Yes, the thing that tallies up how much cash should be left in the till, operated by people on minimum wage, has been coded by the CEO’s nephew. Sure.
Comment on tesco and sainsburys hit with technical issues
jabjoe@feddit.uk 8 months ago
This because their checkout are just Windows PC with what I guess is some big wigs’ nephew’s VB/C# app running?
It’s not just the wastefulness of the overly large software stack, and the massively overblown hardware requirements that adds, it’s the size of the attack surface. Oh and lack of control of a closed platform.
What a grown up would have done is a tiny Linux thing that ran nothing but what was required and locked down. Made with Buildroot or Yocto. Running on some low power ARM thing.
I’m guess they have got some Windows infection.
sunbeam60@lemmy.one 8 months ago
echodot@feddit.uk 8 months ago
I’m sure they would do the sensible thing and get a big hot shot Japanese tech company to do it.
sunbeam60@lemmy.one 8 months ago
Yeah how about Fujitsu?
Look, I wasn’t arguing that it was quality software, merely that it wasn’t coded by the CEO’s nephew.
UrbonMaximus@feddit.uk 8 months ago
What do you do when you need to update all the machines with your setup?
jabjoe@feddit.uk 8 months ago
A common way is to have two (or more) system partitions. You update one, charge the boot one and reboot. Typically the system partition is read only use. The bootloader tries the one it is told to try first, if it finds itself back in the bootloader it boots the other. You have a watch dog that resets if not kicked.
Buildroot and Yoctor give you a few update options. Then there is things like: swupdate.org
And it’s not really that hard to role your own.
thesmokingman@programming.dev 8 months ago
It doesn’t sound like you’re aware of PCI DSS
Regulatory burden aside, you don’t do data analysis at scale running “some big wigs’ nephew’s VB/C# app.”
jabjoe@feddit.uk 8 months ago
I’ve not worked directly with any of these payment systems, but I can’t believe the only solution is go all 90s style Windows based system. There will be embedded ways that comply to regs.
I can see they are Windows based when there is issues. I’m sure of Tesco and Morrisons but Sainsburys I don’t go to often enough to have see an issue that bring up Windows. I was being flippant, but I don’t hold using Windows to build stuff in high regard. In my experience the software engineers who doing that don’t know anything else.
Ashe@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 months ago
It’s very likely to be one of the NCR platforms. If I were to hazard a guess, StoreLine. Though it could be Encor/ISS45, ECRS has a pretty big market share as well. POS software is a walled garden of security through obscurity. Windows dependencies tend to be in part because it is such a small market, but also due to workstation/server requirements as well as remote support.
Long time support and stability are the name of the game. The industry doesn’t allow for much downtime which makes any change significantly harder than a lot of other industries.
jabjoe@feddit.uk 8 months ago
I’m sure these brands/sector will end up Linux too at some point. I’m half expecting MS to move to the Linux kernel themselves in the not too distant future, so no matter how trailing edge they are, they could get dragged in.