Re: US Navy bets on Win2K

[Buck Calabro <Buck.Calabro@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The slam on Windows is a bit inaccurate.

Yorktown was running NT 4.0 alright, but it was a prototype version of the
application software that crashed, not NT.  It wasn't NT that brought the
propulsion system down, it was the propulsion software, and THAT failed
because the prototype wasn't validity checking the input, causing a divide
by zero.

Interested readers can peruse a more even handed article on this issue at
http://www.sciam.com/1998/1198issue/1198techbus2.html   Please bear in mind
that everywhere (even the Navy) there are rarely "discussions" about which
OS is best; there are often political turf wars.  This incident appears to
be one of them, as the main opposition to NT appears to be another vendor
who wants to offer a Unix solution.

The only reason I care is because I've been the personal target of managers
blaming the AS/400 for application software faults.  We lost a sale because
somebody at the potential client had a vague recollection that "OS/400
sucked at journalling."  No data to back that feeling up, but what
difference does that make in a religious argument?  This'll be my last on
the subject, but we'd better learn how to adopt Windows technology _where it
makes sense_ rather than mutter about the blue screen of death ad nauseam
and show the sign of the evil eye to ward it off.  Like it or not, Windows
is here and it's not going away.  It's on the corporate desktop and in the
server farm.  They have stuff we can take advantage of, to lever ourselves
and our platform into organisations.  We are NOT going to do that by making
wisecracks about the sysadmin's choice of system to her boss.

Isn't that very wisecracking of misinformation what's dogging the iSeries?
We'd be better off showing off how well we play with Windows than trying to
show how poor Windows is.  Just my opinion, and it's worth every penny you
all paid for it!
  --buck