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Optical disks.... Your department of defense uses exclusively optical media for non-networked data transfer. You would be disgusted at how inefficient the process of getting data for a presentation from multiple users to a single computer is when no official IT-Managed network is available, or when users computers are not "compatible" with said IT-Managed network. Ten people trying to get 10 DVD-ROM disks, each with a single 5Kb-2Mb file on them to one person, who must then sort through the unlabeled disks to open a .ppt file on each of them and import that data into a consolidated single powerpoint, all so that the boss can have a slide show so he can look at the wall of text while someone in the audience is reading it to him.
USB drives and other easy-to-use digital media is banned because.......it's too convenient. They'll tell you its for a multitude of other reasons, but in the end, they all point to that one single reason.
Optical disks.... Your department of defense uses exclusively optical media for non-networked data transfer.
(...)
USB drives and other easy-to-use digital media is banned because.......it's too convenient. They'll tell you its for a multitude of other reasons, but in the end, they all point to that one single reason.
Interesting. I'd have assumed quite the opposite, that the availability of USB thumbdrives with built-in hardware encryption and access controls would have made them the media of choice, as opposed to things like optical discs which require client-side security protocols.
Originally Posted by EO2K
See if you can name it without Google
It's a missile guidance computer, I just can't remember with certainty which one. I want to say Minuteman, but I'm not 100% on that answer.
It's a missile guidance computer, I just can't remember with certainty which one. I want to say Minuteman, but I'm not 100% on that answer.
Good call. It's a Autonetics D-17B guidance computer from a Minuteman I ICBM from the early 60's. I once heard someone refer to U.S.S.R. as the "target market" for this particular computer.
USB drives and other easy-to-use digital media is banned because.......it's too convenient. They'll tell you its for a multitude of other reasons, but in the end, they all point to that one single reason.
The issue was malware manufactured into the chipsets that transferred during the USB hand-shake. It specifically targeted DoD systems, and it's believed the Chinese wrote the code.
I once heard someone refer to U.S.S.R. as the "target market" for this particular computer.
Originally Posted by czubaka
The issue was malware manufactured into the chipsets that transferred during the USB hand-shake. It specifically targeted DoD systems, and it's believed the Chinese wrote the code.
Two thoughts occur to me:
1: There's no reason you couldn't manufacture a black CD/DVD-ROM with malware hard-coded into it as well, and
2: Since when did the extreme cost of specifying a custom ASIC design and then having it manufactured by a domestic foundry under burdensome and complex security regulations ever prevent a branch of the US Federal Government ever do so? (for that matter, I'd be surprised if you couldn't create a complete USB flash drive out of a commodity FPGA these days.)
I mean, someone has to manufacture the machines that this media is being inserted into, and the operating system running on it, and the applications running under that OS, right? If you can clear all those vendors, you can clear the maker of a flash memory device.
On the roof of the World Trade center, at the base of the mast.
This thing is massive in the extreme. The picture doesn't begin to do justice to how large that thing is. See those vertical columns? They're not hollow, they're solid steel. Each one is about 10" diameter and 12' tall.
Surprisingly, I didn't feel any movement at all. It was a calm day, granted.
Nice shot joe, but it needs more radome I think.
It's hard to get a good shot from the roof:
They actually nixed the radome idea. Originally, the whole thing was going to be enclosed, but cooler heads prevailed and realized that would be an incredible pain in the ***.
One upshot, however, is that the steel was engineered under the assumption that the radome would be there (you can even see the mounting tabs for it), which means that in its free-standing configuration it is MASSIVELY over-engineered for both weight and wind-load. Translation: that sucker will never run out of load capacity, no matter how many antennas they decide to hang on it.