It liiives! Sorta. Gentle azure glow of Windows XP clocked in Tesco's self-checkouts, no less OK, so it's not quite Windows for Warships, but Tesco's point-of-sale terminals appear to still be running Windows XP more than two years after Microsoft ended support for the aged operating system. A hungry vulture looking for some luncheon snapped this Tesco PoS terminal which seemed to have crashed and rebooted, going via …
Morrisons have a different message. Theirs says (at some volume): "Surprising item in bagging area."
I don't know why it's surprising. OK, this particular item was a cucumber, which could cause surprise in various NSFW ways. But the staff member didn't seem at all surprised at the checkout going on the fritz, and nor was I.
The big machines that measure the pressure in your eyes (Henson) used to use BBC Micro to do the work. I know there were still some around 15 years ago. I'm sure there are still some doing a good job now. Can tell from the distinctive two tone startup tone.
That said, they're not Internet connected, so perfectly safe.
> Yes but did they lock down the USB ports?
At some major EU airports, the PC's used by security staff to the X-Ray (etc) machines have their cables and unblocked USB ports facing users, directly on the edge of the desks right where they're accessible to people just casually leaning on the desks.
For anyone so inclined (not me) they'd be truly trivial to stick something in.
Not sure how that gets past any security audits.
Various endpoint protection programs can lock down the USB ports -- there's a (slim) chance they're using something like that. Though that probably wouldn't save them from USB Kill or similar. But I suspect that deploying that would quite likely cause you to be delayed from reaching your flight, or anywhere else for that matter.
> That can easily be done via Group Policy or an application control piece of software.
Strongly suspect any decent grade USB malware would get around the more common USB blocking approaches.
Sure, someone plugging in (say) some random storage device or wifi stick will likely not have it work.
But anyone clueful doing it "on purpose" and with evil intent is probably not going to be stopped by the kiddie barriers.
"running XP is not really that bad especially if the machines are not connected to the Internet"
For point of sale equipment, it is almost certainly connected, if not to the internet at large, at least a corporate network. You could create a communication system that lets information about payments be sent out without networking, but that is difficult and probably wouldn't be attempted. These vulnerable devices have been used before to gain access to payment information, usually after a breach somewhere else in the network.
We have one of these in the workshop at my company. Its doing the same job as it always did, running tests on new/refurbished hardware.
It'll only get replaced if the company we are doing the work for stumps up the cash to replace it, the problem being that if it were to break, we're out of replacement hardware for it...
>I don't know about POSReady 2009, but with the earlier versions of XP Embedded that I was familiar with, pretty much every component of regular XP was available as an option
.....indeed and you can actually go the other way and keep the EOL'ed XP editions fresh using the POSReady 2009 updates and a couple of registry hacks. Latest updates were rolled out 10 days ago BTW so why this is a story I'm not sure.
I did this out of curiosity on an XP desktop used a couple of times a year in the workshop. It's pretty easy (unlike Win10) to review the suggested updates and hide the ones only needed for a POS and inappropriate for a workstation.
I have a 2 way belkin box someone chucked out. The other PC on the box, sharing screen, keyboard and mouse is running Linux Mint + Mate. The WINE on it runs some old VB6 and other programs needed in the workshop for test gear that won't run even on 64 bit Win7, though they do work on 32 bit win 7.
Likely the Office XP / aka Word 2002 might be a risk?
Fine if not used on the Internet or with files of unknown provenance (data or programs).
Built on the XP codebase, these embedded operating systems hit end-of-life in January and April 2019 respectively, as Microsoft explained four years ago.
Either there is some time travel involved or there is a date wrong. I was under the impression that we were not yet in 2019 and especially April as BREXIT would have happened and someone would have told me. (sic)
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Well, 4 years ago, Windows XP was legal!
I don't know what the rules are where you come from but XP is 18 tomorrow. In civilised countries, people say that someone is "legal" when they reach 16 or 18. Four years ago, it was approaching 14. You can get locked up for that!
Last time I saw XP in the wild (i.e. not reported by El Reg), it was also a self-checkout at US hypermarket chain Meijer. I know the local Ace Hardware locations also use a Windows-based POS, but I don't know which Winver.
I don't understand why NCR and the lot their peers bother to use anything so bloated when an R-pi properly configured could do the job. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.)
I don't understand why NCR and the lot their peers bother to use anything so bloated when an R-pi properly configured could do the job. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.)
I suspect it's a matter of availability of drivers for the hardware, there may not be Linux equivalents to run the various peripherals.
Certainly when our company had a brief dalliance with ticketing kiosks, some years ago, the only available software was Windows based, and relied on a proprietary interface card to join all the bits up - no USB equivalents.
Also programmer availability. Windows desktop GUI programmers are easier to find than Linux desktop GUI programmers. Any Visual Basic programmer can do a Windows GUI.
Also on a typical big-company Windows-based corporate LAN, developing for Windows is easier than developing for Linux because everyone has Windows PCs.
It shouldn't be hard at all for find a developer who can make a GUI that runs on multiple platforms.
Java does it, .Net/Mono does it. There are no real differences, a button is an instance of the button class regardless of the underlying OS or graphical subsystem. This is precisely the main drive behind these languages. Sure there may be a difference in IDE but anyone who has used an IDE long enough will be able to adapt and anyone who hasnt will just see it as part of the same learning curve as before, assuming they do the development on the LInux system itself! They could just keep using their proffered IDE and simply test on a Linux system.
My god you could even use the most universal of cross platform of interfaces, HTML!
I have developed stuff for android. The IDE runs in Java, on any OS that runs Java. The VM that I test on runs on any platform that runs a supported Java, heck I usually just forgo the VM and push the app to my personal phone, using USB! With full debugging, live over USB. In Linux, just by plugging it in. I dont do it in windows because I cba to hunt down the driver I need.
Also, if anyone is using Visual Basic nowadays to do anything other than making a GUI for prototyping I'd be very worried.
And windows PC's can run virtual machines nowadays. Download a development environment turn-key VM, run it in a hypervisor. Develop on windows, compile, move to the Linux VM, run.
I've been doing this since the early 2000's there really is no excuse any more.
Once all the kiddies with their Linux running raspberry Pis grow up and expect to program on Linux because "everyone had a linux RPi" we will see the opposite argument I bet: "Nobody will develop a GUI for windows because everyone runs Linux and ts hard to find developers who can write a GUI for windows".
Everyone running Linux would be great of course. But that argument would still be stupid just as it is now. Cross platform development is EASY. The hard stuff was done by other very clever people a long time ago.
Hey, did you know? Minecraft runs on Linux, and windows. One executable. What is this sorcery?
Yep a cross-platform UI for kiosks would be straight-forward. Otherwise... not-so-much.
Kiosks are much simpler for such things because the UX is constrained by the very specific nature of the device. But the vast majority of software in the world does not run on kiosks. It runs on various different devices and form factors and operating environments, many of which specifically differentiate themselves from others by differences in the UX.
If cross-platform development was EASY, everyone would be doing it by now and it wouldn't need to be constantly re-invented to get-it-right-this-time-no-honestly-we-have-nailed-it-now. I am guessing you don't remember (perhaps weren't even born at) the time of the likes of Omnis and various other 4GL's that had "nailed" cross-platform development in the 90's - a time when there was far less diversity in platforms to contend with.
Which is of course why Omnis and it's ilk went on to dominate the software development industry and why we are all using those tools now.
Oh, but wait. Then came Java with it's Ultimate Solution to the write-once-run-anywhere problem. Hmmmmm.
Then .NET. Then Qt. Then FireMonkey. Then Xamarin. Then .net Core (Jeez even .NET is taking two bites at the cherry).
It's almost as if this is a bit harder than some people seem to think.
I don't understand why NCR and the lot their peers bother to use anything so bloated when an R-pi properly configured could do the job. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong, please.)
I't probably because whomever originally specced out the system design was only familiar with Point-and-Drool MSWin dev environments.
Now if these companies had been anything less than abject cowards, they could have funnelled a bunch of money and effort into ReactOS development in 2009 or earlier (when they'd realize they were setting themselves for the situation), it might have been ready by 2014. They'd have full source code, wouldn't be dependent on questionable updates, and could save boatloads of money on licenses. But as I say, it would require companies not suffering from Cranial-Rectal Insertion.
Ahh, Horizon, the stuff of nightmares.
I had a lot of integration work related to Horizon, and what an absolute pain it was to work with.
Designed originally to use a custom flat-file format, with variable length records, at a time when everyone else was using delimited files (CSV, EDIFACT, X12 etc.), and many systems were moving to XML.
Later enhanced, not by changing to a better format, but by actually appending XML onto the end of the flat-file records! And worse still, it wasn't even valid XML (no root element for example), and the Horizon system couldn't even guarantee the order in which the elements would arrive.
We had to write a custom preprocessor, to reformat the XML into something valid (i.e. that could be parsed with a schema), so that we could then use standard XML processing tools, to process the actual data.
Alas most of the old NT machines have gone now as Post Office have been running a major project to replace these old bits of kit with a combination of Thinkstations and all-in-one units running Win10.
Not a bad idea considering the old hardware was so aged that some of them wouldn't even survive a power cycle without the hard drive croaking and the screen backlights had got so dim you could barely see the screens in a well lit room.
apparantly they run common garden XP pro and yes they are networked, how the F do you think the NFC and visa card payment works, pixie dust and sneakernet?
Or how else do ALL the tills recieve any price changes to the stores portfolio on a daily basis? RS232 and a clown with a laptop? pfft no.
Allegedy they were replacing all with new EPOS from NCR then they had to divert the millions to the gaping hole in their pension pot. ;o) I personally wouldnt give Tesco steam off my techy excrement, "loyalty" card anyone?
Oh and others ive spotted, Home bargains until recently used W95 based POS ;) beat that! :P
Hmm, would be interesting to know how they got that past the PCIDSS auditors. A few years ago you could wave a bit of paper at them with a list of possible mitigations on it, but in recent projects I've been involved in the correct answer to the auditors saying 'jump' has been 'how high?'.
So ..?
I still use XP on 6 of my home's 9 PC's. Ah, you think, now you know who I am: I'm the guy you met on Archer's seat Edinburgh Tuesday putting the world to right on top of one of Scotland's 400M year-old volcano stumps. It's me alright. I divert, I wander, I meander ...
XP is OK, Dirt cheap on eBay. Still activates, and runs. The scare stories are for those running businesses whose data could theoretically be hacked due to the rather convoluted hack weaknesses of this legacy OS.
And Microsoft Essentials Security/Antivirus scanner still runs with weekly updates, though one has to do a manual (from website) download of the latest pattern-file(s).
Don't worry about it. Nobody Manic Captain Painwaring. It's going to be OK .. for me.
And if you listen to my lifetime of experience and advice ... it maybe will be OK for you too.
What else is there to know?
This is the way.
This is the Dao.
Pass on The Dharma, barmy army.
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I run XP on one of my music making PCs - loads of vintage 90s era software synths won't work on anything new. You can't beat obscure synths for unique noises. One of my other music PCs runs Windows 2000 because of the driver limitation of the very useful sound card which creates amazingly strange and expansive hardware DSP echo, much weirder than anything "new"; which is often just the same algorithm recoded for a new platform, then price hiked. I still think XP is the most user friendly OS Microsoft have ever made, very few clicks to get to settings and programs compared to anything that they've shat out forcibly since. NEVER 10!
Is this really an issue. There connected to an internal network to provide functionality for another device, e.g the checkout.
I recently worked in a large company that make silicon wafers and they have machines in the fab that runs OS2/2, NT4 and Next. You cant just change production systems because Microsoft no longer supports it, it would cost the economy millions, if not billions. to upgrade manufacturing kit across the world. The OS is not the difficult part, it is the hardware support and applications that run on top of it.
I found an old jukebox that runs 98SE with some strange custom config.
Of course, most sound cards made recently don't support it, in fact I resorted to trawling Ebay, Craigslist and "Friends in low places" to find one only to experience the horror of a custom setup that noticed I'd changed the CMOS battery and ate itself!!!!
Note, if you ever have the misfortune to run into one of these for $DEITYS SAKE image the drive.#
The software is so specific that it won't run if anything is changed at all even drive serial.
I had to use extreme measures to get a second keyboard working.
(note: still have it because its cool)
I wouldn't care if they ran OS/2 or DOS.
But could we please just make them so that they aren't so damned tied to that stupid weighing scale thing on the bagging area.
Honestly, just turn it off. If I wanted to steal something, I just wouldn't put it through the till in the first place, and my receipt would always clearly show what I SHOULD have in my possession and what I shouldn't. And likely you'd want to steal things like microSD cards or something expensive-but-light that wouldn't even register, or you'd scan something and then put something weighing the same on the scale anyway. Nobody ever checks, even if you call someone over.
Stick a camera directly in the machine to watch what I scan/place on there, and then turn off the stupid scale thing that whines at me until I manage to arrange the bags in the exact configuration that it needs to sense "previous weight + 0.5g of envelope" or whatever.
Honestly, it's a brilliant technology, totally hampered by a stupid implementation. And, yes, I have seen stores where they turn it off... Poundland sometimes has them. It works so much better without that nonsense.
Fix that and you could run the thing on hand-coded assembler for all I care.
My main complaint about the weighing scale in the bagging area is the poor implementation for when you are using your own bag (which for me, is almost always).
Prompt: Are you using your own bag?
Me: Yes.
Prompt: Please place your bag in the bagging area and press OK to continue.
Me: Places bag, clicks ok.
Prompt: Unexpected item in bagging area, please remove item and try again.
Me: Gives up, drops bag on floor, then loads the bag once I've finished scanning and paying for everything! This of course takes longer, and so ties the till up for more time!
I suspect the issue is around weight, they expect you to put a carrier bag, like one of the bag-for-life ones, onto the till, when I always use a backpack if I'm on foot, which of course weights more.
Carry a single use bag, life bag, or cotton bag; put that on scales to pack shopping into, then transfer the entire bag into your backpack. I caught cotton bags with Harry Potter logos at Poundland that fit in my new Ridge bicycle panniers. To avoid nerd conversations I chose Slytherin House bags. Working so far!
Except that unfortunately a loaded shopping bag is often too large to fit easily through the neck of a rucksack…
They should just let us plonk the rucksack on the scales and be done with it. Weigh rucksack, store the weight, then check the weight of purchases by comparing the increase in the weight on the scales: it shouldn’t be hard.
We're being encouraged to re-use bags, but too often those damn self-service checkouts freak out when you put your bag for life in the bagging area and it cries out for human assistance.
Whilst annoying I guess the positive spin on it is it's an indication the machines aren't mature enough to take over, yet...
See my post above. I get this all the time, and usually just put the bag on the floor instead (as half the time trying to get assistance is a pain, as there is either no one around, they are trying to resolve some other issue, or too busy chatting to some other member of staff to bother assiting).
At Tesco (not sure about the others), if you press the "Request subtotal" button, you can take whatever you put on the scales off without it complaining. Fill one bag, press the button, take bag off scale, and continue with the second bag.
Worked that one out when I had a bunch of stuff that wouldn't all fit on at the same time.
Upvote for the "subtotal" tip for Tesco, provided that it works. Maybe I can use it at the Co-op just east from Central Station in Glasgow, where the self-service stations are clever but cramped.
Several shops seem to give me an issue of accepting a bar code but not letting me bag the item. I might get into trouble for dealing with that by laying the charged but unweighed item next to the scanner and then taking it with me after I pay for it and for everything else - but I don't see it as doing wrong. I must look honest, anyway.
...needs to fing sort out theirs. They are the shittest machines. Put the bag on the hook thing to keep it open. Start putting stuff in. It can't detect that you've put the stuff in so moans. OK. I'll shift it around then. Maybe an issue with your scales. Nope, 1 item later it starts doing it again.
Bollocks I say.
The most reliable one I've come across so far is Waitrose and then M&S in that order.
The new software they have put on the self service tills is awful. So slow and unresponsive.
Also, in some branches the smartshop button is enabled (where they have the handheld scanners) on the self service tills, yet it does not work. It gets stuck in a 'please rescan' loop, good testing there (!!!).
The best ones are the Waitrose ones with no bagging area.
And some of the self service tills have you put your basket on one side and then scan and pack to the other side, but then some of them have the basket and packing shelves above each other on the same side but with no obvious indication as to whether the shelves on the left or on the right side are the ones which belong to “your” till, grrrr!!
When I dealt with them several years ago, their attitude was that they didn't give a s**t.
"Patching? That's your problem."
"Security? That's your problem."
In the industry I was in, they supplied the kiosk, the OS, and the platform, and managed app deployment on the kiosk platform. But they then insisted that the OS wasn't their responsibility...
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