We had one of the Royal Australian frigates in port today
so being a good daddy I took my boys along for one of their guided tours, we went through a room where all the computer stuff is, you know where they launch misiles, fire guns, torpedoes etc etc and what did I see

A familiar gui desktop that lookes strangely like ...
nah - It couldnt be ...
so I asked
Ummm is that Windows on those computers
Oh yeah was the reply
I started laughing
So how often do you reload those things
he didnt see the pun
anyway I said to the guy
You know I would have thought you would be running Unix or something like that ....
Oh no was the reply
They have to be easy enough for everybody to use
I was sort of speechless
After all they think it necessary to train all the crew in firefighting and first aid
I wouldn't have thought a computer course would be too much to ask
but
Oh well
Thank God Osama ben Laden
sticks to flying jets into buildings and blowing up things
we'd be in real trouble if they branched out into cyber-terrorism
and decided to crash all the military computer systems running windows

I couldn't believe it when I saw the Royal Navy ( UK ) was using windows 2000 to control its nuclear fleet
but after today - now I do

I was tempted to offer to load Mandrake on his gear
but he didn't seem to have a sense of humour
so I let that one slip by

live long and prosper
floppy

yup, finnish defence forces just decided that their system now and in the future will be windows, since it has to play well with nato. and well it plays.
well, they bought 60 hornets just to find out that they weren´t meant to be operated from land. now they brush them with toothbrushes before each flight since they are so full of dust & sand
then they bought some tanks from germany. after the deal was closed, poland bought the same tanks from germany at 1/10th of the cost per unit. and our politicans said that the deal was still good.
that´s how it goes.
maybe it´s good for world´s economy?
i really don´t know.
all i know is that ignorance is a major factor when making big decisions. our boss won´t let me install linux, nor he won´t buy me a mac since "our work must be compatible with windows, since our clients use that". what do i make? pictures and video clips

Unfortunately when it comes to making security and equipment decisions the flow of cash and political considerations play a bigger role than actual security and quality.

Good for the world's economy ?

Hmmm
Probably just the economy of
Microsoft, Mc Donnell Douglas, Boeing, Raytheon etc

Call me cynical
but I think we have wars to keep these corporations going
and all the people in jobs
after all
what would happen if peace broke out
sigh

floppy

Awesome. I can see it now:

Clippy pops up and asks "Would you like to: a)Fire Cruise Missle b)Fire Guns c)Jam Radar d)Sink"

It disturbs me deeply that anyone would trust proprietary software, let alone MS software, for any sort of weapon control. I know that I'm going into tinfoil-hat territory here, but MS at least is a company capable of anything. Of course, maybe I've just read too much science fiction for my own good... that could be it.

That makes me think of this:

http://www.windowscrash.com/modules....=article&sid=1

USS Yorktown Dies Due to Divide by Zero
Posted on Sunday, September 15 2002 by coppit

News articles of interest The Navy's Smart Ship program is meant to reduce the number of people needed to operate a ship. For some reason, they depend on Windows NT, with predictable results: the USS Yorktown died in the water when its network of NT machines experienced a cascading failure due to a divide by zero.

Says Ron Redman, deputy technical director of the Fleet Introduction Division of the Aegis Program Executive Office: "Because of politics, some things are being forced on us that without political pressure we might not do, like Windows NT... If it were up to me I probably would not have used Windows NT in this particular application. If we used Unix, we would have a system that has less of a tendency to go down."

That is really bizarre, I always thought that military computer systems had their own custom Operating Systems that are created by military computer technicians.

It's cheaper and easier to use Commercial Off The Shelf software, sadly... Thus, that's what a heck of a lot of decision makers (read: PHBs) elect to do, even for military applications.

Ideally, they would at least insist on code that they can build themselves, but MS for one very rarely allows that. MS may provide source code (with a nice "shared source" license stating that you can look but not touch nor compile), but there's no way to tell whether or not it's the same code that the binaries were built from.

Linux is making its way into a lot of government areas. China, India, and Germany are all switching from Windows to Linux in certain government controlled areas, with plenty of FUD, threats, and propoganda spewing forth from M$. Hopefully, it's only a matter of time until the US decides to move in that direction. The idea of Windows running on anything more deadly that a screwdriver is just plain scary... Hmm...I wonder if Linux could be installed on a screwdriver...

Microsoft has been a US Government contractor since Bill Gates won the bid for lowest priced OS in the early 80s.

One would think that they would make a more secure version for the Government then they do for the consumers.

And since windows is the only game in town for 98% for the world there is no real incentive for M$ to publish watertight code.

Also the military does gain some benefit from all of this...should all of their existing computer systems fail irreparably. They can quickly replace them all from consumer inventories.

There is an old russian military saying that goes like this: "Quantity has a quality all of its own."

This reference was made at a speech where the Generals where discussing the merits of German tanks against Russian tanks.

While the quality of the German tanks was undisputedly better then the quality of the Russian tanks.

The quantity of the Russian tanks was superior to the out numbered German tanks. The Germans ran out of Ammo before the Russian ran out of tanks.

Thorn

It was the same with American tanks, it took four or five Shermans to knock out a Panzer, but there were so many of them it didn't matter.

I'm not sure the same applies to an aircraft carrier...

Ironi said
It's cheaper and easier to use Commercial Off The Shelf software, sadly... Thus, that's what a heck of a lot of decision makers (read: PHBs) elect to do, even for military applications.

True True for hardware as well.

Watkins-Johnson used to make this you-beaut shortwave radio (WJ-8711 ) to NATO and US miltary specs then came out with a commercial version ( HF-1000 ) which looked strangely very similar except for the paint job. It was supposed to have been dumbed down as well but when you looked at the specs it looked like it had been smartened up ! The HF-1000 was a dream for many a shortwave radio nut but at $ 5000 US each ... - I'm still waiting to win Lotto first.

Apparently it is easier and cheaper for NATO etc to buy off the shelf and then modify for own needs than to tender out for specialised equipment.

Having said that, I thought the US Marines were looking into using Linux I wonder how far they have got with that idea.

And to Capt Caveman, thats a frightening thought, some moron in a sub somewhere using clippy to launch a missile or something. you'll be giving the young ones here nightmares saying things like that. LOL Reminds me of that movie "whoops apocalypse" Now thats worth seeing.

floppy

The US Government did experiment with "Harded Linux". The results of those experiments became Imunnix Linux. After Immunix became vaporware they continued on with SELinux that you can download from the goverment for free without export restriction.

SELinux is implemented in Fedora core 2 & 3, Mandrake (I don't know the version) and Suse 9.2.

Most US and Allied computer systems are fairly well protected from direct hack attacks. The only way to target government systems is via a direct attack on the Internet itself. Which would kind of be pointless because the Internet is a redundant communication system.

Thorn

although it's not surprising that the military (and more accurately, the politicians supplying the military) are dumb/corrupt enough to use ms2k for user apps, you have to hold out some hope that the engineers that actually build the weapons systems are smarter than that.

that they would trust control of missles and ships to software that can't reliably be trusted to run email apps without crashing is too horrible to imagine....