Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 34436
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2025/05/25 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
5/25    

2004/10/29-30 [Computer/SW/OS/Windows] UID:34436 Activity:kinda low
10/29   Aaaagh! Engage fetal position! http://csua.org/u/9px
        \_ This sort of thing has been going on for some time now.  Remember
           http://www.gcn.com/archives/gcn/1998/july13/cov2.htm ?
           Also, for some insight into software buying decisions in the UK
           and their ramifications, do a search for 'national police computer'
           or NPC.  -John
           \_ Yes, I remember that story, the best quote by far is:
              "Although Unix is more reliable", Redman said, "NT may become
               more reliable with time.".  What the fuck?
           \_ This gives a whole new meaning to the term "blue screen of death".
              One can imagine a Windows general protection fault in conjunction
              with icbms being accidently launched due someone accidently
              downloading MyDoom onto the computer. Wow, I guess The Terminator
              was a documentary after all...
2025/05/25 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
5/25    

You may also be interested in these entries...
2007/4/13-16 [Computer/SW/WWW/Browsers] UID:46291 Activity:nil
4/13    I use IE7 to browse a web site, and the server says the UserAgent
        string is
        "UserAgent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.2; .NET
        CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30)"
        Is MS bowing to the Mozilla community?
        \_ What are you talking about?  IE has always reported its UserAgent
	...
2004/7/13-14 [Computer/SW/WWW/Browsers] UID:32251 Activity:very high
7/12    In the news...
        "Continuing security problems have eroded Internet Explorer's
        popularity; the market share for Explorer has dropped by more than a
        percentage point from 95.48 percent to 94.42 percent..."
        Gee that's gotta hurt! Poor MS.
        \_ Although if you read a report that said non IE browsers have gained
	...
1997/3/4-5 [Computer/SW/OS/Windows] UID:32088 Activity:high
3/5     Can someone please tell me why Netscape 3.01 crashes so much
        more on my NT 4.0 than my Win95?
        \_ Insufficient RAM you have?
           \_ I have 32 megs, dude. Still, NT shouldn't be crashed.
           \_ Yoda, you are not. Speak like him, you should not. Weak with
              the force you are.
	...
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csua.org/u/9px -> www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/06/ams_goes_windows_for_warships/
John Lettice Published Monday 6th September 2004 13:15 GMT Almost three years ago the naval systems arm of major UK defence contract or BAE Systems took the decision to standardise future development on Mi crosoft Windows. an immediate effect was to commit BAE's joint venture C MS subsidiary, AMS, who specialise in naval Combat Management Systems, t o implementing a Windows 2000-based CMS system for the new Type 45 Destr oyer. But this prompted strong internal opposition from some of AMS' eng ineers, who had a sound background in Unix and who had, despite resource starvation and a companywide policy to standardise on Windows, been inv estigating open source alternatives as a foundation for future combat sy stems. Acting as spokesman for the concerned engineers Gerald W Wilso n compiled a 50 page dossier detailing the unsuitability of Windows as a foundation for a naval command system, and arguing that BAE's Unix hist ory and expertise made open source UN*X a logical and viable way forward . In May of this year Wilson reiter ated his concerns to the board of BAE Systems at the company's AGM, poin ting out that Windows is "proprietary technology owned by a foreign corp oration", has "many and continuing security flaws", and is not even warr anted by Microsoft itself for safety-related use. Why then, he asked, is AMS "shunning established engineering practice" by developing the Type 45's CMS on Windows. announced, claiming as it did to be 'enc ouraging' open systems development, that Windows 2000 was "the current b aseline console" for Type 45 development. AMS supports this with copious documentation on the AMS approach to open systems, which can be summari sed as open, so long as it uses Windows. on submarine HMS Torbay, together with plans to retrofit Windows to Vanguard class and other attack submarines. And in case you're wondering, the Vanguard class boats carry the UK's Tri dent thermo-nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. So some people think that's a heap of responsibility for Windows to carry. As The Register has noted in previous pieces on BAE's interesting Windows plans, this is no trivial matter. Whereas most previous naval deploymen ts of Microsoft Windows worldwide have been overhyped, and have dealt la rgely with non mission-critical, non-lethal installations, AMS really is committing the Royal Navy to Windows-based command, control and combat management systems. Having spoken up and lost his job for his pains, Ger ald Wilson has now contacted The Register. Gerald Wilson writes: I used to work for BAE Systems, within the division which developed Command Systems for naval warships. Four years ago, I s purred active debate about the future software foundations for these sys tems. As a long-time assessor of innovative technology, I advocated inve stigation of, and adoption of, open source UNIX foundations, such as BSD and GNU/Linux. Given that the companys command system products had alr eady been successfully migrated to run on proprietary UNIX, I viewed thi s as a natural strategic evolution, expected to be low in cost and risk. One consequence was that computer resources were owned and controlled by BAE's outsourci ng partner (Computer Sciences Corporation). CSC's published policy was t o standardise BAE's computers to use only Microsoft's proprietary softwa re. Deprived of equipment, it was difficult to investigate open source UNIX a s an alternative technology, despite BAE touting "Innovation and Technol ogy" as one of the company's core business values; ultimately, the only recourse was to buy equipment from private funds. The enforced conforman ce to Microsoft Windows influenced Engineering. In New Year 2002, it was decided that the Combat Management System, for the new Type 45 destroye r, would run on Microsoft Windows. Many of us raised in the discipline o f software engineering were alarmed, even shocked, to learn this, but la cked strong grounds for speaking against it; In Ap ril 2002, Bill Gates, acting as Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, ga ve extensive testimony under oath to the US Courts. Gates's testimony in cluded description of the current structure of Microsoft Windows. Snubbi ng fifty years of progress in computer science, the current structure of Windows abandoned the accepted principles of modular design and reverte d instead to the, much deprecated, entangled monolithic approach. If this is a flagship Operating System, then Dijkstra's life was in vain. Those of us who understood the implications of trying to use Windows as a foundation for a command sys tem saw the risk. As loyal officers of the company, we were obliged to a ttempt to convince management about the risk. Acting as spokesman for a phalanx of concerned engineers, I compiled a dossier to document the pro blem. The dossier provided a management summary, reinforced by some fift y pages of detailed analysis and rigorous argument; The dossier explaine d why Microsoft Windows could not form a safe and secure foundation for anaval command system; and why, given BAEs established use of proprieta ry UNIX for this purpose, open source UNIX was a sound successor. The do ssier was circulated within the division (now part of BAEs joint ventur e AMS) in summer 2002, and more widely within BAE Systems. For the publ ic record: the dossier was stored under the references JSWT/MRX/379 andJ SWT/MRX/471 within the standard electronic filing system used by command system developers. Hence it would be impossible for the company to los e these documents without calling into question its ability to manage p roject documents of any kind. Rather than respond to the concerns I had raised, the company terminated my employment. Whatever my failings, sloppiness of thought is not one of them . I felt that I had applied my mind to this issue on behalf of my employ er, but that my concerns had - echoing Mr Justice Sheen - been treated w ith derision. Although not (when written) protectively marked, these doc uments are, obviously, commercially sensitive, and remain the property o f the company. Consequently I would not be able to publish them even sup posing I had copies available. They can only come under public scrutiny if released by the company; although, realistically, I would expect the company to be reluctant to do that. Since leaving the company, I have repeated my concerns to various parties : to the management ofAMS, to MoD officials, to the heads of professiona l bodies (the BCS and the IEE), and to the board of BAE. So far, I have been unable to convince anyone to agree with my view. As far as I can te ll, BAE remains wedded to "Windows for Warships", and ignorant about ope n source alternatives. Despite BAEs wishful thinking, this issue will n ot go away. In the two years since I compiled the dossier, numerous secu rity problems have been discovered in Microsoft Windows and its ancillar y programs. Many of these have arisen precisely because of its non-modul ar structure, and in particular because of the complex entanglement betw een Internet Explorer and the rest of Windows. These continual problems demonstrate how, in practice, Windows proves inherently insecure by desi gn. Greene di stinguishes how the structure of Windows (entangled, monolithic) necessa rily compromises its security when compared with the structure of open s ource UNIX (modular, scaleable). It is simple to infer which structure i s preferable for building a safe and secure foundation for an engineered system, such as a naval command system. A more recent example is this r ecommendation in a recent security advisory from the Computer Emergency Readiness Team, now part of the US Department of Homeland Security. One solution recommended here is use a different web browser: "There are a number of significant vulnerabilities in technologies relati ng to the IE domain/zone security model, the DHTML object model, MIME ty pe determination, the graphical user interface(GUI), and ActiveX. It is possible to reduce exposure to these vulnerabilities by using a differen t web browser, especially when browsing untrusted sites. Such a decision may, however, reduce the functionality of sites...
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www.gcn.com/archives/gcn/1998/july13/cov2.htm
gif (4789 bytes) GOVERNMENT NEWS GCN July 13, 1998 Software glitches leave Navy Smart Ship dead in the water By Gregory Slabodkin GCN Staff The Navys Smart Ship technology may not be as smart as the service conte nds. Although PCs have reduced workloads for sailors aboard the Aegis missile cruiser USS Yorktown, software glitches resulted in system failures and crippled ship operations, according to Navy officials. Navy brass have called the Yorktown Smart Ship pilot a success in reducin g manpower, maintenance and costs. The Navy began running shipboard appl ications under Microsoft Windows NT so that fewer sailors would be neede d to control key ship functions. But the Navy last fall learned a difficult lesson about automation: The v ery information technology on which the ships depend also makes them vul nerable. The Yorktown last September suffered a systems failure when bad data was fed into its computers during maneuvers off the coast of Cape Charles, Va. We are putting equipment in the engine room that we cannot maintain and, when it fails, results in a critical failure, DiGiorgio said. It took two days of pierside maintenance to fix the problem. The Yorktown has been towed into port after other systems failures, he sa id. Not officially Atlantic Fleet officials acknowledged that the Yorktown last September ex perienced what they termed an engineering local area network casualty, but denied that the ships systems failure lasted as long as DiGiorgio said. The Yorktown was dead in the water for about two hours and 45 minu tes, fleet officials said, and did not have to be towed in. This is the only time this casualty has occurred and the only propulsion casualty involved with the control system since May 2, 1997, when softw are configuration was frozen, Vice Adm. Henry Giffin, commander of the Atlantic Fleets Naval Surface Force, reported in an Oct. Giffin wrote the memo to describe what really happened in hope of cleari ng the scuttlebutt surrounding the incident, he noted. The Yorktown lost control of its propulsion system because its computers were unable to divide by the number zero, the memo said. The Yorktowns Standard Monitoring Control System administrator entered zero into the d ata field for the Remote Data Base Manager program. That caused the data base to overflow and crash all LAN consoles and miniature remote termina l units, the memo said. The program administrators are trained to bypass a bad data field and cha nge the value if such a problem occurs again, Atlantic Fleet officials s aid. But the Yorktowns failure in September 1997 was not as simple as report ed, DiGiorgio said. If you understand computers, you know that a computer normally is immune to the character of the data it processes, he wrote in the June US N aval Institutes Proceedings Magazine. It seems that the comput ers on the Yorktown were not designed to tolerate such a simple failure. The Navy reduced the Yorktown crew by 10 percent and saved more than $28 million a year using the computers. The ship uses dual 200-MHz Pentium Pros from Intergraph Corp. The PCs and server run NT 40 over a high-speed, fiber-optic LAN. Navy prepares to take Smart Ship full steam ahead Despite the USS Yorktowns setbacks, the Navy plans to use Smart Ship tec hnology on other classes of ships. The Naval Sea Systems Command in May awarded Litton Integrated Systems Co rp. The Navy also might install the equipment on DDG-51 class destroyers. The Navy has issued a stop- work order that will last until GAO rules on the protest. Smart Ship technology is also on the amphibious ship USS Rushmore, Navy o fficials said. Gregory Slabodkin Blame it on the OS But according to DiGiorgio, who in an interview said he has serviced auto mated control systems on Navy ships for the past 26 years, the NT operat ing system is the source of the Yorktowns 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 shi p when under way. Using Windows NT, which is known to have some failure modes, on a warshi p is similar to hoping that luck will be in our favor, DiGiorgio said. Pacific and Atlantic fleets in March 1997 selected NT 40 as the standard OS for both networks and PCs as part of the Navys Information Technolo gy for the 21st Century initiative. Current guidance approved by the Nav ys chief information officer calls for all new applications to run unde r NT. Ron Redman, deputy technical director of the Fleet Introduction Division of the Aegis Program Executive Office, said there have been numerous sof tware failures associated with NT aboard the Yorktown. Unix is a better sys tem for control of equipment and machinery, whereas NT is a better syste m for the transfer of information and data. NT has never been fully refi ned and there are times when we have had shutdowns that resulted from NT . Hauled in The Yorktown has been towed into port several times because of the system s failures, he said. Because of politics, some things are being forced on us that without pol itical pressure we might not do, like Windows NT, Redman said. If it w ere up to me I probably would not have used Windows NT in this particula r application. If we used Unix, we would have a system that has less of a tendency to go down. Although Unix is more reliable, Redman said, NT may become more reliable with time. The Navy is moving the services command and control applications from Un ix to NT as part of IT-21. Under IT-21, the Navy also plans to modernize ships in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets with asynchronous transfer mod e LANs. Large ATM networks running NT have already been installed on the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Essex. But DiGiorgio said the LANs might experience a chain reaction of computer failures like those experienced on the Yorktown. That domino effect is inherent to the system design of shipboard LANs, he said. There is very little segregation of error when software shares bad data, DiGiorgio said. Instead of one computer knocking off on the Yorktown, they all did, one after the other. Although the Yorktown did not have backup systems, Redman said that futur e Smart Ships will have systems redundancy to ensure that ships can cont inue to operate. But DiGiorgio said that the Smart Ship project needs to do more engineeri ng up front. Installing a control system on a warship and resolving problems as the p roject progresses is a costly and naive process, DiGiorgio wrote in the Proceedings article. Now, with the top people rotated off the Smart Sh ip Project, it would be wise for the Navy to investigate this fiasco mor e fully. has said out of discretion and considerat ion for being a long-term employee, he said. But I will say this about Tony, hes a very bright engineer. Everybody plays the obedience role where you cannot criticize the system , said DiGiorgio, a self-described whistle-blower.