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Apple Businesses

iMac Floppies over the Net 83

Posted by CmdrTaco from the this-is-amusing dept.
netstat sent a link to iMacFloppy.com which (get this) allows you to send virtual floppy disks to other iMacs! Assuming it's connected to the internet! But they won't discriminate against PCs! Apparently attaching files to email is much to complicated. Thank god for virtual floppies. The best part is that this site is 'designed for an iMac'. What a gas. Funniest thing I've seen all day.
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iMac Floppies over the Net More

iMac Floppies over the Net

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  • Not really a bad idea (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Think about it most isp have a limit on the users mail box of 2.5 megs. If someone send 3 megs to another email that has that limit, it will either lock the account, not accept the message, or try to delete old messages so it can fit. Either way the user wih the 2.5 meg quota on there account can't get the message. Anyway it is rude to send someone a 1 meg of bigger file to there email if they run on a analog modem.

    It is a good idea in theory but 3 megs is alittle tight, and plus you need a web browser for it.

    They should of gave those poor imac users a floppy drive in the first place, I feel sorry for the ones that actucally learn about computers and realize that they had to bend over to cover the rest of the low price of the imac.

    I would get me an account but i just ftp everything from work/school/home any how, don't need a dedicated line when you have a shell account. Some isp will give free shells, or space for web page either way, why can't that be used?? just ftp and chmod 700 *

    I would use it, if I didn't have any space on any dedicated servers

  • Funny? No! An interesting idea. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Gumber sez:

    Another outbreak of narrow vision on slashdot. Sigh.

    While I am not entirely enthusiastic about the exact details of this, I think it is a great idea.

    First, the marketing. This company has turned a possible shortcoming of the iMac, the lack of a floppy drive, into an opportunity. I think this is smart.

    Second, the basic idea of having internet accesible file servers is also smart. It allows access to information from any internet attached computer. Plus, a central facility can offer much better data protection than any given individual.

    As for the fact that there are already ways of accomplishing data transfer without resorting to something like this, I would suggest that all of them have their shortcomings.

    e-mail attachements: Inneficient. sending to one user requires the data be copy from the source machine to the sources e-mail server to the recipients e-mail server and on to the recipients machine. A central file server cuts this down to two copy operation. In addition, conveying the file to multiple recipients increases the number of copy operations and the number of intermediate copies of the data that have to be stored. There is also the issue of size restrictions that are often imposed on mailboxes and attachments.

    FTP: Possible space restrictions (also the case with iMacfloppy.com) Permissions management issues. UI issues restrict audience somewhat. A lot of you seem to think that people should adapt to computers, rather than vice-versa and that any useability improvement is suspicious because it may attract a lower class of computer user. I don't have much sympathy with this view. How many of you can rebuild your auto engine? Some of you may complain that you can't because automakers have made them more complex in order to coddle the lUsers, but I would disagree. This increased complexity gives you engines that are more efficient, less polluting and lower maintainance than older, simpler, easier to maintain engines. I think this is a reasonable tradeoff. How many of you can or do maintain your own Internet backbones?

    That said, this is certainly an imperfect start. My ideal service would support multiple filing protocols in a secure fashion for native support of multiple platforms. Larger storage. Enhanced UI for simplified permissions management and automatic backup. Ability to order CD archives of personal site contents.

    Add this up with DSL or cable modems and you have a great platform for remote collabaration and off-site backup.

  • umm.. actually... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    email attatchments _are_ too complicated. you can only download an email once, unless you tell it to leave a copy on the server, something that wouldn't occur to a lot of people. also the last time i checked POP3 wasn't very efficient at downloading files. it seems slow and i've lost files between the server and the computer before. also some people have limits on how much data can be in their mailboxes but don't know it. and there's a chance you could run into confusion over the pure evil of binhex.

    you suggest the imac user should set up his imac as an FTP server. But most of these people with the imacs have modems. Modems do disconnect, and you'd assume someone using this virtual floppy thing would have left the house by the time they'd be using the imac.

    This is an interesting idea. Temporary storage space that is going to be there no matter what happens? Could be pretty nifty. the only thing they ought to do is put in some kinda encryption thing so that neither other users nor the admins can get at another person's data.

    ADMIT IT!! if this was called, say, "NetSafe", didn't have such a cuddly design, mentioned macintosh nowhere, and had technical jargon on the web page, these same people posting things about how stupid macintoshes are (except they call it MAC, in capital letters) would think it was really cool. Slashdot, on the other hand, would be treating it with the same courtesy they treat, say, ml.org.

    What's more, this idea has been tried before, by microsoft. They let you back up your hard drive on their FTP server. It died pretty quick, apparently because noone trusted MS with their personal data.
  • As several people have pointed out.

    I think it's a lame idea too tho.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad

  • try cypherpunks slappy
  • Sites like this are proof positive that we ought
    to begin requiring some kind of test before we
    allow people to buy computers.

    Think about it: it'd keep the net from becoming
    sucked down by the lowest common denomonator(sp?).
    Someone walks into Best Buy and asks to buy a
    Packard Bell, for instance, and they automatically
    fail the test and are condemned to Silicon Hell
    for all eternity.

    We could be nice, have five-month training courses
    and the like for smart people who just have never
    used a computer. The truly stupid people out there
    would still fail and not be allowed to own a
    computer. Maybe we could sterilize them while
    we're at it...

    You'd stop hearing things like "I'm having a
    problem with my microsoft" (because MS would be
    out of business). No more "I think AOL gives fine
    service".

    Better yet -- dare I hope? -- no more "FIRST!!".

    I can dream, damnit.

    ----

  • 3 megs, yeah, right. FreeDrive [freedrive.com] lets me have 20. And it uses the same methods to upload to their servers.

    Besides, there's a floppy disk drive that attaches to USB availible from Apple. I asked that at CompUSA.

  • Posted by HarryZ:

    Amen to what you said, and it appears that a majority of clueless, snooty idiots on here doesn't realize that:

    * There are (*gasp!) people that are not as versed on computers as they are.

    * Consumers have different needs.

    * They themselves, with their arrogant attitude, are rendering themselves obsolete (just look where arrogance got Microsoft. In that way, they are no different to MS)

    HarryZ
  • Posted by CyberPete:

    New services for the Internet are a GOOD THING.

    The value of any network increases exponentially with the number of nodes. If services like this help a certain subset of the Net population, then more power to them. There is nothing wrong with designing services to fit with the metaphors that people are used to.

    This whole thing reminds me of those high and mighty dinks back in 1994 that were so sure that the web was fluff and had no value to REAL users of the Internet.

  • The same thing we do when our Sun Ultra Entriprise servers crash (not that this ever happens): boot from cdrom, tape, arbitrary scsi device, network, ... The concept that machines can only be booted from a disk or a floppy is confining and intelpc-centric. There's a great big world of booting options out there, and macs actually support some of them. Go do your homework before you mock a machine that lacks a slow, outdated, roundly despised piece of hardware.
  • NT device drivers are an order of magnitude harder to write than linux equivalents

    True enough, although I'd say two orders.

    linux PPP is an order of magnitude harder to get working than NT PPP

    It's too bad you tried to use this as an example. Because it's a terrible one - Linux PPP is cake. However, that said, very few people here are flaming "all mac users" or saying "Linux is perfect in every way." And then you come on with another bad example: GNOME and KDE. The reason both of them exist is that nobody has figured out that people who use windows are going to think anything else is hard at first. The UI options offered under Linux/UN*X already whip everything else out there. But anyway... The people who are saying such things are wrong and simply shouldn't be here - so don't read their posts. As for whether it's better for software to be easy or hard to use...I'll take easy any day, but only to the extent that no flexibility is lost.

    In any case, the point here is not about "macs suck" or "mac users suck" - it's about whether people with no knowledge of computers, no concept of netiquette, and no independent thinking abilities (even as re: not computers) can benefit themselves or others by "getting on the information superhighway." And that is a resounding NO.
  • Amen. I've been saying it all along. Maybe if we did something like this, the Internet would a more clueful, less profiteer-and-newbie-filled thing. But the gov't won't do it - they're too busy prosecuting the two Bills. Bah.
  • AppleshareIP can do the Windows peer-to-peer filesharing, so you can support both Macs and Windows machines with it.
  • While I can see market for net-based storage beyond stupid e-mail tricks, at least the bastards could have set up a 10 meg Appleshare IP account...this web based crap has -got- to go.

    Feh.

    SoupIsGood Food
  • Maybe because this kind of a WWW site is a joke. Come on, would you really place anything critical or really important on such a site, say like your tax return information? Of course not and that's the point.....
  • I mean, the name is bogus, but having a web interface to 3 MB of storage is pretty cool. I use it as a backup for my own records (I encrypt them, and they're not especially sensitive anyway). Slashdot people really need to think about getting past knee-jerk reactions. Sigh.
  • I think some people here need a clue.

    This *IS* a usefull service. TRY IT.

    Picture this...

    Lab of 32 iMacs.

    400 students at a uni use this every day.

    Instead of battling over how to get their files from the lab and home... THey just upload their documents from the harddrive to imacfloppy at the end of the session. And they can download them from home.

    It works. Its as simply as you can get it. A lot simpler than ftp, or sendmail, or setting up ftpd etc etc etc.

    Try it and see what they're on about.

    It is to replace the floppy disk which normal people keep in the coat pocket on their way from school or work to home!

    NOT for you or me!

    BUT I've found a use for it ;)

    I use it to keep the few files I sometimes need... such as my sig file. So I can work anywhere :)

    So combined with my virtual floppy and my pilot what more do I need?

  • The whole point of computing is that it is supposed to be accessible to everyone. To discriminate like that, especially for a Linux user (remember that the Linux philosophy is supposed to be "open computing for everybody") is simply bad.

    Yeah; I don't like this "virtual floppy" idea, though I suppose it could be used for other things. But it's atill a Good Thing; it makes the idea of sending files over the Net more accessible to people, and that is never bad.
  • One: this never happens to anyone but the most psychotic users who do stupid things to their computer to see if it still works (hell, I'm one such user and it never happens to me either).

    Two: Were that ever to happen, they use the CD. Unlike more archaic machines, Macs all the way back to the Plus can boot from a CD-ROM drive.
  • A lot of posters here are offended that Slashdotters would find imacfloppy.com useless. Yet, the fact is, anyone who runs Linux and knows what they are doing would find this site useless. There are tons of ways to transfer data on a Linux box:
    • distributed file systems: NFS, AFS, Coda
    • internet protocols: FTP, HTTP, SMB, e-mail
    • command line utilities: rcp, scp
    Some of these methods even secure your data in transit. All of these methods require no third party who might possibly leave you hanging with service glitches, or get their grubby little hands on your data.

    For Linux users, if you leave your computer connected to the internet all the time, there is no excuse for using a third party for data transfer. If you can't transfer data to and from your own computer on the internet at will, then you're not doing things right.

    So, my main objection to imacfloppy.com is that it feeds off user ignorance to sell a service that really isn't necessary. By implying that imacfloppy.com is the best way to transfer data, the site delivers misinformation bordering on fraud. Every user of imacfloppy.com is one more person who isn't using the computer the way it could be used. We have enough of this type of behavior already. We don't need to have web sites encouraging it.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • ...It is the easiest solution to securely transport your files from one iMac to another Internet connected computer.

    Yeah, right... It doesn't even use HTTPS...
    Anyway, the operators of this site have access to lots and lots of 'sensitive' files. Maybe it's a NSA-sponsored project? ;-)
    Hey, everyone, go use imacfloppy.BigBrother.gov to store all your stuff... We won't read it... Honest ;-)

    j0
  • Freshmeat is providing a great service to the Linux community.

    iMacFloppy.com is trying to make money by offering webspace using a "Virtual Floppy Disk" gimic.

    two very different things.

    Die infernal Mac Biggot!


    -Ranma
  • .. or does it actually work?
  • I interviewed the creator of iMacFloppy months ago (he's designed several point of sale/online ordering systems as well) to ask him, quite frankly, why not email attachments, etc.

    The point was to that whatever was stored could be retrieved from any machine, anywhere via a simple web interface. No custom software, etc.

    As for setting up personal ftp servers, using some sort of net file system...these things are not single shot, quick and easy no brainers.

    And quie frankly, as many of you 16-24 year olds that hang out here know, being clever for the sake of having something to brag about in a flame war (to borrow from jefferson Airplane) "doesn't mean shit to a tree"...

    Or to put it another way: As smart as some of you folks (think you) are, you can't market you clever ness for shit; you're to self-deluded with you 'eleetness' (like anyone has been genuinly so since the 80's...).

    None of you would have ever thought of the idea, let alone it's marketabily, because it's too 'stupid'.

    Shame. You probably could have done it better.

    You could probably also design better UI's for the blind or terminally Computerphobic, based on linux underpinnings...or the next N64 for that matter.

    But why? Easy = stupid to you folks.

    There's a LOT of cash to be made wrapping complexity in a candy-coated shell, and the *really* saavy folks figured it out a long time ago:

    "It takes someone really smart to figure out something complex, but it takes a true genuis to make accessable to simpletons."

    Think kids. Get paid for it.

    -K
  • AFAIK, he was being _ironic_, not sarcastic.

    Irony is when you say the opposite of what you mean. Sarcasm is when you say what you mean, but in a cutting manner.
  • Not!!!! It's a linux system...
    try queso, nice to begin
    dominating in the world of
    the biggest leeks....

    aXi

    Windows NoT
    Windoze 2000BC
    Die you stupid piece of software...
  • Boot from CDROM .....
    Ever heard of bootable CDROMS?
    Well Mac was the first one to implement it

    aXi

    Windows NoT
    Windoze 2000BC
    Die you stupid piece of software...

  • I work in the comp labs at UMD. Do you know HOW often I get a user who wants to take a file home but doesn't have a floppy, or a working floppy, or (ugh) the only free machine has no working floppy drive? I usually send them to FTP, but FTP is too complex for these people. And there's no conformity to it -- you can have a CLI FTP prog, or a GUI one -- and if it's a GUI, it can be like Fetch, or Internet Neighborhood, or FTP voyager... This is *free*, bigger than a floppy, and it allows them to get it from anywhere. Personally, I'd use FTP, but I know how.

    My only real caveats are :
    1 server, which means there's no real way to do redundancy
    How does it deal with resource forks? Can I just send a small app there without stuffing it first? If it fusks up resource forks, it's useless, because if they can't understand FTP, stuffing a file is probably also beyond them.
  • I think your idea is great! Wonderful! Uber-cool! Lets extend it into the realm of humor. In order to USE humor, you must pass a few tests such as:

    a) showing you have timing and delivery ability.
    b) delivering 50 jokes to a set "focus group", scoring at least above 70% laughs.
    c) essay test where you must create 3 jokes on-the-fly containing subject matter given.
    d) ability to take beating from a bad crowd. Say, 10 minutes stading infront of a brick wall w/ mic. while crowd laughs at wrong spots for first 5 minutes, and then BOOs for last 5.
    e) balancing ability - Must provide entertainment for group for 25 minutes using only material that is insulting. Andrew Dice Clay imitation not allowed.

    All these test can be waived by appearing at least 3 times on "Who's Line Is It Anyway" or a similiar certified venue.



    Brought to you by Y2K4U Services, assisted living for the humor challenged.
  • If this is being billed as an iMac-only service, why didn't they just set this up as a big AppleShare IP server? What could possibly be more intuitive than giving people a platform-native shared volume?

    In a close second, for those with firewall issues, doesn't MacOS 8.5 have one of those fancy FTP clients (a la KDE, and Win32 utilities like FTP Explorer) that looks and feels like an extension to the users' drives?

    On a related note, I sure would like to see sensible security rather than paranoid or lazy security become the norm for OS installs so that SMB (poor throughput and all) and NFS file sharing over the 'net can become the norm for purposes like this.

    FTP is speedy and reliable, but from a usability standpoint, its all-pull refresh scheme leaves it with a maddening combination of the bad traits of both persistent-connection and stateless protocols.
  • If this "Mac-oriented" service is just plain-ol' INPUT TYPE=FILE webform attachments, won't it present the unique problem email attachments have always had in the Mac world, namely that only the data fork of attachments would get transferred?

    There isn't much tech info on their site (any, actually) so I don't know if/how they tackled this. Unless browser behavior (or some kind of signed applet ot helper app they'd have to provide) automagically BinHexes the files or at least transfers both forks some other way, these files will certainly have no MIME type associated with them and may even be missing crucial resource-fork data in some cases (such as nonflattened Quicktimes).

    How did they approach this? Surely they do something.
  • It would be good to support other protocols such as SMB and NFS, as well as Appleshare and of course ftp. Though a web-based interface is also useful if you are at a friend's and want to just download a file without the hassle of doing some setup.
  • Blahahahaha.

    I'm sorry. That was insanely stupid of me. :)

  • I don't know if you were being sarcastic, but that's absolutely the most stupid thing I've hever heard. In this crazy capitalist country things only become popular because the rich, stupid technogeeks buy them, and that makes the poorer folks want one, and so the companies find a way to make them cheaper. Without stupid people, these personal computers would never have made it.
  • Perhaps we could have a spelling test too. That seems to be a fairly reliable (although not infallible) indicator of cluelessness on this site at least.

    It makes me laugh to see someone complaining about stupid PC users, then turn around and use words like "liscence" or "speach." Nothing makes you look more pathetic.

  • Hell, it lets you upload and download files from any machine with a web browser and internet access.

    While most of us can use FTP just fine there are those who are clueless. Yes they do exist and they can be annoying, but you weren't all born with the experience you have now.
  • Yea, but the internet is still run by super smart people like yourself. You were a dumb ass on computers at one time. We all were. We may not have called tech support as much as some folks, but it took time to learn.

    People need to understand that the "lowest common denominator" is the majority in this world. (just look at who's in the White House and who put him there and the dominant os in the world)

    You can not afford to alienate the majority, becasue they have lots of money to blow. If there weren't services like imacfloppy.com or books like PC's for Dummies then there would be fewer people using computers and fewer people for us to make money off of. Ignore imacfloppy.com, it's really easy.
  • "Why don't you people just grow up and realize that you may not always be right and after
    expressing your opinion once or maybe twice just give up on it unstead of filling an entire forum with useless flames directed at products you have never used."

    Right on.
  • Isn't it really just a variation of the theme of internet "disk backup" services? I have a tape drive for my PC, Zip drive, and SuperDiscs (iMac and PC). And I STILL use an internet back-up service too, for some stuff. I might make use of this iMacfloppy service. It makes sense, really, as an alternative, in some situations--I can access files from any computer with an internet connection--and this is useful for my PC, too. Floppies get damaged, lost, etc. Binaries transfered via e-mail easily get shredded or screwed up. I won't even mention newsgroups (hey--what are you doing posting binaries to newsgroups? none of your business!). Laugh at it all you want--I think it's cool, and it makes sense. Except they need to up the 3 MB storage space limit.

  • Any takers?

    Seriously...with all of the legal wrangling over domain names, I wonder if Apple will eventually pull the plug on this guy's domain name.
  • They have the following "testimonial":

    "iMacFloppy.com is glorious! My department used to have our 32 iMacs connected through a 100MB LAN, but no more! We've thrown our server away and sent everyone to iMacFloppy.com, saving us thousands of dollars on equipment and useless network administrators." - Alfred P.

    Is it only me who thinks this "testimonial" is a joke? But why would they not get it???

    Paul
  • Scoff and laugh all you guys want, but imacfloppy came in real handy in my case. I was without a zip drive last quarter (the USB Zip drive just came out not too long ago) and I had a class where we would work on small photoshop and freehand files. Rather than spending time in the crappy labs (8100/80's on 14" monitors) or trying to find an open spot in the sole G3/300 lab, I'd just u/l my files to imacfloppy and work on it at home. I also had a design class that would let us do some of our projects on the computer...Again, screw the crap labs, I'd rather work at home thank you very much! Then all I had to do was u/l the finished project, hit the lab real quick to d/l it to my zip and then take it to the imaging center to get it printed out. I tried transfering files via Hotmail, but for some reason it couldn't handle .sit files. Hotmail would d/l it as a document or something and expander wouldn't recognize it. Now that I have the USB zip drive, it kind of renders the site moot for me, but you have to remember this site was out BEFORE there was any sort of floppy or zip drive for the iMac.
  • I hate to see all those wonderful G3's being molested by evil Mac users. Give us G3 clones with Linux, 4 button wheel mice and nonvirtual standards based 120M floppy drives. I'd love to have a low-cost G3 running at 400MHz with NO FAN. I hate those crappy noisy excuses for computers, low budget consumers are stuck with today. And i don't want all my hardware - monitor, hard drive and everything - moulded into one hideous block of plastic.
  • First off, not even ROB would pass. Hey, wait, Apple is trashing its competitors. Instead of being unbiased, lets bash them, and Spread FUD.
    Rob/CmdrTaco -- this is my message to you -- Fuck off. Go somewhere else. Do we laugh patetically at GNOME and KDE in your face, at your site? No, we don't.
    If you don't see a use for it, don't use it. No one is forcing you to. But some people prefer using Apple's Disk Image format rather then attachments.
    Thank you. That is all.

  • This could actually be useful for people with ISPs that place strong limits on the size of their mailbox. Most of the ISPs in my area only give users 1MB for mail space, at least with this place you can have 3MB. But other than this I don't see much of a point to this, but hey, it's better than some other sites that could have been created based with the iMac in mind.


    Force Recon Half-Life TC: Check it out [cass.net]
  • Thats why I don't use things like a mac (1 button mouse) and windows (idiot's OS). But I know if I did have a mac....I would defiently throw linux ppc on it! As for Virtual Floppies...think I'll stick with attatchments :)

    NaTaS
    http://natas.startx.org
  • hahahah...This is truely the funniest thing i have heard in a while. I think that it is just pretty stupid. I mean attachments if those are confusing by just typing in the path of the file you want to send then the word is an idiot. I mean you got the Macintrash that have baiscally nothing to do on them then you got the Windows which is truely the idiot OS.. For me i wouldnt get a MAC i stay to the PC and through some Redhat or BSD on there. Much easier. I wish macintosh would stop embarrassing themselves.

  • iMAC??? (Score:1)

    by nop ( 14784 )
    Personally I think some geeks really should get a life. I like linux, too, but I will never abandon my Mac since I'm way more productive using my Mac than I am using anything else. Everyone has his/her preferences and I think we should be a little more tolerant with those who are not so much into computers and just use them to do some word processing and reading email.
    I would never use a PC cause if I want Linux I'll use LinuxPPC and if Apple manages to put only half of what they promise into MacOS X then I'm more than happy.
  • Wow, I wish I had thought of starting an advertiser-supported ftp site. All I would have needed was this "internet floppy" gimmick.

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