davidf18

47 ms·

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by davidf18 9y ago
I heard a recent youtube talk by former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg in which he claimed one of the greatest successes of his administration is that the length of the average NYC life was extended 3 years. Most of this was accomplished by publi
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by davidf18 9y ago
"Trump is a far more avid tweeter than his predecessor, adding original posts (as opposed to retweets) at an average rate of almost 40 a week. In the first several months of his presidency, this has created a trove of information that
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'Obama' Is Trump's Magic Word on Twitter(bloomberg.com)
4 points by davidf18 9y ago|1 comments
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by davidf18 9y ago
Similarly, all of the brouhaha about Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta getting his gmail account hacked. He was in a very sensitive position and he should have had 2-factor authentication turned on. Gmail has great support for that.
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by davidf18 9y ago
> "Organization running bulk of window's xp and 7, for sheer cost cutting purposes." I agree with this observation. I believe this also was the reason that Target and Home Depot did not follow manufacturers (Microsoft) re
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by davidf18 9y ago
Windows XP was released in 2001. Just exactly how long should a company supported outdated software? Since XP there have been the following releases. (1) Windows Vista (2) Windows 7 (3) Windows 8 (4) Windows 8.1 (5) Windows 10. A
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by davidf18 9y ago
Healthcare is a mission critical business and they need to be responsible when purchasing capital equipment including of course, software. If it doesn't operate properly for example, in the US there could not only be patient harm or d
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by davidf18 9y ago
"Financially-motivated hackers have targeted hospitals before, particularly in the US. A source from The Dark Overlord, a hacker or group of hackers that has recently stolen data from medical organisations for ransom, summed up how muc
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NHS Hospitals Are Running Thousands of Computers on Unsupported Windows XP(motherboard.vice.com)
2 points by davidf18 9y ago|1 comments
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by davidf18 9y ago
Not advocating that software be converted from IBM mainframes (which IBM still maintains and still releases new hardware) to be converted to Windows. How much software that is generally available only works on XP and that can't run in
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by davidf18 9y ago
> "Then why are so many healthcare providers who were caught last week saying they couldn't upgrade from Windows XP because some essential functionality of other software or equipment no longer worked on Windows 10?" In th
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by davidf18 9y ago
I think many firms have a two or three year cycle for upgrading their desktop/notebook computers. Honestly, they are far less expensive these days than they used to be. The biggest cost might be retraining people to use the new syste
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by davidf18 9y ago
In theory you might be right, but pragmatically (and from an engineering perspective) it isn't going to happen and it is just fraught with possible problems. Best not to deal with an OS from 2001. In many cases, they can probably upgr
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by davidf18 9y ago
> "The manufacturers of the medical devices and software themselves are just as much to blame." Yes, they are, but when purchasing high value pieces of capital equipment, people need to have this maintenance as a part of the pu
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by davidf18 9y ago
Banks have vaults to store money and other valuables. Theft is going to happen even with great policemen. People who don't follow manufacturers instructions (especially when they are told the software is no longer supported and yet th
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by davidf18 9y ago
> "Why not, exactly? What is mysteriously going to stop working just because someone's legal arrangement expired?" No, it is about engineering and resiliency as opposed to just getting something to work. Would you fly on
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by davidf18 9y ago
As far as I recall, one should generally be able to use a Win XP in a VM running say, on a Win 10 OS. Fixing by writing drivers may not be cheap for the vendor of the software, but they should do it. You simply can't get around the fa
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by davidf18 9y ago
It is always best policy in my opinion, to upgrade to the next OS version after the first (point) release. Each new version of the OS (eg, Win 10 over 8.1) has additional security measures not in the previous version. I use Mac primarily
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by davidf18 9y ago
Yes, you are absolutely correct. There was the collapse of an Interstate Highway bridge near Albany NY, the collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis, MN, and other cases. Since people die because of the lack of proper inspections, I wonder why
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by davidf18 9y ago
> "One thing that comes to mind is that while dropping XP might be the manufacturer's recommendation for the OS, it's not the only manufacturer's recommendation in play here. Only geeks like us and the ones in IT depa
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by davidf18 9y ago
Firms that implement software using software from a vendor (eg, Microsoft) have to follow the manufacturers instructions . If they feel they cannot do that, then they should use a different OS vendor (not Microsoft). That goes for proper
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by davidf18 9y ago
The bean counters ultimately work for the shareholders if a public corporation or the public if it is government. The shareholders empower management and the public elects their leadership. The CEO of Target got fired for not upgrading the
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by davidf18 9y ago
> So your answer to the difficulty in making an OS secure is that anyone writing an application to run on that OS should instead be contractually required to support that application on arbitrary future OSes that don't even exist ye
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by davidf18 9y ago
> "As it is, are there specific examples of software used by firms and government that are not updated to current versions of Windows?" Sounds like a hypothetical. What applications software is being purchased for which there
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by davidf18 9y ago
According to an NHS blog post about the matter, the NHS corporate (or whatever) had been warning hospitals, etc. that Microsoft was discontinuing maintenance of XP and to upgrade. They purchased an additional year of coverage giving hospit
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by davidf18 9y ago
> "And the reality is, the overwhelming majority of IT people have no training or background in risk assessment,..." But in this case, as in the case of credit card hacks of Target and Home Depot, it was simply a matter of foll
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by davidf18 9y ago
> There's plenty of blame to go around, if you want to play blame games. The "free market" has no mechanism for 3rd parties to affect the decision making process. Microsoft has its policies, well known to the buyers, and t
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by davidf18 9y ago
> "A reason. Real events have lots of root and proximate causes. MS could also have avoided writing the bug, or discovered it themselves with better auditing. NHS could have disabled SMB on systems that don't use it, or otherwi
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by davidf18 9y ago
> "And what happens if some of the software or equipment used with that system is not compatible with Windows 10?" It is irresponsible for a firm or government (as opposed to an individual) to purchase software without a contra
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by davidf18 9y ago
> "On the other side, you have the software manufacturer's instructions to stay on Windows XP at all costs." It is one thing for an individual to purchase software for their own needs, but any firm or government should not

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