Re: Uncle Sam Wants YOU!

[William T Wilson]

On Sun, 1 Jul 2001, Ben Ford wrote:

> This seems to be meant as a joke, but I don't think it's all that unlikely.
> 
> I seem to recall that MS products cannot be used in aircraft control 
> rooms for this reason.

It's not just MS.  Aircraft control rooms (as well as nuclear power
plants, spacecraft mission control, etc.) require special certified
software to be used - it's not simply that they avoid MS, they avoid all
software that hasn't been blessed.

My understanding is that astronauts going up on the shuttle take turns
bringing a laptop computer so they have actual computing power available
to them.  The shuttle computer is not adequate for many tasks because it
is something like 30 years old, but that's what they use because it is
certified.  So somebody has to bring along a non-certified system in their
"personal effects" allowance to get real work done :}