[ale] End of the world announced

[jon.maddog.hall@gmail.com]

Unfortunately a lot of people will look at this and consider it an issue with "Open Source".



However it can be even worse in closed source...

o It is estimated that .6% of the "PC" base still runs Windows XP, and it is estimated that in one country 60% of their desktop computers runs XP.

o a friend of mine that works for one of those agencies we dare not talk about confirmed that many of the systems we do not want to think about are still running XP.

I mention this not to pick on Microsoft...but if this issue was found to be in XP, how the heck do you fix it?

o What if your closed-source software was written by DEC/SGI/Sun?

Years ago I was involved with a large project to rewrite all the code running on some ancient IBM mainframes at a little facility called the Houston Space Flight Center, in charge of the Shuttle flights. The reason this project was important was that t he hardware that it was running on was becoming more and more expensive to fix as the parts became more and more scarce  AND not only had the programmers that wrote the code retired, many of them were dying.   

It is relatively easy to bring people back from retirement.  Only two people in history came back from the dead, and only one one on their own steam.

Slide rules typically did not need bug fixes.

This issue is not limited to the FOSS community by a long shot, and actually is easier to correct in FOSS than in closed systems.

md

>     On 10/19/2021 4:29 PM Dow Hurst via Ale <ale at ale.org> wrote:
>      
>      
>     This gpsd bug is also a reminder to think about what systems you are supposed to be managing, instead of just the ones you are remembering to manage... ;)
>     Dow
> 
>     On Tue, Oct 19, 2021 at 8:17 AM Jim Kinney via Ale < ale at ale.org mailto:ale at ale.org > wrote:
> 
>         > > https://www.theregister.com/2021/10/19/gpsd_bug_reset/
> >         --
> >         Computers amplify human error
> >         Super computers are really cool_______________________________________________
> >         Ale mailing list
> >         Ale at ale.org mailto:Ale at ale.org
> >         https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
> >         See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
> >         http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> > 
> >     >     _______________________________________________
>     Ale mailing list
>     Ale at ale.org
>     https://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>     See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
>     http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo
> 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20211019/cf4dfeca/attachment.htm>