How surprising, a twisted misleading summary regarding Microsoft...

Microsoft obviously discovered the counterfeiters through users submitting information willingly - if WGA finds your copy of windows to be unlicensed, it offers the option of squealing out rouge salesman, and possibly rechttp://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=2893689eiving a free copy of windows for your trouble.
(oddly enough - the eligibility for a free is determined by the quality of the counterfeit software you purchased - only high quality fakes will earn you a free license).

This is one case were I doubt microsoft had gained any useful information without the consent of the users it belonged to.

I beleive a "conspiracy of one" would be a contradiction in terms, well, at least unless you are the Offspring :)

God help us if the reactor is going to be run by a windows machine...
That would really put the "of DEATH" in BSOD
With any luck, the reactor is still controlled by custom crafted micro-controllers, or even analog equipment. All the new windows machines should do there is provide a monitoring utility, or at most a control interface.

Subs usually tend to maintain radio silence and acoustic silence under water. transmitting anything would be like sending out a homing beacon for any submarine hunting vessels that may be about. For surveillance or phoning home, a sub will usually climb to periscope depth and sneak out a directional antenna. Underwater "radio" systems are mostly designed for communication with a friendly ship, when climbing to periscope depth would pose a safety risk (collision etc.).
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and yes, I do realize that the data transmission is acoustic, not electromagnetic.

Soon enough the RBN is likely to purchase a cold war surplus nuclear sub, and do just that...

My point was that as far as espionage is concerend, on a closed system like a submarine - no choice of operating system would give you any measure of added security.

Plus - if I wanted to infiltrate a military computer system, I'd probably use a man in the team whose job is to audit and build the source code of the os/software :)

Arguably, it might be much easier getting an operative into the submarines CREW.

Bottom line: Regardless of the existence of a backdoor, to access it - you'd have to be in a position that would enable you to get at the data without a backdoor in place. also, odd are that the UK military actually HAS the windows source code.

- "Our operative finally infiltrated the shipyard, and is trusted by his superiors to preform regular maintenance on all the ships computers"
- "Wonderful, begin data collection immediately!"
- "There is one problem sir"
- "What is it?"
- "The ships computer are all running linux!"
- "OMG were screwed! we could never hack THAT!"

First of all, I find the notion that the UK would send a SUBMARINE to log on to the INTERNET rather silly... I'm sure their department of defense has internet access... no need to go wifi war-diving :) That said - and assuming you intended to present the more plausible scenario of hacking into the protected wifi network of the coastal palace of . Connecting surveillance equipment directly to the ships network would be extremely poor practice, not matter what operating system it is running. Such systems are usually isolated. As for internal threats - soldiers bringing media onboard from home and such: from my experience in the field, such military systems are usually hardened in a manner that you would need a set of wrenches, the admin password, and some wires and assorted spare hardware in order to plug in something you brought from home. This has yet to stop soldiers from doing so - but in this case the correct approach is disciplinary - since I doubt any security system, on windows or any other os, could stand between a sailor on a six month underwater mission and his porn. Hopefully they have non networked recreational PCs for that purpose...

And these would be backdoors would be accessed... how? ...underwater wifi?

Namely a "private session" tab, and history/cookie that preserves selected sites. Is there a FF plug-in that knows how to do any of this? Usually I'd be the first to bash M$, but it looks like they're actually in the right direction with this feature.