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War(ship) Driving For 802.11b Controlled Destroyers
Jason Straight writes "There's a story at pcworld, that describes how navy warships will be equipped with 802.11b networking to allow the captain to control the ship from anywhere on the ship.
" The point of the article also gets into the issue of cutting manpower for the ships - going from 300 people on each to destroyer to 90, and makes the point that the only way to do is through automation.
Terrorist take over the United States Navy, w/o Wires!
"And in other news, the USS Bigship crashed into the USS Otherbigship because someone forgot to turn ESSID broadcasts off."
"... allow the captain to control the ship from anywhere on the ship."
Great, just what the crew wanted: Their captain giving orders while he's in the head.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
In other news, the export of Pringles, laptops and speedboats to the Persian Gulf region has increased dramatically.
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
"It sounded like a great idea until the terrorists released a virus called WOPR that exploited a vulnerability in MS Captain and launched a thermonuclear war..."
What kind of chalk marks would indicate this kind of access point?
"What'll it be tonight, sir? Minesweeper, or battleship?"
Oooh, this was an obvious one...
Help savingAmigaOS and a free PowerPC market
Destroyer captains were notably irritated after being presented with their newly mandated hats that included an embedded Airport base station.
An anonymous officer complained "I've got 10 pounds of circuitry on my head now...first the anti-homosexuality halo, now this!"
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
It's called Buzzword Bingo, and everyone's playing. That will be the main reason for this; it sounds cool, it sounds like a neat concept, and we'll be the only players, right? We don't need to worry about The Enemy building a 15dBi omni, and at least listening in, and at most actually taking over? Surely not. Never. They'd not do that. Nobody has that capability.
Lo and behold, what was designed and implemented as a battlespace advantage quickly becomes your biggest battlespace disadvantage.
Given the military's strong chain of command - and the near heresy of so much as thinking questioning thoughts, the techs implementing this won't dare mention what a Bad Idea it is.
But hey, it's not as if I have any experience in large defence projects. Oh, no. Definitely not.
Okay, lets see:
-world's most insecure networking technology...check!
-world's most insecure, unstable, practically-end-of-life'd operating system....check!
(remember, WINNT is the OS of choice in the navy, despite that whole dead-at-sea-had-to-be-towed-in incident)
I think we've hit upon the Destroyer equivalent of "screen door on a submarine". Only way this could get any better is if they use ColdFusion for the web interface with a MS-SQL backend(and, of course, Exchange for email.)
Still, that's going to make for some fun dialog boxes:
"Searching for newly installed hardware- Found, AEGIS Ballistic Missile Defense System. Please insert vendor CDROM"
Better hope you don't have an IRaQ conflict!
Wait wait, I'm on a role.
PocketPC:"oooh yeah baby, oooo[pop click click DING!]
Captain: "#$@!%$"
[wham! Clink clink clink clink...]
"CAPTAIN IN THE GALLEY!"
Captain: "SEARGENT! HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU, MICROWAVE OVEN USE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED WHILE I"M TRYING TO DOWNLOAD PO...uh...TECHNICAL SPECS!"
Seargent: "SIR, SORRY SIR, I WILL FINISH MY POPCORN IN THE AFT GALLEY!"
Oh, but there's more.
"Anyone up for a fireworks display?"
"Oh, the USs Potshot back in port?"
"Yeah, grab the pringles can."
From this control they can pretty much operate all of the primary functions of the train (IE throttle, brake, horn, bell, etc.)
Both horn and bell? Is there anything you can't do with computers these days..
for whatever reason, the boss had a telephone extension installed in his office bathroom (he owned the building)..one of the things you learned there very quickly was, when you were paged to extension 13, you did NOT pick up the phone.
------ Work is so much easier when you don't