
Haskell and floppy disks in Norwegian government - fegu
https://gundersen.net/functional-floppy-disks-in-2015/
======
digi_owl
There is a whole host of old in work there, not just the floppies and the DOS
software.

Notice that the company he works for gets the records that are to be
distributed in EBCDIC format.

According to Wikipedia that can be traced back to IBM punchcards!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC)

And i'm not surprised, likely older, doctors cling to their DOS interfaces. I
recall watching cashiers operating similar ones at various stores, and once
you have the keys down navigating the interface can be quite fast.

Also, you never have to worry about some errant popup or other stealing
focus...

~~~
mattivc
The reason a lot of Norwegian doctors cling to their DOS interfaces is not
because of age, or a resistance to upgrade.

I have discussed the topic of medical software with my father extensively, who
is a M.D. in a rural town in Norway.

The reason is efficiency. As a doctor you are required to look up a lot of
information on the patient, while maintaining a conversation with them. This
is only really possible with a keyboard only interface. The older DOS systems
does this, and the newer GUI based packages largely does not.

~~~
toothbrush
Cool, someone should write an Emacs mode for them! I am very sympathetic to
the arguments for using a keyboard-only interface, i try to achieve that on my
own computer as much as possible, too.

~~~
digi_owl
I dunno. Emacs seems to have the very X+Y+Z+butt+cat kind of key combo issues
that was mentioned as a problem elsewhere.

The basic benefit of these interfaces seem to be about single keys (F keys
mostly) for reaching major functions.

I am guessing that once the patients id number has been entered, a single key
brings up the journal, and one can page through entries (and their content)
using single presses (next/prev entry, page up/down style).

~~~
toothbrush
> _Emacs seems to have the very X+Y+Z+butt+cat kind of key combo issues that
> was mentioned as a problem elsewhere._

You can rebind stuff. As an example, the magit mode for rebasing has a whole
bunch of one-key functions, specifically optimised for the task at hand. A
"doctor-mode" might have exactly those F-keys do what you describe. But
anyway, this is a case of me wanting to do everything in Emacs :P. At least
that would allow the rest of the system to be upgraded, instead of running
DOS(box) or whatever they do now...

Anyway, way OT.

------
Mithaldu
I'm quite surprised by this. My experience with floppies (dos-formatted) was
that in a bike ride of 1 hour 1 out of 10 floppies would have corruption. Or
maybe the drives i used to copy on them just did not do write verification.

~~~
toast0
I think that's a function of the quality of the disk drives and the media;
both of which went into the toilet when floppies stopped being generally
useful. (was windows 98 available on floppies?)

~~~
cgriswald
Windows 98 was available on floppy. I know, because I painfully installed it
that way.

For me, floppies started failing when I didn't need to use them as often. The
drive would get dusty from lack of use, and I'd put a disk in and it would be
destroyed. I ended up using one floppy as a "cleaning disk" for the rare
occasion when I needed to use the floppy. I'd attempt to do something on the
disk and the activity would make it safe for the next disk I put in
(generally).

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
I recall doing an Oracle Forms based install back in 94 you had to feed 13 or
14 floppys in the right order then you could install our forms application
(another 3 floppys).

It to a coworker and my self 2 days to install the pilot site for only 5
users.

I remember saying to my boss that about the www that when the it becomes more
mature we could save so much time in product roll out.

~~~
digi_owl
In effect bringing back the X terminal era...

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
Only with much less suck :-) at one time our entire team at BT was slated to
switch to native X development luckly the MCI fiasco happened and we dodged a
bullet

~~~
digi_owl
From a user angle i find it to be a different kind of suck.

I have yet to find a web app that can make up its mind about being a app or a
site.

Maybe the problem is more that they invariably existing inside a chrome-less
browser window, but sooner or later some niggle shows up that you can't find
on proper native UI.

------
kaffeemitsahne
For doctors that really really don't want to switch:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_hardware_emulator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floppy_disk_hardware_emulator)

~~~
devit
That's quite cool, although it would be more practical to run the MS-DOS
software in DOSBox or a virtual machine and configure a virtual floppy disk
drive.

~~~
mjcohen
Can it emulate Amiga floppies?

~~~
Keyframe
Like gotek?

------
36erhefg
I'm surprised a plain floppy disk is considered secure because it is in an
envelope. Even though that envelope requires an id to pick up, I see that
similar as a message in plaintext that has a header: _private - please don 't
read_.

~~~
userbinator
From another perspective, a floppy is also secure because it is a _completely
dumb_ storage device: it's just a piece of magnetic media in a plastic case.
The drive is equally dumb, and the controller IC is usually a hard-wired logic
array. The format has been around for a long time and publicly documented in
standards. Contrast this with USB drives which have their own firmware and
microcontrollers that can hide maliciousness, or even CD/DVD drives that also
have modifiable firmware.

Someone could intercept a floppy and read/write its data, but putting malware
on it and getting the receiver to execute it unnoticed is going to be much
harder than with a USB drive. Putting a floppy into a drive literally does not
cause any code to execute - it's only when commanded to, i.e. when the drive
is accessed, that things start happening. There's no AutoPlay for floppies.
Contrast this with the whole USB enumeration process.

~~~
jerven
Have you ever tried to intercept some one else's snail mail (or even your own
wrongly delivered)? Its a lot of work if you don't have an insider at the post
office. Requiring major time investments, to visit mail boxes or collect mail.
E-mail even encrypted is much easier to permanently monitor than basic post,
even for state level actors.

Opening an envelope is easy, doing so without being detected day in day out is
hard.

~~~
veddox
The (East) Germans managed - the Stasi (East German secret police) did so for
years on end with any number of suspected citizens.

Actually there was a joke going around here in Germany when the NSA scandal
broke, talking about how jealous all the ex-Stasi guys must be that the NSA
had beaten them at their own surveillance game...

~~~
digi_owl
I keep having the feeling that the west only stayed somewhat sane by having
the eastern block as a comparison.

------
josteink
> A floppy copy workstation in 2015. The retro handset is just there for
> giggles.

As a norwegian, I have to say its good to see these guys have a sense of
humour about their (honestly) pointless work :)

------
mseebach
> Norwegian doctors get one 3.5″ floppy in the mail from the government [..]
> every month. For a long time this applied to all of them, but for about the
> last decade a secure electronic option has been available. Problem is, a lot
> of doctors love their MSDOS-based electronic journals and haven’t switched
> yet.

> The government seems to finally close down floppy distribution at the
> beginning of 2016, forcing any remaining doctors over to newer electronic
> patient journals. Sadly, the chosen strategy is just to offer paper
> printouts instead, requiring error-prone rekeying at the doctor’s office.

It seems like these guys have a potential business in selling a
device/appliance to bridge the "secure electronic option" to floppy gap
(without relying on paper): Basically make doctors do this work themselves. A
laptop (running locked down Linux for security reasons) and a USB floppy
drive. You can easily charge 10x hardware cost, so no need to skimp, and you
can support by exchanging the entire setup via post.

~~~
amelius
The problem could be that the solution must be "open", so there is no
potential for lock in, hence not much money to be made.

~~~
mseebach
It's not a huge, long-term business, for sure. There are only _n_ doctors
still running the DOS app in the entire market, and that number will only ever
shrink.

The lock-in is provided by the extreme niche-ness of the market the
conservatism of these doctors. These floppy-guys have a unique position in the
market, they know exactly what to do -- they are basically the only ones who
can credibly pitch these doctors at all. Once they've bought a solution that
actually works, is stable and compliant etc., these doctors are not going to
shop around to save maybe $1-2000/year (or whatever you can charge in
maintenance), it's simply not worth their while and the risk. Remember, these
are not scrappy little outfits, they have cash to spend, and they _will_ spend
it if you can supply stability and continuity.

------
chanux
The first thing I thought seeing the picture in that article:

"Classified info on a Lenovo Thinkpad?"

~~~
semi-extrinsic
From looking at the webpage of TFA's author I'd say it's very probably
airgapped and running some BSD flavor.

~~~
fegu
Airgap is a requirement, I will update the article. Thanks for reminding me.

------
provemewrong
> Fun fact: while floppies are indestructible

Haha, oh boy.

