111–120 of 197 posts
Aside from that, the upgrades to this critical infrastructure should be resistant to hacking and other vulnerabilities They should realise that, unlike e.g. USB drives or SSDs or even HDDs[1], floppy disks are dumb raw media and cannot contain any "hidden" behaviour, and the failure modes are well-known. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23735424
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A considerable number of countries use systems based on ex-Eurocat now TopSky, for their air traffic controllers, which is a distributed system. Install and updates are via a registry based system, and it supports Windows, Linux, macOS - because its mostly written in Ada and R, as of 2012. (Most are running on top of Linux, as far as I'm aware). No floppy disks, no underrunning DOS, etc.
Is this one of those things like phones or banking where the early adopters are stuck with old tech due to inertia while late adopters are using newer technology?
If it works, then don't change it. I would trust a floppy-powered Windows 95 system over the horror show that passes for common operating systems in 2025. What will they think of next? Adding AI to the ATC system?
> If it works, then don't change it. As the article points out: the hardware is at risk of physically failing and it’s getting harder to replace like for like. That’s the reason for looking at an upgrade. Hell, even turning the machines off to replace them is a challenge since some systems need to run 24/7!
If it works, then don't change it. I would trust a floppy-powered Windows 95 system over the horror show that passes for common operating systems in 2025. What will they think of next? Adding AI to the ATC system?
Operating systems have gotten a whole lot more reliable since Windows 95. The way I remember it, Windows 98 would regularly corrupt itself and need to be manually reinstalled. I'd done it so many times that I could pretty much recite the license key from memory. Modern Linux is rock solid. Even Windows 10 is very stable. They might be 'bloated', but modern OS's are way, way more stable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If it works, then don't change it. As the article points out: the hardware is at risk of physically failing and it’s getting harder to replace like for like. That’s the reason for looking at an upgrade. Hell, even turning the machines off to replace them is a challenge since some systems need to run 24/7!
If the machine is that old, couldn't an emulator be used to migrate to modern hardware?
The most recent Dolphin Emulator post referenced a bug they had where memory cards were written to too quickly under the emulator (and even on actual hardware if you had memory cards that were sufficiently fast) which caused some games problems because they did not expect save files to be written so quickly. Imagine things like that, but where the worst case isn't having Wind Waker hang while saving, but planes crashing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A considerable number of countries use systems based on ex-Eurocat now TopSky, for their air traffic controllers, which is a distributed system. Install and updates are via a registry based system, and it supports Windows, Linux, macOS - because its mostly written in Ada and R, as of 2012. (Most are running on top of Linux, as far as I'm aware). No floppy disks, no underrunning DOS, etc.
Is this one of those things like phones or banking where the early adopters are stuck with old tech due to inertia while late adopters are using newer technology?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the machine is that old, couldn't an emulator be used to migrate to modern hardware?
Not necessarily. For example, if there is custom hardware used for communications with other systems, such as radar for example, there might be specific timing and latency requirements that could be difficult to meet under emulation. The most recent Dolphin Emulator post referenced a bug they had where memory cards were written to too quickly under the emulator (and even on actual hardware if you had memory cards tha…
Of course, nothing can prevent poorly designed code and hardware.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A considerable number of countries use systems based on ex-Eurocat now TopSky, for their air traffic controllers, which is a distributed system. Install and updates are via a registry based system, and it supports Windows, Linux, macOS - because its mostly written in Ada and R, as of 2012. (Most are running on top of Linux, as far as I'm aware). No floppy disks, no underrunning DOS, etc.
Is this one of those things like phones or banking where the early adopters are stuck with old tech due to inertia while late adopters are using newer technology?
If it works, then don't change it. I would trust a floppy-powered Windows 95 system over the horror show that passes for common operating systems in 2025. What will they think of next? Adding AI to the ATC system?
This whole thing is being done as a reaction to this video:
https://youtu.be/YeABJbvcJ_k?t=1540
The article completed skipped over this. This video was released literally a week ago and is completely mocking the FAA. Floppy disks are a big joke in this video.