http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/tags.php?tag=nats The NewsBiscuit Community en-US Wed, 22 May 2013 20:00:34 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 q http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/search.php http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/topic.php?id=200#post-604 Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:09:13 +0000 RichT 604@http://newsbiscuit.com/forum/ <p>Britain’s National Air Traffic Control System was said to be ‘running very smoothly’ last night following its upgrade to Windows 7.</p> <p>The Application which is used to monitor Britain’s entire aircraft industry had been running on a copy of Windows XP for the last 8 years after an attempt to upgrade it to run on Vista failed dramatically at the license key page, however Microsoft had been pressing for the upgrade as the possibility of having more than 999 planes in the sky at any given time would have caused the well known operating system to crash, with the resulting “blue screen of death” having ironic implications for the aircraft it would have been guiding.</p> <p>“It’s business as usual and customers can go on holiday happy that they are in safe hands” said chief controller Charlie ‘Biggles’ Waithwaite who leads the 200 strong team at their centre in Brightnorton.</p> <p>At a demonstration today NATS they were keen to show off their new system. “Not only are we on the latest Microsoft platform” boasted Mr. Waithwaite, “but we’ve moved from a bog standard Dell PC to this top of the range AlienWare Gamer System which has one of the best graphics cards in the business. And the power button glows blue when you turn it on!” he declared with a suitably awed assembled press uttering gasps of astonishment as the plastic light lit up upon pressing it.</p> <p>After a brief panic about username’s and passwords the main screen was beamed onto the 10 metre display at the front of the control centre. A quick game of minesweeper later and it was time for the showcase with Mr. Waithwaite duly clicking on LandPlanes.exe for the Nations Air Control Software to Launch. </p> <p>Within seconds the screen was filled with little dots portrayed over a copy of Google Maps and Mr. Waithwaite was grinning like a Cheshire cat. “Ignore the bit about evaluation has expired at the bottom” he requested, “we’re getting something in the post for that soon I’m sure”.</p> <p>Microsoft we’re on hand to add some glitz to the occasion. “We’re very pleased NATS is now running on the latest Windows version” said PR Director Hillary Bowden, “and with Microsoft Updates turned on automatically they can rest assured the software will keep itself in tip top shape, installing security updates and restarting all by itself when it needs to.” </p>