Windows use in medical spaces (Re: vintage computers in active use)

[Toby Thain]

On 2016-05-27 8:38 PM, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
>> You can hardly blame windows for the stupidity of people. This could also
>> happen w/ discreet stupid devices
>
> One word: Therac.
>

Therac is not the same threat at all. What seems to be missing from the 
process that leads to specifying Windows is, indeed, threat modelling. 
The threat of a virus scanner disabling the machine is not the same as a 
virus disabling the machine, and so on (a proper enumeration of threats 
would be quite long).

The point is that the threat model for a "discrete stupid device" is 
VERY different from the threat model for Windows. Human error obviously 
appears in both lists (and can be mitigated!) And these aren't the only 
2 options, either...

I think we can all agree that when the outcomes are as bad as this, then 
the engineering process was faulty. A virus scanner (or virus) is a very 
easily foreseen problem.

--Toby