back to article UK.gov is hiring IT bods with skills in ... Windows Vista?!

Freelance IT type? Know about the gubbins of Windows XP, Vista and Server 2003? Don’t care about all that IR35 guff? We’ve got great news – UK.gov wants to hire you. Strictly speaking the role is with an agency rather than the Almighty Government itself, but the Technical Architect vacancy specifies competency in "Windows 2003 …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If it's “on a government client site” in Milton Keynes then it's Hanslope Park.

    1. Velv
    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I concluded similar from my reading of the job spec - and some of the skills and experience it requires.

  2. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I don't think I have seen a machine running Vista in the wild since around 2009 when everyone had either 'downgraded' to XP or upgraded to 7.

    Surely there can't be any good reason to leave machines on Vista in 2017 as I very much doubt there was any software written for Vista that wouldn't run on 7 or 10 and a upgrade is cheap enough.

    1. TRT Silver badge

      I found one the other day. Someone had resurrected a "stickitinthecorner-unt-forgetaboutit boxen" and wanted to use it as a desktop machine for a summer student. Wondered why the network kept rejecting it.

      1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

        I recently had a user ask if they could put their windows 2000 laptop back on the network.

        After saying no and confiscating it , i looked inside and saw mcafee last update was in 2003 , although some docs on the desktop (and the event log) suggested it had been used a bit in 2007 and 2009 - presumably offline.

  3. Aladdin Sane

    Mark of Cain

    cursed with a supernatural mark

    Subtle. Very subtle.

    #destielforlife

  4. MJI Silver badge

    Vista had an upgrade path

    Of XP

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But which part?

    gov.uk isn't one thing, it is a collection of things.

    This article is quite poor on actual content.

    1. m0rt

      Re: But which part?

      Says the AC...from propaganda.gov.uk?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Says the AC...from propaganda.gov.uk

        Says the AC that knows how unwieldy the .gov.uk is

        So many departments so many different teams.

        To say .gov.uk is hiring and not specify which part is madness.

        And yes I am definitely working for the propaganda dept

    2. Dan 55 Silver badge

      Re: But which part?

      s/thing/clusterfuck

    3. LewisCowles1986

      Re: But which part?

      All systems at beyond personal scale are a collection of things if not designed by some window-licking idiot.

      The question is what those things are made of, which is a steadily exploding public account of mostly bad ideas https://github.com/alphagov

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Because if you can cope with Vista then coping with all the other idiocies of government will be trivial.

  7. Sanguma

    Still Vista Bet-ing?

    They say vistabetion makes you blind ... and humourless. Friends don't let friends vistabet. It's just not done to have a professional vistabeta in the house.

  8. Korev Silver badge
    Boffin

    Instrument controllers?

    Assuming this is for the boffinery at Hanslope Park then they may still have a lot of very specialist instrumentation which is driven by PCs running an older OS whose software breaks when the underlying OS is upgraded.

    We have a number of PCs like this at $EMPLOYER which are firewalled off etc from the rest of the network.

  9. nickx89

    Might they add

    Might they add Windows Me and Long Horn as well. It's just a trick to ward off the freshers in the field which is a risky gamble to ignore potential candidates, or the HR is just stupid to update the requirements according to every other job.

  10. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Coat

    Obvious question. What's in or around MK that needs a bod with DV clearance?

    I've no idea.

    1. Mr Dogshit

      Re: Obvious question. What's in or around MK that needs a bod with DV clearance?

      Her Majesty's Government Communications Centre

      in other words, GCHQ's communications spooks.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Obvious question. What's in or around MK that needs a bod with DV clearance?

      If you don't know then you don't need to know and clearly, as you don't know, you aren't qualified for the role, even if you are currently working as a TA...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Obvious question. What's in or around MK that needs a bod with DV clearance?

      What's in or around MK that needs a bod with DV clearance?

      A communication roundabout?

  11. Joseph Haig

    Are they looking for someone to upgrade the new aircraft carrier? (https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/06/27/hms_queen_elizabeth_running_windows_xp/)

  12. Charlie Clark Silver badge
    Flame

    I'm okay with all the versions of Windows…

    … but Milton fucking Keynes? No fucking way!

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Potentially discriminatory advert

    It says here https://www.gov.uk/guidance/security-vetting-and-clearance that “Advertising for staff that already hold a security clearance is contrary to government policy, unnecessary and potentially discriminatory”

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Potentially discriminatory advert

      Advert doesn't actually specify that applicants need to hold a current UK security clearance...

      However, it does indicate:

      1. The technical architect role will be subject to DV vetting - so don't apply if you don't want to be intrusively vetted, and

      2. An essential skill/experience required is of "High level Security Clearance" - so don't apply if you can't evidence how you gained this skill/experience.

      Naturally, the fun part is conveying the relevant information in an unclassified document, namely your CV - that will be handled and seen by people who haven't been security cleared...

  14. Huns n Hoses

    Well of course Vista

    because XP is so last year

  15. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    I know it was Blair's intention to make us the 51st state, but it's gov.uk not uk.gov

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The role came up because...

    The Americans now have Marcus Hutchins...

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    You couldn't pay me enough

    To support shoddy products created by Microturd any longer. 20 years of this shit is enough to make you go nuts.

    Imagine if the army of M$ 1st / 2nd line support monkeys out there said, "enough is enuogh, we're no longer going to support your customer base". How long would Microfail last as a company?

    Do end-users want to be beta-testers?

    Any company that thinks it's a great idea to:

    a) have a firewall but not enable it by default (XP pre-SP2), and also fail at incorprating egress filtering into said firewall

    b) thinks its a great idea to hide the 3-letter extension by default because....well, just because.

    Deserves neither support nor praise

    I know one thing, if Microshite designed cars, we would see UI changes every other month, the steering wheel in the boot, the wheels on the roof and the engine in the passenger seat.

    fucking muppets

    1. LewisCowles1986

      Re: You couldn't pay me enough

      Well, their revenue is about $300k per-head, so I'd imagine paying fewer support workers, the kernel of business experts at the very top would just pay themselves handsomely, pivot and have plenty left over.

      It's a multi-national umbrella company, so they could start new companies and pay them and saddle the original debt, then wind them up... Ultimately nation-states lose when dealing with a Microsoft Level entity

      Don't bet against the house (although professionally I'll only work on Linux, BSD or UNIX systems)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: You couldn't pay me enough

      @AC You forgot to name and shame with actual lousy products and "features" from Microsoft. How about:

      - Windows 98

      - Windows Millenium Edition

      - Microsoft Bob

      - Clippy

      - The "ribbon" in Microsoft Word

      - Silverlight

      - Sharepoint

      - Windows 8 (thanks, Steve Sinofski)

      .......and that's only the cr*p that I can remember....theres's more....much more!

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I think they actually do want XP experience.

    Judging, at least, by the .gov.uk owned machine with a Vista sticker on it that runs XP which I use every working day attached to a .gov.uk network.

  19. HKmk23

    I think

    It's a sly way of asking for support guys for the new aircraft carrier HM Queen Lizzy.....they are using Windows XP and are trying to keep it all hush hush......

  20. GrapeBunch
    Alien

    Milton Keynes. That's code for Bletchley.

    There was a time you could tell the weft of a chap's tweed from the bold ollocks he wrote for Hell Reg. And when you gask oogle to do the interviewing for you, it says "Sorry, Dave, old chap, I could have done that for you last week." Will have to go bad to filtering out the ones with no Reginads in the ancestor list. Pity poor Charles.

  21. GrapeBunch

    I hear they're about to say "TOODLE PIP" to CP/M 2.2.

  22. HellOnWheelz

    Legacy support - it can make for a darn fine paycheck

    We're still supporting .Net 2.1 framework legacy applications. And SQL 2010. And ASP classic. On IIS 8.0. Windows Server 2003. Corporate desktops are =all= Windows 7. I have to run a virtual Win 7 client on my remote Win 10 machine to even access my workspace.

    Yes government contract clients. Corporate won't upgrade until MicroSoft pulls its support from a version (and then only if there is no way around it). I have a very decent paycheck. The other stuff? That's up to someone whose pay grade is higher than mine. I'm only one in this man's army.

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