Could the Enterprise-D run on Windows?

[Luckyflux]

Basically what are computers like in the 24th century? I am a Network Admin and I use windows everyday but it doesn't seem like that or any other computer software could effectively run a starship....

Like if everyone suddendly had a hard time breathing, would I just start and stop the Life Support Service from the admin tools window?

What is Starfleet issued an Automatic Update to it's Starship OS, and that caused the Enterprises work stations to automatically reboot...during a Romulan Attack?!?!

If I plugged my Interphasic Scanner into a USB port on the Engineering table, and that drained the power I needed to run a diagnostic, or even worse, it screwed up Geordi's DVD player in his office.

And what if I am in the Neutral Zone helping out some friendly Pakleds or Romulans and one of them Terminal Serves into my Starship OS with the blank admin password?

Windows just won't work for a Starship, so what needs to be done to get this software up to speed?

Things we need to be able to do:
Reroute power from system to another system
Never have to reboot
A star network topology in case one subnet goes down, that won't take the entire network down with it

What else?

 

[T J]

FAIL

 

[HellRaiser]

A sysadmin for an enterprise-class network should know that you don't leave the computers in your charge on Automatic Update, but only do a LAN deployment of new code after testing the patches on a testrig.

If you plugged in a scanner and it sucked too much power from the USB bus, that's either a problem with the scanner, your hub, or the USB architecture, not with the operating system.

 

[Luckyflux]

^ great answer...really gets into the topic of the thread... :|

 

[Ronald Held]

Some far future successor to milspec computer OSs?

 

[Verteron]

Basically what are computers like in the 24th century? I am a Network Admin and I use windows everyday but it doesn't seem like that or any other computer software could effectively run a starship....

Like if everyone suddendly had a hard time breathing, would I just start and stop the Life Support Service from the admin tools window?

What is Starfleet issued an Automatic Update to it's Starship OS, and that caused the Enterprises work stations to automatically reboot...during a Romulan Attack?!?!

Realistically, the reason computers seem to crash frequently in our current age is because Software Engineering is a very young field.

Although things go wrong occasionally, bridges and buildings don't generally fall down. This is because structural engineering is a much older field, and we have tools such as tensor analysis that guarantee to us before we build it that the bridge will carry the weight we'd like and then some.

I expect that by the 2300s-2400s, we'll have far better tools to make software work which we'll be able to apply to guarantee software like the Ent-D's main computer works as well as, say, the Golden Gate Bridge!

People at the cutting edge of the field are already working on the beginnings of such techniques, such as formal languages, semantics, and lambda calculus, which will allow us to 'prove' mathematically that a piece of software does the job it's intended to just as well as we can prove that 1 + 1 = 2.

Unfortunately, it's very early days, and these techniques simply need more time and more development before we're ready to apply them to mainstream software development, although in some quarters (such as safety-critical software) such techniques are already making inroads.

 

[Anachronus]

An excellent analogy Verteron.

 

[USS KG5]

Basically what are computers like in the 24th century? I am a Network Admin and I use windows everyday but it doesn't seem like that or any other computer software could effectively run a starship....

Like if everyone suddendly had a hard time breathing, would I just start and stop the Life Support Service from the admin tools window?

What is Starfleet issued an Automatic Update to it's Starship OS, and that caused the Enterprises work stations to automatically reboot...during a Romulan Attack?!?!

Realistically, the reason computers seem to crash frequently in our current age is because Software Engineering is a very young field.

Although things go wrong occasionally, bridges and buildings don't generally fall down. This is because structural engineering is a much older field, and we have tools such as tensor analysis that guarantee to us before we build it that the bridge will carry the weight we'd like and then some.

I expect that by the 2300s-2400s, we'll have far better tools to make software work which we'll be able to apply to guarantee software like the Ent-D's main computer works as well as, say, the Golden Gate Bridge!

People at the cutting edge of the field are already working on the beginnings of such techniques, such as formal languages, semantics, and lambda calculus, which will allow us to 'prove' mathematically that a piece of software does the job it's intended to just as well as we can prove that 1 + 1 = 2.

Unfortunately, it's very early days, and these techniques simply need more time and more development before we're ready to apply them to mainstream software development, although in some quarters (such as safety-critical software) such techniques are already making inroads.

It is also worth remembering that a desktop PC is normally made of cheap components and is designed with crashes on a reasonable basis being acceptable to keep the price down - in high quality server hardware crashes are less prone, if properly configured.

Now some wag is likely to come in and say the same about cheap lousy military hardware - but in fact a lot of warships run windows without any serious issues.

There are a lot of issues with Windows Vista right now - but XP and Server 2003 are good, reliable, well developed OS's, fair is fair.

None of this invalidates the above excellent analysis of the state of software engineering - imagine it now as the same maturity of development that produced the Tay Bridge...

 

[Verteron]

It is also worth remembering that a desktop PC is normally made of cheap components and is designed with crashes on a reasonable basis being acceptable to keep the price down - in high quality server hardware crashes are less prone, if properly configured.

This is very true, too, of course. All modern Aircraft run on fly-by-wire. Sure, there are occasional accidents. But their software is much more carefully written and as a result, far less crash-prone than your desktop PC!

I've seen some vague statistics on this, and roughly (my memory not being perfect!) the average aircraft software programmer spends 50 times longer considering each line/operation of code, leading to 1/10th of the bugs of a typical desktop software system. Certainly an example of the law of diminishing returns, but certainly worth it.

None of this invalidates the above excellent analysis of the state of software engineering - imagine it now as the same maturity of development that produced the Tay Bridge...

Personally I'd say you're giving us credit, I think we're still on ropes and key stones! As a civilization we've been building bridges for about 2500 years, give or take (the oldest surviving stone bridges date from this period in China) -- as for software, 60 years, give or take!

 

[Tau Ceti III]

The Enterprise computer runs on the 24th century version of Linux

The Ferengi sell Windows, but they don't use it in their own ships

 

[trekkiedane]

FAIL

Nice -first thing I thought of was this:

(Not sure it's the E-D though)

 

[Hofner]

Well considering how things were always malfunctioning on the Galaxy class starships, I thought they HAD to be using Windows operating systems.

Robert

 

[ALF]

FAIL

TJ, That's crazy. I was on an escalator today and that VERY SAME SCENE (excluding the blue screen of death) jumped into my mind. I was trying to figure out if Spiner had destroyed the prop console in that scene. It really looks like he's pounding that screen there.

Did you make that gif? It's awesome either way.

 

[Saturn0660]

Well considering how things were always malfunctioning on the Galaxy class starships, I thought they HAD to be using Windows operating systems.

Robert

No no just MS BOB warp cores running ME..

 

[Santaman]

Didn't the US navy try Windows on one of their ships a few years ago? I remember it being rendered unable to go anywhere because of some dodgy setting in the engine control software.. took them days to find out..

 

[USS KG5]

Personally I'd say you're giving us credit, I think we're still on ropes and key stones! As a civilization we've been building bridges for about 2500 years, give or take (the oldest surviving stone bridges date from this period in China) -- as for software, 60 years, give or take!

To be fair while we have been building bridges for 2500 years the science of bridge building is still not exact and we still get comical cock-ups, like the famous wobbly bridge in London.

So, I guess there is still lousy software in Trek's time, if ITunes and WMP are still around you can bet one is still badly ported for Windows and the other is still a sock full of sh*te

 

[constovich]

A similar question is facing the Nuclear Power Industry right now. Some plants are in the process of upgrading their Nuclear Safety related systems into digital - computer backed systems.

The types of questions being asked include realibilty of the hardware and being able to know that the software will do the function intended all the time without having any other "features" that are not desired.

To be honest, that was easier ten years ago than it is now. Computers and their associated operating systems were so much similar so it was easier to guarentee the intended functions. Many plants today still have systems based on Windows 3.1 or older operating systems. In fact, the site I work still has a system built on a hardware platform using the 8086 processor - I believe it has a propreitary OS though. The damn thing just ticks like a timex. Now, a Windows 2000 server that was installed in 2001 just crapped out not too long ago...so it'll be interesting to see where the future takes us with regards to Software and Hardware Engineering.

 

[Verteron]

To be honest, that was easier ten years ago than it is now. Computers and their associated operating systems were so much similar so it was easier to guarentee the intended functions. Many plants today still have systems based on Windows 3.1 or older operating systems. In fact, the site I work still has a system built on a hardware platform using the 8086 processor - I believe it has a propreitary OS though. The damn thing just ticks like a timex. Now, a Windows 2000 server that was installed in 2001 just crapped out not too long ago...so it'll be interesting to see where the future takes us with regards to Software and Hardware Engineering.

It's an interesting point, this.

The main reason for software like this apparently 'crapping out' more often is that Windows contains many millions of lines of unverified code, and they are far more complex than their predecessors from 10 years hence, exponentially so, in fact, according to Moore's Law observations.

The main problem is simply stupidity: any person who picks a desktop operating system (or even one intended for serving desktop PCs like Windows Server) to run a nuclear power plant or a battleship is a fool, and is giving our industry a bad name.

On the other hand, in aircraft control systems engineering, where Windows has not yet "crept in", fly-by-wire systems are far more complicated than before, but are verified and tested in a very controlled and fastidious environment, are now widely deployed and sufficiently safe that it's far more likely your aircraft will fall out of the sky due to collision or some other factor.

Software like Windows (or Linux, or Mac OS X, it's not a Microsoft problem!) should not be running battleships, aircraft, nuclear power plants, ATMs (or other banking systems) or electronic voting machines.

Any application where safety or verifiability of the system's correct operation is important demands a verified system designed with proper software engineering tools.

Stories of Windows being deployed in such situations make me wince, I seriously fear for the first disaster that arises from such poor specification. I wish our lawmakers had a sufficient grasp of the situation they would pass laws requiring well written software in such situations, but alas it seems it isn't going to happen any time soon due to corporate lobbying and lack of knowledge amongst typical politicians...

 

[regemet]

Who is to say that L.C.A.R.S is not an advanced version of windows. Maybe Windows L.C.A.R.S.

 

[Lyon_Wonder]

Well considering how things were always malfunctioning on the Galaxy class starships, I thought they HAD to be using Windows operating systems.

Robert

Not to mention malfuctioning holodecks!