[Am-info] Benefits system hit by IT chaos

[John Angelico]

On Fri, 26 Nov 2004 06:21:34 -0500 (EST), Erick Andrews wrote:

>You gotta laugh at this.  Maybe it should have been titled
>"The (not so) Hidden Cost of Windows", or "Putting All Your
>Eggs in One Basket".
>
>http://society.guardian.co.uk/internet/story/0,8150,1360162,00.html

It seems to overstate the numbers involved cf the Register report for which
see
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/26/dwp_network_outage/

Mainly it's not a "real" Win fault - rather human error: 
a) no rollback facilities
b) no cross-check "Roll out live to 80,000 desktops? Are you sure Y/N?"

But it does fit with the philosophical/design weaknesses of Win. 

Ease of use and simplicity override security and nobody worries about
recovering from some error because untrained users believe "Doh, computers
don't make mistakes - right? And we can trust Microsoft/EDS, right?"



Best regards
John Angelico
OS/2 SIG
os2@melbpc.org.au or 
talldad@kepl.com.au
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