THE TRAVELING TERABYTE PROJECT

INSTRUCTIONS

So, you've gotten your hands on a Traveling Terabyte Drive...

Enjoy! It's our way of saying thank-you to the men and women who serve. Here's just a little piece of home, to hopefully help the time pass more easily while you're away. Read on for details on what we'd like to see happen now...

The name of the game is "share and enjoy"... meaning, have a look, have a listen, then see that this drive gets passed on to others. Share it among your squad, your unit, your whole base... then do your best to see it move to another location.

Please keep in mind the following...

1. Safe Computing Practices

Just because this project was founded by a computer security professional with a tattoo of the Liberty Bell on his ankle doesn't mean that this couldn't be a drive compromised by malware. There are plenty of adversaries who would love to have an easy vehicle for infecting US DoD computers.

So, be smart. Never plug this drive into any official military hardware (removable media isn't even supposed to be taken in to Defense Department computing facilities anymore) and be certain that your own personal computer's antivirus software is working and up-to-date before using this drive.

2. Playing the Files

All of the content shared by the Traveling Terabyte Project is in open, nonproprietary formats that should be easily played in Windows, Mac, and UNIX environments. If you have trouble, feel free to try to download the latest version of VLC Player for your computer. A recent version of this software along with some useful codec installers can be found on this drive, but (as with our advice above) use caution. It's never a good idea to run executable files from an unknown source, so those packages should be used only as a last resort if a reliable intenet connection is not available.

3. Keeping in Touch

If you have the time, please consider emailing us at the Traveling Terabyte Project so that we know where the drives are, who is enjoying them, etc. The people who contribute to this project really appreciate seeing updates to the web site and hearing about the people whom we've managed to entertain.

An email with a photo or two, or a brief message telling the story of where you are (very generally, we don't want details of troop movements) and what sorts of content you enjoyed the most are incredibly appreciated.

4. Passing it On

While the Hard Drive resources of the Traveling Terabyte Project rotate back home to the US every so often for maintenance and updates, the Flash Drives are never really meant to return to us. We produce them simply in the hopes that they will continue to spread far and wide, entertaining soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen in all global theatres.

Once you and your buddies have all shared in the content, do your best please to pass along the whole package to someone else. Encourage them to read this page, to enjoy the entertainment, to shoot us an email, and to likewise pass it on from there.

5. Spread the Word

Do you have friends or loved ones whom you know in other units or other branches of the service? Would you like to see something similar sent to them? Then please, by all means, have them email me and we'll prepare a Flash Drive Package just for them. We can custom-tailor the content to people's tastes, more or less, so don't hesitate to tell others about the Traveling Terabyte Project and have them write to us so we can keep spreading the love as best we can.

6. Come Home Safe

Keep your heads down, keep your asses covered, keep your actions clean, and keep yourselves alive. Come home safe and secure to the friends and loved ones who are all thinking about you. Thank you for your service.