No time to install updates, reboot, and reinstall/pay ransom

WE OFTEN hear some dreadful stories about hospitals getting totally and completely hijacked by criminals due to dogmatic use of software with back doors in it. Software like Windows. The media will rarely tell that to readers/listeners/audiences and it's rather likely that the victims will be blamed, instead. Not for recklessness such as choosing Microsoft; but for "doing it wrong" or "not paying ransom" or "using an old version" (as if the latest versions from Microsoft magically lack the back doors).

We recently shared a story about how Windows 'handing over' a hospital to criminals resulted not in elimination of Microsoft but elimination of everything that competes with Microsoft. It is insane, it's just totally insane. But this is the sort of cultish, irrational thinking we've come to expect from people looking to cover up incompetence, resorting to blame-passing and reinforcement of the status quo. Some of these people, we've learned, get sacked. But not enough.

"We recently shared a story about how Windows 'handing over' a hospital to criminals resulted not in elimination of Microsoft but elimination of everything that competes with Microsoft."How can incidents that demonstrate Windows (and Microsoft at large) is not suitable for hospitals be used as a case for making everything Microsoft?

"In any case, free software is no longer welcome in the office," one source once told us, "and my work has become tedium of Microsoft shit."

That was after a successful attack on Windows, resulting in immeasurable privacy disaster, very long downtime, and no access to medical records. People died due to this. Where was the media? It had been long dead.

Readers might typically think that it's some sort of sick joke. If Windows is the cause of the attack, why are people who do not Windows take the blame? Notice who's doing it to them... the Microsoft-faithful people responsible for having Windows and Microsoft in the first place. It's more like an act of hostility and retribution, not an attempt to enhance security in any meaningful way.

"Readers might typically think that it's some sort of sick joke. If Windows is the cause of the attack, why are people who do not Windows take the blame? Notice who's doing it to them... the Microsoft-faithful people responsible for having Windows and Microsoft in the first place.""My boss is particularly dogmatic about all of this and there is nothing I can say or show him that will make an impression," we learned. "He told me that if I did not like Microsoft I had no place in the [redacted] profession, that I had to do everything with Windows as he imagines everyone else works..."

So GNU/Linux was being removed, not Windows. Windows got cracked, so let's ban GNU/Linux...

Does that make any sense at all?

"My laptop, he told me, was a HIPAA violation and a security risk that should not be attached to the network or have any patient information on it. For some reason he thinks Windows and Microsoft Sharepoint are secure."

"In the next few parts we'll explain how Free software-friendly people were either driven out or sacked."How many stories do we need about Sharepoint being at the center of security disasters? There are plenty; and many incidents are untold, never reported on...

In the next few parts we'll explain how Free software-friendly people were either driven out or sacked. And why? Because they weren't using Microsoft -- the very culprit in the whole incident that brought down yet another hospital among many. What is this, a religion? At the end we'll tie it all together and explain the sorts of scenarios people have come to expect working in a hospital manned by de facto Microsoft moles and fans. Facts don't matter and all that matters is that Microsoft is in control of patients' lives; no matter how many of them are killed due to Microsoft's shoddy software. ⬆