[ILUG] Linux at SpecSavers

[Timothy Murphy]

On Thursday 21 January 2010 12:35:37 Paul Reilly wrote:

> I got a pleasant surprise when I visited SpecSavers on Grafton street the
> other day. The patient system, with those touch screen displays, is all
> built upon Linux. Redhat Linux to be exact.
> 
> Googling it, I see they moved over 800 stores to Linux in 2007
> http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39287602,00.htm
> 
> It's quite re-assuring that my patient data is not on Windows, considering
> there are currently at least two zero day exploits in the wild which allow
> people
> to own your windows machine.
> 
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/19/microsoft_escalation_bug/

I'm all in favour of Linux, and find it much easier to use
for most (not all) purposes than Windows.

But isn't it a little paranoid to worry about someone
stealing information from SpecSavers?
Surely there cannot be a large market for people's lens specifications?

I felt the same when someone lost a laptop with medical records on it
a few months ago.
Does anyone except me really care what my blood sugar level is?




-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland