h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The next war will occur only with the cooperation of Bill Gates and other computer related entities. The war machine runs on computers and sneaky Bill probably has some failsafes built into all of the schemes. His stock aint worth diddly if the world decides to blow itself up.

The US military aren't likely to be running the nuclear button on Microsoft software. Although it is debatable, even they're not that stupid (please prove me wrong). The majority of US Military software is still written in an archaic language called ADA, since there are security issues with newer languages like C++ and Java.

I forgot to mention that according to Techradio ([URL removed by moderator])
sometime during the duration of this year, Micro$oft/Disney and AOL/Timewarner will fight the first Corporate land war and millions will die
I think its funny

The us military has the sense to use UNIX
so does the british military
in fact the only two major groups that use Mirco$oft windows for much of anything (servers, coding) are Mirco$oft and E-Bay

don't worry. we don't need Billy

Mr. Big Bill, does not have anything to worry about in the event of a world war. According to scientific studies, the bugs will be the only survivers of a nuclear war. Bill and his company should come out of it like brand new.

Mr. Big Bill, does not have anything to worry about in the event of a world war. According to scientific studies, the bugs will be the only survivers of a nuclear war. Bill and his company should come out of it like brand new.

Mr. Big Bill, does not have anything to worry about in the event of a world war. According to scientific studies, the bugs will be the only survivers of a nuclear war. Bill and his company should come out of it like brand new.

Sorry about that. Good fellow, that bug. Name it and it will pop out. Oops.

HEY! Don't slag Intel! As far as I know, most nukes have Motorola nad Zilog processors in them!

When the military isn't using their own personalized flavors of Unix, they're using their own personalized operating systems built from the ground up (betcha never heard of ATES, right?). The only thing they use Microsoft for is their busy work... parts inventories and ordering systems, personal documents, etc.

True.
Anyway it'd be a good idea if all the nuke silos disconnect there internet lines so billys hackers, sorry crackers (if he has any) don't decided to start nuking linux, amd etc.

Hacking into the nuclear launch codes?

Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?

Surely playing tic-tac-toe against yourself would be the better plan?

Hey, I didn't say that I wanted to, or that I want anyone else to, but some corporations may see it as a neat way of eliminnating competition.

Those were references to the film WarGames where a teenage hacker played by Matthew Broderick gets into a military computer and almost starts a war. He thinks it's a games network and wants to play a game called something like "Thermonuclear War" but the computer keeps asking him if he'd prefer to play chess. The computer controls the USA's nuclear arsenal, thinks that the game being played is real life and is all set for a firsdt strike against the USSR. The ultimate way of stopping the computer setting off all those missiles was pointing out that they couldn't win by playing tic-tac-toe.

This was filmed in the mid-eighties, I think that the US government (well the bits of the army that deal with these missiles) probably recognises the problem by now and have ways of avoiding it. The most simple probably being to use people instead of computers to launch the missiles.

Ahhh... a movie from the simple times of easy phreaks and war-dialers.

Ahh, but they do use computers - i just hope they're not linked to the Net.
Sorry I missed the Chess quote, but I forgot that bit of the movie - I saw it ages ago
Anyway, I wasn't talking about lone Crackers, but those employed by big businesses who are worried about competiton - wild I know, but in the midst of WWIII who's going to noitice?

I'm reminded of a quote by a Nato guy during the Balkans war, who said that action against Serbia was justified because 'we are all democracies'. Guess what - so is Serbia. Given the current vogue against actually declaring war on anyone, any WWIII would surely be conducted at a truly global level and in a rather offhand manner - a combination of airstrikes by Nato-style intergovernmental organisations, economic terrorism (government-sponsored crack attacks) and destabilisation of an opponent's global 'interests' (Kuwait, anyone?). Modern war is not about territory so much as political and economic confidence and influence, with every side (and, given the post-Cold War effect, there would most likely be many - factions, fractions, freedom fighters and liberating armies) using propaganda, violence and economics to prove that the Other Place is a less safe place to think, live and (most importantly) shop. Ideology, after all, is all very well, as long as you can still get *those* trainers...

The Air Force is responsible for ICBM's. I think the longest range missles the Army had were the intermediate range Pershings. They were the one's that really got the ball rolling on disarmement talks during the Regean administration.

I think most of the Army's nukes were short range missles, anti-aircraft weapons, and artillery and mortars.