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No Windows Allowed On Ex-Battleship Cruise Liner
uucee writes "Wired has a story on an ex-warship cum cruise ship. Owner of the ship, Doug Humphrey, on why no Windows aboard his ship: 'We didn't want to have viruses blowing up systems that we depend on for navigation and monitoring engines and other systems. And since nothing seems to be able to stop all of these Windows viruses, the best way to win is to just stop using Windows.' However, it's not clear why Mac programmers can be trusted more than Windows programmers to keep a ship running: USS Yorktown was brought to a halt not by a virus but by bad coding: divide-by-zero.
As Windows viruses don't travel through 'the ether,' it's also unclear how mission-critical systems, properly cut off from the outside world, would become infected in the first place."
(1) It's not a battleship, it was a patrol ship....quite a small one at that.
(2) It's not used as a "cruise ship" now -- it's the personal vessel of an entrepreneur.
(3) As for how viruses would have gotten aboard (because they don't "travel through the ether") -- the ship has satellite Internet and is hooked-up to DSL when moored.
All that said, it's an ugly fsck'ing boat that dude's got!
-psy
Some friends said I might want to get in here and correct factual errors, and clarify what we are really trying to do. It's my warship, and I'll do what I wanna ;-) Seriously, it is
mine, so I can answer questions on it.
1) it isn't remotely a battleship
You got that right - we run it with a crew of
4, you can't do that with a battlewagon. It is
a coastal patrol boat, 120ft long, 24ft wide,
draws 2 meters of water (yes, it is british,
and NATO compliant, which means that there are
mixed english/metric measures EVERYWHERE on it.
Mine has not 40mm gun on the back deck - a much
more mundane but much more useful Seacrane 200
is on there for picking up large items on and
off the rear deck.
There are mounts for .30 cals (1919's or M60 if
it was in the US navy, something in .303 british
if in the Royal Navy)
There are 2 mounts, one per side, on the upper
deck for heavy machine guns, likely the ever
popular M2HB .50 cal
2) The Yorktown thing is none of my concern per
se - I don't need any extra evidence that windoze
is a threat - I have owned companies with many
employees and many windows boxes. Evidence
abounds.
3) If you are talking to me, I do not have a
"fairly sketchy knowledge of computers. I have
written PDP-10 code, PDP-11 code, Suns (my first
was a 2/120), Vax, and have done IP networking
since NCP was around. No, I don't hack code now,
but I am pretty well versed on the technology, and
on the current state of the security art (my
current focus is deep packet scanning - not sure
I really BELIEVE in it, but there is a lot of work
going on in the area)
You don't always have to check your brain at the
door to make money, and YOU should be more carefull
before making the assumption that someone who owns
a strage toy like this might not understand
networking.
Doug Humphrey
doug@joss.com
It is just a private vessel now - nothing official. You can get barebones GPS things with no real OS but we have more sophisticated things for charts and maps, and also we are doing stuff that monitors equipment. Still, really critical things like radar, radios and basic GPS nav have nothing to do with external connections - we are not fools ;-)
As to how we got the company to go all Mac, and
the evidence that it saves a bundle, that is pretty
easy. When you are downsizing things, you don't
have the luxury of a big MIS staff - sales people
like PC's rather than Macs, but if there is nobody
to fix the PCs they are all dead in a few weeks.
The Macs are more simple, and they get the job
done. Seriously, the only complaints we got were
that the games didn't run on the Macs. Boo Hoo.
Doug
Welcome Aboard the Badtz Maru! has more photos and details of her history.
why don't they just isolate the network that the ship's computers are on..... this works well in theory, but since there are a number of people working on the systems, networks, etc. there is the possibility that they will get exposed to the outside world (internet access is a requirement because I use it for my day job(s) and guests like to have access too. Better to take an active role in maintaining security than to simply count on nobody plugging the wrong rj45 into the wrong place. Or I could turn IPSEC on and just break everything..... ;-)
I can not assure that guests will not bring on
dirty machines - that would be real friendly,
taking their laptops and examining them...
Doug
how are they using satellite comm without going through a pc.... ? not using consumer gear - there are inmarsat systems that are dedicated hardware - there is a realtime os in there, but not windoze. connection is 10baseT. doug
Read the article. The guy owns a company that provides broadband access via satellite. You can certainly connect a Mac to such services (the sat modem just looks like a router), but most companies that provide that service are just too lazy to provide config scripts for platforms other than windows.
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