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I suspect it's the same reasons nuclear launch facilities use floppy disks -- the solution is approved, and getting a new solution approved is viewed as too exp
by YCode 9y ago
I suspect it's the same reasons nuclear launch facilities use floppy disks -- the solution is approved, and getting a new solution approved is viewed as too expensive/infeasible.
Not saying the argument is valid, just that it may be the reason.
- chakalakasp 9y agoThat and its proven to work, has a ridiculously long track use history (for software) so the bugs are fixed or well documented, and pretty damn hard to exploit. It's not like anyone is going to plug an 8 inch floppy disk they found laying in the rural Wyoming dirt parking lot into the nuclear silo master computer to check what's on it.
- adrianratnapala 9y agoYikes! Last time I looked, the intercontinental nuclear launch codes of any major power have not yet been proved to work. But OK, I assume they still pass whatever dry-run test procedures exist. But if it is true that they are based on floppy-disks, then I don't think sticking with them is a net win for reliability and safety. Bits rot, especially on floppies. So if they are still using them they have created procedures for refreshing the bits from backups. By now the floppies might be little more than ceremonial objects inside the systems that really determine the launch procedure. And those systems would have evolved informally over time and might be ever-changing, poorly understood and poorly tested.
- crpatino 9y agoOn the other hand, when the collective idiocity better known as the Internet of Things finally comes back to bite us in the ass, we can at least be sure it wont be in the form of a nuclear winter.