(Ah, the good old days...) :-)
That kind of also brings back the memories of the "hanging chad" election...
Posted on 05/26/2016 6:02:18 AM PDT by C19fan
Maybe they use the '80s flick "War Games" as a training film, too.
The U.S. Defense Department is still using — after several decades — 8-inch floppy disks in a computer system that coordinates the operational functions of the nation's nuclear forces, a jaw-dropping new report reveals.
The Defense Department's 1970s-era IBM Series/1 Computer and long-outdated floppy disks handle functions related to intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear bombers and tanker support aircraft, according to the new Government Accountability Office report.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...
Hacking most often occurs by accessing the files electronically, not the physical media upon which they reside.
Binary doesn't care what format it is stored on. When it's traveling over wires, fiber or RF there is no way to tell what the storage media was. Just like Morse, only a whole lot faster!
Well, I'm fairly sure that the dumpster behind my old office was emptied some years ago. :) I used to buy them from Radio Shack. We had state of the art tape back up too!
When I graduated from college, I went to work for an actuarial consulting firm that used paper tape on an IBM 1620. There was one 1620 with a punch card reader, which was reserved for senior staff.
A creative response might be to point out that today’s 1-inch thumb drives have a much greater capacity, last much longer, and hold a lot more stuff than their aged 8-inch floppies.
Isn’t it easier to secure a physical disc than a storage system connected to outside access by heaven-knows-who?
Did you have to use a keypunch machine, a card-sorting machine, and stuff like that?
Do you remember disk drive terminology from the old IBM-360 "mainframe computers", such as "unit=3330"?
Do you remember typewriters? :-)
And these are the people PRIMED to fill FEMA camps and control the planet?¿??
today’s 1-inch thumb drives ... last much longer
Nope. Anything you have stored on flash is a charge on a capacitor that is slowly draining away.
“In this case, I’m wondering where they are getting their supply of 8-inch floppies.”
Dunno, but I have a box of them that I’d sell. Our office once had a Wang word processor that used them.
Now I know for a fact that your article's claim to 1-year thumb-drive data retention is inaccurate, as I've personally had thumb drive data last much longer than 1 year.
It depends, of course, on the quality of the thumb drive being used, how often and exactly how it is being used, how and where it is stored, etc., but if you do a simple Google search on something like 'thumb drive data life expectancy', many technical sites declare that thumb-drive data can last for 10 years or more.
Yes to all of that. I used an IBM 360 in college.
Are you familiar with 8-inch floppy disks?
Intimately.
Now I know for a fact that your article's claim to 1-year thumb-drive data retention is inaccurate, as I've personally had thumb drive data last much longer than 1 year.
And I once had to toss a printer that was perfectly fine, except that its firmware had leaked off its flash.
that thumb-drive data can last for 10 years or more.
Emphasis added.
(Ah, the good old days...) :-)
That kind of also brings back the memories of the "hanging chad" election...
Yep right up there with the black wind up telephone the Russians use wonder if we have placed our order yet?.
And that “can” word applies to all data storage media in the world, of course, (and always will in the future too, with all future technological advances).
If I’m not mistaken, the 8” were the first (and largest) floppies. IBM SSSD, with their, I believe, 128 kbyte, capacity, were THE standard for a number of years.
It is all in scale: they go along with those 5Mb hard drives the size of a two drawer filing cabinet.
Think that “magnetic medium, is a magnetic medium”… And using an Courier delivered 8 inch floppy will keep the systems “off-line”… Very important security measure
8-inch floppies, aka Ninja Frisbees. ;-)
But are you claiming it’s hardened to survive as well as the older equipment?
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