[ale] OT: Downadup/conficker worm makes MSM

[Jeff Lightner]

Being an old fart and having a past career in Hospitality (hotels) I
started working back when they still had electric cash registers with
hand cranks to operate during power outages.

It amazed me through the rest of my career how many hotel people simply
couldn't function when "the computer" was "down".  Many folks seem to
think computers ALWAYS existed and no businesses ever ran without them.
It was one of the reasons why, later, the Y2K "bug" hype amused the hell
out of me.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of tom
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 10:07 AM
To: Mike Harrison; ale at ale.org
Subject: Re: [ale] OT: Downadup/conficker worm makes MSM

On Sat, 24 Jan 2009, Mike Harrison wrote:

>> The Register published a hilarious story about a hospital whose
network was
>> brought down by the worm. They had turned off automated Windows
update, because
>> they had a critical computer reboot on them in the middle of surgery.
Having
>> turned off the updates, they missed the one that would have offered
them some
>> protection.
>
> I'm a few years (10+) out of date, but I specifically remember that MS
> products were specifically NOT allowed (By MS) to be used for life
support
> applications in hospitals. Apparently this has changed. Unfortunately.
>
> Story: Once upon a time in '89 I ended up sitting on the floor in the
OR,
> cranking, by hand, the "heart lung machine" (Perfusion), because the
> hospital lost power, both feeds, the generators would not start,
> and the internal battery backup of the machine was dead.
> Having a machine that only required a flow of 02 and something to
> crank the rollers for blood flow (hand crank was affixed to bottom of
> machine with clips and tie wraps) to keep the patient alive was a
savior.
>
I like it.

'Nother story. Not as good a story. When I was with a hospital years and

years ago, there was a surge or something on the mains which blew two of

the three circuit breakers. The rumor mill had it that the third breaker

tried to break, but fused on instead, which prevented the emergency
power 
backup from kicking in. The emergency power outlets went dead, other 
outlets were live, elevators fell a half story. Rather a jolly lousy
time 
was had by the employees while Maintenance (sp?) tried to get around the

fault and bring us all back up.

We had a _lot_ of power drills for the next two years...
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