[Info-vax] "Shanghai Stock Exchange" and OpenVMS

[Michael Kraemer]

In article <00659a5f$0$10051$c3e8da3 at news.astraweb.com>, JF Mezei
<jfmezei.spamnot at vaxination.ca> writes:

> A few years ago, the whole Québec medical IT network went down. It is
> all windows based. (pretty scary, isn't it ?). 

Well, doctors are used to write their stuff in M$ Word,
and doctor's wishes also determine IT operations in a clinic.
What was the last version of M$ Word that ran on a VMS workstation ?
And what rules the desktop will rule the servers too, 
sooner or later. Which is why the "server only" mantra is 
rather stupid and short-sighted.
 
> One of the arguments given as explanation is that the IT guys did not
> have sufficient budget to hire people in charge of installing patches to
> protect against viri.

Maybe they now have the budget ?
 
> In the end, what matters isn't what *could* be done to make Windows
> secure, but what is actually done in real life. And if in real life,
> there are sufficient sites that have insufficient protection, then the
> fauna of Windows viri continues to expand.

Viri are no animals, hence "fauna" is misleading.
Since they have no own metabolism, one may even deny
they are a form of life.

> It is relatively easy for a geek to secure his windows desktop. Not so
> easy for a large corporate network with thousands of workstations to
> roll out a new patch across its network.

But in practice it seems to work most of the time.
Look at all the stock exchanges running without VMS.