Tim Smith wrote:
> Mark Kent wrote:
>
>> The USNavyis quite right here, although they did have that wonderful
>> problem with a frigate needing to be towed home because Windows died, so
>> the probably have a particular concern regardingproprietarysystems.
>
> Stop making stuff up, Mark. Windows did not die. An *application*
> died, because someone input a zero, which the *application* used as the
> divisor in a division operation, and received a divide-by-zero fault,
> which it did not handle. What happened then was exactly the same thing
> that would have happened on Linux: the *application* was terminated by
> the OS.
http://www.gcn.com/print/17_17/33727-1.html
[quote]
Blame it on the OS
But according to DiGiorgio, who in an interview said he has serviced
automated control systems on Navy ships for the past 26 years, the NT
operating system is the source of the Yorktown's computer problems.
NT applications aboard the Yorktown provide damage control, run the
ship's control center on the bridge, monitor the engines and navigate
the ship when under way.
"Using Windows NT, which is known to have some failure modes, on a
warship is similar to hoping that luck will be in our favor,"
DiGiorgio said.
Pacific and Atlantic fleets in March 1997 selected NT 4.0 as the
standard OS for both networks and PCs as part of the Navy's
Information Technology for the 21st Century initiative. Current
guidance approved by the Navy's chief information officer calls for
all new applications to run under NT.
Ron Redman, deputy technical director of the Fleet Introduction
Division of the Aegis Program Executive Office, said there have been
numerous software failures associated with NT aboard the Yorktown.
"Refining that is an ongoing process," Redman said. "Unix is a better
system for control of equipment and machinery, whereas NT is a better
system for the transfer of information and data. NT has never been
fully refined and there are times when we have had shutdowns that
resulted from NT."
The Yorktown has been towed into port several times because of the
systems failures, he said.
"Because of politics, some things are being forced on us that without
political pressure we might not do, like Windows NT," Redman said. "If
it were up to me I probably would not have used Windows NT in this
particular application. If we used Unix, we would have a system that
has less of a tendency to go down."
[/quote]
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