Sweet Jesus, according to Slashdot the British Royal Navy submarines are now running Microsoft Windows. Hardly a week goes by without huge security scares involving Microsoft products so surely it’s crazy to see that our fleet of NUCLEAR submarines will now be running Windows 2000 network servers and XP workstations.
I understand that they are trumpeting a huge cost saving (which will come almost entirely from the use of commodity hardware replacing the specialist and extremely expensive custom hardware of old) but surely a Linux/Unix based system would have been cheaper and much, much more secure. I mean, Windows 2000 and XP are a hackers dream and a security nightmare, surely Vista/Windows 7 with their much heralded improvements in security should have been the OS of choice if it absolutely HAD to involve Microsoft.
My God, we’re talking of nuclear submarines here, I’m breaking out in a cold sweat just thinking of what could go wrong…