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He's certainly "pretty" enough to be a politician stroker.

You gotta love the fact that they seemed to have digitally enhanced the whiteness of his teeth.

So essentially Microsoft is back to taking the approach that if they close their eyes tight enough, everything will be OK?

'Super-Linux' Cluster Declared Third-Fastest Computer On Earth

fastest computer system in the US

NCSA Linux Cluster Among Fastest Computers in the World

Two Linux clusters on Top 10 list of fastest computers

Linux NetworxTM EvolocityTM cluster supercomputer to study smallpox genomics in light of the threat of possible bioterror attacks here

The Linux open-source operating system powers a new government supercomputer that will help meteorologists forecast the weather more accurately. here

New SGI supercomputer to scale Linux to 1,024 CPUs
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications will use it for research here

And the list goes on and on.

...before any missiles arrived. Is that close enough?

I can hardly wait for Windows to do for the family minivan what it once famously did for the USS Yorktown.

However, your next statement is somewhat missing the point: "Estimating based on what it would cost in a commercial environment is also flawed, because there are too many variables to consider." Yes, salaries and overheads vary, and they'll certainly affect the answer. But I used a U.S.-nationwide average for salaries, and several sources for the overhead value. See "Gigabuck" for more info. So this is an "average" kind of development. If you don't like those assumptions, I gave enough information for you to recompute everything using different values. But you have to make some assumptions, and I think these are quite reasonable ones; I basically picked averages to represent an "average" development project's costs.

But then you say stuff that I think isn't right: "The bottom line is, since the developers have always been paid nothing for their work (except those that are being sponsored by commercial entities) ... since in all likelihood if these guys weren't writing the code in their spare time, they would be doing some other hobby... The bottom line here is, the only time that you can assign a value to is the time that someone actually received a wage for. This is a small minority of the overall code base, so by that method the code would not be worth much at all."

Two problems: first, I'm computing re-development cost, and presuming that the developers would be getting a wage. And second, most of the changes in the Linux kernel are from developers getting a wage to do so.

In fact, the move to wage-earning OSS/FS development has been one of the silent trends in the IT industry. In 2004, Government Computer News reported in July 2004 on a presentation by Andrew Morton, who leads maintenance of the the Linux kernel in its stable form, and confirmed the trend towards paid OSS/FS developers. Morton spoke at a meeting sponsored by the Forum on Technology and Innovation, to address technology-related issues, held by Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.), Sen. Ron Wyden (D- Ore.) and the Council on Competitiveness. Morton noted that "People's stereotype [of the typical Linux developer] is of a male computer geek working in his basement writing code in his spare time, purely for the love of his craft. Such people were a significant force up until about five years ago ..." but contributions from such enthusiasts, "is waning... Instead, most Linux kernel code is now generated by corporate programmers." Morton noted that "About 1,000 developers contribute changes to Linux on a regular basis... Of those 1,000 developers, about 100 are paid to work on Linux by their employers. And those 100 have contributed about 37,000 of the last 38,000 changes made to the operating system."

For more about the general trend of employed OSS/FS developers, see http://www.dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html#wont-destr oy-industry. This isn't new in a sense; X Windows was started this way, as was Apache. It's just become more common.

yeah cuz "real banks" don't have problems with transactions.

Scott McNealy got my dander up in the quotes in this Government Computer News article.

From January through June, there was a sharp increase in bot networks. The number of these remotely controlled networks of compromised computers jumped from fewer than 2,000 to more than 30,000, Symantec noted in the report released today.

This makes the probability of an increase in DDOS Extortion more likely. I fully expect a high profile site to be hit significantly before the end of the year, to lend a sense of legitimacy to the ability of bot network 0wners to shut down a site. Create enough fear of reprisal, and many companies might just pay off rather than inform police.

Everybody seems to be missing the reason for this.

While their service sucked AND they were annoying us with switch calls the real culprit was Bush and the FCC.

http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/26319-1.html

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&tab =wn&q=fcc+bush+telecom+act+1996&btnG=Search+Ne ws

They got rid of the regulations about unbundling the local copper so the local carrier can charge AT&T whatever they want.

Expect others to leave that market soon as well.

Unlike the food example, where bad food could kill you, a computer virus in your home machine won't.

Explain that to the sailors on the USS Yorktown.

Yes, I know it wasn't a virus. It was bad SQL Server-based code. Sadly, Microsoft is equally vulnerable to both.

Well, given that the US Navy uses Windows NT to run (nuclear capable) warships, I wouldn't be so sure.

The problem: Linux has usability holes you could drive an aircraft carrier through.

Yeah, well, at least you can still drive that aircraft carrier. By contrast, Windows NT has reliability holes that left the USS Yorktown dead in the water.

I know, this is a cheap shot, but I just hate that hackneyed "hole big enough to drive X through" cliche.

The link referenced in the /. article seems to be dead, but Google found it's new location.

those are simply not operating systems to be laughed at.

"Despite urging from competitors and open source advocates, Sun Microsystems Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., will not open the source to its Java programming language anytime soon, said Sun CEO Scott McNealy during a news conference at the 2004 FOSE conference. "We're trying to understand what problem does it solve that is not already solved," McNealy said."

If I didn't know better, it would seem that Sun is flailing pretty badly at this point.

http://www.gcn.com/archives/gcn/1998/november9/6.h tm

""Now that we know what can happen, we've realized how to bring the
system back quickly," Petty Officer 1st Class Phillip Cramer said. "All
we have to do is change the zero to any number, and everything comes
right back up.""

USS Yorktown dead in water

I think most worrisome is a computer glitch (not to mention a bullet) hitting the right server at the right place to cause the ship to be dead in the water because engine/navigation controls don't work.

You mean like the USS Yorktown in 1998?

The Navy's track trecord with skelton crews and automation is not flawless.

The Yorktown didn't survive a divide by zero calculation.

I like automation and I love computers, but are they really going to have a technically savvy crew? A crew that could fix the onboard systems if they break, not just utilize them while they are working?

I like the idea of some manual controls to get them out of a pinch.

Establishing a monoculture environment leaving the organization vulnerable

Excessive costs by requireing MS office on desktops that never user it where something like OO may be sufficient.

Restricting the use of a emerging class of IP enabled devices (from UPS to IP telephones)

Forcing the use of Win2000/IIS/SQL server where a Unix box is more appropiate and secure and cheaper to operate. I am sure other could add to this list.... But I hear customer satificaton is high

http://gcn.com/vol1_no1/daily-updates/25400-1.html

"Go open source with DB2 and then you can tell me what to do with my assets," was McNealy's response to IBM

Nobody ever seems to put this together but everytime Apple makes a threat to port their OS to x86 hardware, Microsoft makes some sort of "investment" and they quietly drop the plan. Microsoft is actually Apple's savior and will be as long as x86 is there for the taking.

Remember Yellow Box? Remember the Microsoft investment?

Apple on Intel would have several hundred of my dollars, if they'd ever release it.

Google is still the king. Here is the article about the Navy and its war ships using NT (on an Aegis even!). Turns out, that human error was the real problem in the event in question but, I still find it a bit scary that such an advanced weapons platform runs Windows, even if it is NT.

Google sells a search appliance which also includes a (presumably) customized implementation of their searching algorithms. Basically any geeks dream - their own little Google. I read that base price is $28,000 (seems to be a hardware/software bundle).

You can keep the tin foil hat on, because this has been sold to government intelligence services.

They found Open Source on Mars

It gets worse. President Bush has just cut funding to the NIST's Advanced Technology Program. Where is the money going instead? Amongst other needy causes, The Department of Homeland Paranoia of course!

They're ready for you.

First of all, Miscrosoft didn't bail out Apple

Yes they did. This bailout is detailed all over the place. Here is but one link

A lawsuit that they of course knew they would lose

The lawsuit was frivolous anyway. So, Microsoft ripped the Xerox interface after Apple did.

Secondly, there are thousands of free open source applications that are available for OSX that you cannot even find a commercial solution for on a Windows PC

Show one.

try a Mac software site, like versiontracker.com or macupdate.com

I did. They show more than download.com does that there is really hardly anything out there for the Macintosh.

I use both PC's and Macs in Educational and Corporate settings and there is nothing I can do on a PC that I cannot also do on a Mac

You obviously do nothing, as you are lying. Software-wise, Mac's do only a fraction of what PC's do.
As far as terminal applications, you have got to be smoking crack

The drug reference must contain an admission that Macs just don't have this.

And lastly, sheer numbers of programs does not equal superior programs

Yes it does, certainly! Sturgeon's Law applies to programs, on all platforms. If there are 300 programs, chances are that there are 5 or so good ones. If there are 10 programs for something, chances are there are no good ones.

thus there is no need to have 217 different programs that do the same damn thing

Ah. another Mac myth. "competition is bad". What perverse arguments you use to excuse paying a lot more for a machine that does a lot less. Applying your twisted logic to other things, why NOT have one OS be the universal standard?

If the world switched to Macs I would be out of a job.

If the world switched to Macs, maybe someone would actually start writing software for it, and you would not have the situation where it is so useless due to lack of applications.

As it is now, it only makes sense to get a Mac if you are running only certain niche applications like desktop publishing. For everything else, there's a better tool.

The Yorktown last September suffered an engineering LAN casualty when a petty officer calibrating a fuel valve entered a zero into a shipboard database, officials said. The resulting database overload caused the ship's LAN, including 27 dual 200-MHz Pentium Pro miniature remote terminal units, to crash, they said.

The petty officer, who has since left the Navy, fed the bad data into the Remote Data Base Manager, a Standard Monitoring Control System application. SMCS, developed by Canadian Aviation Electronics Inc. of Toronto, allows sailors to monitor the ship's engineering and propulsion plant for potential casualties.

The system provides troubleshooting data and normally indicates whether a valve is open or closed without requiring calibration. But something went wrong.

"There was a problem in that this one valve was closed, but SMCS wasn't indicating it as such," said Cmdr. Eric Sweigard, the Yorktown's commanding officer. "So this petty officer started playing with the data.

"This was the only time it occurred, and since then there have been some changes made to prevent it from happening again," he said.

SMCS managers are now aware of the problem of entering zero into database fields and are trained to bypass a bad data field and change the value if such a problem were to occur again, Sweigard said.

"Now that we know what can happen, we've realized how to bring the system back quickly," Petty Officer 1st Class Phillip Cramer said. "All we have to do is change the zero to any number, and everything comes right back up."

The Yorktown's Standard Monitoring Control System administrator entered zero into the data field for the Remote Data Base Manager program. That caused the database to overflow and crash all LAN consoles and miniature remote terminal units, the memo said.

From this article linked by granparent or something.

Since my recollection of the USS Yorktown failure stems from back when it actually happened, I'll admit the crashing of NT is a detail I may be incorrect on. I do remember being quite clear at the time that it was in fact an application fault and subsequent operating system failure, but again that was six years ago.

I was unable to find a link that explained the situation in more (technical) detail. If you have a link that would indicate specifically whether the operating system of the computer running the database software was still alive or not after the crash, then that would be helpful. Otherwise the issue remains unclear.

"The Yorktown was never towed as a result of any Smart Ship initiative. During my command, we lost propulsion power twice while using the new technology. Each time, we knew what caused the interrupt and were underway again in about 30 minutes. The September 1997 incident was caused by incorrect data insertion by a well-trained crewman. The Yorktown returned to port using two FFG-7 emergency control units that specifically had been requested by me, and supported by other commands as a risk reducer. We knew there were some risks in the engineering development model propulsion-control system installed under a rapid prototyping development effort. The bottom line: The data field safeguards found in production-level systems were not installed yet in the Yorktown by intention, until complete wring-out was accomplished.""

"On Sept. 21, 1997, the Yorktown experienced what the Navy called "an engineering LAN casualty" [GCN, July 13, Page 1]. A systems administrator fed bad data into the ship's Remote Database Manager, which caused a buffer overflow when the software tried to divide by zero. The overflow crashed computers on the LAN and caused the Yorktown to lose control of its propulsion system, Navy officials said.

The Navy CIO Office is trying to determine whether the crash was caused by the software application, NT or some other problem.

"So far, it doesn't seem like it's an NT issue but a basic programming problem," said deputy CIO Ron Turner, who is in charge of the inquiry."

"Between July 1995 and June 1997, the Yorktown lost propulsion power to buffer overflows twice while using the new Smart Ship technology, said Capt. Richard Rushton, commanding officer of the Yorktown at the time of the failures. But in each incidence the Yorktown crew knew what caused the failure and quickly restored systems, Rushton said. "NT was never the cause of any problem on the ship," Rushton said. "The problems were all in programs, database and code within the individual pieces of software that we were using."

""Now that we know what can happen, we've realized how to bring the system back quickly," Petty Officer 1st Class Phillip Cramer said. "All we have to do is change the zero to any number, and everything comes right back up.""

Ok, I'll bite. How about the USS Yorktown shutdown in 1997. A Windows NT bug crashed their engine control system and required that they be towed to port. Dockside repairs took several days. You can get the full story here.

Had this happened in a battle, it would have likely resulted in loss of life and probably the ship.

More FUD - from http://www.gcn.com/archives/gcn/1998/july13/cov2.h tm:

Navy brass have called the Yorktown Smart Ship pilot a success in reducing manpower, maintenance and costs... The Yorktown last September suffered a systems failure when bad data was fed into its computers during maneuvers off the coast of Cape Charles, Va.... The ship had to be towed into the Naval base at Norfolk, Va., because a database overflow caused its propulsion system to fail... The Yorktown lost control of its propulsion system because its computers were unable to divide by the number zero, the memo said. The Yorktown's Standard Monitoring Control System administrator entered zero into the data field for the Remote Data Base Manager program. That caused the database to overflow and crash all LAN consoles and miniature remote terminal units, the memo said.

Also, in blaming the SQL, considering the patches and fixes that have been issued for competitor's SQL products available at the same time, I think one has a hard time arguing that Oracle [bulletproof - cough!], DB2, Informix, MySQL [snicker], or anything else wouldn't (or, couldn't) have had their own share of similar issues.

I found a few flight software links about the two Mars craft... it's normal that little of this information is put on the web due to ITAR regulations...

PDF of a powerpoint about static analysis of the code

First and second links from GCN magazine.

And here is a chatty JPL page showing the key team members and their personal reflections

Some technical briefs on the science payload can be downloaded here or here

A list of Cornell's scientists and their bios etc is here

Here is an article about another software guy.

A cool technical power point about the computers, only available on google cache, is here

And lastly, a technical comparison of today's rovers against something called Fido.

I simply don't know what I did before Google!

I found a few flight software links about the two Mars craft... it's normal that little of this information is put on the web due to ITAR regulations...

PDF of a powerpoint about static analysis of the code

First and second links from GCN magazine.

And here is a chatty JPL page showing the key team members and their personal reflections

Some technical briefs on the science payload can be downloaded here or here

A list of Cornell's scientists and their bios etc is here

Here is an article about another software guy.

A cool technical power point about the computers, only available on google cache, is here

And lastly, a technical comparison of today's rovers against something called Fido.

I simply don't know what I did before Google!

Sorry, I hit reply as there were no other replies at that point :-p There's some good stuff at http://www.gcn.com/22_24/news/23246-1.html if you like. #maestro on irc.freenode.net is also a good source of technical info.

another short article from GCN on the subject.

another short article from GCN on the subject.

They're trying. Why do you think they're running submarines with Windows NT? <shiver>

Any geek, but a reporter? I don't mean to denegrate reporters in general, but maybe geeky reporters are not allowed on Air Force One "for security reasons." Are reporters from GCN who can recognize and report on tech allowed on Air Force One?

The Navy does use Windows NT. See here.

Choice quote: The Navy selected NT 4.0 as the standard operating system aboard the Yorktown for its reliability, functionality, low cost and ease of integration, said Lt. Danny Bethel, Yorktown's electronics material officer. NT runs the Yorktown's integrated bridge, engineering, condition assessment and damage control systems.

If you read the entire article (fat chance), you'll see they do blame it partly on NT's lack of error handling.

Gee..What we need is a language that has been around for a long time. Is ISO standardized. Supports OO. Has the power to do low level programming when required. It would actually have to be fast and efficient . It would also be good if it had run time checks on things like buffer overflows but also made them less likely by the structure of the language itself (e.g. Doing pass and array and a separate array size but have the language know about the size of the array to start with). It would be good if this language already had a free implementation. It would have to work under Windows, Linux, most other Unixs and a lot of embedded targets. It would have to have the option of easily letting the user suppress the run-time checks if required but have them basically on by default. Hopefully we could do something in the language that would at least help reduce bugs. But we have to be realistic too. We probably won't be getting rid of Windows any time soon so this made up language would also need to be able to interface easily to things like COM/DCOM for windows. It should also support things like Gtk+ and GNOME out of the box. Hmm...Sounds Like Ada. Oh but wait..It does not use ugly C syntax so programmers will never use it...Not to mention that problem with the military being involved at the beginning (but lets just overlook that for the whole internet thing)...

Oh and we all know what happens when a Microsoft OS gets to run a navy battleship. I bet the Chinese are shaking in their boots now....

So ships are not important. I see.

Favorite line: "Although Unix is more reliable, Redman said, NT may become more reliable with time"

I live in that area, and there are a LOT of Msft job openings requiring security clearance these days.

I'm afraid our front line troops mostly do run Windows. This is one of the few military applications where Microsoft wouldn't have an almost automatic lock: almost nobody uses NT as a high-performance computing platform.

"I didn't even know the USN was running Linux on front-line ships."

They probably looked at alternatives after Windows NT crashed from a division-by-zero error and left a navy ship dead on the water for several hours.

I think what this means is that they can pick Linux and have a piece of paper supporting their choice. Got to cover their own backs I guess.

Better still the Defense Information Systems Agency is recommending that any Linux purchase support the LSB and that apps be written to the LSB.

So, not only is it now easier for government agencies to support Linux deployments, but they are going to force any Linux distributor doing business with the government into interoperability.

if you're curious about some of the history of microsoft and the certication of windows for government work, click here, and look elsewhere for the story of ed curry. its been linked to here on slashdot before.

if you want to know more about what the eal4 certification that windows 2000 sp3 currently has, click here.