From: ldo@nz.invalid   
      
   On Mon, 18 Aug 2025 13:15:34 -0400 (EDT), Scott Dorsey wrote:   
      
   > Eli the Bearded  <*@eli.users.panix.com> wrote:   
   >>   
   >> In comp.misc, Lawrence D'Oliveiro   wrote:   
   >>>   
   >>> Anybody remember seeing an AOL floppy?   
   >>   
   >> Definitely. Better than CDs because you could just wipe and reuse them.   
   >   
   > Except that they were the worst quality floppies and they failed after a   
   > while when you did that.  I spent some interesting times recovering data   
   > for a project that used them.   
      
   If they were smart, they would have stored their data on those using   
   erasure codes. These let you allow for a certain percentage (say 20%, if   
   you’re feeling lucky) of the data blocks being bad, yet still being able   
   to recover all the data.   
      
   In fact, hasn’t there been some format designed along these lines for   
   posting large files on Usenet, as multiple segments with some redundancy   
   to allow for segment loss? I keep thinking “NZB”, but I’m not sure if   
   that’s quite right ...   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)