OT: worldwide worm

[The Natural Philosopher]

The Register has this well covered for those that are interested in more than political capital.

[Graeme]

In message , The Natural Philosopher writes

That was interesting, even for a non techie like me. Thank you.

[Another Dave]

Using Windows XP should be a criminal offence.

Another Dave

[Dave Plowman (News)]

XP was one of the better Windows OS in its day. But that day has passed.

Good to know this was caused by The tory government blocking plans to upgrade the NHS system to save money. Nothing new there.

[Andy Burns]

NuLabour could have upgraded the NHS to Win7 in 2009 ...

[The Natural Philosopher]

Isn't it typical: A worldwide problem and all Citizen Dave can do is moan on about 'tory government'

[Dave Plowman (News)]

A sensible person waits until the OS is mature - had any bugs sorted. I take it you're not sensible?

But you'd support a government telling the NHS IT experts how to run their department? After all, just interfering with doctors, etc, isn't enough.

[charles]

Surrey Police are still using XP.

[Andy Burns]

Lets just say that I'm *very* well aware how NHS IT always clings to out-of-date systems until someone puts a bomb under them and actually lights the fuse.

No, it's just always worth getting a reply in when you're on your political hobbyhorse.

[Bob Eager]

Until last year they were paying Microsoft to support XP for the NHS. That was costing £5.5m p.a., so they cut it.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Interesting - thanks Bob.

[Tim Lamb]

R4 interviewed a techie who said some patient care equipment only runs on XP.

[Robin]

Can you point to the evidence that the government did that - and that Trusts were unable to use their own very wide powers to JDI?

And what do you mean by "the NHS system"? You do know that New Labour's plans for a big system, crashed and burned at a cost of £10 billion plus?

There's a plethora of systems and configurations in Trusts. How else do you explain the fact that some Trusts use XP and some don't?

[Robin]

AIUI the central government deal for updates to XP across the whole public sector was in 2004 and ended in 2005.

Note that did not stop Trusts doing their own deal with MS if they wanted to do so and judged it VFM.

Oh, and central government never promised to carry on paying for the updates. On the contrary, they made clear in 2014 it was a one-off. So you seem to have couched a new meaning of the word "cut": "not paying again that was only ever paid for once, and then on the basis that it would not be paid for again".

[Dave Plowman (News)]

That is the obvious answer.

[Tim Streater]

And there's not necessarily anything wrong with that. The question is why such kit is connected to the Internet.

[Robin]

AIUI not the internet - the hospital's network: eg if the MRI scanner only works on XP then you need that XP machine networked in order for the scans to be viewed by radiologists, surgeons et al without delay. Though after this week it may be that will have to be done with an air break (or virtual air break?) and some delay accepted.

[Nick]

Quite disgusting that someone should use a really serious problem like this to to advance their petty prejudices...

So why weren't they using Linux ;o)

[The Natural Philosopher]

When I was in hospital the other week the pharmacist said 'your GP is running old world software that I cant access to find out what drugs you are on: I will have to get them to fax it to me.

Yes, fax.

Normally, they use the internet. This is kinda handy to stop the utterly WRONG drug being prescribed.

Later on one of the doctors at the surgery phoned me 'the new drugs the hospital have prescribed are showing up red alert with the drugs you are on already, in the national drug database'

Fortunately I assured him they were replacements, not additions, but the paper letter from the hospital hadn't yet been scanned into my notes.

Medical data needs to be online so that you can access it wherever you are being treated.

Accessing it *securely* is the challenge.

As to why XP is still in use, its simply that old kit uses old software to run on. X ray, cat and MRI Scanners, and patient databases and the like are an investment: You would be the first to yell at cost overruns if they had to scrap half the hospital equipment simply because it only ran on XP shared file servers.

Remember that nuclear power station that was running on a PDP-11?

Or the firm I visited where the business software ran on a 21 year old IBM system 38.."we are going to put it all on this PC running AIX"

Running Legacy software is good use of funds. What should have been done is that the hospitals should have held Microsoft ransom for 20+year support. The reality is that Microsoft holds everyone else ransom and then abandons them.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Because the X-ray machines don't have drivers for linux. Because patient records are not held on industrial strength oracle or Mysql servers, nor even on MS SQL servers, but on flat files on networked drives, because the c*nts who wrote them were very good at hospital stuff but knew f*ck all about databases.

Because you can sell XP but you cant sell Linux. so no one makes money out of it.

Except support.