Windows for Warships nears frontline service
When the Blue Screen of Death, really means death.===================================================
By Lewis Page → More by this author
Published Monday 26th February 2007 12:15 GMT
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Analysis Everyone knows the differences between Windows and other operating systems. Steve Jobs has recently spent colossal sums telling us that most malware is written for Windows; also that using Windows is no fun and, even worse, seems to involve wearing a tie.
Those acquainted with the more foam-lipped Linux fanciers will also be familiar with the position that Windows use is morally corrupt, indicative of sexual perversion, and causes cancer.
A lot of customers keep buying from Microsoft, however. One may want to deploy a particular kind of hardware, perhaps used only by a few organisations. It may well be that you can only get the associated software from the hardware maker, and the vendor in question doesn't provide anything other than Windows-based machines.
One type of hardware where this is happening more and more is warships.
This shift has already been heavily criticised. Nonetheless, BAE Systems subsidiary Insyte, the UK's sole provider of warship command systems, has decided to standardise on Win2k (this was during the company's former incarnation as AMS).
The Type 45 destroyers now being launched will run Windows for Warships: and that's not all. The attack submarine Torbay has been retrofitted with Microsoft-based command systems, and as time goes by the rest of the British submarine fleet will get the same treatment, including the Vanguard class (V class). The V boats carry the UK's nuclear weapons and are armed with Trident ICBMs, tipped with multiple H-bomb warheads.
All this raises a number of worrying issues. First up is basic reliability and usability. Most of us have stared in helpless despair at the dreaded blue screen; how much worse would you feel if that wasn't just your desktop gone but your combat display, and it really was the screen of death?
Surely we can't have our jolly tars let down by possibly untrustworthy, difficult to use kit such as Windows? Especially when you reflect that cost is not an issue. When you're buying destroyers at £1bn per hull, the price difference between 26 PCs and the same number of Sun workstations barely shows up.
....rest of article on The Register .
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