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Swedish Carbon-Fiber Stealth Ship Runs NT
tiled_rainbows writes "The Guardian has an article today about the Swedish navy's new stealth warship, which they claim is the largest carbon-fiber vessel ever built. Slashdotters will be interested to learn that the ship runs Windows NT. The article says 'While the point-and-click system is popular with conscripts, the ship was fitted with a wooden ship's wheel at the insistence of senior officers. If Windows goes down, they will still be able to steer.' Which raises the question: where can I get a USB-compatible wooden ship's wheel for my computer?"
IIRC, Microsoft was bound to stop support on windows NT 4. Are there any kind of provisions for systems such as this, which is going to be in service for quite some time? Or will the Swedish Navy be on its own if some glitch appears ?
I know that using an old an proven operation system is better because all major bugs have been either wiped out or referenced, still I'm not sure that using a closed source unsupported OS is the smartest way. But maybe they know better ?
Was probably to be done by a wheel anyway. That it's made out of wood at the request of the officers is probably a nod to tradition.
I'm not a materials scientist, but I would imagine that carbon fibre can burn. A huge advantage of steel is that it may weaken under heat stress, but it will never contribute to a fire, which is one of the gravest threats to a warship in combat.
The British learned this lesson the hard way in the Falklands. In that case the new building material was aluminum, which can actually burn when it gets hot enough. This contributed to the loss of several ships which suffered massive fires after being hit by Argentinian aircraft. As a result, not only in the UK but in navies around the world, new naval ships are built entirely out of steel.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
You know, the sensor doesn't need to support the wheel :-)
Skipping the driving controller, you might do better to dismantle a $2.99 optomechanical USB mouse for its optical sensor and USB interface.
Apparently the Swedes did not learn from the US Navy's experience of using NT to run the ship. Not a good thing to be dead in the water because a computer crashed. IIRC, in Microsoft's EULA it specifically says not for use in critical systems.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
They must have divided by 0 in kernel space to bomb the OS.
NT get chosen for stuff like this because it's easier for them to support special hardware by writing and maintaining drivers, not a particular monolithic kernel that slashbots would recommend.
Frankly, who cares. This would be a story about some really cool tech (an enormous, "invisible" boat) but instead its an OS flamewar.
Bah, slashdot isn't a "news for nerds" or a "geek" site anymore, it's just a soapbox for OSS philosophy.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
NT is known for freezing for periods of up to 10 seconds (maybe more?) at random intervals, quite probably while it defrags the mess it has got its memory into. The same problem happens with Win2000 and I have also seen longish freezes in XP. Controlling a ship, or anything lese for that matter, needs hard real time.
Not only that, in most countries, evidently not Sweden, the software would have to be capable of validation and verification to a suitable standard, that can of course only be accomplished if you have source. The currently fashionable standard assigns criticality levels Sil1 to SIL4, now NT can't even meet SIL1 (SIL4 is the highest, mandatory in life-threatening situations). Previously, lots of people followed the aircraft industry in assigning levels 1,2,3,4 or A,B,C and D (in these cases 1 or A was required in potentially life-threatening cases). An extra level, Z, was introduced, guess why?
I once upon a time thought that the Swedes were generally competent, however with the JAS39 Grippen, and now this, I think that their defence industry has become a complete joke. I could tell you about their SAAB civil aircraft, fortunately they are out of production now.....
NT is one of the only operating systems the FDA approves for class 2 (and higher, I think) medical devices. It's funny to say Windows NT bombs out all the time, but that's mostly because of driver issues. The fact remains that for embedded/turnkey applications, NT is about as stable an OS as you can get. It got that job by replacing OS/2 (in ATM software, etc) not by replacing a UNIX platform.
Mod me down if you want, but you know it'd be abusive, and this is totally on-topic.