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Kalos posted:Also because, despite all our technology, it's still the most simple way to transfer files between two physically-close computers. No special software, no need to trust your data to third party security, works on any operating system, and no limitation on file size other than the actual storage of the drive itself. Just copy some files onto it and gently lob it at the recipient. I'm pretty sure I've heard people say the same things more or less about floppy disks or data tapes a couple of decades ago. Parallel Paraplegic posted:Except the PC as we know it is already on the way out for everything but businesses as far as corporations that make them (and software for them) are concerned, and it's only a few tens of years before we all have crazy augmented reality glasses that read our thoughts anyway Some people I know have been using their phones or micro SD cards with a USB adapter on jobs simply because they can access the internet without relying on the client's network and can even access their own PC if need be. I'm not saying that flash drives are going to stop being used any time soon, but it's not hard to see them being phased out eventually.
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Sep 21, 2012 15:10
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Jibo posted:I'm pretty sure I've heard people say the same things more or less about floppy disks or data tapes a couple of decades ago.
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Sep 21, 2012 15:45
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Ensign Expendable posted:There will still be vital systems controlled by a dusty old box with leaking capacitors and Windows XP.
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Sep 21, 2012 16:20
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I have an old Sony BD player that I bought a few weeks after HD-DVD was officially declared dead. Anyway, I rarely use it anymore but the last time I did it was to watch Dark Knight. I put the disk in and then went to microwave popcorn. By the time I sat down the movie had finally loaded and was ready to play. I also could not update the firmware or use any Blu Ray live functions without shoving a USB stick in the back of it.
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Sep 21, 2012 16:20
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Bonzo posted:I have an old Sony BD player that I bought a few weeks after HD-DVD was officially declared dead. Older BD players didn't have onboard memory, which some discs need to cache data on to work. I had to fit a stick to my Sony player before I could watch Crank 2. Anyway, access times are dropping. Early gen players would have a cited spin-up time of anywhere up to two minutes for a disc, but these days it's generally 45 seconds at most.
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Sep 21, 2012 17:55
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Jibo posted:I'm pretty sure I've heard people say the same things more or less about floppy disks or data tapes a couple of decades ago.
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Sep 21, 2012 18:12
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mystes posted:On the other hand, as someone who hasn't routinely used physical media to transfer files between computers since the 1990's, I am starting to suspect that people who aren't using networks and/or the internet to transfer files by now aren't going to start doing so any time soon. Depending on the quantity of data to be moved, sneakernet is still often faster than networks and/or the internet.
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Sep 21, 2012 21:05
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I don't think they'll ever really properly phase out 'Stuff that you can put data on and carry around to put into other devices/machines'. The horrific Technopocolyptical future where we're all hardwired to the Hot-Web and surfing data streams in our minds is all well and good till you want to take your mind-warp enhanced copy of Robocop 2 to your aunts who hasn't got wireless in. Plus isn't 'sneakernet' basically always going to be faster(sortof), at least to some extent? You can only shove data down a line so fast, whereas you can basically make storage devices infinitely huge forever (sortof).
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Sep 21, 2012 21:35
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Plus isn't 'sneakernet' basically always going to be faster(sortof), at least to some extent? You can only shove data down a line so fast, whereas you can basically make storage devices infinitely huge forever (sortof). Sort of. Sneakernet is an excellent example of high bandwidth (as many flash drives / portable hard drives as you can transport) versus high latency (it takes a longer time for one "packet" to arrive at its destination, but the packet is much larger than a network could send as a packet.) E: It doesn't matter so much for the average Joe, but if you're a big corporation like Google and you need to move multiple terabytes of data from one place to another, it's useful. (That's mentioned in the wikipedia article I linked; specifically it was 120TB.) vv m2pt5 has a new favorite as of 21:57 on Sep 21, 2012 |
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Sep 21, 2012 21:42
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m2pt5 posted:Depending on the quantity of data to be moved, sneakernet is still often faster than networks and/or the internet. mystes has a new favorite as of 21:55 on Sep 21, 2012 |
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Sep 21, 2012 21:50
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I imagine that some people would prefer keeping things on flashdrives, or other non-cloud storage for security's sake.
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Sep 21, 2012 22:01
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SC Bracer posted:I imagine that some people would prefer keeping things on flashdrives, or other non-cloud storage for security's sake. Flashdrives can be lost or stolen. If you encrypt your things properly before you put them on the cloud drive, nobody but you can access them even if they break into the cloud drive. I mean sure you could encrypt your flash drive too but why bother when a cloud drive can store seemingly-limitless amounts and will never run the risk of being sent through the wash by accident. Anyway portable hard drives are still useful for bulk transfers and will be for some time, I admit. I work for a software company, and our data center is 10 miles away. We have a fiber line directly to there, but file transfers are still horribly slow for the amount of data we deal with. For a while, before I got seniority at the company (  ) whenever we needed to push something big to our servers we'd load it up on an ancient external drive (the kind with two USB plugs because it uses so much power!) and I'd get to drive it over.
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Sep 22, 2012 01:52
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I can definitely see removable media going away for the average home user eventually. I built my current PC in 2008, and since then it's only ever had external hard drives connected to it for backups and a flash drive once for OS installation. It's never had an optical drive and I've never run into a situation where I've needed one. The average user doesn't have much that can't be stored on something like Google Drive and it shouldn't be long until connection speeds improve, making off-site backups ubiquitous and maybe even a nifty automatic feature built into Windows.
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Sep 22, 2012 04:06
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Mr_Person posted:I can definitely see removable media going away for the average home user eventually. I built my current PC in 2008, and since then it's only ever had external hard drives connected to it for backups and a flash drive once for OS installation. It's never had an optical drive and I've never run into a situation where I've needed one. There are a LOT of people who just will not buy software in a downloadable format. Just, they refuse. I do not understand it, but I will not hesitate to continue to take their money at work. I think that attitude will continue for a long time, since even in college-aged kids who use iTunes for music and movies have a disconnect when it comes to software. Optical drives are going to be around quite a while yet, and removable media more so. Personally, I'd rather keep isos or exes of programs on an external drive rather than downloading them whenever I need to reinstall.
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Sep 22, 2012 06:10
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Avenging_Mikon posted:There are a LOT of people who just will not buy software in a downloadable format. Just, they refuse. I do not understand it, but I will not hesitate to continue to take their money at work. Guild Wars 2 costs £50 for a digital download and £30 for a physical copy. Do you understand it now? Also, a lot of people still burn their own CDs and DVDs.
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Sep 22, 2012 10:41
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Jedit posted:Guild Wars 2 costs £50 for a digital download and £30 for a physical copy. Do you understand it now? I understand even less now. A download should be cheaper.
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Sep 22, 2012 11:27
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Boiled Water posted:I understand even less now. A download should be cheaper. Most companies don't want to piss off retailers (who won't stock their stuff as a result) by setting lower prices on downloads, hence this weirdness. I've never heard of there being such a huge difference though.
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Sep 22, 2012 19:32
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Avenging_Mikon posted:There are a LOT of people who just will not buy software in a downloadable format. Just, they refuse. I do not understand it, but I will not hesitate to continue to take their money at work. I think that attitude will continue for a long time, since even in college-aged kids who use iTunes for music and movies have a disconnect when it comes to software. Optical drives are going to be around quite a while yet, and removable media more so. Personally, I'd rather keep isos or exes of programs on an external drive rather than downloading them whenever I need to reinstall. I think one of the reasons for this aversion to digital downloads is that they are intangible. When you have the physical media that your program resides on, complete with official label and in many cases, complex anti counterfeiting holograms, you have physical proof that you own the product. If you saved the receipt from where you bought it that's even better because you have proof of where and when you bought it. Being a physical hard to counterfeit object is also why paper money will be around for a very long time. With a digital download, you have *zero* physical proof. Any and all proof that you own a copy of the song or software is all digital, and digital data is not as trustworthy as an actual physical object. Now that said if the price is low enough, digital downloads are worth the risk, real or imagined.
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Sep 22, 2012 19:55
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Jedit posted:Guild Wars 2 costs £50 for a digital download and £30 for a physical copy. Do you understand it now? Landerig posted:I think one of the reasons for this aversion to digital downloads is that they are intangible. When you have the physical media that your program resides on, complete with official label and in many cases, complex anti counterfeiting holograms, you have physical proof that you own the product. If you saved the receipt from where you bought it that's even better because you have proof of where and when you bought it. Being a physical hard to counterfeit object is also why paper money will be around for a very long time. I guess I'm just too used to damaging/losing discs and cd keys to not love downloads.
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Sep 22, 2012 21:22
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Avenging_Mikon posted:Not the kind of situation I'm talking about. I had a weird uncomfortable "but it's a download, why am I paying for a download" feeling for a while, ingrained in me from the earlier culture of the internet where downloads were practically all free (and generally mostly sucked). I grew out of it because Steam is pretty rad, but I kinda understand the weird unexplainable aversion to downloading entire games and programs.
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Sep 23, 2012 00:53
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Jedit posted:Also, a lot of people still burn their own CDs and DVDs. For what? I'm genuinely curious. I used to use DVDs for when I wanted to give something to a friend, but these days flash drives of greater capacity than DVDs are only a few dollars and easy to pass back and forth without being too concerned about it getting lost somewhere along they way. Even that's a pretty rare case, since most of my friends have Internet access.
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Sep 23, 2012 04:21
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CDs are really useful if you forgot to charge your iPod and don't feel like listening to the radio in your car. vvvv 
Coffee And Pie has a new favorite as of 05:09 on Sep 23, 2012 |
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Sep 23, 2012 04:34
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You can get an iPod car charger for like $10
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Sep 23, 2012 04:38
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I haven't even touched any sort of optical disc in around 2.5 years. I guess digital video downloads have more problems than audio (since audio is generally just DRM free files now), but I don't particularly feel any compulsion to actually own movies as opposed to renting them so this isn't that big an issue for me.
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Sep 23, 2012 05:07
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I have no problem going all-digital with games and music, but I still buy movies and Tv shows on disc. I'm fine with digital movies in principle, but the digital releases never get extra features, which annoys me. Also the pricing on digital movie releases feels way too high, for the most part.
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Sep 23, 2012 08:01
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I'm trying to think of the last time I've ever bought a CD or DVD in the past 6 years, and all I can remember is that copy of UT2004 that I accidentally left behind in somebody's taxi on the way home. I also bought a stack of DVD-Rs, but flash drives are better in every way besides installing Linux so I haven't even gone through the whole thing. Punching in your CC# a bunch of times and having everything ready to go by the time you're out of the shower is just way too convenient, I suppose 
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Sep 23, 2012 08:22
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Goons are really out of touch with what the ~average~ person does. Flash keys aren't going anywhere, and removable media in general really isn't except maybe CDs. Less than 40% of households in the US have a Blu-ray player, despite 70% having HDTVs. There are 100 million people in this country that are completely fine with watching a standard definition DVD, even when they already own an HDTV and Blu-Ray players cost less than a C-note. The average person is not nearly as technologically up-to-date as goons like to imagine. The ~average~ person is still buying DVD's, Blu-rays, and video games on physical disks and they probably will be for a long time.
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Sep 23, 2012 09:17
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^^^ The main advantage of Blu-ray is the sound. I wouldn't have bothered with Blu-ray if I didn't have a receiver and 5.1 speaker rig.Coffee And Pie posted:CDs are really useful if you forgot to charge your iPod and don't feel like listening to the radio in your car. Or if your car CD player doesn't have a way to connect an MP3 player, like 99% of all car CD players made before three years ago.
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Sep 23, 2012 09:33
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Avenging_Mikon posted:There are a LOT of people who just will not buy software in a downloadable format. Just, they refuse. I do not understand it, but I will not hesitate to continue to take their money at work. I'm like this, but it's mostly because I live in Australia and we have painful bandwidth caps.  (Not to say I never download stuff, but I generally avoid it if I can)
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Sep 23, 2012 11:30
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AntiPseudonym posted:I'm like this, but it's mostly because I live in Australia and we have painful bandwidth caps.
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Sep 23, 2012 11:55
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BoutrosBoutros posted:Goons are really out of touch with what the ~average~ person does. Flash keys aren't going anywhere, and removable media in general really isn't except maybe CDs. Less than 40% of households in the US have a Blu-ray player, despite 70% having HDTVs. There are 100 million people in this country that are completely fine with watching a standard definition DVD, even when they already own an HDTV and Blu-Ray players cost less than a C-note. The average person is not nearly as technologically up-to-date as goons like to imagine. The ~average~ person is still buying DVD's, Blu-rays, and video games on physical disks and they probably will be for a long time. I personally think Blu-Ray is dead in the water. Technologically sophisticated customers are already switching from physical media to online streaming, and average people will follow them. The idea of spending $30 on a physical copy of one movie is going away, and Grandma is far more likely to buy an Apple TV than a dedicated Blu-Ray player. Revolutionary technology always crowds out evolutionary technology, for example, it doesn't matter how good a consumer-level digital camera is, it still isn't competing with an iPhone.
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Sep 23, 2012 12:54
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Jedit posted:
My biggest problem is that I live in North Carolina and it gets really hot in the summer. I have all the plug-ins, but I don't want to carry an iPod around in my pocket, but I also don't want to leave it to cook in the car all day. On top of that, and the interface in my car is way too clunky and unintuitive. Mine is a 2010 with a lovely interface, her's is a 2008 with loving Bluetooth that streams audio from her phone. Go figure.
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Sep 23, 2012 13:12
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SC Bracer posted:I imagine that some people would prefer keeping things on flashdrives, or other non-cloud storage for security's sake. I've read statistics that about 25% of the flashdrives in use by the dutch ministry of defense are lost/stolen. Konstantin posted:I personally think Blu-Ray is dead in the water. Technologically sophisticated customers are already switching from physical media to online streaming, and average people will follow them. The idea of spending $30 on a physical copy of one movie is going away, and Grandma is far more likely to buy an Apple TV than a dedicated Blu-Ray player. Revolutionary technology always crowds out evolutionary technology, for example, it doesn't matter how good a consumer-level digital camera is, it still isn't competing with an iPhone. Yeah I think it's very likely that Blu-Ray will be the victim of people leapfrogging the format entirely when they finally feel the need to upgrade their dvd player. It's like windows vista in that regard and DVD's are more like windows XP. DONT TOUCH THE PC has a new favorite as of 14:47 on Sep 23, 2012 |
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Sep 23, 2012 14:40
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Konstantin posted:I personally think Blu-Ray is dead in the water. Technologically sophisticated customers are already switching from physical media to online streaming, and average people will follow them. The idea of spending $30 on a physical copy of one movie is going away, and Grandma is far more likely to buy an Apple TV than a dedicated Blu-Ray player. Revolutionary technology always crowds out evolutionary technology, for example, it doesn't matter how good a consumer-level digital camera is, it still isn't competing with an iPhone. mystes has a new favorite as of 14:52 on Sep 23, 2012 |
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Sep 23, 2012 14:49
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Konstantin posted:I personally think Blu-Ray is dead in the water. Technologically sophisticated customers are already switching from physical media to online streaming, and average people will follow them. The idea of spending $30 on a physical copy of one movie is going away, and Grandma is far more likely to buy an Apple TV than a dedicated Blu-Ray player. Revolutionary technology always crowds out evolutionary technology, for example, it doesn't matter how good a consumer-level digital camera is, it still isn't competing with an iPhone. One downside to flash drives is as far as I know, you can't really write protect them. SD cards you can, but it's more a feature of the drive then the actual card. A disc is much harder to accidentally erase. Also, aren't flash drives susceptible to magnets as well?
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Sep 23, 2012 15:59
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Landerig posted:
Some flash drives have write lock switches. SD card write lock is NOT mandatory for the host to pay attention to. Flash drives are not susceptible to any magnetic field you can manage to put through them, no.
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Sep 23, 2012 16:09
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I wonder which one is going to last longer anyway -- flash memory or the dye layer in recordable optical discs? Last I checked, CD-Rs only had a lifetime of ten to fifteen years before they start to degrade and become unreadable. Blu-rays can't be much better.
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Sep 23, 2012 16:51
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I honestly don't WANT physical media to go away. Network outages or slowdowns are more common in my experience than plain old power outages, and it's nice to know that even if my BR player's connection to Netflix WI is acting weird, I can still watch one of the many, many discs I actually own.
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Sep 23, 2012 17:05
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Sagebrush posted:I wonder which one is going to last longer anyway -- flash memory or the dye layer in recordable optical discs? Last I checked, CD-Rs only had a lifetime of ten to fifteen years before they start to degrade and become unreadable. Blu-rays can't be much better. NAND flash is spec'd to retain data for a year, but most non-enterprise NAND can't manage that. With lovely SSDs, you're lucky to get a few months out of it. Flash drives usually do better, since the NAND wasn't binned for speed at the expense of other considerations, but the capacitors which make up the memory itself will leak, and bit-rot will set in within a few years even in a safety deposit box. Flash memory is not long-term storage. And it will soon be obsolete! Memristor-based memory (memory-resistor, if you're PBFing on the portmanteau) should be coming out next year, and it has a lot of potential. Initially, it will be a faster Flash, but Memristors could well become a super-speedy, unified RAM and storage. So standard silicon fabricated SDRAM could bite the dust, too, in a couple decades.
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Sep 23, 2012 18:02
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Factory Factory posted:Memristor-based memory (memory-resistor, if you're PBFing on the portmanteau) should be coming out next year That soon? I know companies have been researching it, but I hadn't heard about anyone being ready to start mass production.
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