 |
Submarines Are Full of Seamen. |
|
 What's worse than being in a giant metal war ship in the middle of a navy battle? Being in a dead giant metal war ship in the middle of a navy battle. In September of 1997 that sort of thing happened. While there was no navy battle then, the resaults had to be just as horrific. Because while one of the Navy's "Smart Ships", the Aegis missile cruiser USS Yorktown, was sailing along in the middle of the ocean, the ships computers were asked to divide by zero. This caused the computers, running Windows NT, to crash - resulting in system failures and crippled ship operations.
It was dead in the water for about 2 hours and 45 minutes. Then after being towed to port, it took 2 days to fix. All because it was asked to devide by zero; a task any cheap calculator can take on (and give you a result of zero) without crashing. The entire story can be read here.
Now I remember this story from when it happened. I had a good laugh about that, and told everyone I knew since I was as big of a Mac evangelist then as I am now. So when I was reading MacMinute yesterday, I was happy to read that the Navy had purchased 260 Linux-powered Xserves for their submarines. Now this is only for "a unique sonar imaging system", and doesn't control the ships nuclear reactor or anything dire like that. But you can be sure that the "unique sonar imaging system" will kick ass, and probably not kill the entire ship if the "unique sonar imaging system" is required to divide by a cardinal number indicating the absence of any or all units under consideration. Plus it will add some much needed style to the otherwise bland nuclear submarine... even if it isn't OS X that they are running. Can't go wrong with the hardware. |
|
August 7 2003, 5:12 PM EDT, by
 |
Comments:
|
| macinsider |
8/7/03, 5:18 PM EDT |
BAAHAHAHAHAH!
Figures. Go wintel.
|
This article is archived, so you may not comment on it.
(The good news is there's always the shoutbox, the
forums or the
contact form if you're socially-inclined at the moment!)
