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British Royal Navy Submarines Now Run Windows
meist3r writes "On his Government blog, Microsoft's Ian McKenzie announced today that the Royal Navy was ahead of schedule for switching their nuclear submarines to a customized Microsoft Windows solution dubbed 'Submarine Command System Next Generation (SMCS NG)' which apparently consists of Windows 2000 network servers and XP workstations. In the article, it is claimed that this decision will save UK taxpayers £22m over the next ten years. The installation of the new system apparently took just 18 days on the HMS Vigilant. According to the BAE Systems press release from 2005, the overall cost of the rollout was £24.5m for all eleven nuclear submarines of the Vanguard, Trafalgar and Swiftsure classes. Talk about staying with the sinking ship."
Didn't the Brits hear about what happened to the USS Yorktown when they tried Windows as a naval solution. God save the Queen, please.
.. British Navy submarine captains are the only officers worldwide (as of the mid 90s or so) to have the independent right to launch nuclear missiles if they lose contact with the Admiralty.
When I was doing an internship a few years ago, a colleague of mine (who was working to fund her masters degree) told me the first job after her bachelors degree in computer science had been writing software for nuclear submarines.
She worked in some high security, underground place with thick steel doors (did she? well either she told me that or it's my imagination again...) and they showed them videos of what happened when they made mistakes: everyone drowns... or the submarine gets crushed by pressure, or whatever, depending on the bug. I don't think accidentally releasing nukes was one of the scenarios though...
Maybe they should show the microsoft programmers some of those videos.
And these would be backdoors would be accessed... how? ...underwater wifi?
They used to use the English system in the UK, and then the rest of the world caught up with them and they converted to metric. Right now, the countries not using the metric system are: Myanmar, The United States, and Liberia.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
It's actually a really irritating system we have here in the UK, in school during the 80's we were taught soley in the metric system so I still have no instinctive understanding of what a farenheight, a gallon, a league or a fathom actually are and yet some of these measurements are still pretty much in general use as are pounds, ounces & stones.
In my car I can view my petrol consumption in miles to the gallon or litres to the kilometer but the fuel which goes into the fuel tank is measured in litres and the odometer shows only miles so there is no way to make a simple comparison without having to work out between the two sets of measurements.
I wish the UK would make up it's mind one way or another properly and then stick to it !
Microsoft denies that the NSA has access to the _NSAKEY secret key.
before flamebait-tagging me, please read.
Given the fact that Linux is built mostly by anonymous contributors, kept on servers which are hacked every now and then (Fedora Signing Key Server Hacked in August - Red Hat Infrastructure Servers recently Hacked, Cracked & Compromised) what guarantee is there that Linux - God's gift to nerds - doesn't contain sleeping trojans written by Russians or Chinese ?
Do the math: what would it cost to accomplish this? I think something like less than 10.000$ (including paycheck, laptop and broadband connection).
"Violence is the last refuge of the competent, and, generally, the first refuge of the incompetent" - Thing_1
The US gallon is the old British Wine Gallon.
The US and UK tons (short and long tons respectively) are both based on the old English pound measurement of weight. Both are twenty hundredweight, but the British hundredweight is 112 pounds while the US hundredweight is 100 pounds.
Interestingly, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_ton
There are, however, some U.S. applications for which unspecified tons normally means long tons (for example, Navy ships)
A league is about the distance a healthy man can walk on a good road in one hour. A fathom is about the height of a tall man; it is about eighteen hand widths (fingers closed). A US gallon is the volume of eight pounds of water. An imperial gallon (i.e. the UK gallon) is the volume of ten pounds of water.
One interesting thing about weights. The system of dram/ounce/pound is base 16, which makes division by two a practical measuring operation. Take a pound of something readily dividable, divide it into two equal portions (using a balance scale). Then repeat the process four times. The result is one ounce.
This shows the offsetting virtues of traditional units. While they are difficult to calculate with, they are convenient for measuring things -- especially when it come to quantifying things for sale.
For example, consider length:
1 inch = approximately the width of a thumb
1 hand = 4 inches = width of a hand with fingers closed
1 ft = 3 hands
1 yard = 3 ft
1 fathom = 2 yards
1 rod = 5.5 yards = length of ox goad
1 chain = 22 yards = 100 links in standard survey chain
1 furlong = 10 chains = distance ox team can plow without rest
1 mile = 880 fathoms
Notice that if you lay out a square field such that an ox team can plow one furrow across then rest, you get a square with sides of exactly one furlong or 660 ft. The area of that field 43,600 square feet, which is nearly exactly one acre (43,560 ft).
For purposes of round measurement (no fractions), such as you would use in commerce, traditional measurement is far more convenient. If I'm buying liquor, the following units exhaust all the practical measures to which I might wish to round a purchase:
1 mouthful
1 jigger (aka 1 fluid ounce) = 2 mouthfuls
1 jack = 2 jiggers
1 gill = 2 jacks = 4 jiggers
1 cup = 2 gills = 8 jiggers = 16 mouthfuls
1 pint = 2 cups
1 quart = 2 pints = 4 cups
1 gallon = 4 quarts = 8 pints = 16 cups
1 cask = 16 gallons
1 barrel = 2 casks
1 hogshead = 2 barrels
1 butt = 2 hogsheads = 4 barrels
1 tun = 2 butts = 4 hogsheads = 8 barrels
In such a system of measurement, you never, ever have to deal with fractions. Breaking down into smaller units is simply a matter of dividing a whole into two equal parts. So if you want to buy things without having to specify fractions, traditional units are the bee's knees (equal to 1 / 128 of an inch ... no just kidding). That's not so important in a world with calculators -- you just calculate a unit price.
Still, if you want to buy eight feet, three inches of rope, you can measure out twenty-four hands and three thumbs and come rather close.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The Lusitania was a Cunard liner.
In 1915 nothing on this Earth could be more British. She was torpedoed just south of Queenstown, Ireland, on May 7, 1915. The ship went down in 18 minutes. 1,195 died, including 123 Americans. The U.S. was a neutral in 1915 and her ports were open to ships of all nations. The Lost Liners - Lusitania [Robert Ballard, PBS 2000]
That Japan was about to make a move against the U.S. was known.
But where?
The Pearl Harbor attack was a hit and run raid, and, in the end, the attack bought Japan only six months of naval superiority in the Pacific. Pearl, after all, was nothing more or less than a forward naval base. It wasn't where ships were being built or men being trained. It wasn't rubber or oil or other strategic materials. Report Debunks Theory That the U.S. Heard a Coded Warning About Pearl Harbor [Dec 6, 2008]
Tonkin didn't feel like a virtual battle to those who fought in it. Anatomy of a crisis [March 2004], What Should We Tell Our Children About Vietnam? [May 1988]
There was - let us say - fair reason to be a tad suspicious about Iraq's abandonment of WMDs:
In 1995, UNSCOM's principal weapons inspector..showed Taha documents...that showed the Iraqi government had just purchased 10 tons of growth medium. Iraq's hospital consumption of growth medium was just 200 kg a year; yet in 1988, Iraq imported 39 tons of it. Shown this evidence by UNSCOM, Taha admitted to the inspectors that she had grown 19,000 litres of botulism toxin; 8,000 litres of anthrax; 2,000 litres of aflatoxins, which can cause liver failure; Clostridium perfringens, a bacterium that can cause gas gangrene; and ricin, a castor-bean derivative which can kill by impeding circulation. She also admitted conducting research into cholera, salmonella, foot and mouth disease, and camel pox, a disease that uses the same growth techniques as smallpox, but which is safer for researchers to work with. It was because of the discovery of Taha's work with camel pox that the U.S. and British intelligence services feared Saddam Hussein may have been planning to weaponize the smallpox virus. Iraq and weapons of mass destruction
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* - Spell-checking is built into Firefox and the ieSpellplug-in has been around for quite some time as well.