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

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.

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."