11–20 of 211 posts
Why on earth is medical equipment running standard Windows? This is the ideal location for some basic RTOS or even just an embedded Linux. Seems like a huge cost and risk for no gain.
That the equipment is somehow configured to be susceptible to viruses.
The whole structure is wrong. I used to work in medical equipment repair. Windows Embedded is running so many devices it's not funny. But it's not just Windows that's the problem.
I put a linux-system on a PACS network to diagnose equipment. It was a headless, and we asked the IT group to block it off from the Internet.
Hospital IT: "Does it have antivirus?"
Me: "..."
/rant/ I can't tell you how many times we've chased down field problems that ultimately were the result of antivirus scans. It's been so bad, that one of the first questions we now ask when we get a tool-down report is "is there antivirus running and what is the configuration?" Bringing Windows into the architecture of any type of capital equipment control system is a bane. A scourge. I mean to say, it really is a mi…
I would expect these kinds of systems to be running a soft realtime OS. Or at the very least a run of the mill OS with no extraneous software running in the background.
/rant/ I can't tell you how many times we've chased down field problems that ultimately were the result of antivirus scans. It's been so bad, that one of the first questions we now ask when we get a tool-down report is "is there antivirus running and what is the configuration?" Bringing Windows into the architecture of any type of capital equipment control system is a bane. A scourge. I mean to say, it really is a mi…
This machines costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.
There should be no excuse for using Windows. None.
I would not be surprised if the "antivirus" thing was some PHB requirement
Why on earth is medical equipment running standard Windows? This is the ideal location for some basic RTOS or even just an embedded Linux. Seems like a huge cost and risk for no gain.
It's cheap to find Windows programmers and even cheaper to find ones that are not hindered by knowledge about software quality and safety. That's not their fault; no-one ever told them something like that exists.
This is a great phrase. "Joe was hindered by knowledge of what a p-value means and so didn't claim he discovered a key to understanding the disease."
But it rarely is useful. It only causes problems. We've seen so many issues related to virus scans throughout the years it's crazy.
What's better is to lock down the servers with only minimal access. I haven't used virus scan on my main desktop for over 10 years because I don't click on weird emails and I don't go to sketchy websites ever. Sure there's the risk of malware from ads I suppose, but I'm not that worried.
Antivirus scans are one of those things added on IT checklists to cover their ass whenever something wrong happens. But it rarely is useful. It only causes problems. We've seen so many issues related to virus scans throughout the years it's crazy. What's better is to lock down the servers with only minimal access. I haven't used virus scan on my main desktop for over 10 years because I don't click on weird emails and…
Antivirus scans are one of those things added on IT checklists to cover their ass whenever something wrong happens. But it rarely is useful. It only causes problems. We've seen so many issues related to virus scans throughout the years it's crazy. What's better is to lock down the servers with only minimal access. I haven't used virus scan on my main desktop for over 10 years because I don't click on weird emails and…