Gates: Vista Good Enough to Run a Life Support System

2007 February 13
by Jeff Ventura

Bill Gates has slowly been slipping into an odd state of dementia lately, as first evidenced by this semi-meltdown and now, claiming that MS Vista — an OS that’s just gone GA and been released to the public at large — is secure enough to run a life support system.

Vista. A brand-new OS. Running a life support system.

Journalist: Let’s imagine a hospital where life support systems are running Vista. Would you trust it with your life?

Bill Gates: [...] The answer to your question is that, absolutely, Vista is the most secure operating system we’ve ever done, and if it’s administered properly, absolutely, it can be used to run a hospital or any kind of mission critical thing.

I think the gods live in the definition of what “administered properly” means. And really, security is nice and all, but in the life support context, what we’re really talking about is day-to-day operational stability. I don’t need my life support system’s OS worrying about whether my movies and music are compliant with its own internal DRM scheme.

Still, a little hyperbole never hurt anyone, right?

For the record, if you trust Vista with your life support system, more power to you. I want no part of that, thanks.

Also for the record, I wouldn’t trust OSX with this, either. Such insanely critical functions are best left to embedded, locked-down operating systems that do one solitary thing but do it very well.

Anyway, Gates has been a quote machine lately. I love it. Whatever he’s eating I hope he keeps it up.

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24 Responses leave one →
  1. 2007 February 13
    SteveP permalink

    This could give BSOD a whole new “life” – so to speak.
    I can see “BSOD” listed as cause of death on the death certificate.
    And then there’s the question of virus infections!
    No PC or Mac systems running MY life support either, thank you.

  2. 2007 February 13
    Fatty permalink

    …assuming you could get Vista-compatible drivers for said life-support system.

  3. 2007 February 13
    Deliferate Spulling Mistale permalink

    Extra crash teams – expensive.

    Perhaps we could hire one to place the paddles either side of Billy’s head. As a kind of ‘reset’.

  4. 2007 February 13
    xtd permalink

    X. Kevorkian – CIO, your hospital

  5. 2007 February 13

    Bill has a certain indignance about Vista that doesn’t become him. He’s talking as if it’s the be- and end-all of operating systems, and the market (via independent reviews and expert analysis) is saying otherwise.

  6. 2007 February 13

    A human life is prone to virus. Vista, like any other software, attracts virus. Vista to run a life support system? Here’s a great (or crap) idea for a fiction book or movie: Trojan horses, worms, and spywares infiltrating Vista manage to creep into the veins of a patient inside an ICU.

  7. 2007 February 14

    Sorry, Dong, it’s a crap idea. Almost as bad as using Vista for running a life support system…

  8. 2007 February 14
    Sebhelyesfarku permalink

    “Bill has a certain indignance about Vista that doesn’t become him. He’s talking as if it’s the be- and end-all of operating systems, ”

    Not that scumbag Jobs doesn’t call anything new from Apple revolutionary, awesome and simply the best. It’s called marketing, retard.

  9. 2007 February 14
    BloggyBoy permalink

    Virista and the blue screen vista.

  10. 2007 February 14

    A fatal exception 0E has occurred. The current patient will be terminated.

    To continue: Press Enter to return to Windows, or Press CTRL+ALT+DEL to restart your computer. If you do this, you will lose any hope of resuscitating the patient.

    Would you like to tell Microsoft about this problem?

  11. 2007 February 14

    Sebhelyesfarku — Jobs isn’t walking around uttering utter bullshit about Windows (Gates: “Macs get broken into every single day. Every single day.”) and saying hyperbolic stuff (“Vista can run a life support system.”) about an OS that has been the laughing stock of the tech world for the last two years.

    Get your facts straight before you open your mouth.

    When Leopard comes out, the buzz will be much, much greater than Vista’s, and Jobs won’t be in multiple interviews looking frazzled and saying wholesale ignorant things.

  12. 2007 February 14

    Did anyone asked Gates if he would trust Vista on his own life?

  13. 2007 February 14
    nithin permalink

    nice post.visit my blog and find bills vision for vista
    http://alieneliminator.wordpress.com/2007/02/02/bill-gates-vision-for-vista/

  14. 2007 February 14

    slighterman — of course not, because the press softballs Gates.

    Your question, of course, is the exact right one to ask.

  15. 2007 February 14

    Meh, I’ll stick with XP until they fix the kinks.

  16. 2007 February 14

    For the record, if you trust Vista with your life support system, more power to you. I want no part of that, thanks.

    So does that mean when the ambulance is backing up to the emergency room’s entrance, you’re going to ask the doctors and nurses what OS they’re running?

  17. 2007 February 14

    Vista … is secure enough to run a life support system.”
    Well, maybe if you keep it off the Internet.

  18. 2007 February 14

    credit card processing co’s don’t trust windows. they use unix. how is a hospital going to make the leap?

    if (assuming windows is used instead of unix) windows crashes on Visa or MasterCard, a few hundred thousand or a million credit card transactions get erased, but can be recreated via paper receipts. a hospital OS crashes, and well, refer back to Deliferate Spulling Mistale’s comment on using the paddles on billy for a ‘reset’.

    pretty soon hospitals will be going to families of terminal patients asking “Do you want us to switch to Vista” in leiu of “Should we pull the plug?”

    btw I am switching to vista – but not for running a hospital.

  19. 2007 February 14

    remember he didn’t see the mac ads either

  20. 2007 February 14

    Windows has made a fatal error, this life-support system will be terminated. Lol!

  21. 2007 February 14

    This was when Bill Gates came in Romania (and president Basescu publicly admitted that piracy made the Romanian IT industry) and the journalist was Lucian Mandruta.

  22. 2007 February 14

    Piku — Interesting. Thanks.

  23. 2007 March 1

    “Andrew Ferguson, editor at Think Broadband, said: ‘I suspect Vista is going to break a lot of things as it makes some major changes to how things are done in Windows.’” | BBC mmmh’m

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