this post was submitted on 28 Jan 2024
577 points (99.1% liked)

Technology

59635 readers
2947 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Sagifurius@lemm.ee 11 points 10 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.

[–] Maven@lemmy.sdf.org 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 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.

[–] WildPalmTree@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] Sagifurius@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Is there another way to express it except : ?

[–] psud@lemmy.world 2 points 10 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"

[–] anarchy79@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] psud@lemmy.world 1 points 10 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

[–] anarchy79@lemmy.world 1 points 9 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.

[–] Sagifurius@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

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