Pentagon's nuclear missile system is run on floppy disks

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I used eight-inch floppies in computer science courses in the 80s. They were hilariously big and hilariously small (on the order of 100KB, if memory serves). I’m glad I had a chance to use them before they disappeared; it gives me the perspective to understand why the slightly-less-antique 5 1/4" discs are called “minifloppies”, and the hard-shelled 3 1/2" ones are “microfloppies”.

Edit: Thanks for the helpful WIkipedia link, jerwin! I was using DEC PDP-11s, so the capacity must have been 250K or 500K, depending on density. I don’t recall the exact number (obviously), but I remember it was easy to fill those suckers up.

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Why upgrade when all you’re playing is tic-tac-toe?

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In case anyone missed it, that’s not the 5-1/4" floppy disk from the IBM PC / Apple II / Commodore days. That’s a 7" floppy, the standard that came before.

I still have a copy of Crosstalk on 7" around here somewhere…

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I thought they were 8".

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Right!

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Pentagon’s run by Commander Adama…

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1970s thinking::1970s technology

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When you have unique legacy software, that has to be extremely reliable, and doesn’t have to connect to the internet, updating it is a justifiably low priority. The difficulty of maintaining the old hardware to run it is the only good reason to do so.

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Pbbt! I’ve seen floppier!

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Yes, by all means, let’s update our nuke launchers to a 2010’s, cloud based system. I’d feel so much safer, wouldn’t you??

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And remember, especially where nuclear weapons are involved…

Don’t Copy That Floppy

(YouTube)

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And to be clear, in this case he’s played by Lorne Greene, not Edward James Olmos.

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Early 2018: America’s nuclear arsenal held for ransom because Gus’s “awesome mix” memory stick was infected…

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Yeah, I’m kinda OK with this…

My friends insteon based smarthome has been hacked twice.
My steampowered X10 based one, never.

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The DoD gets mad twitchy over USB sticks.

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Gives a whole new meaning to the dreaded click of death old floppy drives can develop.

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Normally i’d agree with you on this. but “extremely reliable” is never something i’d associate with floppy disks of any type :wink:

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And a staple can ruin them. Some kid did that to another kids floppy in BASIC class on their Apple IIe disk.

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