That's an interesting story. I vaguely recall hearing about the Therac incident somewhere, but never knew the story. What a horrible and tragic thing to happen. Never underestimate the power of greed, I guess.

I don't necessarily "think it's OK". I didn't write an editorial, I just outlined why this is what it is, as it seemed a lot of the commenters were under informed on what the article is referring to.

Also, as per usual, the media uses sensationalist wording. Most of the "medical devices" in question here are not something attached to your body where you will die if it crashes. Most of what this is referring to are clinical workstations used for doing all sorts of work related to medical care. For example, a workstation that interfaces to some sort of scanner to set up and initiate a scan. Or a workstation that crunches data that comes off some piece of medical hardware. Most devices that physically touch you and control something which can harm a person are coded in hardware, not windows, and have hardware in place to prevent such a thing from harming someone.

Please realize that the FDA must approve ANY piece of hardware that comes in contact with a human and the process is EXTREMELY restrictive and scrutinizing (and expensive). It's actually one gov't institution that I feel really does protect people in a lot of ways.

black helicopters should be hovering above your house right... about... NOW

I hate to reply to my own comment, but I forgot to add something.

5) Why don't sysadmins at the hospitals disable filesharing and enforce stronger policies on these devices?
      - usually the vendor contract explicitly states that modifying the systems in such a way will void your $50,000 annual support contract on your $3 million scanner. Scanner is broken? Tough shit, you voided your contract. Buy a new one.

1) Vendors of these devices almost across the board disallow local IT admins to put any windows patches on the machines
    - this is due to FDA requirements for approval, and the vendor is "covering" themselves
    - also, they usually have a list of "qualified updates" that is usually MONTHS behind MS's patch cycle (not surprising given the sheer number and speed of holes that are found)
    - usually the vendors claim that THEY will apply patches regularly, in practice, they almost NEVER do

2) Vendors typically disallow these machines to be on the active directory
    - this is because they can't stand troubleshooting/supporting issues in their software due to GPO's being pushed down, software management software, etc etc

3) To everyone screaming how idiotic it is that medical devices have Windows on them: you may be a geek, but have clearly never worked in a real enterprise environment. Windows is embedded on so many devices in the world (medical and otherwise) that you would never even know existed. Why? Because it's widely supported, has huge hardware support, and is surprisingly OPEN to developers to hack it into whatever they need it to be. And windows programmers are a dime a dozen.

4) To everyone screaming how idiotic it is that medical devices are connected to the internet getting infected - Do you even know how Conficker spreads? It spreads quite easily across a LAN, attaching to Windows file shares. See MS08-067 for more info. Many of these devices are on a LAN with no DNS (although plenty are on the 'net). Why? Again, because vendors insist that they be connected so they can VPN in and support them (often using LogMeIn, Webex etc).

Dude, its not like thats some exotic fastener that takes an act of corporate espionage to get the tools for. Ace is the place.

And for the record, it's Torx, not torques.

Wow, bitter much???

Seriously, it's folks like you who contribute to our divided country. How can you possibly state that people wouldn't or shouldn't care about acts of terrorism on American lives simply because they reside somewhere that you don't like the culture or politics (or whatever crack pot reason you have).

It's diversity that makes America great.

Stop trolling.

I'd put money that they will call this an act of terrorism if they catch the parties responsible. These folks are going to get pinned to the wall. Especially since they have disrupted infrastructure and broken the 911 system.

But other than that, isn't NZ pretty f'in awesome?

Agreed. The Evil Bit one was pretty good!

please stand up?

... Hahahahahahhahahahahahahhahahaha!!!!!

This is interesting to me, as I also live in the LA area, and have TERRIBLE performance the last few weeks (or months) on Netflix streaming. It used to be great (esp before it went on Xbox Live).

And I only use it 1-2 times per week at most, as usually it ends in extreme frustration with constant rebuffering at a very low bitrate.

I'm actually ready to cancel my acct with them, I only kept it as the streaming became so useful to me, and it's not any more.

"In the center (laptop) compartment, rather than the MacBook Pro, I had an Eee 10" laptop, running Ubuntu Linux 8.10."

Since Ubuntu adds some length and girth to your e-penis, that's why this comment is relevant in the bag's functionality.

"In testing, batteries incorporating the electrodes discharged in just 10 seconds."

Sweet, now my laptop will get up to a full 10 seconds of use until I have to recharge!