throwaway3306a

What I meant when I said reinstall the PCs was to reinstall the critical computers necessary for operation of medical machinery to make basic and still mostly manual/paper based operation possible, not every computer they have there. I really don't think they have hundreds of computers necessary for operations of MRIs and other machines.

You misunderstood me, I am easily convinced that this is the case - what I don't get is how they could let it be the case.

I talked to people in charge of the operations on a daily basis for years. I really don't think these considerations have changed that much since my times of leadership of an entire department managing just that.

It's pretty obvious they meant the material possessions. Isn't it in guidelines to look for the more charitable options?

Yes, they wouldn't be considered doing the Linux stuff in a professional capacity.

Things haven't changed in IT so much. I am not in ICT management anymore, but I write software for the modern enterprise systems and networks - I'm reasonably up to date.

Ad medicine - hence my question, I'd really like to know what's the blocker. So far it seems the blocker is bad IT management, regulation and liability, not impossibility to perform the treatment.

They are people. They are entitled to everything every other human is entitled to. Including being idiots.

Are they trying to help any cause other than their own? Also - don't generalize based on nationality, please. These behave like this, others behave differently. This changes nothing about the war in Ukraine or Ukrainians.

You're free to donate money to Ukraine yourself. They didn't ask to be born there or to be in that situation.

I live in a country with hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees just living their new lives, working - and spending the money, sometimes a lot of it for expensive apartments, nice cars, luxury meals etc. Are all of them bad just because they don't want to be responsible for the state when they didn't sign up for that and nobody paid them to do so? I really don't think so. They are people like you and me, they want to live a happy life. Some contribute to the defense effort, some don't, both is fine.

It's not like your bank account immediately stops working when you cross the border. There are people who had successful careers finding themselves in this situation, is their story not valid just because they also weren't completely broke? It's not actionable advice (is this even advice?) for someone with zero on their bank account, but why should it?

I expect the local admins to be able to install a fresh OS not connected to the enterprise network. And I expect them to have physical copies of stuff like disk encryption keys, also backups of OS installations and images, and all critical software. If they don't have that or can't use it during an outage, the problem is incompetent IT management that has no business running a hospital, not CrowdStrike. Something else would take them out sooner or later.

Again, we had all of this for a forest logging operation - is it too much to expect at a hospital?

If it's stuck in a boot loop, the first thing I do is call the local admins and tell them to take a fresh SSD and a Windows installation USB drive with them. Plug the new SSD, reinstall the OS and copy the files from the old one. Computer running in less than an hour.

That's literally what we did to restart our forest logging machinery. Are human lives less critical than that?

I have trouble accepting that. Even if they had to unplug the computer from the network and disable SSO and antivirus in safe mode, it's possible to get the computer operational. Even if they had to reinstall the OS and the critical software from scratch. There are solutions, the question is - did they even try? If not, why? And is CrowdStrike really to blame if they didn't? I just don't think so.

What if it turns out they harmed the patient by insisting on following the standard procedure during a worldwide outage? Isn't that the same kind of liability risk, and is the regulation really going to protect them in this case? If so, isn't that a hugely problematic regulation?

So the problem really isn't CrowdStrike or any computer at all, but dumb policy or regulation?

If it requires a computer, why was that operationally critical computer not restored from a backup within hours after the problem started? This has nothing to do with CrowdStrike or other bugs - it could've simply failed hardware wise and the hospital should have been able to replace it immediately.

I really, sincerely don't understand that. How does an unscannable barcode prevent a doctor/nurse from administering medicine they are holding in their hands?

I have managed IT departments that managed hundreds of locations and thousands of computers running Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, no cloud at all. And I went through several similar outages (similar in impact on our operations, not cause or impact on others). Our first priority was to get the critical computers that operated machinery running - we did that hours (1-2) after the problem started. Then we played around with the servers and network for few weeks - but critical stuff was operable, albeit with lesser capacity and efficiency.

And we were managing forests and waterways, not hospitals and human lives.

Presumably they would fix these computers first thing during the night from a backup? If not, is this really about CrowdStrike, and not about a hospital unable to keep their absolutely critical computers backed up and restored in a timely manner?

Again, I understand that restoring a complex net of servers is hard and takes time. But they surely have local hospital IT admins for these absolutely critical computers who are always available on site and can do it individually - it's not like there will be more than a hundred of these at a particular hospital? Hack it a little if you have to, disable the SSO etc - all that can be fixed later.

I get that, my point is, why is it absolutely necessary to use the computer system? Why don't they just knock on the door, go grab the medicine and tools, apply it, then fill it into the system later?

I understand they would just postpone whatever can be postponed to save the headache, I don't get the stories about life/health threatening situations.

While I appreciate the effect this kind of downtime can have, I just don't understand these stories.

Presumably it was planned in advance, so the patients know the time of their appointment and the doctor knows what was planned, and everything necessary to physically perform the treatment is already prepared at the hospital. What's stopping them from doing it without filling it into a digital system? Why is it impossible to make a paper record and fill it into the computer system later?

If somebody was literally dying, would they stand around the computer like confused characters in a The Sims game who can't find the door, instead of saving the life? And if not, why is this less urgent case different?

The bad person is the one who decided to lock and downsize public toilets. All the arguments about taxes are about money for public good that market can't solve, well where is it?

As I said, it's obviously not zero issues with Apple either. But this particular issue is an exception imho, my own experience and everyone with a Mac around me is saying the battery lifetime is much better than any other brand they tried. Also, 1.5 years is below 2 years of warranty (in EU) - if you're around here, try to have it replaced. I had only good experience with Apple customer care - much better than HP, Dell and Lenovo. Again, while it wasn't always perfect and sometimes required visiting again, at least they really wanted to help - unlike the other vendors.

BTW you're saying it was 2018 model, and employer issued, so if I'm correct in assuming it was a top model Intel CPU, these really were chewing through the batteries because of the heat. It's very different with i5, less powerful i7 and Apple Silicon.

I really don't think anyone is claiming that Apple is perfect - it's just that the experience with other vendors is so, so utterly bad. For example ThinkPads - nice performance and cheap, I give you that. But the non-existent customer care (for consumers, not enterprise), the build quality, the bad sound and displays and the absolutely terrible touchpad make me avoid it. Also Windows - and I never got Linux properly working on a ThinkPad as well as MacOS does on a MacBook, even though they claim it's Linux certified.

It has a simple reason, any other device is much worse. All my Lenovo laptop batteries died in 2 years, meanwhile my MacBook from 2015 still gets 3 hours of battery life. That one was expensive, but now with Apple Silicon the Macbook has best power to performance ratio by far.

And it's not like other vendors are not full of crap either. I had a Dell laptop with a clearly broken display that they never acknowledged or repaired - and many other problems of all kinds. Apple was always least (but obviously not zero) problems and best build quality.

So the solution is to combine them?

How to manage Slack access control via Azure AD groups? Even the most basic integrations are missing in other options...

People use Teams because it's well integrated into Office, 365, Entra and other MS products, they would (and recently do) pay for it. It has functionalities that no other alternative has, e.g. it can act as a full call centre solution through a SIP gateway.

Yeah, true... There is currently a big anti-EU/Schengen backslash in my state because we can't control entry of Russians that got the visa elsewhere. Which is a problem as we stopped giving them out because they acted as if we were the next in line for invasion.

Weird, considering there are entire countries that stopped giving them out.

That's not about experience, that's about following the regulated standards. This is well known ever since technology (not computers) got into hospitals.