"Immutable backups." Interesting concept. But how? Optical media?
Enormous decks of Hollerith cards? Enormous reels of punched paper tape?
So far as I'm aware, there is *only one* operating system currently in
wide use, that has never been successfully infected with malware outside
of laboratory experiments: the IBM Midrange operating system that goes
by such names as OS/400 and i5OS (among others, and although I work with
it on a daily basis, I've long-since given up keeping track of what IBM
is calling it in any given week).
But Linux comes a lot closer to being malware-secure than WinDoze, or
even Mac OS, which is one reason why, with my "bionic desk lamp" iMac on
its last legs, instead of buying another Mac, or a WinDoze box, I bought
a Meerkat.
As to MDs and Dentists making poor decisions where computers are
concerned, it's not just healthcare professionals: over a quarter
century ago, I spent about a year trying to fix the hidden flaws in a
small business accounting program. It had been written, not by a
programmer, but by an accountant. In C. It was his first non-trivial
program in a language other than BASIC. And it ran on the Amiga.
Aggressively multitasking within itself, on a platform where there was
no memory protection, and nothing but "good intentions" to keep one task
from stomping all over another task's memory. It nearly killed me.
--
James H. H. Lampert
