Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2020 May 4

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May 4

Computation model of biological viruses

It would seem to me that DNA and RNA, paired with the protein synthesis mechanisms of a ribosome, are Turing-complete. If so, this would imply that there is no way to construct a universal vaccine because "this is a virus" or even "this will synthesize proteins that produce a copy of the same RNA" is undecidable (Rice's theorem). There are of course other challenges, but I would imagine this is probably part of why. There aren't many good answers online.--Jasper Deng (talk) 10:02, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

To complicate things, the virus need not even self-replicate using the host cell machinery; theoretically one can imagine virus genotype A0 generating virus genotype A1 generating virus genotype A2 generating ... . On the other hand, there is a limit to the size of the RNA/DNA strands and proteins produced; they take up physical space and there is only so much room in a host cell in which a virus has injected its genetical material. A running simulation can be cut off when the size of the simulated genome exceeds that length, or when a loop is detected, resulting in theoretical decidability. Of course, the patient will be dead long before the decision procedure terminates. In practical terms, there is no need to resort to computability theory to torpedo the dream of a universal vaccine. There is only so much power we can build into a vaccine. A vaccine works by stimulating the body's natural immune system to produce antibodies against a specific class of antigens – characteristic aspects by which pathogens can be recognized. It does this by fooling the immune system by closely resembling these antigens in some crucial aspect – basically by having a very similar spatial configuration of atoms somewhere on its outside. Any vaccine based on this principle – which includes all developed to date – will work for only a fairly limited set of pathogens.  --Lambiam 11:07, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Windows 10 Professional Workstation

I am working on an engineering project that is attempting to modify one of the most widely available CPAP machines to work as a Ventilator (often called a "respirator"). Related: Open-source ventilator, Non-invasive ventilation. We may not be able to get it to work, and if we do it most likely won't be as good as a "real" ventilator, but it will almost certainly be better than no ventilator at all.

One of the hospitals we want to work with has a document giving us ground rules for doing a clinical trial. Of paragraph specifies "test the system using all currently available Windows 10 editions". See Windows 10 editions, List of Microsoft Windows versions. I don't use pirated software, but I will use a free trial or evaluation version if one is available.

I have copies of all of the current Windows 10 editions except one: the new Windows 10 Professional for Workstations. It looks like I have to pay the Microsoft Store $300 USD and then upgrade a regular Windows 10 Professional install. I would of course like to save a few dollars, but I really want to be able to do a fresh install to a blank hard disk.

Is there an evaluation version of Windows 10 Professional for Workstations available? I don't see it at [ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ ].

Related:

• Microsoft's Windows 10 Workstation adds killer feature: No Candy Crush
• Buy Windows 10 Pro for Workstations

--Guy Macon (talk) 16:44, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

It's been a long time since I had a subscription (and they change these things a lot), but it certainly used to be the case that if you had a mid-level (the paid, but not for very much) MSDN subscription, you got a trial-and-development licence for just about every Microsoft technology, OS variant, and service. It literally came in a briefcase-sized box of DVDs. Your use here was exactly the case that MSDN dev licence was for - it was prohibited to use the OS licences for production (that is, some actual business-performing service) but checking, developing, and validating a product against that OS build was just what that licence was intended for. In your case, I'd ask on Microsoft's own developer forums (specifically those), as many of the people answering there are Microsoft certified developers or MVPs. I think, if you show your charitable bona-fides, they find someone to either get you a legal eval licence for whichever OS you need, or indeed a full MSDN (it's called something different now) subscription. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 17:02, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

See current prices at [ https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/vs/pricing-details/] --Guy Macon (talk) 17:29, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

It sounds like you'd want "MSDN Platforms", which it says resellers charge about $1000 for. We didn't pay remotely that; as with all enterprise prices, the publicly quoted price isn't remotely what an enterprise would pay (it's often just to make the sales people look like they're giving you a massive discount). If you were in some enterprise with an existing bulk relationship with Microsoft, the sales rep would probably chuck an MSDN licence at you for little or nothing (because the sales people don't make their bonus on dev tools). As, it seems, you aren't, that's why I suggested you ask on the MS forums specifically (and not Stack Overflow or whatever). MS will have programmes for charities and whatnot - that needs a manager there who is the equivalent of a sales rep (in that they can distribute keys). You won't find that person yourself, but I think you'll find some MVP on the Microsoft forum who will know what the relevant programme is called and who to ask about it. -- Finlay McWalter··–·Talk 18:25, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

BTW, Microsoft Developer Network may need to be updated. It currently says "Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) was the portion of Microsoft responsible for managing the firm's relationship with developers and testers..." and "From January 2020, the website has been fully integrated with Microsoft Docs." --Guy Macon (talk) 17:29, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Look, I know I'm a sort of a wet blanket in these matters ... but the real trouble with "homebrew" medical devices is that medical devices are used very differently than consumer products.

The thing about so-called "shortages" - they are real shortages - but, see, it's not that it's hard to make a ventilator. The shortage is not for lack of smart people who can make ventiators out of spare parts. The mechanism itself is quite simple, as compared to a lot of the machinery we find in today's technological society.

The real thing about medical devices is that they are frequently going to be used in the provision of life-critical services. They cannot break - which implies a few things from a mechanical or engineering perspective - but it implies a heck of a lot more from a legal perspective. How much liability-insurance do you have? How many years of sustaining-engineering contractual obligation and world-wide spare-parts- support can you provide? How will you pass regulatory hurdles related to marketing a commercial product that makes specific medical claims? When you are sued, repeatedly, for malpractice, malfeasance, and various other liabilities and torts - whether founded or unfounded - how many attorneys can you muster? What about when the lawsuits against your business have no relation whatsoever to the quality of your engineered device, but are claims made against you by the attorneys employed by major insurance corporations who believe your price structure misappropriates funds from certain Federal care programs in the states of Alabama, Massachusetts, and Vermont? What about when your company is sued by people who did not even use your product, because your product might have been unavailable to them? How about when you are sued for noncompliance with a minor detail of 21 CFR 820, and your deviations from ISO 13485 practices, the procedure for which you have of course hired outside auditors to thoroughly verify and document? And again, all of this is giving you the enormous benefit of the doubt, insofar as it assumes your device currently does, and shall forever into the foreseeable future, actually do what it is supposedly claiming to do, namely to blow air through a tube, and such - because you've invested the time and talent to engineer it perfectly, and the costs and labor to manufacture it perfectly, and every supply and supplier you worked with did exactly the same thing, perfectly... oh, and the people using it were trained to operate it correctly, perfectly, in all conditions, in perpetuity.

... But you're concerned about the up-front capital costs of a few million dollars ...$300 for a Windows license?

The medical device industry is so entirely dissimilar from the production of consumer products that the actual engineering challenges you will find are probably going to be completely unrecognizable - they probably have no relationship to the design and operation of a device that can blow clean air through a tube. In total honesty, if you wanted to help with the medical device shortage crisis, you'd have a better shot by designing and engineering an improved software for billing an already-existing device to the patient's insurance company - because ... that's the most severely broken technology right now!

Forgive me for my perhaps over-institutionalized point of view, but... this just ain't a game for the small-business owner, let alone the home-brew hacker.

If you haven't already reviewed it, here is FDA's guidance for Emergency Use Authorizations for medical devices - specifically, for ventilators, in response to COVID-19.

The "shortage" is not really about the lack of a hypothetical machine that can blow air. The "shortage" is a real-world lack of the capacity to economically provide access to the ventilators that we already have because the fundamental cost-structure of healthcare provision in the United States is extraordinarily ill-suited for the kind of public health emergency that we now find ourselves in. That is why it is possible for the paradoxically-simultaneous shortage of medical capacity at the exact same instant as some of the largest and most profitable healthcare systems in the regions most severely hit by acute community epidemics of COVID-19 are closing hospitals and laying off tens of thousands of trained medical-staff.

Nimur (talk) 20:15, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

I hear what you are saying, but please consider the situation where you are an emergency room physician and have twenty acute Covid-19 patients who will die without ventilators and ten ventilators to give them. Do you use ten hacked CPAP machines, or do you draw names out of a hat to decide who dies? BIPAP machines are already being used as improvised ventilators, but there are a lot more CPAP machines out there than BIPAP machines.

There really is a ventilator shortage. It is entirely possible that COVID-19 will use up every available ventilator, even with the existing manufacturers making them as fast as they can. Everybody who is working with me on this hopes that they will never have to use hacked CPAP machines after running out of real ventilators, but it could happen.

I am very familiar with the FDA Ventilator, Ventilator Tubing Connectors, and Ventilator Accessories Pre-Emergency Use Authorization (EUA)/EUA Interactive Review Template. It is one of the reasons why we are looking at starting with an existing CPAP machine. Many of those requirements have already been met by the CPAP machine manufacturer.

For example, all of the mechanical portions are already approved, as are the power supply and the blower driver circuitry. We are looking at making a drop-in replacement for the control circuitry only. And it is easy enough to order boards with manufacturing (the design is another question entirely) that conform to medical standards such as ISO13485 and 21CFR-820. This isn't my first rodeo: I jumped through all the hoops and got approval for a wireless heart monitor a while back. Something that could potentially deliver a lethal shock to the heart though low resistance electrodes on the chest is a lot more risky than a machine with a face mask that helps you breathe.

Re: "But you're concerned about the up-front capital costs of $300 for a Windows license?", No. I am not. My main objection is the requirement that I install regular Windows 10 and then upgrade to Windows 10 workstation. If the hospital buys a machine with Windows 10 workstation pre-installed it will almost certainly be a clean install. Windows upgrades don't always behave exactly the same as Windows clean installs. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:11, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

I wonder if you could install the different windows versions you want to test on Azure cloud instances, and pay by the hour. There was once a windows compatibility test site but it looks like they got rid of it: see here, which might still have some useful info. 2602:24A:DE47:B270:DDD2:63E0:FE3B:596C (talk) 06:46, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I will look into it. Good plan; get everything working well on the Windows versions I have, then do a quick test paying by the hour. If everything works, bob's your uncle. If not, then I will buy a copy of whatever version of Windows gave me a problem so I can debug and test. --Guy Macon (talk) 10:00, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

• From what I can tell, Windows 10 Pro for Workstations can be purchased standalone, and doesn't require Windows 10 Pro. Note that you need not have it activated from day 1 for purposes like this.--Jasper Deng (talk) 19:25, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

  Your link doesn't work but it looks like you're linking the same thing Guy Macon did above. (You can't cut off the bit at the end, it's not just a tracking ID even if it may look like it.) That's just a digital entitlement though. I've never purchased Windows like that, but I think if you do so Microsoft may simply direct you to their default install process normally involving the Media Creation Toolkit. While not an official answer see [1] but also my comment below. Nil Einne (talk) 00:49, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

  "Comment below". Is that sort of a Zen thing? (big smile). --Guy Macon (talk) 02:40, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

So, I went to [ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 ] and followed the instructions to Create Windows 10 x64 installation media, burned a DVD, and tried installing it it on a test laptop I keep around for just that purpose -- a Lenovo N23 (Windows version, not Chromebook).

Now on multiple YouTube videos showing a clean Windows 10 pro workstation install, I see the exact same screens I see on my little laptop until the OS selection screen, but workstation is not on the selection list like it is in the videos. Strange.

One example is at [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alJMvDasI3w ] but I must have seen ten videos showing the same thing (and not all on VMWare either). Maybe it sees my slow mobile processor and doesn't show that option? Next step will be to try it on a virtual machine on my main PC and see if the menu item for Workstation appears in that environment. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:40, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

The problem is the image the Media Creation Tool creates doesn't make an image with Workstation. Possibly some older versions did, I'm not sure. But it's probably why everyone suggests you install Pro then upgrade. Funnily enough the Media Creation Tool does have some undocumented command line options like ".\MediaCreationTool1909.exe /Eula Accept /Retail /MediaArch x64 /MediaLangCode en-GB /MediaEdition Enterprise" which is widely discussed and still seems to work, it creates an image with Enterprise if you feed it an appropriate product key (like the generic install key).

However while ".\MediaCreationTool1909.exe /Eula Accept /Retail /MediaArch x64 /MediaLangCode en-GB /MediaEdition ProfessionalWorkstation also seems to work, it doesn't actually. If you look at this image using an appropriate tool, you'll find it still only has the bog standard 7 editions. Further since you've added a Professional Workstation key to it, when you try to install it will fail with no way to fix it (that I can see) because the key you're trying to use is not valid for the available versions. (It seems the tool checks you key is a valid Windows 10 key, but not that it's valid for the version particular media, you get the same thing if you use the wrong key for Enterprise.) Note that ProfessionalWorkstation does seem to be a valid option, trying Meow or ProfessionalWorkstations or ProWorkstation or ProWorkstations all fail after you input a key.

Investigating this rabbit hole is one reason for the lengthy time to reply. I think there are other ways you can modify the image to add Professional Workstation e.g. MSMGtoolkit seems to be one. But you may also be able to do it manually without much effort. I think the difference between Pro and Pro Workstation is actually minimal, you can actually upgrade without even needing to reboot [2].

Still, since I can't be certain there isn't something different from a more clean install, I suggest you get the ISO that Microsoft provides if you're not downloading from Windows (or they think you're not) as suggested below as that thankfully has the Pro Workstations variant already embedded for now. It could change next time the ISO changes so probably try not to lose it. (Most of what I wrote below isn't that important since it sounds like you already know it all but I couldn't be bothered re-writing when I got the EC.)

Nil Einne (talk) 04:59, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

(EC) @Guy Macon: First I should mention I cannot guarantee any of this isn't a violation of some EULA, or that it will do what you want. However if you just want a clean install of Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, you may be going about this the wrong way. Go to the Microsoft Windows 10 download site [3] from a browser that is recognised as not running on Windows such as most browsers running on FreeBSD or Linux or Mac OS, or Android phones or tablets (not mentioning iOS here since I'm guessing downloading and retrieving the ISO from iOS is often still tricky). If you are using Windows, then use the console or otherwise change your browser so it does not appear it's running from Windows, see [4] if you don't know how.

However you do it, you should be given the option of downloading the ISO for the appropriate architecture (probably 64-bit) and language that you want. If you are given the option of downloading the Media Creation Tool instead, something has gone wrong. Microsoft still thinks you're using Windows. Once you do get the ISO, I assume you can figure out how to use the ISO to install the OS. (Hint: If using EFI you can probably just "extract" it to a USB key.)

So go through the install until you hit the part where it tells you to enter the licence key. Then tell it you will enter the licence key later. It should give you a list of install options which will should include Windows 10 Pro for Workstations and Windows 10 Pro for Workstations N. Choose the one you want. Go through the install as normal. When done you should have a working but not activated copy of Windows 10 Pro for Workstations. For clarity, I did this just now on a VM and it worked fine for me.

Nil Einne (talk) 04:35, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

You'd need to carefully read the EULA or contact someone from Microsoft to find out for sure, but I don't know if you're supposed to do much with the unactivated version of Windows 10 Pro for Workstations other than very basic evaluation i.e. make sure it works on your hardware. (I'm hesitant to even call it an evaluation version.) So how do you activate it? If you have a valid unused system builder key or retail key, you should be able to simply enter it either via the GUI (there should be an option to enter key when you try to activate) or use slmgr.vbs /ipk <your key>. To be clear, I don't know if there are actual retail keys but MSDN and similar keys are generally retail although if you have MSDN you should also be able to get the consumer editions ISO from MSDN so don't need this.

If you have a digital entitlement, you should be able to login to your Microsoft account and activate it. If you have already installed ProWorkstations and haven't changed stuff enough that your hardware ID has changed too much, possibly you won't even have to login to your Microsoft account to activate, it will happen semi-automatically. Although I'm unsure what the state of play is with digital entitlements and have no idea for the ProWorkstations version. I'm assuming from other points of discussion that have a Microsoft account is not an issue. (You can or at least you used to be able to have a digital entitlement tied to the hardware without a Microsoft account but I don't think that will arise with ProWorkstations.)

BTW I mentioned earlier that I assume you can get the consumer editions ISO direct on MSDN if you're getting your key via MSDN. I think you may be also able to get the business editions ISO too. I suggested the consumer editions ISO for 2 reasons. One is that AFAIK it's similar to the ISO you can get from the MS site if not using Windows. Two is because the business editions AFAIK is not simply something randomly deployed on computers sold to businesses. Rather it's what you use/end up with if you're using MAK/KMS for activation. See e.g. [5] [6] [7] (Some of the claims in the first link seem a bit confusing. Perhaps there is a way to be using MAK but to be still a consumer version. However I'm pretty sure as the 2nd source attests this isn't normal and if you convert an install properly it should end up as business.)

Nil Einne (talk) 04:35, 6 May 2020 (UTC)