Hmm...

From the sounds of the article, I don't think there's anything really special about it. It just comes pre-configured as being locked down to DoD standards. Stuff you can do on your own if you really want to - just takes a little bit of time.

Well, i think it is a good thing. Maybe not really necessary for someone who is doing computerstuff on a regular basis and interested in it-sec but for people who are not very familiar with computers it may reduce the possibility of getting hacked.

Further from that, download the public version of Gold Disk and run that on a fresh 2003 install. You'll see all sorts of fun registry edits

LOL! Yeah, forgot about that. I was going to add that and got sidetracked while posting. Definitely do not click that 'remediate all' or whatever it's called button.

Funny story on that.. a guy I was on a project with had hardened his server down and had only a few findings left. He wasn't quite sure about fixing them and had asked for help from one of the security "experts." While they're on the phone talking about it the expert pressed that button and his response was "oops." Yeah.. the server had to be completely rebuilt (didn't have a backup at the time and they couldn't figure out how to get it operational again). Luckily, it wasn't in production yet and didn't have any "real" data.. just a staged application.