Archive | September 6, 2004

OSS torpedoed: Royal Navy will run on Windows for Warships. “Combat management contractor opts for Win2k as base OS.” from The Register

Deeply disurbing. I don’t think that Windows was ever developed for, and carries a warranty forbidding, operations in such sensitive environments as nuclear plants, life support or warship command & control centers. While the stability and reliability of the system has improved vastly over the past few versions, it doesn’t touch Unix and real time OSes for reliability. How long will it be before someone hooks up their laptop for diagnostics, forgetting they have a wireless connection to the Internet, and popups invade these systems? “Mission-critical” in this case means lives are on the line, and Windows is for home and office machines, not warships.

Hurricane Frances. G’bye and good ridance!. Alex Feldstein reports: “Hurricane Frances is almost past us (Miami). It is such a huge storm and so slow that it takes almost 3 days to pass. Fortunately for us in the North Miami area, we did not get the brunt of the storm and only saw plenty of rain and wind but only of tropical storm force (under 75 mph). We did not lose power and, although bored and tired of being cooped up inside for three days, are safe and sound with no property damage. Thank you to all the well wishers.”
[Alex Feldstein]