[Beowulf] Wired article about Go machine

[Robert G. Brown]

On Thu, 26 Mar 2009, Joshua Baker-LePain wrote:

> On Thu, 26 Mar 2009 at 10:42am, Robert G. Brown wrote
>
>> On Thu, 26 Mar 2009, Leif Nixon wrote:
>
>>> As in health-care. Which is why you get hospitals with
>>> Conficker/Downadup running rampant through medical equipment with
>>> embedded Windows systems. Basically, you're not allowed to patch them
>>> without FDA approval.
>>> 
>>> That's scary.
>> 
>> Um, I don't believe that this is the case, and I say this as a semi-pro
>> consultant in health care.  Most hospitals probably do something along
>> these lines as part of the standard CYA, but the regulations, especially
>> HIPAA, are "due diligence" recommendations with an amazing {\em lack} of
>> specification.  You can pretty much do whatever you like, but heaven
>> help you if you drop your patients' data or violate their
>> confidentiality.  At the very least you'd better be able to show that
>> you tried hard to keep things secure...
>
> Note that Leif mentioned medical equipment with embedded Windows systems. And 
> he's right -- you're not allowed to touch the software build on those without 
> getting the new build approved by the FDA (at least, not if you want to use 
> said equipment on real live patients).  And those machines are generally 
> networked so that the data (images, e.g.) can be uploaded.  It is very, very 
> scary.  Why anyone ever made the decision to run medical equipment on Windows 
> (over the screams of the engineering team) is utterly beyond me.

Ah, I see, thanks.  I completely missed the point about medical
equipment.  Sorry Leif.  Or as Jane used to say on SNL, "Never Mind..."

Need coffee, need coffee, got no coffee.

Maybe a bite of chocolate instead.

    ;-)

>
> -- 
> Joshua Baker-LePain
> QB3 Shared Cluster Sysadmin
> UCSF
>

Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu