[Martinus]

Originally posted by an0n
This is ****ing bull****.

I ****ing bet you this is part of America's global domination plan.

Using code developed by the most evil corporation - since Sweeny Todd became a registered trader - to control thermonuclear weapons is absolutely ****ing insane.

[color=66ff00]Too true.

Linux is open source, free to use and edit and both flexible and scalable but the writers claim it's probably not suitable for such critical applications.

Windows? Are they out of their minds?
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[aldo_14]

Something like this, you need to be able to either build or rebuild parts of it from scratch... Windows, you'd have to rebuild the whole thing from scratch (as the guy in the article pointed out).

Plus the obvious question as to why in the hell we're buying software that could control a thermonuclear weapon from a foreign power?  Even if there isn;t a war, what's to stop the merkins saying 'let us build an early warning radar station in Grenwich or we'll turn of the HMS nameherepleases' early warning systems"?

[Nix]

Do you honestly think that ANY sort of military outifit, wether it be United States or English or Whatever country of your choice, that the military would use the SAME boxed version of Windows as we end users use?  I highly doubt it I bet there's a codebase that is completely different than the 2000/03 codebase.  Hence, all the vulnerabilities wouldnt exist.  I severely doubt ANY government would put an operating system with this many security holes on something as important as an aircraft carrier, or some other type of naval warship.
I'd bet that they use windows Source Code, through some sort of agreement between the govt and M$  to develop thier own "windows" operating system, and just say it's "Windows".  It's way hard for me to believe they'd stick Windows 2000 SP3 in a cruiser and pray for the best.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Nix
Do you honestly think that ANY sort of military outifit, wether it be United States or English or Whatever country of your choice, that the military would use the SAME boxed version of Windows as we end users use?  I highly doubt it I bet there's a codebase that is completely different than the 2000/03 codebase.  Hence, all the vulnerabilities wouldnt exist.  I severely doubt ANY government would put an operating system with this many security holes on something as important as an aircraft carrier, or some other type of naval warship.
I'd bet that they use windows Source Code, through some sort of agreement between the govt and M$  to develop thier own "windows" operating system, and just say it's "Windows".  It's way hard for me to believe they'd stick Windows 2000 SP3 in a cruiser and pray for the best.

The monolithic W2k architecture makes it inherently difficult to correct and modify.  (and even to detect & trace security holes)

That's the key point the SE (sacked) made - Unix can be modified in a sensible, modular fashion to replace & repair key parts.  Windows can't.

"snubbing fifty years of progress in computer science, the current structure of Windows abandoned the accepted principles of modular design and reverted instead to the, much deprecated, entangled monolithic approach. Paragraphs 207 to 223 are particularly revealing about Microsoft’s chosen approach (paragraph 216 is difficult to believe!). Anyone with elementary knowledge of computer science can see that Microsoft Windows, as described here by Gates, is inherently insecure by design"

"espite BAE’s wishful thinking, this issue will not go away. In the two years since I compiled the dossier, numerous security problems have been discovered in Microsoft Windows and its ancillary programs. Many of these have arisen precisely because of its non-modular structure, and in particular because of the complex entanglement between Internet Explorer and the rest of Windows. These continual problems demonstrate how, in practice, Windows proves inherently insecure by design."

"CERT limits its advice to that of avoiding use of Internet Explorer, rather than avoiding Windows as a whole. However: CERT confirms that, as others have already found, IE cannot be removed from Windows, and its presence can still leave vulnerabilities in the system even if IE is never used as an application –showing again how Windows remains inherently insecure by design. In an operating system, the combination of closed source and entangled structure makes for a deadly cocktail. I"

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Windows is not and never was a 'hardened' OS, it's design is monolithic and thus new features instead of replacing old ones (the modular approach) are written on top of old ones. Also M$ does not sell 'code' they sell an OS (which is most likely intentionally flawed to increase service lifetime and push people to buy newer versions).

The engineer that works for the company in question tried to point out this problem and was quickly fired. This suggests that there was more thought of money than safety or workability.

Heheh Aldo beat me to it.
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[Flipside]

My problem is that it's actually not all that hard to believe if enough money is put in the right hands.

Even if they use the heart of Windows 2000, they are still using an application that is designed to do a different job. When we burned stuff on Proms, when you needed to upgrade, you just altered the Rom core file, reburnt it and mounted it where the old Prom was. Because packets were identified by their destination, and saturation sent to the system, even if the hard-connection to the launcher was damaged, as long as something shared a link between the two systems they could share data. The system was more-or-less unaffectable externally and was easy to fix, even in combat situation.

Windows is not designed to handle that kind of thing, obviously things have updated since we used to program in Z80 onto Programmable Roms, but the theory remains the same, if an error occurs with someone elses program, and we tweak something and it doesn't happen again, it doesn't always mean it's fixed permanently, we've all encountered the problem of 'pointless error', where the computer crashes because 'it feels like it'. The more complex and indirect the code base is, the more chance there is for that error. Whereas hard-coding tends to either work or not work.

[Vanguard]

I wonder if they'll still need the occassional Service Pack now and then.

[Flipside]

hehehehe

New Device Drivers available for Download :-

Wardows has detected new drivers for.

Sea Wasp_Ship2SurfaceMiss.1.00.3.4

[Vanguard]

Ooooooohhhh, and that opens up the possibilities of out-of-date drivers.  Spooky.

[Bobboau]

the weapon you were trying to launch has commited an illigal opperation and will be shut down, if the problem persists please contact the munitions vendor

warning: your nuclear warhead drivers are out of date!

[Kamikaze]

I should point out that classically Unix has been monolithic and Linux continues to be monolithic. Microkernel OSes aren't really in use. In fact, the original design of the NT kernel was as a microkernel. I assume that nowadays there's so much junk grafted on it can't be called a microkernel though.

I'm puzzled at the decision for Windows, what use is a multi-tasking, general purpose OS for a warship? As if you need complex schedulers in a warship's weaponry management. I wonder if this was some sort of "cost cutting" plan, it seems to me Windows would cost a ridiculous amount in maintenance.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Windows has performed an illegal operation... In Cuba.

Now dumping all warheads.
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[Flipside]

Drive N: is running low on resources, would you like to defragment or continue your battle?

[vyper]

Well it'll put a whole new meaning to the term Blue Screen Of Death.

[Vanguard]

All missile defense systems have performed an illegal operation and must close.  Any work you did not save will be lost.

Would you like to send an Error Report?

[Rictor]

Just for the hell of it, I'de like to see a battle between a Windows equipped fleet and a Linux equipped fleet. You could even throw in Macs into the fray, though no doubt the ships would cost three times as much, look very pretty and be staffed only by hip people.

There are legions of fanboys out there that would pay to see this kind of thing.

[Bobboau]

that would own.

[Flipside]

Windows ME would just about be a target drone then?

Just thinking, can you imagine the Readme.txt on missile drivers?

1: Does not stop tracking each missile as the next one is launched.
2: Infa-Red vision now working.
3: Stopped occasional error which would cause the warhead to detonate during the launching sequence. Make sure you have flashed your missiles with the latest Bios.
4: Height adjustment system now modified to correspond to landscape.
5: 'Whoops! That's a friendly!' bug fixed.
6: With minor adjustments to the missile itself, this should stop TV-Guide mode picking up the Disney channel. For more info, see your user manual or do a Google search on 'Exocet' and 'Disney'

[Bobboau]

Windows Millitary Edition...

[Kosh]

Originally posted by aldo_14
Royal Navy will run on Windows for Warships

EDIT: whoops

Is this a joke? If it's not than these people are freaking crazy. All it would take is 1 computer virus to cripple your fleet. And it's not like there are not plenty of security hole to exploit.