Windows for Warships? Not on our new aircraft carriers, says MoD Britain's new Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers will be Windows XP-free zones, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed to The Register. Readers made us aware that a technician working aboard HMS Queen Elizabeth itself, which is a year away from completion, had the famous Windows XP rolling hills desktop background used by …
What with Microsoft buying Sysinternals some years back it's available directly from Microsoft themselves: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897558.aspx
Fooled one of my colleagues at work. Down having a drag and he came down to impart the news that my PC was in serious trouble and throwing repeated BSODs:
"It's a screensaver. I can't believe you fell for it."
"No it's not, I wiggled the mouse to check that."
"Well it wouldn't be any bloody good if it didn't disable the mouse now, would it?"
In the 90's there was a fad for free "comedy" screensavers, featuring badly animated sprites doing unfunny things. E.g. Bill Gates as a window cleaner - Pasta shapes dancing the "Macaroni" etc etc.
They all had two things in common: They were always described as "hilarious", and they were all as tedious as hell.
(Except for Johnny Castaway of course)
They all had two things in common: They were always described as "hilarious", and they were all as tedious as hell.
Mine consisted of strip tease artistes and they were far from tedious. For a few weeks at least...*
* Footnote for the do-gooderesses: as a self-employed person I could only sexually harass myself.
And you just know they unticked all the privacy invasion options on install, right?
"To improve your combat experience, Windows 10 for Warships sends application details to Microsoft which may include usernames, passwords, armament levels, crew compliment, readiness levels, fleet size, fleet makeup, fleet location, satcom transcripts, satellite imagery, radar contact and electronic intercept data.
Your privacy is respected at all times, but we will dump all this shit on a public server somewhere because we couldn't be arsed to secure it properly and figured we could make a quick buck off sale to carefully (yeah, right) selected third parties.."
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"Not as good as the joke BSOD screensaver I used to run ..."
Ah, yes, that one got me in trouble with the wife - her response when I explained it to her was "WHY ON EARTH WOULD ANYONE THINK THAT'S FUNNY?!"
Wasn't even my fault, damn thing was part of the default Red Hat install back around 2001.
“The MoD can confirm that Windows XP will not be used by any onboard system when the ship becomes operational,” the spokesman added. “This also applies to HMS Prince of Wales.”
Note the bold bit. You can almost imagine after the spokesman got off the blower with el Reg, the frantic call made to the beancounters to get approval for a quick software retrofit before the thing actually goes live.
I visited a US Marine Corps base museum earlier in the year. The people there were against the F-35.
'Far too heavy', 'Far too slow', etc etc
Well, we were standing in front of a recently retired Harrier.
My new years wish would be for BAE/Boeing to restart production of them and scrap the F-35.
A new versio with composite mateirals etc would probably beat the F35 hands down
I am biased because I worked on the Harrier at Hawkers.
"My new years wish would be for BAE/Boeing to restart production of them and scrap the F-35"
You and a few others. I did read somewhere a few months back in a defence rag that the current owners of the UK's Harriers were looking for an engine upgrade, but the word on the streets was that RR had lost the instructions for making engines and ancillaries (e.g. the electronic control system, like the whole aircraft, originally designed in the 1960s).
Be a good boy next year and Santa may sort it for you in 2016.
It's probably a very sensible financial decision to prevent a free upgrade to the soon to be announced subscription version of w 10 (support for legacy drivers extra).
But on the other hand this is extreme political decision making /MOD procurement / porkie pies / pork barrels / the good of the country?? / etc etc, so I'm probably way wrong there.
El Reg - we need an "It's not funny "icon.
" the GR5 a (stainless) steel leading edge escapes me."
The AV-8B composite wing was designed by McDonnell Douglas and gave extended range and carrying capacity, but at reduced turn rate. The RAF would only agree to purchase the AB-8B if the turn rate matched the GR3. (Something which would have been provided by the UK designed but never built GR5K "tin wing" Harrier). As a compromise BAe designed wing root leading edge extensions which gave improved turn rate. These were eventually fitted to both the RAF and US Marine Corps versions of the AV-8B. They're metal because McDonnells refused to export the composite materials technology to BAe. They were happy to use UK technology, but would not share their own.
There was a fair bit of blackmail about this. The "tin wing" could have been retrofitted to the existing Harrier (and Sea Harrier) fleet giving a faster, more manouverable aircraft with more lift capacity than the AV-8B, but the US Government would only buy their own AV-8B design, and would only purchase if the RAF also purchased it. Essentially we were blackmailed into buying an inferior USA design instead of our own better product. Note that the eventual AV-8B/GR5/GR7 is actually slower than the GR3/FRS1
There was a fair bit of blackmail about this. The "tin wing" could have been retrofitted to the existing Harrier (and Sea Harrier) fleet giving a faster, more manouverable aircraft with more lift capacity than the AV-8B, but the US Government would only buy their own AV-8B design, and would only purchase if the RAF also purchased it. Essentially we were blackmailed into buying an inferior USA design instead of our own better product. Note that the eventual AV-8B/GR5/GR7 is actually slower than the GR3/FRS1
Ah, US blackmail. Plus ça change.
Well given the comment "Software based on XP is used to run the command suites of most of Blighty's major warships" it now becomes obvious, naturally the engineers will have XP systems to confirm the new systems are giving the same results as the old ones.
It is a shame I didn't take a photo at the time (back in the 80's) where we had a (then) modern computer suite and sitting amongst all of this were a couple of ancient frames containing obviously live valve and relay based equipment. The reason for these systems being there was because we were testing the digital-analog interfacing between the to-be installed computer system and a remote analog system that wasn't part of our upgrade project (and it would not surprise me if that interface is still being used and the ancient analog system's valves are still glowing and its relays clicking...).
'(and it would not surprise me if that interface is still being used and the ancient analog system's valves are still glowing and its relays clicking...).'
Of course: ElectroMagneticPulse-proof ;-)
Ah, valves - as used in Colossus and in the 1950s HMV radiogram through which I am currently listening to music.
Ah, valves - as used in Colossus and in the 1950s HMV radiogram through which I am currently listening to music.
Aaah, I hear the loudspeaker emitting the dulcet tones of the Harry Roy Orchestra.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjWOdVdasGM
Isn't the Internet a wonderful thing?
It's fun to knock Vista- it was such a dog when it was first issued.
Perhaps the only Win-OS that was worse in the last 15 years was Millennium. And it was only 16-bit.
I know several folks that bought a laptop with Vista on it. And struggled and swore. But eventually MS got it to a level (SP2?) comparable to Win-7. Once I installed this on their laptops, the inevitable question was "Should I upgrade to Win-7?"
Nah. Stay with Vista - it's as fast - and more reliable.
But then, THEREGISTER is full of these complaining dopes/dinosaurs. "I WILL NEVER UPGRADE TO WINDOWS-10!" Or 8 or 7 or XP, etc.
... (Sent from my old 4GB desktop, currently running Win-10 Build 11082) ....
But then, THEREGISTER is full of these complaining dopes/dinosaurs
So, you wouldn't complain if MS pushed seven redundant copies of W10 onto your computers at a cost of $AU2 per megabyte. If you are so wealthy, why are you running antique computers and OSs?
No, fortunately the law changed here in Oz to require telcos to warn consumers that they were over the limit. But I still objected to MS assuming that it was OK to waste huge amounts of my data. The only way to stop MS was to change OS to Linux.
If MS hadn't decided to play silly buggers I'd still be running W7 on all of my computers.
“The MoD can confirm that Windows XP will not be used by any onboard system when the ship becomes operational”
But we don't have a direct quote to support the statement that all the on-board software will be newer. After all, Windows 3.1 is probably resistant to all manner of modern malware.
“The MoD can confirm that Windows XP will not be used by any onboard system when the ship becomes operational”
I'd take that as reading that the current systems are XP and will stay in place during trials, but will be replaced during refit before she becomes operational in 2020. Remember the first ship is destined to be a floating testbed/trials platform to be later upgraded to operational standard.......its quite likely that the second ship will actually be the first to become actively operational on the front line, using all the developments worked out from the first
.its quite likely that the second ship will actually be the first to become actively operational on the front line, using all the developments worked out from the first
What, like a flight deck that won't melt under the F35's exhaust?
The whole F35 saga has the makings of the world's most expensive mess. Can you imagine the discussion:
"Let's build a new strike aircraft"
"Yep - better make it strong so it will be a stable weapons platform and robust at low altitude"
"Great idea! But lets make it capable of Mach2 as well, so it can get in and out fast"
"Great thinking! Since it's Mach 2, we'll make it capable of air defence and interception"
"Bingo. So double the avionics, and high altitude dog fighting to please the top brass"
"Genius, man, genius. Don't forget stealth, you're nobody if you don't do stealth"
"We're onto a winner here! Lets make is carrier compatible, so the Navy will buy it too"
"Don't forget then, different wings, different undercarriage"
"You are The Man! And I say we do a S/VTOL variant for the marines and idiot foreigners like the Brits"
"So cool! Make sure we've got fly by wire, and incredibly advanced software to manage EVERYTHING"
And so began the sorry tale, wherein the Yanks have committed themselves to a vastly complex programme with a current expectation of a whole life cost of $1.5 TRILLION. And meanwhile, their security services maintain the biggest threat to the US is a bunch of bearded arse wipes straight out of the middle ages. In many ways, of course, the F35 programme is like the original Harrier programme - driven by the cutting edge of what you could do with technology, rather than a practical, realistic need by the military.
" the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter (aka widowmaker)..."
Interestingly if you compare the F-104G (the European ground attack version of the Starfighter) with the Harrier (in all its variants) then the crash rate is roughly the same at around 50% of airframes. I don't know if the pilot loss rate is also similar.
@ Ledswinger,
Your quote:
<quote>And so began the sorry tale, wherein the Yanks have committed themselves to a vastly complex programme with a current expectation of a whole life cost of $1.5 TRILLION. And meanwhile, their security services maintain the biggest threat to the US is a bunch of bearded arse wipes straight out of the middle ages. In many ways, of course, the F35 programme is like the original Harrier programme - driven by the cutting edge of what you could do with technology, need to impress local voters with the pork you have brought home, and the defense contractors whom you have enriched, rather than a practical, realistic need by the military.</quote>
needs some editing, note the changes.
I hope you will find them illuminating.
"is like the original Harrier programme - driven by the ......need to impress local voters with the pork you have brought home, and the defense contractors whom you have enriched"
please don't tar the designers of the original Harrier/Kestrel/P1127 with that statement. Hawkers and Bristol-Siddley were genuinely trying to resolve a real military problem: how to launch aircraft in the event of a Soviet strike destroying the fixed runways of Europe. Their intended solution: the supersonic P1154, never flew due to technical issues (in part due to the need to use plenum chamber burning in the hover - which would melt the landing pads and also give severe reingestion problems), but the subsonic Harrier / Sea Harriers that were eventually produced were a useful successful technology spin-off.
The decision making process which led to the Harriers has no similarity to that of the F-35 series
"Why aren't my icons working???"
I used to do something similar on the school acorn network. a quick bbc basic program to logout and fake the prompt as if still logged in, returning fake but plausible error messages on any input.
Retreat to a safe distance and watch the teacher try to log the machine out...
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This sort of thing really makes me tear my hair out in frustration. We are spending £6.2 billion on these aircraft carriers and probably about the same on the Trident replacement. If just 1% of that money was diverted to paying a shed load of UK software developers to create "UK Linux" we'd have a hardened OS which we could maintain ourselves without being beholden to a US company. Yes, it would take time to port over all the applications but you'd only need to do it once. "UK Linux" could also be used by Government, councils and the NHS making savings all around. I'd be prepared to bet that the project would pay for itself within a year of launch.
Considering how well most Government IT projects go though perhaps we should just let MS fleece us...
" that's the kind of project that just runs and runs."
Where the Government is involved, there seem to be no other type.
Has there been a successful IT project initiated by government in the last couple of decades (the failures keep getting reported, but not the success stories (if any). Iit just seems like really poor P.R. work for them to not blow trumpets about a success, given all the abject failures and complete disasters.
It's not even 'unlike them' to blow their own trumpets, even when it's undeserved...
"And me. I wonder how much the NHS spends wastes on MS crap when all they need is simple email, word processor/spreadsheet and web browser stuff on 100,000's of machines?"
sorry, but you are absolutely wrong.
The NHS uses a large number of database applications, required by all users, which are virtually all Windows-only.
Just to start, the three biggest-selling GP clinical systems (Emis, SystmOne, Vision) are all Windows-only. Docman, the main document control program, is Windows only. Specialist software for processing blood and other tests is Windows only.....the list is endless
I always stand in awe of those who downvote people when they state the absolute bleeding obvious:
(ALL CAPS so that it'll sink in. Maybe.)
PEOPLE BUY COMPUTERS TO RUN APPLICATIONS. THEY DO NOT BUY OPERATING SYSTEMS. THEY WANT TO DO A JOB OF WORK ON THEIR COMPUTERS.
If the applications they need to run are Windows-only, then they will buy Windows-based systems as they need to do their jobs. Anyone who wants people to stop using Windows-based systems needs to deliver applications which will do what people need to do at least as well as the Windows-based systems they are already using. In addition, the new applications MUST be able to read the existing data; users are not going to re-enter all their data unless they have a very good reason indeed.
There are a few Linux-based general office productivity applications. So far as I can determine they do NOT import the more complex MS Office files (I seem to recall specific mention of tables in MS Word) without the users doing some massaging of the files. I'm sure that Microsoft doesn't go out of their way to assist 3rd parties in their efforts to be able to read/write MS Office files, but it still remains a fact that one of the problems affecting users is moving their files out of MS Office. If it is difficult for them to move, they just will stay right where they are. Your typical user will have thousands of files, possibly tens or even hundreds of thousands. If it takes ten seconds to massage each file so that it displays properly in the new, open-source, application, that will cost the users hours or days or more (1000 files, 10 seconds each, 10,000 seconds, or just under 3 hours) and you know that it's going to take more than 10 seconds each. Even if the new open source software is totally, completely, utterly, free, without even a service contract or anything, it will still cost money to make the conversion, as someone will have to pay for all the time wasted.
x 7 mentioned applications which exist on Windows and which do not exist for Linux systems. So, are those who downvoted him willing to volunteer to write applications which can do what those applications do, which can read the data created by those applications, which can deliver the output required by the users of those applications, which have an UI sufficiently similar to those applications that the users will need minimal, if any, retraining? I'm pretty sure that there must be a document-management system available for Linux that can do what DocMan does. I'm less sure that such an application can read Docman databases, has a UI at all similar to Docman's, or can deliver exactly the results required. It is entirely possible that the UI and the results can be modified to an acceptable degree. How long will that take, how much will it cost? And then there are other applications for specialist duties. He specifically mentioned bloodwork. Bloodwork is very finicky and requires close adherence to very specific rules. The users simply aren't going to use replacement application unless those replacements can demonstrate that they do everything the Windows apps can do, and can do it at least as quickly, and can do it in a way that the users can access without major retraining. If there are incorrect results, or, worse, correct results which were misinterpreted for whatever reason, including user error, then people can die. The users are going to be very conservative. They are NOT going to change unless they KNOW that the new apps do what is necessary.
She Who Rules has to use specific software at work, and it's all Windows-based. She'd really rather not, but non-Windows based software that does what she needs simply does not exist. If anyone wants to change her industry, or many other industries dominated by Windows-based systems, they need to start creating applications for the people who work in those industries. That's how it is.
Industry is locked into Windows because it is the platform with the most users.
So new desktop software targetted at commercial users is developed for Windows. There is not yet any cost/benefit model to justify producing and supporting another version.
One of the reasons I still use Windows is that I am a T2 diabetic and the software which comes with my Blood Glucose monitor only runs on Windows.
My TomTom Go is also managed by Windows software.
Unless/until major manufacturers of hardware (medical, navigation, anything specialised) routinely produce drivers and management software for e.g Linux as well as Windows and major software suites are developed to be OS agnostic then Windows will always win.
Double (at least) the cost of software development and support? Who is going to pay that extra cost?
"Well Mozilla ( Firefox & Thunderbird), Google (Chrome, Google Earth) Gimp, LibreOffice , VLC, Skype, VirtualBox, Apache, MPLab (PIC dev/programmer) and a number of others."
None of which have any practical use in a medical environment. No clinical database system. No patient arrivals system. No patient messaging system. No document management system. No medical diagnostic testing system. No interface with ECG machines, Spirometry machines, diagnostic results databases. No integrated dictation software or speech-to-text (with medical dictionary). No automated text messaging system. No prescribing or prescription dispensing system.
The NHS uses windows because it HAS to: the applications it needs are windows only.
The programs you cite are all generalist non-specialist programs, which can be made to work in a simple small office environment. But in any type of specialist environment they are next to irrelevant.
And its no good bleating about how manufacturers "should" provide non-windows alternatives. The simple fact is that the market isn't big enough to support multiple development and support streams. There isn't enough cash in the pot to allow companies to offer multiple competing products (which is what Linux versions of the existing windows products would be). And the medical tech support teams - the CSUs - certainly don't want to increase their support costs with alternative support options.
"And its no good bleating about how manufacturers "should" provide non-windows alternatives"
I didn't but there again I didn't mention anything about medical environment either.
On the other hand a quick Google suggest that most areas of specialized medicine that involved detailed analysis of MRI, CAT etc does use software that is often available for Windows, Mac & Linux. It seems to be in the areas of databases and messaging that Windows is used solely.
If you want specialist areas I know of dozens of scientific programs only available for Unix/Linux some of them are eye-wateringly expensive. I'd also point out that MPLab is highly specialized.
If you want specialist areas I know of dozens of scientific programs only available for Unix/Linux some of them are eye-wateringly expensive. I'd also point out that MPLab is highly specialized.
The Git remembers drooling over a Silicon Graphics Indigo machine running Irix and some interesting mathematical/graphical software.
"The Git remembers drooling over a Silicon Graphics Indigo machine running Irix and some interesting mathematical/graphical software."
We used to use SGI with 3D graphics and a lot of backup horsepower (compute servers & Linux farms) for protein modeling etc - around ~~2003 we changed to Linux/Dual Xeons and saved a large amount of money on hardware - although the 3D graphics card and LC spectacles added a lot to the cost. Some experiments were done with porting some of our in-house software to Windows (W2000) but it almost always crashed. (We ran on SGI or Linux at ~100% CPU for 2-4 days or more so we gave it some stick. Once we had a 2048 core Linux farm it became a lot easier to do more speculative runs very rapidly )
Anyone who wants people to stop using Windows-based systems needs to deliver applications which will do what people need to do at least as well as the Windows-based systems they are already using.
Slight flaw in your logic. People buy orifice. Wordpad would suit most of them just as well. Even opens office docs.
In addition, the new applications MUST be able to read the existing data; users are not going to re-enter all their data unless they have a very good reason indeed.
And how often has changes to office (etc) broken such things?
"Wordpad would suit most of them just as well. Even opens office docs."
It doesn't offer proper styles / templates / macros / team working / database linking........etc etc etc
You clearly haven't a clue how a modern electronic office works, with teams using central document repositories linked to backend databases.
"And how often has changes to office (etc) broken such things?"
Changes which are fixed with trivial checks. Compared with (for instance) moving a surgery's clinical database from Windows to Unix/Linux where you could be faced with rekeying the entire medical history of all 10-20 thousand of the sites patients. Keying ACCURATELY with NO errors all 20,000.
Could YOU do that?
Are you suggesting that it's not possible to migrate a database from on environment except by re-typing everything - Good Grief !
A decade or more ago, the Australian telephone directories were all rekeyed in each year and the data sold on CD. The businesses had access only to the dead tree directories and OCR was less accurate than Asian typists.
I've done quite a few translation/merges of data using Excel and Word for partial automation, but manual fine-tuning was required. Unless the dataset was very large, manual rekeying was often cheaper albeit with some loss of accuracy.
We routinely moved 1-2 million records between databases - due to mergers of companies.
Small business buys up a competitor who used a different system and OS. Let's say purchase kept names and addresses etc in a Word table and the purchased business used Excel on a Mac. Some ASCII characters such as the ones for the three commonest fractions 1/4, 1/2 and 3/4 don't exist on the Mac; they do exist on the PC, DEC Alpha, Lotus and Commodore that uses "Windows" ANSI. One database has dates as dates, the other dates as text. One has some entries in all Caps. Luckily I never had to merge data from a Linux system where the character set was ISO 8859-1.
I know that big iron databases can have issues too. A colleague said he was having fun merging several state government databases. They didn't even agree on the number of sexes!
Why do you need so many, when Linux is already available? I guess this was what you referred to by "hardening" it, but there are hardened versions of Linux as well. Do you plan to have all these programmers take stock Linux and reinvent the wheel by re-hardening it, assuming that us crafty yanks (and of course the head Fin in charge of it all) have deliberately left a few backdoors in it?
All you really need to produce a UK Linux is to decide on a distribution and set to "UK English" mode and there you go. If you find things to harden, hopefully you feed that back upstream, and you can pay your programmers to be part of the "many eyes" that review everything that changes. Good luck on that, despite all the eyes security problems slip through all the time.
The only other alternative is to pick a version and stick with it, patching only security holes and bugs that you can't work around. Probably a good idea for a ship, but not for a government where servers and desktops will be constantly refreshed to newer hardware that will require newer versions to support...
An hour-long documentary on the first Type 45 included much detail about Windows for Warships. The experts explained why it was inherently reliable and essentially crash proof.
It crashed within seconds of entering the first exercise. Took several minutes to reboot. A famous incident documented on that video.
'BAe' = billions above estimate
Oh Paul, you couldn't resist. But making remarks about BSODs on XP and later MS Windows systems only shows you to be hopelessly out of touch. The only time I saw a BSOD on my work workstation was due to a chip going nails-up. I did see one on my home system when the Symantec AV nagware turned out to be unfit for purpose.
BSODs are rare animals now, and have been for more than a decade. Waving them in people's faces just says "I have no idea what I'm talking about right now".
Other than that, nice follow-up.
BSODs are rare animals now, and have been for more than a decade. Waving them in people's faces just says "I have no idea what I'm talking about right now".
Somewhat less than a decade ago, I visited Melbourne (Australia) to stay with my mother and sister. Everywhere I went around the city, there were these new-fangled, computer-driven advertising billboards. Nearly all of which were displaying a BSOD!
Yep, that was one source of angst in the days when card manufacturers were less than timely with the drivers. MS got more aggressive about the issue and gradually, it went away.
Like I say, I've seen exactly two XP bluescreens since 2000. My Win7 laptop has NEVER bluescreened.
But then, I don't fit it with any old crap I can find free on Teh Intarweb. I only run mature software that is ready for primetime (or as ready as it will ever be). Yes, a couple of these have crashed unexpectedly in use, but significantly they didn't take the OS with them.
Even crappily-written games don't take the OS down the rabbit hole like they used to in the pre XP days.
I don't doubt if you are in the business of driver writing you will stand a good chance of seeing the OS crash, but sitting in your living room working? Nah.
The BSOD is now something for Linux software vendor-owned techs who don't know any better to trot out into an embarrassed audience silence.
Like I say, I've seen exactly two XP bluescreens since 2000. My Win7 laptop has NEVER bluescreened.
I saw a BSOD on my old Toshiba laptop immediately after installing WinXP SP3; several times in a row. Until Win7 came out, it remained at SP2. Since installing Win7 it never blue screened, but MS don't want me to run Win7 and have rather pointedly wasted my Internet bandwidth to drive that home.
If MS could brick my old Toshiba with an update, they could certainly brick any other machine I own in future. Unlike with the Toshiba and WinXP where I could choose not to install SP3, MS inform me that all future updates for W10 will be compulsory. W10 on my current main machine was not stable and required at least one reboot per day to be at all workable. (Graphics issue).
All showing the output of the same one computer?
Tullamarine airport is 25 km from Melbourne CBD so unlikely to be connected to the same computer. Also doesn't explain why some of these billboards were displaying ads for products other than MS Windows. That's how I knew they were advertising billboards. It struck me as funny that MS would want to advertise BSODs.
And how many in Windows? And OSX?
There's no way of knowing how many accidental bugs or deliberate back doors exist in any closed-source software.
It is at least theoretically possible to find and fix them in open-source.
Both of them will contain bugs - they're written by people.
Precisely! Plus, as a Linux/Unix/Solaris professional, I saw that article yesterday and yawned a great yawn, and took a nap while my servers ran without issue. Give me the "must have physical access, must be at the keyboard alone", Grub vuln rather than the thousands of available exploits on sad, GUI Windows hosts and I'm a happy admin! OS X is unix, but it's a desktop heavy user Unix, not a "data center, we're behind quite a few firewalls and in separate functional subnets, good luck getting in here!" Linux/Unix, so it seems to be attackable mostly via human engineering. The problem with Windows is that some idiots think it belongs in the data center, and also running web front ends, as if they are securable from remote exploit in any sense of the word. Windows and OS X are best kept on the desktop. There are already many more capable, securable Linux/Unix variants for data center use. Truth be told, when I see an organization that is Windows heavy in the data center and on their front-facing machines, I head the other way. There is nothing but easily fooled management that took the blue pill and repeats their mantra; no one ever got fired for purchasing Windows. no one ever got fired for purchasing Windows...
Windows on the front end, or anywhere in the data center, is bad enough, but then stack the ever popular "we don't have any dedicated computer security staff" on top and you have a breach waiting to happen. These companies always think they are too small, or don't present an interesting target to hackers. It most cases I'd say it's already too late for them, they are probably already hacked and won't find out for many months, or ever. Sounds like a good way to save using the "pay me now, or pay me later" terms, at least in the upfront cost of hiring a dedicated computer security staff member of some sort.
I had the updated version of grub notified through the usual Debian upgrade channel and installed on my laptop before I even got round to reading the article on el Reg. No waiting until patch Tuesday. Downloaded and installed in a fraction of the time I've ever seen any Windows patch arrive and no attempt to force a multi-gigabyte OS ?upgrade onto it.
Downloaded and installed in a fraction of the time I've ever seen any Windows patch arrive and no attempt to force a multi-gigabyte OS ?upgrade onto it.
Three months now since my move to Mint [time flies]. Ran the updater this week and twenty minutes later all done. No reboot needed.
Ran the updater this week and twenty minutes later all done. No reboot needed.
Really want to put it to the test? Get the latest Windows installer and a year old Linux installer. See which is finished doing updates while the other still has "checking for updates" for another 40+ minutes.
Oh, wait.. Maybe you can't. Do you even get to tell 10 to check for updates ahead of time or is it a "You must wait until we say it's time, no matter that there's a whole pile of new patches for serious security flaws, you are not due to update your system until Tuesday after next!"
(Sorry, I just love how Mint does updates in minutes... :) )
To launch nukes, hit the any key ............. are your sure .......... sorry an error has occurred, would you like to send details to Microsoft .......... BSOD .......... reboot ........... Congratulations, we are now upgrading you to Windows 10 BAE Sunk Edition, please note, until you register and deposit £6.2billion, your warship can only go around in circles !
Last time I looked, geeks were just as much a minority in the military as in civilian life.
My dear departed brother was an engineer and he worked for the Australian Dept of Defence some years back. When he needed a computer for some calculations, he was asked why he couldn't use a four function calculator to do his sums.
He was sent from Canberra to Sydney for several weeks to use a computer there. When he mentioned he was going away to a friend in Stores, the friend showed him a room full of brand new PCs that he wasn't allowed to distribute to staff.
Back in 2000 I had the chance to tour the USS Hue City when it was docked in Boston Harbor, as part of a special millenial Tall Ships weekend. We eventually headed down to the "war room" on the ship. This place was really impressive to me because of all the computer equipment. It was equally exciting to see Microsoft Windows NT logon screens on several monitors (I had read an article in Computerworld that the Navy was going to use NT on missile cruisers, and we had made several jokes about re-booting in the middle of a battle and dealing with blue screens when things were going hot and heavy). At the Vanguard Security Expo later that year, Bill Murray (of IBM & Deloitte & Touche fame, not the actor), a recognized national expert in secure computing issues, had stated during a presentation that he would leave the country if the military ever began to rely on Microsoft technology for anything of a strategic nature. I could hardly contain my excitement to point out I'd already seen it in use on a US Navy ship. "God help us..." is all he could mutter to the audience.
Most likely a switch to FOSS. Problem is that might not be to well received for use on a killing machine, so they are remaining tight lipped. Military all over the world are likely developing an extreme phobia of closed source proprietary software. One hack and the armaments controlled by the software could be actively used against the end users or simply be shut down.
Electronics, any one part fails and the whole system goes down. A single capacitor with the ability to receive coms from it's power supply and could be triggered to short, board after board replaced, only to fail in the exact same fashion.
The professionally paranoid must be going nuts trying to secure those systems. I can not understand any country that does not force the manufacturer of it's own electronics in it's own government controlled and audited factories to ensure there are no embedded hacks because guaranteed all new military hardware produced for export will contain built in hack points and there ain't no such thing as allies in those hacks.
Back in 2013, MS's revenue from sales of MSO broke down to almost 88% corporate with a tad over 12% of sales being Office Home & Student. Over half of the latter were to business users breaching the T & Cs of the EULA ("pirating" the product according to MS). Consumer subscriptions to Office 365 accounted for only 7% of all Office 365 revenue. So, if you are correct that most users of MSO are home users, that means they are purchasing far more corporate product than businesses do! Presumably including Software Assurance programs. What a strange world this is...
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