[ale] Fwd: [mil-oss] US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to coordinate nuclear force operations

[Chris Fowler]

> From: "Dustin Strickland" <dustin.h.strickland at gmail.com>
> To: "Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts" <ale at ale.org>
> Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2016 11:20:13 PM
> Subject: Re: [ale] Fwd: [mil-oss] US military uses 8-inch floppy disks to
> coordinate nuclear force operations

> > Agreed. It's 2016. They need to move to the cloud already.

> > I really hope you're kidding. Some things don't belong on the Internet,
> and access to nuclear weapon launch is one of them.
> Looks like we have here a developer and a sysadmin.

Developer here. 

Fedora just released v24. I have a few systems in the wild still on v2. All private and no Internet access. Others are on CentOS 5 and then newer on 6. 

If it works maintain it. If I upgrade it I have to do work. 

My biggest issue is not really OS issues as far as upgrades/features. Some of my customers use an 8 port PCI full-length modem board. First challenge is building a 2U server that even has PCI. If you pass that test you need to make sure a full-length board will fit! This board is really 3/4 of a full. It has a plastic thingy to extend it to the full so it can fit in the plastic guide a full would. 

Fun fact: The modem board typically costs 1.5 or even 2x that system I install it in! 

I make sure those that order their own tell their vendor about the requirements. One customer forgot. We had to use USR USB modems. Sometimes one of the modems go stupid. This causes issues for devices calling in. I had to write a program to see this condition and reset the USB devices. It also had to make sure the device nodes were correct for mgetty so that the modems would answer. In the end I spent a few hours writing the program vs them ordering a new system and I would reinstall. Either option would have cost me roughly the same hours. 
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