I had a job offer to do systems engineering work on ALIS in Orlando. Glad I passed!

Performance enhancing drugs - HGH, steroids, amphetamines, etc.

You win the internets, good sir! Congrats!

I was implying that you had intent to do a burnout, and when you dumped the clutch, the disc exploded and destroyed several components. I should have been more clear, though.

As for vehicles with launch control, most of the vehicles that come equipped with it are far more expensive than even the most expensive factory Mustang. While the GT and other high performance variants will be built with heavier duty halfshafts and driveline components, the base models will sacrifice strength for cost and weight.

No, it's just that when you're making 10,000 horsepower in a top fuel car, which really have no brakes, you have to do the burnout, then let the drag on the tires and aero package slow the inertia of the car.

No. Stability control works to reduce yaw under hard cornering or emergency maneuvers, so that the tail of the car doesn't slide. Traction control, on the other hand, uses the ABS system and torque vectoring (if the car is so equipped) to reduce wheelspin on a wheel that is slipping, and increase the traction of the opposite wheel that has traction. It's more to reduce wheelspin while driving over loose road surfaces or wet/snow conditions.

It would be a simple ABS trick, as they've got independent channels (one for each wheel). The ABS computer would lock up the front tires while leaving the rear tires with no braking force. Lame.

Bleach doesn't soften the tires, it's just more slippery than water, so people with underpowered cars use it to do burnouts. At a drag strip, they use water, because normal people that understand how to drag race wouldn't let bleach touch the paint on their vehicles. The idea is to heat up the tires (by doing a burnout) and thus, soften them to get better traction.

That said, you NEVER do this with street tires or drag radials, only slicks.

The key you're referencing is for the Boss 302, which remaps the engine tuning to provide additional power and less streetability.

I'm definitely of the camp that no auto manufacturer is going to put a burnout button on their vehicle, both because of legal reasons, and because burnouts prematurely wear many components, including brake pads, tires, transmission, axles, etc. The maintenance/warranty issues would be absurd. Imagine you do a burnout with Ford's burnout button, dump the clutch, and it shatters, tearing a hole in the transmission bellhousing, opening up the hood, and puncturing a tire. Then imagine a smoking hot piece of clutch disc hits someone and injures them. Option 1 is that Ford says - "Well, you took the risk using that feature, so we're not covering it." Option 2 is is that the person hit with the clutch disc sues the driver, Ford, the dealership, the engineer that designed the clutch, the engineer that designed the burnout system, their insurance companies, et al, and comes away with a six-figure settlement.

When I worked for Lockheed Martin, emphasis was placed upon degrees and formal education, and though I have a BS in Business Administration, I have an ME in Systems Engineering, with a concentration in Space Systems.

Now that I work for another defense subcontractor, more emphasis is placed upon technical certifications, so I've run through the CompTIA gamut, got my Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) cert, and have about another half dozen technical and security management certs planned out.

Right, but they're not front-line warfighting systems, they're small, standalone systems that don't connect to any other DoD systems, otherwise, they'd never get an accreditation, and neither would their associated systems.

I've seen random little one-off systems that use a one-way tactical data link to provide simulations for other systems, but they're only accepted because there's no duplex communication possible, it's one-way only.

Speaking from someone who had to get around licensing to use FOSS components, it's a tough line, and one that has to be carefully navigated. We had to submit any FOSS packages that weren't delivered explicitly with the install media to a legal review board, and it would take weeks to get an answer back. Further, we needed to submit each revision (1.2 to 1.3, not 1.2.1 to 1.2.2) to the board for approval, just in case the license had changed.

Agreed. I've deployed about DDGs and CGs as a contractor, and they're knee-knockers.

AEGIS does it all with about 20 racks. The rest, like I said, is HME, NMCI, Vertical Launch System, etc. I haven't worked on the DDG-1000 program, but I'd expect their architecture to be very similar to what AEGIS uses.

Besides just the core operating environment, there are literally dozens of other systems, from Hull-Mechanical-Electrical (HME) to unclassified NMCI email terminals, and everything in between. The core combat system will run off about three dozen racks, while the rest are random systems scattered throughout the ship, and a 'rack' might mean a small switch cabinet in a closet somewhere.