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

[Cameron Kaiser]

> > I wrote time and mission critical food distribution related software for 
> > the ten years before I retired in vb and then vb.net (oo)  I would have 
> > seen just about every possible bug in windows and in developing 
> > applications under it.
> 
> You are probably a good coder who knows how to tweak Windows and make it 
> do what you need. I don't doubt that's possible. However, there are still 
> other factors (like the ones I mentioned earlier) that can make it less 
> desirable. Plus, there is a ton of absolutely horrible Win32, MFC, and VB 
> code. Not that I write on those APIs, admittedly, but I've experienced 
> plenty of the application failures that result.

There's also a lot of "bad practices" and for whatever reason I see them
more with Windows installations. Microsoft, to its credit, is making it
harder for people to screw up by default.

During my consultant slut days, I was tasked with building the ODBC backend
for a campus resource management system and the vendor specified SQL Server,
so that's what I did. After I hung up my hat on that job, Code Red blew
through and knocked off all the Windows servers on the administrative
network ... except that one. They did a forensic analysis and discovered
the reason "my" box didn't fall victim was I had written a very restrictive
set of file-sharing permissions instead of accepting the Windows default.
The worm couldn't get in.

It never occurred to the other admins to do that.

-- 
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  Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- We shoulda bought a squirrel. -- "Rat Race" --------------------------------