Join the Hunt For the Government's Oldest Computer (muckrock.com)

v3rgEz writes: As the saying goes, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.' If a machine is doing its job, reliably and without error, then common sense dictates that you just shouldn't mess with it. This is doubly true for computers and quadruply true for government computers. This lends itself to an obvious question: what's the government computer most in need of an upgrade? MuckRock has launched a new FOIA project to find out, and has already started receiving some interesting results.

Comments

Re:The article has some interesting highlights

[bws111]

It says he 'is catching wind' of circa 1970 computers. That is hardly 'confrmed'.

In-use vs owned/missing

[Scoth]

I'd be curious if he has a way to differentiate active, in-use machines vs. old stuff that may just still be in the inventory roles. I helped a bit with my previous company's effort to clear out old storage and inventory and there was some pretty old equipment that had been in the closet for close to a decade, plus some stuff in their inventory records that had long since disappeared.

So I wonder if that Gateway Liberty 2000 is actually still sitting on someone's desk where the toil away with WordPerfect and Windows 3.1 every day, or if it got tossed/walked out of the building in the late 90s and no one bothered to update the records.

Re:In-use vs owned/missing

[DerekLyons]

So I wonder if that Gateway Liberty 2000 is actually still sitting on someone's desk where the toil away with WordPerfect and Windows 3.1 every day, or if it got tossed/walked out of the building in the late 90s and no one bothered to update the records.

Or somebody set it on a shelf in case his 'new fangled' machine died and a backup was needed - and it's simply been handed down from one custodian to the next even since. Nobody cares that it's not needed and probably doesn't work anymore, the paperwork says we have it, and there it is on that self over there... and that's good enough.
 
When I took over the department test equipment locker at TTF in the late 80's, I had a ton of stuff like that - old and obsolescent equipment squirreled away by previous custodians because "we might need it again some day". The bosses were OK with that because there was no penalty for having excess gear, and it was a massive pain in the ass to get rid of gear. (There's a lot of hoops to jump through to make sure that was in fact excess to requirements and that the person getting rid of it and his chain of command weren't simply trying to take it home themselves or sell it for their own profit or whatever.)

waste of tax-payer's money to answer these

[klindsay]

"If a machine is doing its job, reliably and without error, then common sense dictates that you just shouldn't mess with it."
"what's the government computer most in need of an upgrade?"
You've just given a great reason why some hardware is still in use, it works.
Why turn around and conclude that it needs an upgrade?

"knowing which agencies are running hardware older than I am is important"
Sure, for a very loose definition of important.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Fuck off.

[imac.usr]

I hate that goddamn phrase. When the inevitable time comes when suddenly the old system *does* break, it's no longer under any support, nobody's left at the company who knows how it works, there's no budget for a modern replacement, and it has to be fixed in four hours or the company goes bankrupt. Been there, done that, ate the T-shirt after hours of working with no break for food.

People who say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" are the same idiots who brag about uptime.

Pro tip: *every* system is broken. The trick is being able to repair or work around the broken parts without disruption, not to just seal it behind a wall and rediscover it years later when trying to track down what's still pinging.

Re:"If it ain't broke, don't fix it?" Fuck off.

[Dutch Gun]

The funny thing about pithy little phrases like that is that there's inevitably a counter-phrase that works to refute it. In this case, perhaps "don't put all your eggs in one basket" would be appropriate?

There's nothing wrong with "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" as a general rule of thumb (nor of good uptime), but I'd certainly temper it with the notion that a lack of support or replacement parts can also be considered "broken", and thus in need of fixing. There's a lot of damage done by needless upgrades or "enhancements", which is what this phrase is meant to counter. I understand your frustration with idiots who view any one rule as some sort of golden rule handed down from on high, but... well, "don't throw the baby out with the bathwater."

Re:Nice way to waste taxpayer money

[mschuyler]

Amen to that. The FOIA has a purpose--to maintain open government. It was not designed to allow the merely curious to indulge their historical fantasies. Replying to this kind of stuff costs money, and guess who pays?

I've seen cases where, for example, an activist decides the local public library's stance on open access to the Internet violates their stance on "decency" because it allows some people to view pornography, so said activist embarked on a campaign to ask the library for EVERY document they had on budget, personnel, policies, emails, etc. It was so bad that the library--not exactly an over-funded and wasteful public agency, had to hire a full time secretary just to respond to the myriad of requests.

Basically it all translated to less materials purchased and fewer service hours open to the public while taking an inordinate amount of the library management's time and resources.

This is just harassment and a misuse of the statute enacted in good faith.

Re:Not too surprising...

[NicBenjamin]

In theory.

In practice these tend to be used in arcane, highly technical settings, with fairly old workforces. Setting up a new system that does precisely what the old system does, including bugs that 60-something workers have figured out their way around, but not adding new bugs they won't be able to figure out their way around? Not cheap.

Particularly since a) you can't pay any developer more then $174k (that's what Congresscritters make), and b) you still have to interface with the department across the hall which isn;t upgrading jack.