Thousands of UK government PCs including HMRC and NHS still running XP

[pctech]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/01/14/win_xp_uk_gov_hacker_deadline_miss/

[Glenn]

All the tills in Sainsburys use XP too.

[Simon]

It was only a few years ago that my local hospital was still using Windows 2000!

[pctech]

I once saw a video on youtube of a Lloyds cach machine crashing and rebooting back into XP.

[D-Dan]

Slightly off topic - but this quote, "Neither the HMRC – collector for the nation's purse......" really bugs me.

When did Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs become The Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs? It's just HMRC. No "The" required. (And everyone at work will testify that it bugs me - I'm forever pulling them up about it).

[pctech]

I agree, a little.

[mervl]

. . . so what do you call BBC (apart from the rude answers)?

I suspect as with much of the English language, it depends on the grammatical context e.g. whether it's at the beginning of a sentence. I was taught it was bad form to start a sentence with an abbreviation so "The" was often used as a prefix to avoid having to set out the full name (at least in the days when you had to type or write things down). Sorry, just a gentle little rib of mine.

[D-Dan]

However, "The" is a definite article which will usually precede a noun. "Her" is a possessive pronoun, with no place for the definite article before it

[pctech]

How about we just call them Her Majesty's Biased Crettins or HMBC.

Screwing the individual/small business while letting the rich and multinationals off scott free.