U.S. Army's Future Combat System Will Run Linux 742
jkastner writes "In 2001 Boeing was chosen to be the lead system integrator for the Army's Future Combat System. The bumper sticker description of this project is 'see first, understand first, act first and finish decisively,' and while Boeing's official FCS site doesn't have a lot of technical details, but you can find some good information at Global Security. To quote their page, "FCS is envisioned as a networked 'system of systems" that will include robotic reconnaissance vehicles and sensors; tactical mobile robots; mobile command, control and communications platforms; networked fires from futuristic ground and air platforms; and advanced three-dimensional targeting systems operating on land and in the air.' The Phase 2 request for proposals just appeared and the estimated price is $26 billion
through fiscal year 2009. The fact that the Army is spending billions of dollars on a project isn't anything new, but a little known fact is that the OS for FCS will be Linux (FAQ 4 here.)"
money saving technique (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:money saving technique (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:money saving technique (Score:5, Funny)
I knew we were allies with the brits, but isn't this getting carried away?
Re:money saving technique (Score:5, Funny)
I knew we were allies with the brits, but isn't this getting carried away?
I imagine it's something to do with the US Army using Paypal to pay for it. Maybe they got carried away bidding against Saddam for that 'leet "Leenix" thing on ebay.
Re:money saving technique (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: money saving technique (Score:5, Informative)
Major General Smedley Butler, USMC. [fas.org]
I find him a bit more authoritative than the man who said "a little bit of hypocrisy is a good thing" when it comes to life and death issues.
Re: money saving technique (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: money saving technique (Score:3, Insightful)
Personally, I view these as the price we pay for having a market economy (though a reminder of why we need some regulation), and not an indicator that our otherwise healthy system is broken. However, I can understand why some people might feel especially bitter about it right now.
Re:money saving technique (Score:5, Insightful)
That works out to about $5 per person... One meal at McDonalds. About the only health care you can do for that is a pack of bandaids.
Re:money saving technique (Score:3, Insightful)
26 billion goes a long, long, way in the 3rd world
Re:money saving technique (Score:3, Informative)
you mean $26 billion *more* than we already give.
military spending isn't for developing nations. in case you haven't noticed lately, we do have hostiles which we need to protect ourselves from.
Re:money saving technique (Score:2)
It would if you pick just one country, but the post was about "global". Even if you leave out the "first world", $10 bucks won't go very far despite what Sally Struthers has to say about it. If you are willing to spend 26 billion a week you might get something done. What's sad about it is that I don't even flinch anymore when I hear "Billions of dollars" when talking about anything global. To one person a billion might be a lot, but to the world it's chump change.
Heck, Bill Gates only has 35 billion in cash.;-)
Re:money saving technique (Score:5, Informative)
Six bucks per person would inoculate them against the major killing diseases, and provide vitamins for a year, which in turn would prevent numerous nutrional deficiency diseases and ailments.
And if need be, we could set boundaries for help. There's little point in spending six bucks on a single elderly starvation victim who's body is so ravaged that s/he'll only live another few months anyway, when that six bucks could make a life-or-death difference to a dozen children.
$26 billion would also be more than enough to provide contraceptive options to every third-world woman. Reducing the birth rates would allow us to, in following years, provide better health care and nutrition care to the children. And with the children growing up healthier, the long-term consequences would be even further reduced ill health.
The long and the short of it is pretty damn plain:
We can spend $26 billion killing a bunch of people, causing the survivors to despise us even more.
Or we can spend $26 billion saving a bunch of people, and helping bring peace to earth.
I know which I'd rather see.
Re:money saving technique (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, and four billion disease-free third-worlders will breed even more children . . . further straining population levels, food distribution capabilities--competing for resources in general. This in turn increases their poverty, hunger, etc. Misguided compassion.
I'll bet that rather than spending all your surplus income on caring for needy third-worlders, you instead pay for Internet connectivity. Stop whining when those of us, who choose to live a life protecting you, do so in a manner of our choosing
Re:money saving technique (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a word for that. It's "eugenics." It's an ugly word. You might want to think about looking it up, because evidently you've never heard it before.
We can spend $26 billion killing a bunch of people, causing the survivors to despise us even more. Or we can spend $26 billion saving a bunch of people, and helping bring peace to earth.
It must be nice to live in a world where there is no evil, no tyranny, no oppression. Must be nice to live in a world where nobody ever has to fight.
Next time you visit Earth, please be sure to bring some photos or something. I'd like to see what such a place looks like.
Eugenics are you on crack? (Score:3, Informative)
Guess you should watch M*A*S*H, preferably the movie, not the liberal leaning sanitized comedy tv series then you know what triage is.
Re:money saving technique (Score:3, Insightful)
Go have a look at the New York Times website and search for a letter from the US ambassador to Greece. Even your ambassadors are resigning because they don't agree with american policy! And trust me, those guys are smarter and better informed than you are, so if they disagree, they have a point you've obviously missed.
Re:money saving technique (Score:2)
Trillions are spent on war. What say we just take 10% of the war budget, and apply it to a peace budget?
Re:money saving technique (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course, Clinton never got very far with his plan, but I think it was a good one. I grew up in Zambia and I saw the kids with bloated stomachs and pencil thin arms. Those children were not going to survive but they might have if someone fed them every day.
Maybe instead of raising defence spending by $48 billion we should raise it by only $8 billion and spend the rest on food.
Re:money saving technique (Score:3, Insightful)
However, if you consider the actual cost of -providing- that health care, as opposed to paying for it on the open market it makes more sense. Remove the massive profit-making element from the equation and it becomes doable. Spend money educating doctors (instead of sadling them with $100K+ student loan bills) so they don't have the excuse of having to pay back student loans to justify their massive salaries. Take out the million-dollar-a-year hospital administrators, and have druges distributed like they USDA distributes peanut butter. It's pretty socialistic, but it doesn't really make sense to pay captialistic rates for socialized healthcare.
I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but it wouldn't be hard at all to bring down the costs of healtcare; if it'd work enough is a different story.
Re:money saving technique (Score:4, Insightful)
And if we do that, some petty dictator will take the food and keep it from getting to the starving nobodies we're trying to feed.
We'd be better off spending the money on the troops, and then using them to enforce every UN decree that there is. Warlords causing human suffering? US leads the way to stop them. Need to distribute food fairly? US donates military to guard the food and keep it from getting stolen & hoarded.
And, of course, $26 billion is only about $3 for every inhabitant of the planet. I suspect that "global free healthcare" would cost a bit more than that.
Re:money saving technique (Score:5, Insightful)
There is *displaced* cost food and health care.
What would make a lot more sense than throwing away this $26 billion, acomplishing little to nothing, would be to devise systems allowing people to provide their own food and health care.
If, however, we merely feed people who live where producing food is inherently impossible, but the population expands exponentially with the food supply, the more we feed them the worse off *they* are.
You can't solve social problems by writing a check.
KFG
Re:money saving technique (Score:3)
Re:money saving technique (Score:2)
It is also sometimes unavoidable because a group of people are simply beyond reason and attack someone else.For good or ill it is a fact that there are men who are simply prone to violence. There is no shame in defending oneself.
Please note, before knees start twitching, that I attached no names to the above.
KFG
KFG
Re:money saving technique (Score:2)
How much food is grown in NYC? it seems like it would be pretty hard.
Anyway, if you cant grow food there, you might be able to grow cash crops like cotton or hemp. And you can certanly set up factories, computer labs, etc, so that people can produce things that they can use to pay for food.
The point is to keep them fed long enough for them to rebuild their infestructure, etc.
Re:money saving technique (Score:5, Insightful)
Millions are starving where you can't even grow hemp, without even getting into the current social problems involved with growing hemp.
As for setting up factories there is no particular current demand for the goods they could produce. Production in most fields now being in excess of demand. Labor becomes less valuable every year. The problem of raw production has been *solved.*
The problem of *distribution* in a world where the population is growing but the need for, and thus the value of, labor is diminishing, is still an open question with no resolution in sight.
Often times the only logical solution is simply relocating the people. Millions of them. The social and *politcal* problems involved in that are outrageous, although the movement could be accomplished at little monetary cost.
Take the case of Bangladesh. A poor and desperate country, that shall always remain poor and desperate so long as it continues to exist. Nothing can be done about it. Nothing.
And yet they live on the most fertile land in all the world.
They built their entire country, insisted on such political autonomy in fact, directly on the delta of one of the greatest flooding rivers in the world. Great for growing rice. Impossible to live on build on, make any sort of infrastructure whatever on.
In the "old days" Bangladesh was simply a region of India. When the floods came you planted your rice shoots and then ran uphill until they subsided, then went back and havested your rice, You ate what you needed and sold the excess on the Indian market.
Now there is an international frontier where "uphill" used to be.
There really is only one solution, for Bangladesh to reintegrate with India. No amount of money in the world will solve the poverty and miserable conditions much of the nation finds itself living under.
Hundreds of millions of acres, right here in the rich and good old USA, are essentially unsuitable for human habitation, and are thus almost entire uninhabited.
In other nations, usually for purely social and political reasons, people are forced to live in these places.
Take all the inhabitants of NYC and transport them to the middle of the Painted Dessert and telling them grow hemp (illegal, social and political issue) or build a factory they can labor in is *not* going to be a solution to their problems of existence. Even in the long term.
(And yes, part of the problems that NYC faces with overpopulation and poverty is because it has been rendered into a place unfit for human habitation. There is as much hunger in NYC as there is in many "deprived" areas of the world. That is *also* a social and political problem, not a food supply one, since at any given moment in NYC the food supply exceeds that needed by all of its residents)
KFG
Hemp? (Score:3, Interesting)
Huge industries make and sell manila, sisal, jute, and synthetic fibres. Hemp is a tiny niche product, because it's a lousy fibre.
Delta (Score:3, Insightful)
Take the case of Bangladesh.
The Rhine delta has a bit less water, but the country that occupies it (the Netherlands) has managed to get a reasonably good standard of living, and also has one of the highest population densities in the world. Centuries of technological solutions to natural problems (and yes, bad floods do still happen there, but far less people die). So it may be possible, however unlikely.
Re:money saving technique (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:money saving technique (Score:3, Insightful)
I believe their logic is along the lines of "An under-defended war will cause far more healthcare and food issues than 26 bill would solve."
Re:money saving technique (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted we sure could use universal healthcare and food for everyone. But even if we had that we would still need to continue to spend massive amounts of money to develop superior weapons systems just so that we are prepared should war be forced upon us.
The money would need to be spent here regardless of where other moneys may be spent. Its one of the prices of freedom
Who had it right? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hint: maybe they both got it right.
Re:money saving technique (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument is "we haven't enough to feed the world so it's ok to blow it on crap". If we invested this sort of money regularly in these countries, they'd feed *themselves*. They *do* have sunshine, soil, water and seed. It's just hard to grow food when your fields have been napalmed.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Untrue + Uninfomed (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't like Saddarm but let's criticize him on more valid points. If you want cruelty you can attack him on his tyrannical rule and his version of the Gestapo.
Re:Untrue + Uninfomed (Score:3, Insightful)
When he came to power he was supported by the US. The US government was hardly unhappy with Iraq attacking Iran. Remember that Iran had just booted out a US backed Tyrant. (Which the US and Britain had installed in the 1950's because they didn't want to deal with a nationalist democratic Iranian government.)
Re:money saving technique (Score:3, Insightful)
And we wonder why they're pissed at us???
Re:money saving technique (Score:2)
I hadn't heard that the Middle East had any issues regarding money to buy food. In fact, don't some Middle Eastern countries have a higher per capita income than the US?
They *do* have sunshine, soil, water and seed.
They could use more water from what I've heard. But they have plenty of oil.
new recruits (Score:4, Funny)
What the f*** (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What the f*** (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What the f*** (Score:4, Funny)
Networked fires (Score:2)
networked fires from futuristic ground and air platforms;
Is that what the "printer on fire" code will be used for
Bittersweet news (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, I think that more than a few hackers will feel a twinge of sadness when they see footage of some people being blown up. Doesn't exactly make you want to point and say "oh look see, that was my code they used to send the `fire' command to that unit..." Especially if it is one of those not-declared-or-debated sort of wars that we seem to be getting into these days.
Re:Bittersweet news (Score:3, Insightful)
Not necessarily. There is nowhere in the GPL that forces you to give away your source to the world - it only forces you to distribute (or make easily available) the source to those that you are selling/giving the binaries. So, unless Boeing plans on giving us their software (ya right!), we won't benefit at all. Rather, all of the donated work is benefiting a profiting corporation without any form of compensation. This is where the GPL fails IMHO.
Re:Bittersweet news (Score:3, Interesting)
unless Boeing plans on giving us their software (ya right!), we won't benefit at all.
What makes you say that Boeing would write a GPL program for the DOD? Just because a program runs on top of Linux doesn't mean it has to be GPL'd. They will probably use the NSA version of Linux and any bugs they fix in the OS itself would have to be disclosed and that is a good thing because it will make all Linux systems more secure.
Rather, all of the donated work is benefiting a profiting corporation without any form of compensation. This is where the GPL fails IMHO.
It is the BSD license that allows code to be reused in a proprietary program which your employer Miscroft has taken advantage of many times. I'm curious, do you get paid to spread FUD or is this just "donated work"?
Re:Bittersweet news (Score:5, Insightful)
You are right about what the GPL requires you to do. Boeing is going to be required to make the source code for any changes to the Linux kernel available to the DOD, but they don't have to make these changes available to the rest of us. They are also perfectly free to create proprietary software that runs on top of Linux.
My guess, however, is that most of the changes to the Linux kernel itself will make its way back to Linus and friends, and the reason for this is simple. Maintaining your own fork of the Linux kernel is hard, and such a beast would have very few benefits. After all, one of the reasons that these folks chose Linux in the first place is that it would allow them to offload some of their work on the rest of the Linux kernel developers. If secrecy were the primary goal they would simply write their own OS from scratch. What's the point of using Linux if you are going to distance yourself from all of the neat stuff being done by the rest of the kernel developers?
Re:Bittersweet news (Score:3, Informative)
Quoth the GPL section 3b (emphasis mine):
Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange
If Boeing distributes GPL'd code to the US Army it also must give any third party the source if they ask for it.
-- iCEBaLM
Re:Bittersweet news (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bittersweet news (Score:2)
Re:Bittersweet news (Score:2)
Look at the bigger picture. Systems like these are developed in part to try to accurately blow up the minimal number of enemy leaders and soldiers to get the job done while sparing civilians.
It's got to be better than going back to the WWII through Vietnam strategy of randomly dropping unguided firebombs on hundreds of thousands of civilians.
Re:Bittersweet news (Score:2)
Also, I don't think they would be making major modifications to the Kernel. Why would they need to since they could just use the serial port or TCP/IP? Am I missing something? I don't think they'd need to make kernel mods beyond maybe adding a kernel driver to interface to any machine based encryption they might use and that code would be useless to us.
Smarter weapons can save lives. (Score:2)
While I consider myself a pacificist, I think having the better weapons is important. When weapons are needed, they need to do their job, cleanly and precisely. If our smart missiles suddenly go "dumb", then more people will needlessly be killed. If our smart missiles were even smarter, then the military could do surgical strikes with finer precision, saving lives on both sides of the conflict.
Plus improvements made to Linux by the DOD might be released to the public. That would benefit everyone (including encryption-using terrorists, I guess). However, it just occurred to me that the DOD might not need to release their changes, even though Linux is GPL. If they don't "distribute" them product (just use it themselves "internally"), then I don't think they need to legally release their changes..??
Re:Bittersweet news (Score:3, Insightful)
If they don't want to redo all the work the next time they want to upgrade the kernel, they will. If they don't mind passing over that the auditing task to the Department of Redundency Department, they will not release their changes.
Re:Know thy enemy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Know thy enemy? (Score:2)
Re:Know thy enemy? (Score:3, Informative)
They would have to provide access to the code to people they distribute binaries to. Of course that is probably not the general public.
Re:Know thy enemy? (Score:2)
They'll have to overload (Score:5, Funny)
Good - now other services take notice! (Score:2, Insightful)
Other services take notice! Here is one (Score:2, Informative)
Even headline is Best battle ground for Linux [osopinion.com].
Obligatory RMS joke (Score:5, Funny)
or perhaps... (Score:3, Funny)
Slogan: (Score:3, Funny)
Good. How do you download a windows update (Score:2)
With Linux the pilot can ha>0r straight into the computers.
SON OF A BITCH! (Score:5, Funny)
TWENTY-NINE BILLION DOLLARS? (That's dollars, right? Not pesos or something?)
Somebody had better tell the Army that Linux is free and they're getting ripped off big time!
Re:SON OF A BITCH! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:SON OF A BITCH! (Score:2)
That's a lot of money... but if they're prepared to pay it for one little war it doesn't seem that much for updating/creating a new command infrastructure.
Re:SON OF A BITCH! (Score:3, Insightful)
Say bye-bye with EMP (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.wsmr.army.mil/paopage/Pages/WU%2312.
As advanced as many armies are in the world the advent of more and more electronic warfare systems, innovation will bring on more portable and potent EMP weapons. There's always a rub.
Re:Say bye-bye with EMP (Score:5, Informative)
When I went into the Army in 1991, no Army unit had executed a bayonet charge since World War II, but we still learned to fight with them attached to the M-16. There's all sorts of high tech gadgetry that can help you kill the enemy deader than shit...but you still learn to do it with bayonet, bare hands, and rifle with iron-sights before you ever learn to call in MLRS fire or pull down realtime data from a Predator drone...
Re:Say bye-bye with EMP (Score:3, Insightful)
No one really knows how "hardened" it really is. It's not like you can generate an EMP to test with. Sure, we have electric-field chambers to roast military electronics in, and we try to use sturdy circuitry-design principles, but unless you're willing to detonate atomic warheads 100km in the air, you're never really sure if a system can withstand an EMP or not. The full effects of an EMP are still not completely understood. (Maybe if someone invents an easier way to create those blasts, we'll be able to perfect- or at least measure- our resistance)
There's all sorts of high tech gadgetry that can help you kill the enemy deader than shit...but you still learn to do it with bayonet, bare hands, and rifle
There's only 25 hours in every day for a soldier to train. The more time he spends on robotic control commands, the less on marksmanship, orienteering, and PT. The future soldier of America will have more special tools than the enemy, but if they're taken away, then he'll be worse off than the man whose never learned to rely upon them.
Besides, a goal of the FCS project is to need less manpower in harm's way. In the face of an EMP (or some other, theoretical attack which disables advanced machinery), that's a disadvantage in that you don't have fighting men to take up the slack (and the weapon systems might not be suitable for manual operation).
But it's an advantage in that soldiers can't die if they're not there in the first place. For the US, overall, it is much better to lose $50 million of equipment than to bring home 25 dead Marines. The voting public doesn't like to see body-bags. "Force Protection" is the doctrine. And, the military contractors will love to sell replacements for all that hardware! Think of the economic stimulus! (They might even scrap together a re-election dontation as a thank-you to the vistionary CiC)
Re:Say bye-bye with EMP (Score:2)
$29,000,000,000 (Score:5, Funny)
And why just Linux? That script is portable to any flavor of Unix!
Re:$29,000,000,000 (Score:3, Funny)
Time for a new topic icon? (Score:4, Funny)
They'd better (Score:4, Informative)
For such a system, linux is the obvious choice IMHO. Here's why: Consider the possibility of a malicious agent (possibly an insider) gaining unauthorized access to some of the systems. Because the whole thing is networked and remotely coordinated, the possibility for damage is immense. In that case, it is absolutely essential to detect the intrusion, track the attacker's footprints and minimize the damage as quickly as possible. And I would say linux wins hands down at this, because of its transparency. The main thing is not cost or ease of use or applications or any of the things that are usually considered, but having the innards of the system open for the administrator to see.
New Device Drivers (Score:5, Funny)
I can see it now on the Kernel mailing list - a bunch of new developers with
Hey Linus - this one gives improved target acquisition for the Patriot II antimissle. If you want you can come see the live tests in Iraq.
Supplying source code on demand to end users (Score:2)
I guess asking for secret source code would land the people concerned in the brig or worse and so would never happen, but it's an interesting issue nevertheless.
Re:Supplying source code on demand to end users (Score:2)
Re:Supplying source code on demand to end users (Score:2)
2 points.
1st point. The army has the resources to reverse engineer any bit of gpl code they want.
2nd point. If you are familiar with the GPL it only requires supplying the source code to the people you supplied the program to. As a end user you are not required to supply modifications back to the main project. It is only when you distribute the program with your modifications when you are required to distribute your code, and then only to those who recieved the program from you. The only thing that has to be done is to leave the original copyright and credits unmodified.
Re:Supplying source code on demand to end users (Score:3, Interesting)
A few of other points...
The acquiring agency is generally considered to be the end user. Not the guy in the field who sees it as a fire control or logistics system.
Usually the source code for something like this won't be classified. Its a command and control system so its only useful to someone else when it has live data in it. Think of it as a telephone: its not the phone that's classified, its the conversation that's held using the phone.
The developer, Boeing, will have every incentive to provide patches for commercialy applicable code back to the Linux development community. Otherwise, they have to maintain their own set of patches and independently apply them and test them every time they go to a new release. I'm guessing they WON'T provide the device driver for the Patriot battery though.
One last item, a couple of systems I worked on when I was with said defense contractor were elements of what the Army then called the Army Tactical Command and Control System (ATTCS) which consisted primarily of HP9000/3X0 workstations running the current flavor of HP-UX and communicating over a variety of tactical comm gear. So this isn't really new but looks like just the next evolution of a concept that has been in use by the Army for about 10 years.
Re:Supplying source code on demand to end users (Score:3, Interesting)
That's still true today, I'm sure that a major reason that more DoD code doesn't get leaked out to the public is that it's unfriendly, difficult to use (especially on consumer hardware), and plain-old boring.
from a licensing perspective, the end user is the acquiring agency;
That is how many software licenses are written, but it's not how the GPL is written. The GPL doesn't make any specific mention of corporations having special status. Nor does US copyright law give corporations (or agencies, or other kinds of organizations) special rights as a user of copyright (they have a few differences as a holder of copyright, though).
When the government wants software from Microsoft, they can negotiate a Volume License. There is no equivalent to a "Volume GPL", though. The GPL makes no mention of "groups", "companies", or "sites", so each individual person is the same as any other.
So, assuming a government agency recieved a modified GPL program as a deliverable. It'll have the GPL still attached, and each time they distribute it (to one of their military end-users), they'll have to abide by the GPL, or be in violation of copyright law.
That is why, I believe, contractors so far do not use GPLed code as the basis for deliverables- the government wouldn't like abiding by that license once they'd recieved the end product.
That would be like every cash register in a Linux based point of sale system coming with its own set of source CDs.
That's an interesting question, and one I don't see as 100% resolved yet. It comes down to the meaning of "give the binaries to" (because anyone with the binaries can demand the source). Does a person "have" the binaries, if they're embedded in a device whose filesystem he can't access?
Then, what about the related case of a consumer-product (like an MP3 player) having a GPL program embedded in the firmware? Is that end-user entitled to the source code? From watching RMS, it seems he wants the answer to be yes. (Of course, this is a little different from a cash register or battle tank, as the user owns that hardware)
So the rumors are true... (Score:5, Funny)
It's the end for America (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's the end for America (Score:5, Insightful)
Deathbringers! (Score:5, Funny)
You liberals should be firmly backing Microsoft at this point... Windows is the ultimate anti-war software... I mean, how can you bomb the hell out of innocent civilians when your missile launch systems crash when you push the launch button!
But noooooo... with Linux, this'll never happen, and we can kill all the people we want with no doubt our systems will function properly.
Yeah, good job penguin-heads!
(In case there is any doubt, tongue is firmly planted in cheek here)
War, Linux, and Microsoft (dark humor) (Score:3, Funny)
--Tina Russell thinks you're typing a letter. Would you like to go to the Bomb Iraqi Peasants Wizard?
This wedding party has committed an illegal operation...
Oh, great. (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, great. They're building SkyNet.
All robots. All automated. All computer controlled. And they're using Linux. Who'd have thought lil' Tux would eventually bring about the end of civilization? Linux's reliability means that SkyNet will become self-aware and overthrow the humans many years sooner than it would otherwise have done. At least if they ran Windoze we could rest assured that it would eventually collapse due to bluescreens or worms/viruses. But it's running Linux and will therefore be undefeatable. I fear the end is near...
it was chosen *because* it's open source (Score:2)
Say... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Say... (Score:3, Interesting)
$28B over 7 Years? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Land-Warrior gear that the Special Ops use was originally a GD contract. They wrote custom software to work the gear; the program and gear failed misserably. Then, a few small companies in California took Windows CE, a CE PDA, wrote some custom drivers and hardware mods and you have a very useful system that is used today. Although Windows was chosen, the point is to the DOD that COTS works and has been pushed as the right thought for system development up to the highest generals. It is only natural that this time defense integrators choose the RIGHT technology for the job.
I don't know where most posters to this thread are from, but $26B is chump change. With a $350 Billion defense budget a year that is only $4B a year or 1.1% of the annual budget.
The US produces more food than can be eaten. We air drop for FREE billions of tons of food for third world nations.
Furthermore, you all have to realize that the only reason UN demands are NOW being executed and inspectors are NOW back in Iraq is b/c there are 200,000 US Troops with the billion dollar toys effectively saying "you have no choice, you couldn't disarm on your own in the late 90's and we're tired of taking shit, disarm or get distroyed." A fair statement IMHO.
With Nations like N.Korea just trying to cause problems; Mind you a nation that doesn't have a spare volt to power a palm handheld, or food to keep its people alive (YES we are airdropping food to them as well), is building nukes to "shakedown" the asian community??? It is countries such as N.Korea that force the US to build $26 Billion dollar army combat systems to defend the rest of Aisa and Europe (minus the UK-they are pretty damn tough).
[begin Sarcasim_time]
But if you would rather the US to give that $26B in small-bills to third-world nations, OK we'll do it, and at the same time pull our fleet of aircrat carries over to the UK, Spain, Italy (short list of our supportrs) and protect only them from evil dictatorships and let the rest of you all die horrible nuclear and chemical weapon deaths.
[end Sarcasim_time]
All this idological talk about peace is nice but if you are typing on a computer, you should have the intelligence to realzie that the real world doesn't have people that want peace. As cyclic as economic markets are, so cyclic are the ideals of dictators.
In the 1940's you had Hitler, 1960's was the Cold War, and now you have Terrorists and distructive regiemes. I feel much better paying a few hundreds bucks for my health insurance and knowing my government is doing all that is necessary to ensure the future of free (as in beer and freedom) people will carry on.
It is the embedded systems (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows is currently better than Linux in a few (unfortunatly critical areas), but even that is changing quickly. And in the embedded market, Microsoft's products really are niche products, while it is Linux, DOS, and a few other products that are the best products for most projects.
Of course in general server software, I have to say I *much* prefer Linux. For client programs I use Linux mostly (as well as XP occasionally) but even over the last six months, there have been incredible improvements made in many critical areas. Give it another couple years, and I suspect that Linux will be *the* corporate desktop of choice.
Re:way (Score:2)
it cant cost that much to develope a system like what your describing
no... i would imagine it costs about $5000 to develop the system... then you have a small overhead of 25 billion dollars for the management
Apt quote (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:way (Score:2)
Re:way (Score:2)
It is the math skills and gullibility factor of those who have accpeted the $26 billion price tag as the price the system will actually be delivered for that is in question.
Well, actually *not* in question. We're pretty damned sure about it actually.
KFG
Re:Conribute back? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Revoke DOD's linux license (Score:5, Interesting)
It's all about freedom remember?
A while back someone did suggest a variation on the GPL which would rule out various sorts of immoral use (I think they had dictatorial regimes in mind) but I don't know whether it caught on at all.