I don’t know whether to be amazed or horrified at how much out-of-date technology we’re still using. Maybe both. Both is good. It’s

You’re not really still using Windows XP, are you?

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2024-04-16 22:30:08

I don’t know whether to be amazed or horrified at how much out-of-date technology we’re still using. Maybe both. Both is good.

It’s been 10 years since Windows XP support expired. That’s a whole decade, people! But when I recently posted a meme “celebrating” the occasion, I started hearing from people who — God help them — are still using XP.

One person told me he believes XP still lives on at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center on old systems still running Windows XP Embedded (XPe). Why? Because their manufacturers wouldn’t (couldn’t?) update their systems. Of course, NASA could replace them… but at a six-figure price for new gear, no one has the budget to do it. 

I can believe that — I used to work at Goddard in the late 1980s, and one of my projects was running an online system to track the real-time status of NASA Space Shuttle communication links. Among the systems I ran herd on was a tertiary Shuttle data connection that was a 110-baud Telex line to Bermuda dating to the 1950s. It worked, but that’s all you could say about it.

Then, as now, we kept it going because NASA didn’t have the money to replace it. (NASA, by the way, has never had anything like the budget it needs since the 1960s and the Apollo moon landings.)

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