this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] 57 points 10 months ago (5 children)

I'd say more likely it's labs, hospitals, and other scientific stuff where you have to deal with old instruments cause lack of money. I'm fairly certain the military uses some other OS, I believe NATO uses Solaris for example.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 10 months ago

Also that machine only works under very specific circumstances, so you fear changing anything in case your entire protocol breaks and you have to start from scratch.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (1 children)

"Windows for Submarines"

It's XP for Vanguard subs. I really hope none of them provide any telemetry for these stats though.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (1 children)

doubt they're connected to the internet. In fact I'd wager 99% of shit running windows XP is not connected to the internet (and shouldn't be)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

if it's not connected to the Internet, it won't show up in the stats

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

You know there's other ways to do these kinds of estimates, right?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

As a former banker I can tell you that most ATMs run Windows NT 4.0.

However since the network is completely clamped down and the OS boots via network as well (no hard drives in ATMs), they are pretty secure.

I've also indeed seen some Windows XP terminals in use just lately - one in fact in a hospital my current company collaborates with - but it's isolated and used to run some sequencer that was never ported to a 64 bit architecture, and apparently doesn't run in compatibility mode either.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah seems about right.

In my lab we have a spectrometer and an HPLC with computers that use windows XP.

Tho I noticed the HPLC one is connected to the internet, gonna have to ask them of that's necessary

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Tho I noticed the HPLC one is connected to the internet, gonna have to ask them of that's necessary

Someone had to download the Doom installer at some point, of course.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Also Cobol mainframes.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

The current company that owns the old model installed in your hospital and sells the new version, bought the company that bought the company that made the version you have and can't update the firmware and code to work on a modern OS because all knowledgeable staff were lost in the buyouts.

The best they can do is sell you the new version that does the same thing your current working version does for $500,000.

Maybe they even have a new ecosystem that they want you to move to, because they don't make support/subscription revenue with the current stand alone server that moves the image or telemetry results from the machine to the viewing workstations and records database.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

If the U.S. military is anything like it was in the 90s, they may very well still be using Windows XP for all kinds of things. My mother-in-law ran an army reserve center through the late 90s and they were using DOS machines well into the Windows era because the army wouldn't update their computers.