No matter the reality of the system or procedure discussed...whether it exists or not, the fact of the matter is that "shawn", signing his name as "US Army Test Facility" is no more an official query into a hardware configuration than someone signing "Bill" looking into telemetry protocol information for battleships. This is some hotshot who thinks he can make a system work better, and wants to use Linux to do it. DVD on an Army system is as laughable as replacing customized SGI systems with a put-together Linux system. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, but the Army is not going to endorse circumventing the almighty contract system to save a few bucks. GTE (now General Dynamics) owns the CHS-2 (Common Hardware System 2) contract, which basically puts the whole Maneuver Control System on hardened SPARC20's with an old (but customized) version of slowaris...and all the support you can shake a stick at (Hell, I have 24 hour access to six different General Dynamics support techs. On the ground here with me. Let's see Red Hat pull that off). Given this fact, and based on the critical mass of data this person is talking about processing, the official Army stance is more than likely along the lines of "Keep what we have, research and contract the replacement", not "Hey shawn, why don't you ask around and get a better hardware/OS solution from your buds on the web"....Bottom line, the "army" isn't looking for Linux to replace an existing system. "Shawn" is misrepresenting himself as acting in an official capacity for the Army. If "shawn" is a contractor looking to win a bid for a contract to replace the existing system, then he shouldn't be signing "US Army Test Facility".
Sorry... 15 years in the service has taught me two very important things- One, you get no where trying to go around the system, and Two, never make the mistake of thinking you are an official representative of your organization, unless you are actually appointed as such (oh..those official representatives know their lanes).
I used to do the single password thing. I took a word and shifted it and then scrambled it... I've also used a make-shift cipher wheel. The best thing to do is open a text file and then bang on the keyboard with both hands (lightly, of course...don't want to break anything). Make sure you hit the shift key while you do it, and make sure you get close to all the keys... then...well, you pick a string from the mess. Random as it gets....
j&^UFVotygOU^ryf*$RF9ogLMg9*%&Tk
and there you have a password, you just have to memorize it:)
My opinion: M$' "usability study" has probably already looked into stuff like StarOffice (we'll just change the file formats again...then Star Division's "Filter Upgrade" will be another 70mb download"), KDE and Gnome. Linus said that Linux isn't ready for the desktop, but, there are many people that use it every day (like me). I'm not a coder, I don't do any package maintenance, and I'm not really a *nix expert. But, Linux provides me a viable alternative to M$' overpriced software. I think M$ is probably looking across the full scope of Linux usability. The 'last frontier' is SVGA games. How many Linux users do you know who say "I have the WinX partition for games"? I sure as heck do.
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No matter the reality of the system or procedure discussed...whether it exists or not, the fact of the matter is that "shawn", signing his name as "US Army Test Facility" is no more an official query into a hardware configuration than someone signing "Bill" looking into telemetry protocol information for battleships. This is some hotshot who thinks he can make a system work better, and wants to use Linux to do it. DVD on an Army system is as laughable as replacing customized SGI systems with a put-together Linux system. Don't get me wrong, I love Linux, but the Army is not going to endorse circumventing the almighty contract system to save a few bucks. GTE (now General Dynamics) owns the CHS-2 (Common Hardware System 2) contract, which basically puts the whole Maneuver Control System on hardened SPARC20's with an old (but customized) version of slowaris...and all the support you can shake a stick at (Hell, I have 24 hour access to six different General Dynamics support techs. On the ground here with me. Let's see Red Hat pull that off). Given this fact, and based on the critical mass of data this person is talking about processing, the official Army stance is more than likely along the lines of "Keep what we have, research and contract the replacement", not "Hey shawn, why don't you ask around and get a better hardware/OS solution from your buds on the web"....Bottom line, the "army" isn't looking for Linux to replace an existing system. "Shawn" is misrepresenting himself as acting in an official capacity for the Army. If "shawn" is a contractor looking to win a bid for a contract to replace the existing system, then he shouldn't be signing "US Army Test Facility".
Sorry... 15 years in the service has taught me two very important things- One, you get no where trying to go around the system, and Two, never make the mistake of thinking you are an official representative of your organization, unless you are actually appointed as such (oh..those official representatives know their lanes).
I used to do the single password thing. I took a word and shifted it and then scrambled it... I've also used a make-shift cipher wheel. The best thing to do is open a text file and then bang on the keyboard with both hands (lightly, of course...don't want to break anything). Make sure you hit the shift key while you do it, and make sure you get close to all the keys... then...well, you pick a string from the mess. Random as it gets....
:)
j&^UFVotygOU^ryf*$RF9ogLMg9*%&Tk
and there you have a password, you just have to memorize it
My opinion: M$' "usability study" has probably already looked into stuff like StarOffice (we'll just change the file formats again...then Star Division's "Filter Upgrade" will be another 70mb download"), KDE and Gnome. Linus said that Linux isn't ready for the desktop, but, there are many people that use it every day (like me). I'm not a coder, I don't do any package maintenance, and I'm not really a *nix expert. But, Linux provides me a viable alternative to M$' overpriced software. I think M$ is probably looking across the full scope of Linux usability. The 'last frontier' is SVGA games. How many Linux users do you know who say "I have the WinX partition for games"? I sure as heck do.