks that never forget?
((No, those are ELEPHANTs!))
Maybe Polaroid just hid a snapshot feature in all their floppies???