Misleading title: SIEMENS Mobility is looking for said Windows 3.11 admin. NOT the German Railway
Deutsche Bahn is the circus and Siemens in this case the clowns.
Legacy hardware and operating systems are battle tested, having been extensively probed and patched during their heyday. The same can be said for software written for these platforms – they have been refined to the point that they can execute their intended tasks without incident. If it is ain’t broke, don’t fix it. One could also argue that dated platforms are less likely to be targeted by modern cybercriminals. Learning the ins and outs of a legacy system does not make sense when there are so few targets still using them. A hacker would be far better off to master something newer that millions of systems still use.
Tell me you know nothing about cybersecurity without telling me you know nothing about cybersecurity. Wtf is this drivel?
Simple solution: Don’t connect it to the Internet. Hackers hate this one weird trick.
And said trick ends when an attacker manages to socially-engineer their way in. (But maybe they’ll drop floppies instead of flash drives around the block this time)
You really think that infrastructure IT is dumb unless it can brush off a Stuxnet-like attack by the CIA and Mosad? Most RR traffic signals in the US are run with mechanical logic, physical switches connected to circuits closed by steel wheels on steel tracks. Do you really want a “move fast and break things” tech bro to update all this stuff for us?
All kinds of infrastructure uses ancient software because it’s reliable. Updating it just to protect from hackers causing damage is likely to cause that damage unintentionally while doing little to protect from hackers anyhow.
I know a guy fitted for the job. He’s well versed in MS-DOS, Win 3.1, 3.11 etc. Hell, he’s even fluent in German, but he’s due a hip and knee replacement this month…
That’s all I’m gonna say.
Can I install Linux on the old systems so they work better?
This, I had multiple old machines with these kinds of specs, I put Slackware on them, dropped in an ethernet card (or two), and used them for all sorts of things, iptables firewall/router, email server, network storage, irc server, etc. It breathed new life into seriously outdated hardware.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Oh, everyone who ever travels by train in Europe will tell you that the German infrastructure is very much broken. You’re lucky if your delay is less than a day travelling through Germany.
Afaik Deutsche Bahn loses 5 mil a day: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/oct/14/its-the-same-daily-misery-germanys-terrible-trains-are-no-joke-for-a-nation-built-on-efficiency
Germany doesn’t really seem like a very efficient country, they still use fax for things and every person has to manage like 10,000 different insurances for everything. Seems like an old (and inaccurate) ww2 trope.
It’s mostly a misunderstanding of what is valued in German society. The common trope is that German society covets precision. This is not the case. German society covets unwavering precision in the adherence to norms. To the point where innovation is akin to revolution in the negative sense, and pigheadedness in procedure is considered a workplace virtue. In the mean time nothing gets done. Source: expat in Germany.
Source: expat in Germany.
Is this the same as a migrant?
I believe the difference is that an expat moved there non-permanently, while an immigrant moved there permanently
Though if I ever somehow became an expat, I wouldn’t use the word because of how people associate it.
Immigrant = Someone who has moved to another country permanently. Migrant = Someone who has moved to another country temporarily.
Expat is often used by western migrants who don’t like the word “migrant”.
I take issue with it because people classify an Indian doctor moved to the US as a migrant but an American doctor eho has moved to Europe is an expat.
What you call an expat is a temporary immigrant. “Expats” fill immigration forms in their country of migration, not expatriation forms. Politicians pass laws that govern immigration, not expatriation.
That word is meant to differentiate rich (and white, often) workers from the poor, because “immigrant” has a negative connotation. That’s why I take issue with it.
The truth is, the poor might be temporary migrants too (cf Pakistanis in Dubai). The media still uses the word migrants for those. We don’t know if they’re “expats” or not, we just assume because they’re not rich or white enough.
Quick disclaimer here: I’m not saying you are racist for using the word. I just wanted to explain why I react so strongly when I hear it.
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Migrant implies the non permanent kind because a permanent migrant is referred to as an “immigrant”.
What’s the technical difference between a migrant and an expat?
We’re maintaining and developing OpenVMS OS, and both we and our customers need Cobol, Fortran, and other half-dead languages coders.
Many large companies maintain their old systems and use them for production or data processing purposes. Sometimes it’s too expensive to migrate off, but im many cases “it just works”I’ve seen those postings and some executive is living in dreamland thinking they can hire someone to do that for $25/hr.
My bosses tried to ask me if I knew anyone the could hire for a full time position at a hospital. I ask for more details and eventually they relent because they aren’t having any luck on indeed/craigslist/temp recruiter.
It’s a 24 hour on call position for ‘up to’ $55,000 to be the sole IT staff for a 100 bed hospital in upstate NY.
I literally laughed at them, but they seem to insist they are gonna find someone to take the job.
I actually think the job isn’t even legal as described.
Fucking delusional pricks.
Not gonna lie, part of me wants to relive the SoundBlaster and DOS extenders era and watch stuff with QuickTime. Tinkering with config.sys and autoexec.bat was quite fun back then.
Was it really FUN or is it not just nostalgia? I would not reaaaally want to fiddle with the autostart-crap again. It often took soooo long. Even with those auto-optimizers…
With dos 5.x I started creating some fancy auroexec menu at boot that switches between several configurations depending if I wanted to run windows, need a lot of xms or a big chunk of Ems (640k was NOT enough for everything).
It was somehow fun.
But at least, if something is not working, it was entirely your fault. Now? It’s probably windows update who fucked up something you desperately need right now.
That’s a good point, yes. At least we knew what fucked up. Today you can’t. It’s too much and too complex. And nearly nothing is under your direct control anymore. Only android or ios are doing it worse and take all of your controls away.
