			      Sloppy Floppies

		 Reprinted from the Fresno Commodore User Group


  Who would've imagined the abuse that could be heaped on a little floppy disk.
Three month's ago, Polaroid Corp.  kicked off a multi- million dollar
advertising campaign in 25 publications offering to clean Polaroid disks that
get mucked up and unreadable to a computer.  Polaroid, which touts its
on-of-a-kind cleaning technique, expected to receive disks with a couple of
coffee or jelly donut stains from a few clumsy programmers.  What it got were
major messes from some high-tech skeptics.

  Compute!  Publications sent a disk that had been frozen in a block of ice,
thawed out by a microwave oven, scrawled on with a ballpoint pen and then
stapled several times.	Using three chemicals to clean it and a $100,000 device
(which the company declined to describe in detail) Polaroid retrieved 90% of
the data.  The remaining data was ruined because the staples had poked holes in
the disk.  In all other cases, 100% of the data was saved.

  A few of the other tortures Polaroid disks were subjected to:

  * Trade journal PC Week dumped a hot fudge sundae on its disk.

  * A Boston consulting firm sent a saliva-covered disk that was chewed by a
golden retriever

	Is this the beginning of media with a memory?
	    ((No, that was Panty Hose with a Memory))

	How about disks that never forget?
	    ((No, those are ELEPHANTs!))

	Maybe Polaroid just hid a snapshot feature in all their floppies???
                                                           
