Personal tech

Return of the sneakernets

2 comments | 10I like it!
August 26, 2008, 11:56 AM — 

Technology is like Irish weather sometimes - but on a slightly longer time-scale. Just wait a while and the Irish weather is guaranteed to change. Just wait a while longer and the original weather will come back again. Similarly, just wait a while and technology is sure to change. Just wait a while longer and the original technology just might come right back at ya.

Case in point. We used to have sneakernets. We fabricated them from 5 1/4 inch floppy disks. Need to send information from A to B? No problem : copy it first to a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk, have a "frisbee moment" to some other destination, then copy it off the 5 1/4 inch floppy. I have done this across continents. I have done it across a crowded room. I have done this between two machine sharing the same table.

It has been a while since I last wielded a 5 1/4 floppy. The same goes for its successor in the sneakernet stakes - the mighty 3 1/2 inch floppy. That floppy subsequently given way (in order) to the CD-R sneakernet, the DVD-R* sneakernet and now the USB key sneakernet.

I cannot remember when it happened but I remember thinking that a combination of USB and the Internet had effectively killed the sneakernet for good. Why would you export on a data key when you an easily send it over a wire: USB-to-USB or USB-Internet? It hasn't panned out that way for me. I don't know about you, but I find myself sneaker-netting a lot more these days than I would have envisaged a few years ago.

A lot of my sneaker-netting has to do with the way storage is popping up everywhere from cellphones to digital cameras to picture frames. My digital camera for example, has a USB cable and a CD-ROM of software, but it stores all its data on an SD card. I can read the SD directly using the SD card reader in my latop. Now. Which is more convenient - make a "real" network by running the USB cable provided or use a sneakernet and just use the SD card?

More often than not, I just go with the SD card and skip the USB cable and driver software. I don't think I am alone. I know for sure I am not alone when I say that I have fought frustrating battles with the device drivers that lurk behind most USB cables. If I can avoid device driver hell, I will. If, in doing that, I forsake some cool features, so be it.

Welcome back sneakernets. Nothing much has changed since you were last here except that volume has gone through the roof. Oh, and discs are no longer round...

Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world

I like it!
Comments

Pen-drives are big here too:

Pen-drives are big here too: hang about in a university and you see them used for moving Powerpoint presentations, officially, and MP3s and videos unofficially around the whole time. I bet high schools are the same...
| reply

We were just talking about

We were just talking about this at coffee yesterday morning -- with the size of USB keys and the security issues that come from being attached to a network we were wondering if sneakernet would make a comeback.
| reply
peer-to-peer

Esther Schindler
If the comments are ugly, the code is ugly

claird
SVG a graphics format for 21st century

pasmith
Take Chrome OS for a test spin

Sandra Henry-Stocker
Solaris Tip: Have Your Files Changed Since Installation?

sjvn
64-bits of protection?

jfruh
Android fragments vs. the iPhone monolith

mikelgan
What Gizmodo missed about the Pro WX Wireless USB disk drive

 

Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325

Join the conversation here

The Daily Tip

The Daily TipQuick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.

Hot tips:

Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.

Newsletters

Subscribe to ITWORLD TODAY and receive the latest IT news and analysis.

I would like to receive offers via email from ITworld partners.
By clicking submit you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in ITworld's privacy policy.
Featured Sponsor

AISO founders envisioned a Web hosting company that was environmentally friendly. While the company employed energy-efficient innovations like solar panels, its infrastructure produced unacceptable power and cooling requirements. Find out how AISO leveraged AMD technology to overcome their challenge in this case study white paper.

In this whitepaper, Scalar explores the opportunity to change the landscape with respect to mission critical databases built around Oracle. Leveraging technologies such as Linux, high-end commodity processing power and Oracle RAC technology to architect, design, build and maintain database infrastructure that delivers maximum availability, reliability and performance at a fraction of traditional cost.

On a typical day, weather.com, the Web site for The Weather Channel in Atlanta, serves up between 15 million and 20 million page views. But in September 2004, when back-to-back hurricanes ransacked Florida, the peak traffic on one day more than tripled: over 70 million page views by more than 7 million unique visitors. Read the full success story now.

Marketplace