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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."
Blue Submarine of Death
I record my sleeptalking
The last time I drove my car into a lake the windows didn't last past 15 feet. Of course my car is American, and those Brits have that funky metric system, so who knows?
(Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week)
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
The navy liked their version of minesweeper best.
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.
I mean who in a sane mind would want windows on a submarine ? It's not like there is anything interesting to see in the darkness of the depths.
This roll-out must be 5 years overdue, windows 2000 server?
From "Das Boot" to "ReBoot".
Summary fails to mention, and sort of implies the opposite; The cost saving is down to using off the shelf hardware, not switching to windows.
Compared to what? Going open source would save even more money, no? Maybe submarine apps don't run on Linux. We need someone to code GNU Nuke Reactor.
-- http://ninthagenda.com/
Tech support: "Can you tell us the problem with your submarine?"
HMS Bob: "Das Not Boot."
Wolfgang Petersen is reportedly preparing to make "Das Reboot", a (very) short sequel.
Source for obvious reasons. I know the Brits and Americans are friends, but still, running an OS that is doing Bill-knows-what doesn't sound very secure in many ways (Would you want the US military running a closed source Red Hat Linux sight unseen?). Even if there is no backdoors/spying, the ability to compile the source and see what it is doing at every step will have benefits in the future, to look for holes previously unknown, to see what it is doing every step of the way, or to graft new abilities into it.
Linux/BSD/whatever. In fact, I'm wondering why corporations run MS now, considering all this.
20 posts before the first one that actually provides useful information.
Is that a typical ratio on slashdot? I haven't been keeping track.
That'll explain this recent Royal Navy advert.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=aDHPCr5m4ko
I find the words Windows and nuclear been uttered in the same sentence very disconcerting.
If taxation is legalized theft, then Capitalism is a prolonged rape followed by a slow death.
> to look for holes previously unknown
especially valid remark in a submarine, IMHO...
Votez ecolo : Chiez dans l'urne !
..the Blue Screen of Death isn't just a namesake anymore?
Real men read Slashdot articles at -1, bottom up.
Source for obvious reasons. I know the Brits and Americans are friends, but still, running an OS that is doing Bill-knows-what doesn't sound very secure in many ways (Would you want the US military running a closed source Red Hat Linux sight unseen?). Even if there is no backdoors/spying, the ability to compile the source and see what it is doing at every step will have benefits in the future, to look for holes previously unknown, to see what it is doing every step of the way, or to graft new abilities into it.
What makes you think they haven't got a contract with Microsoft for access to the source code ?
Now I can sleep safer knowing that if the Brits are about to launch a nuclear missile from a submarine and start WWIII, a UAC window will pop up asking if they are sure about it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
.. 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.
'I don't know if they frighten the enemy, but they scare the hell out of me.'
at least they're up front about it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDHPCr5m4ko
"hello! i am your friendly helpagent clippy! what do you want to do? wage nuclear war? or just launch a conventional cruise missile? learn how to do that here."
Now think about a corporate drone using Windows. Your desktop is locked down, updates are rolled out by IT. If your machine is taken over by an IE exploit, the Exchange server fails, etc. etc., there is nothing you can do about it.
Conclusion: Windows is the appropriate operating system for submarines.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Summary fails to mention, and sort of implies the opposite; The cost saving is down to using off the shelf hardware, not switching to windows.
Windows made the submarines on-the-shelf hardware, they'll be sitting pretty on some reef shelf in no time.
Mr. Malda, I'm submitting the news article for 2009-01-19 ahead of time:
Microsoft's Ian McKenzie announced today that the entire Royal Navy Nuclear Submarine fleet had sunk due to a Windows buffer overflow. HMS Vigilant's captain, Commander Bob Anstey, said: "I heard my 1st officer shouting 'Captain, Be SOD, Overflow!', so I yelled at him: 'Get the caulking guns ready, you SOD!' and he just gave me a blank stare and said: 'We cannot caulk this one, sir! Vigilant's a goner!' Well, bugger me!"
In other news:
HMS Vigilant's captain, Commander Bob Anstey allegedly accidentally fired a nuclear missile at Redmond, Washington in an attempt to complete the Windows Activation of the newly installed 'Submarine Command System Next Generation' customized Windows XP system. "It was a bug, yes, that's it. Some kind of unfortunate bug triggered the 19-step launch sequence," said Commander Anstey. Nobody at or near Microsoft could be reached for a comment.
With the Royal Navy's recruitment advert for IT crew where the guy goes on about how complex the equipment is and then finishes the advert with the punch line "but sometimes, I just switch it off and back on again".
Perhaps this is why it's saved tax payers £22 million too, we no longer need high paid IT staff with a clue what they're doing, we can just get 16 year old school drop outs who IT qualifications are that they built their own PC and set up an internet on uncle Joes computer by sticking the AOL disc in. I mean, hey the nuclear missile launch console has failed to fire off our nuclear deterrent after Russia just obliterated Europe in a nuclear attack, just reinstall Windows and make sure you stick the latest nuclear weapons launch drivers on, if not just pop round to the local PC World store and get the Tech Guys (UK equivalent of Geek Squad) to fix it for £125.
I can sleep comfortably knowing that our nuclear deterrent is in safe hands.
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.
Microsoft do have source sharing programs with some partners. This sort of project would be one example of that.
The reason the Windows 2000 source code got leaked a few years back is not because of lack of security at Microsoft itself but because a partner leaked it.
Even Microsoft realises that the source code needs to be available for some projects and they have a choice of either allowing just that or losing some of the most high paying contracts.
In the great coordinate plain of life, we seem to have a situation where the line tracing British IQ and the line tracing the mortality of the human race are getting perilously close. I've always taken comfort in the fact that mouth breathers and knuckle draggers seemed to remain alive almost in spite of their gross stupidity. Now a bunch of twits from the dept. of silly walks decides that the most expedient means of managing a nuclear force is with an operating system whose answer to digital indigestion is at best rebooting and at worst reinstallation. I can only imagine how that might impact (and I use the word "IMPACT" in all it's most unpleasant possible meanings) a critical nuclear encounter.
Some additional new possible acronyms;
DBSD ----- Deep Blue Sea of Death
BGAD ----- Blue Glass Ashtray of Death
RBGD ----- Radioactive Blue Glow of Death
BSOA ----- Blue Screen of Armageddon
O-SHT ---- The Missile Ranger is Turning Blue Because Windows Has Wedged and He Can't Abort the Missile Launch!!!
A submarine is a boat, not a ship.
See, this is actually an elegant solution, as the bloat will act as a redundant buoyancy system in case of the inevitable blue-screen crush.
I think they mean that the sub was incapacitated for 18 days while a transition plan was executed.
If it really took 18 days, they wouldn't be installing Windows 2000 and Windows XP.
It is mysterious to me as to why they would use Windows. I'd also love to know what is being commanded with the system? Is it just the Naval IT? e.g, sending encrypted email, accessing charts, documentation etc, crew communications, hiding pornography, printing happy birthday banners? I doubt it is controlling ballast tanks and dive planes and I can't imagine it controlling reactor or launch functions.
And if it's just the case of internal email and minesweeper games, isn't 18 days a long time? Especially if MS decided not to include hardware transition work and training in those numbers?
What were they using before that it was so expensive?
How can 8 years of evaluation time possibly save the military 22M pounds per year?
Meh. I guess it's on MSDN, so it's going to be a *little* biased. Kudos to the MS sales team. Good job, don't know how you did it.
Never open the Windows in a submarine!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
I can't wait for the first national nuclear emergency to occur because of Windows Genuine Advantage (tm)
Sounds like sub standard software to me
Slashdot people often said that a Windows computer is only secure when encased in a steel box and sunk beneath the sea. So, why complain now?
Everybody would be laughing out loud....
40% Funny, 40% Insightful, 40% Informative, 40% Dolomite
It's still legal to use pounds and ounces, or gallons, or miles or any other imperial units, but you are equally welcome to use metric units if you wish.
Actaully that's not quite true. Shops must display a) both metric and imperial or b) metric only)
Steve Thoburn, a greengrocer who worked at a local market in Sunderland who gained a criminal conviction in 2001 by breaching the Weights and Measures act by selling bananas by the pound.
Yes, but even if the source is provided, it does raise some questions:
-does the navy just accept the source, but not compile it as the final product, taking the binary as-is or compiled by Microsoft?, essentially nixing the open sourcing security benefts in the first place
-do they have to compile it with Visual Studio? or any x86 compiler will do?
I believe Ken Thompson himself installed a compiler (relatively benign) trojan that survived many years without detection. And this:
http://books.google.com/books?id=bv2n6o_6LaQC&pg=PA378&lpg=PA378&dq=%22ken+thompson%22+compiler+trojan&source=bl&ots=c-sXYKAlKw&sig=nhoa4LVar3Y3j2aLmcqqtAoxjFo&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result
And the licensees could also compile from this source themselves, using a compiler of choice?
If not, this is not security, this is security theater, which is far worse than no security at all.
Wenn ist das Nunstueck git und Slotermeyer? Ja! Beiherhund das Oder die Flipperwaldt gersput.
I would love to see a group of 100 Microsoft executives taken down thousands of feet under the ocean's surface and then informed that the entire vessel is run under a Microsoft Windows operating network. With bio-monitoring devices attached to each of them, I have to wonder how many of them would not cringe at the news that their safety was in the hands of their "no longer supported" operating systems.
I am not sure how we could work Samuel L Jackson into this plot, but it would make a pretty funny movie, I think. "Das-Reboot"
Just came here to say "Das Reboot" in a random place.
No sig today...
First, Wellington wasn't in the Navy.
as any fan of blackadder would know. :-)
wellington:The men had a whip-round and got you this. Well, what I mean is I had the men roundly whipped until they got you this. It's a cigarillo case engraved with the regimental crest of two crossed dead Frenchmen, emblazoned on a mound of dead Frenchmen motif. - some of the funniest words ever on tv.
rather i saw it as an english officer talking of those that were supposed to be supporting him.
Second, he said it of Spanish officers, not the British Navy.
strange i'd always heard it used as a description of the irish soldiers under his command. i've seen it in print form as well as on the web.
For real Navy incompetence, you need to look no further than John Jervis, Lord St. Vincent. His idea of blockade was so close that its main danger was to his own ships, which were often wrecked close inshore. Appointed to shore command, he couldn't see the need for all those people working in shipyards. So he sacked 20% of them and cut the pay of the rest. Hence Nelson's depleted fleet at Trafalgar. Making stupid decisions to cut costs has a long history in the Navy, beginning with the aftermath of the Armada.
which is referred to in the fictional master and command series i'm currently reading. good reading!
If the UK no longer responds to messages and they have reason to believe this is due to war damage, they open their sealed, handwritten letter from the Prime Minister. This contains their instructions. There is of course much speculation as to what it contains, ranging from "Hi, welcome to the US Navy" to "I told them Iraq had WMDs, but would they listen?". Sadly, barring a takeover of the UK by pacifists, we will never find out.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
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
...it looks like you're trying to fire a torpedo. What would you like to do?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
First of all, I find the notion that the UK would send a SUBMARINE to log on to the INTERNET rather silly... I'm sure their department of defense has internet access... no need to go wifi war-diving :)
That said - and assuming you intended to present the more plausible scenario of hacking into the protected wifi network of the coastal palace of . Connecting surveillance equipment directly to the ships network would be extremely poor practice, not matter what operating system it is running.
Such systems are usually isolated.
As for internal threats - soldiers bringing media onboard from home and such: from my experience in the field, such military systems are usually hardened in a manner that you would need a set of wrenches, the admin password, and some wires and assorted spare hardware in order to plug in something you brought from home. This has yet to stop soldiers from doing so - but in this case the correct approach is disciplinary - since I doubt any security system, on windows or any other os, could stand between a sailor on a six month underwater mission and his porn.
Hopefully they have non networked recreational PCs for that purpose...
I can't tell you when the Imperial units were simplified, but it doesn't strike me as a purposeful overhaul of the system. Likely the exotic parts were slowly replaced by what made more sense to the people who make those decisions.
As far as the metric system, I can really only comment on my little corner of the US, but it seems to be mostly younger science types who use metric with any regularity. Even with them, it's mostly just their professional life where they use metric and it's primarily because the units are easier to work with when doing complex math. I'm an engineer and I run into a lot of older engineering types who refuse to use metric unless they absolutely have to. Younger engineers (and scientists in general) with any decent education can generally switch between the two systems without much trouble.
In my experience with the general (non-scientific) population, metric is a lost cause at this stage. Some of the manufacturing/assembly people I work with (mostly older) actually get angry if I suggest we should use metric, even for simple things. Bear in mind, though, that I live in a somewhat rural area at the moment. Globalization is for unpatriotic commies and these new things like the metric system and computers are black magic. Better educated folks and more urban areas in general won't be as bad.
The confidence of ignorance will always overcome the indecision of knowledge.
Didn't the EULA on XP say not to run medical equipment, ... , Nuclear Power Plants, life-critical devices in relatively straightforward terms?
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
_____
* - Spell-checking is built into Firefox and the ieSpellplug-in has been around for quite some time as well.
Bingo! And there you have one *very* important distinction between an engineer and a craftsman -- the engineer deals more with theory and should-bes and measured reproduceability, while the craftsman deals more with practicalities and what is right in front of them. An engineer's approach to cabinetry would be very different, but when it comes to furniture, FWIW I'll take the craftsman's work any day. :)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
If the system were really defined around a sensible number base, we would all be working in base 12 ... All we need is to modify the human race with a couple of extra fingers - are you game?
Well, I'm a keyboard player, and anyone who plays any sort of keyboard instrument will tell you how often they've wished they had an extra finger on each hand. I recall a keyboard master class a few decades ago, in which the instructor said that we probably thought that by now he knew all the fingerings and didn't have to spend so much time working them out. He told us that we were wrong, and we should face the fact that every one of us would spend the rest of our lives puzzling over fingerings just as much as we do now. It's just a fact of life if you're playing on a keyboard.
So where can we order the upgrade? Is there somewhere we can download a torrent of it?
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.