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http://www.technologyreview.com/news/429616/computer-viruses-are-rampant-on-medical-devices-in-hospitals/

In a typical example, at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, 664 pieces of medical equipment are running on older Windows operating systems that manufactures will not modify or allow the hospital to change—even to add antivirus software—because of disagreements over whether modifications could run afoul of U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulatory reviews, Fu says.

Ye gods. Maybe the second is less gloom and doom.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/10/dkim-vulnerability-widespread/all/

Harder to find just the right paragraph to quote there, but let me say it is pretty funny. This guy got a recruitment email from google, noticed it wasn't that secure, assumed it was a test, played along, and found out that they, like so many other companies, had no idea they had this huge vulnerability.

Some of these other companies include many that work with your money. Sheesh.

On the subject of hacking, I'm now up to the DS9 episodes with the earthwide blackout. I have a few questions, like "in the last few centuries, did everybody decide that there's no point to being off the grid" and "doesn't anybody think that having an analog backup for your power supply, one that isn't run with the same computer codes, is a good idea?" and "did these people just forget about viruses recently? why are they circumlocuting what happened instead of calling it a worm or a virus or like one of those?" and "isn't going to the head of the federation for an earth problem sorta like asking the mayor to change your light bulbs? I don't expect to call in The Feds every time there's a garbage strike, doesn't earth have its own independent government to decide things like when to issue random blood tests? I thought each member planet had its own personal government, like in the UN."

I also find myself wondering how, exactly, Roddenberry could honestly have thought that humans would universally ditch religion. That is one amazingly persistent trait among people. And why is it that in Star Trek people still put on plays and write print books as well as holo novels, but only history geeks like Tom Paris know what movies or TV are? Shakespeare ought to be as distant to them as Chaucer is to us, so shouldn't that make 90s tv and movies, at least the good ones people admit to watching, analogous to Shakespeare to Picard? (Then again, I've never understood the man's fascination with English drama. I know there are French playwrights.)

There goes the idea that atheists are more rational than the rest of you. I'd love to believe myself, but I don't see how I *can*!
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