Posted on 03/22/2017 5:15:45 PM PDT by spintreebob
. . . In case you don’t remember, or are too young to remember, Zip disks and drives were developed by Iomega in 1994. They were a similar size to floppy disks – thicker – but held considerably more data; they started at 100 MB and eventually went up to 750 MB. (Which, in those days, was a lot.) Another interesting distinction about them is that they could be used for either PCs or Apple computers.
Several of the major voting machines used back in the day, such as the ESS Model 650 Central Scanner, used Zip disks. And a number of the counties that considered themselves cutting-edge now have to deal with the ancient technology. . . . .
2002 was a big year for acquiring voting machines in the wake of the 2000 “hanging chad” problem. “The 2002 Help America Vote Act provided $4 billion to states, but that money is largely gone,” Rauf writes. “With many state legislatures unwilling to allocate funding, election officials are left scrambling to make do.”
For example, 43 states used machines that were at least a decade old and nearing the end of their lifespans during November’s presidential election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, Rauf writes. “Election officials in a least 31 states want to purchase new voting machines in the coming years, according to a 2015 report from the center. Most, however, don’t know where they’ll get the money
(Excerpt) Read more at itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com ...
Michael R McCarthy owns ESS that got the HAVA money to sell his stuff to Republican Election Boards. McCarthy donates 95% D, especially Act Blue, and 5% R (Ayotte and others I never heard of). Soros owns other companies that get HAVA money for stuff they sell to Republican Election Boards. A CT friend and donor of Sen Dodd exclaimed "It's as if HAVA was written specifically for me." He also sells (mostly software) to Republican election officals.
And we wonder who controls our elections? Republican Secretarys of State and County Election Boards are just thrilled to get FREE money that they don't have to go begging to the legislature and be accountable to the legislature. FREE money. What could go wrong?
I still have files on zip disks. For awhile dell sold desktops with optional zip drives.
I remember the “click of death”
It’s a bit unnerving that some of our election results may be subject to “The click of death”.
I threw my Zip disks and drives out years ago. Parallel port interface. Take you back?
A ton of my undergrad stuff were on those things. There was simply nothing else that could hold the file sizes I needed back in 2000.
But 30 bucks for 100MB? Seems like a bad joke now especially how those things could easily stop being readable at the drop of a hat. And they did!
Click of death is why I never bought one. Any drive that randomly dies and kills the disk it’s working on it’s a safe system to store files on.
Does your vote count? and count? and count?
I had three zip discs with all my work on them. One work and two backups. The click of death killed them all. I never used zip discs again.
My dad has one all bagged up in a carry with 11 extra disks. You want to buy it?
I was fortunate, i never had a disk fail on me.
They later on made zip disks that conndted via usb.
Both are now found on ebay.
They were a godsend to small publishing shops that depended on Page Maker and Photoshop. Some musicians were tied into them as well. Things change rapidly in this business, well except for Mac Pros.
I paid $875.00 for my first 1 gig Conner hard drive. My first hard drive was a Sider 10 megabyte that I paid $400.00 for, used.
You would want to retreive a copy of something. You put a zip disk in the zip drive and click, click, click - the click of death - the disk damaged itself and you could not get the files off the disk. I had backup copies of anything really important. At the time the Zip disk was a miracle when compared against the floppy disk. Zip disks were everywhere for 10 or 12 years and the they disappeared almost overnight.
cheap CD-Rs CD-RWs and USB flash drives killed off the zip drive
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