Posts by John 110

UK Covid-19 Inquiry finds early pandemic surveillance was weeks out of date

Re: Scamdemic

If you hadn't posted anon, then you could have used the joke icon.I'll put here for you.

NHS left with sick PCs as suppliers resist Windows 11 treatment

Re: Only themselves to blame

Sometimes you just have to buy their equipment. I used to be responsible for a whole chain of Virology testing systems. Mostly test packages that would only run on the manufacturer's equipment. You are definitely at the mercy of the suppliers then.

The procurement was based on testing by Lab people who knew what kind of result accuracy they wanted/needed. The question of will it work with future iterations of operating system was way down their list. Mainly because if the companies wanted us to keep buying test kits then they would have to meet our conditions.

Which sounds naive, but in this field our previous expectation was that companies would work with us to provide patient care. Several takeovers later and suddenly the company is owned by venture capitalists out for profit instead of the idealists that developed the technology.

'Fax virus' panicked a manager and sparked job-killing Reply-All incident

Re: Of the nineties?

when I retired in 2019 the Maternity department was still faxing CHI numbers of newborns to our Lab office staff every morning.

Teen interns brute-forced a disk install, with predictable results

Sometimes..

Sometimes you just need brute force. I just fitted an oven housing unit and a new oven into a 20-year old kitchen in the space where the old oven was. Wouldn't have happened without a judicious touch of a heavy hammer...

Should UK.gov save money by looking for open source alternatives to Microsoft? You decide

Mix because...

The NHS Trust I worked for tried to save a bit by switching to Open Office.

Several objections included:

[fake issue]

- It looks different, I cannae use it.

[legitimate issues]

- The specialist software I use requires a connection to real Excel /Access/etc and won't accept a substitute.

- We extensively use Access databases/Excel macros that are untranslatable.

The fake issue could have been easily solved by training and just telling users to get on with it if it wasn't for the quick solution for the real issue.

Which was to allow deployment of real MSO for those people who needed it to carry out their tasks.

This led to "how come he gets real Office and I only get Mickey Mouse Office?" from users at the next desk and documents round-tripping through OO and MSO becoming unreadable.

Note that this was before LibreOffice and when the ideologists in the Open Office camp thought that interoperability with MSO was evil to be avoided.

The real solution, of course was what they actually did after the great Internet Explorer 5 to 6 debacle when many web-based apps needed to be re-written to be standards compliant (when that was a thing) and spend the cash to get it done. But as the object was to save money, this was vetoed and user satisfaction plummeted.

What they should do now is use the mix option, but mandate (force?) adherence to Open Document standards throughout, even if Microsoft needs to be given a swift kick to bring them into line. Allow the use of MSO only where it's absolutely necessary (same as they currently do for COBOL (see other article)) and only for those purposes, NOT for general office work.and tell dissenters to just shutup and get on with it.

Intern did exactly what he was told and turned off the wrong server

Re: "Everyone Knows"

I was once filmed moving coloured liquid (picked randomly from our stock of culture medium) from one microtitre plate to another with a Gilson pipette for a local tv news spot about HIV testing. It was filmed in a spare bit of lab because the camera crew weren't allowed in the Cat 3 lab. I did wear all the protective gear though.

(and my mum taped the segment off the telly to show to my aunties etc.)

--> me changing out of my howie coat into a green gown and plastic apron -->

Microsoft developer ported vector database coded in SAP’s ABAP to the ZX Spectrum

Re: 48K

Presumably they did have add-on keyboards. I certainly stuck my speccy circuit board in a "proper" keyboard. A nice clicky one it was too. I think it's still in the loft somewhere...

Anyway, if you wait a couple of minutes, I'm sure a speccy programmer will pop up and enlighten us.

Trump's budget bill bankrolls $85M Space Shuttle shuffle

They could....

....just CGI it.

"Store" it in a huge tank to "protect it from the environment" and add "viewing windows" along the side.

Not glass of course, that would let in "harmful UV". I'm sure Monitor technology could supply something...

Then you sell the real thing to a supervillain who's looking for something to steal satellites with.

Firefox is dead to me – and I'm not the only one who is fed up

Re: Other browsers

@gosand

I would think about giving Pale Moon another go. The arse-hole-est developer (who wasn't really a developer) picked up his toys and left ages ago, and the push lately has been trying to keep up with Chrome's buggering about with web standards.

I've been using it daily for years and only revert to Vivaldi for a couple of sites..

Techie fixed a ‘brown monitor’ by closing a door for a doctor

hmm

@tinman

The snag with clip-on anti glare filters on hi res medical equipment is that they invariably degrade the image. Not too much of a problem for text, but I don't think I would like a doctor trying to find the margins of THAT lump on a degraded screen...

Nip chip smugglers by building trackers into GPUs, US Senator suggests

I'm sure...

....that putting multiple tracking devices into your populous's hardware won't be a problem and lead to anything bad....

Developer wrote a critical app and forgot where it ran – until it stopped running

Re: Similar thing, but zombie user not laptop

Back in the good old days, I had to liaise with our Infection Control team who were told they had to have software to replace their two filing cabinets full of folders. (A short aside--people underestimate the utility of paper in a job where folk are required to nip off and audit a Ward for IC compliance at a moments notice. Irene could find the folder for a ward and be out of the office in about 20 seconds. Ward visit over, her notes were typed up by her secretary and stuck back in the file. The same job using their paperless system involved them hunting and pecking at a keyboard for 20 minutes till yhey'd found the file and last report, then printing that out to take down to the ward... Nightmare. We did try PDAs, but the screens proved to be two titchy for our Nurses to read...)

Anyway, the project included daily downloads from the labsystem to generate a textfile (using an SQL query) which was then imported into the fledgling Infection Control software. (another sidenote: we were all learning as we went along. I did the SQL, Computer Services managed the export of the file with a cron job and the IC team struggled to get to grips with with the commercial software which, lets face it was extremely specialised and cobbled together by a very small company who only had a rudimentary grasp of Infection Control issues to a specification dreamt up by a nurse somewhere who knew what they wanted but had no idea how to get a computer to achieve it. Oh, and it was a DOS-based system)

All of these steps required logging in to various bits of software to run the SQL on the Lab System and to access the server to export the file and the new server to import the file. The solution turned out to be fake users at each stage and for each server (no-one seemed to have heard of service accounts, I certainly hadn't. I fell into the IT role as a Biomedical Scientist who knew which end of an RS232 cable went into which socket (NOT the VGA socket--good grief!))

The trial actually worked (to everybodies surprise, personally I never thought Irene would get the hang of it...) and the system was rolled out and functioned for a couple of years, as various changes made to the IC software made it actually useful (Evolution in action)

Then Computer Services were audited and it was noted that they didn't have a security and access control person, so they appointed one. Their first job as they saw it was to tidy up user access to all their systems by getting rid of all these pesky fake logins. Cue complete system failure.

(Last sidenote, I promise: NHS computing especially round the edges of the major apps was a bit of a wild west. Our Apple //e and later our Windows 3.1 PCs were showing people what computers could do, while our Computer Services department had cut their teeth on Big servers storing data. It was all a bit tricky. And we were all flying by the seat of our pants.)

Developers feared large chaps carrying baseball bats could come to kneecap their ... test account?

Re: No, I was Wrong

When I worked in a diagnostic lab, we needed to use the live system for those specimens that had to go through the automated analysers (no-one has two sets of those, useful though it might have been.) Therefore my colleague in the lab upstairs (we shared a patient database) created a patient with a plausible sounding, but unlikely name with an unused Patient Index Number. (Nothing rude or questionable was allowed after a set of results were erroneously sent out to a GP surgery for an unfortunately-monikered test patient.)

We used Linda [lastname redacted] as a test patient for years until the trialling of a system that allowed lab results to be sent from reference labs to the home lab. The first thing that happened was that their IT department complained that Linda already existed on their system as a real person and could we please use their carefully chosen fake patient instead.

IBM swoops in to rescue UK Emergency Services Network after Motorola shown the door

Re: the US are our friends.

"...or just Scotland and turning it into one big Golf Course..."

Not JUST a Golf Course. It would make a handy dandy missile platform/submarine base...

NetAdmin learns that wooden chocks, unlike swipe cards, open doors when networks can't

Re: demarcation dispute

a bit further north in the sunniest place in Scotland

Our Health and Safety rep had a constant running battle with University staff over wearing gloves outside the lab. They insisted there was no hazard, but we were a Microbiology lab and gloves were forbidden in the corridor!!

demarcation dispute

I worked in a diagnostic virology lab in a teaching hospital. The corridor we were in was partially stolen from us in a land grab by the University. The corridor was also a handy thoroughfare to distant parts of the hospital. Then came the Ebola scare (we're all going to die!!) and the Health and Safety people coughed up for card swipe locks on the ends of the corroiodr to stop joe public wandering through "looking for radiotherapy" (this was common ploy for scrotes looking for handbags to rummage through). The University refused point blank to use them. "It's so inconvenient sob, sob".

It turned out to be extremely convenient for a scrote on the prowl, as did the nifty Apple iMac with the handy carrying handle moulded into the case. Somebody's PhD thesis went with it...

The doors were activated and cards issued the next week.

Re: Car doors

Many moons ago (before remote fobs) a colleague explained to me how to lock a car without the key if your hands were full of child picked up from the back seat. You lean through the back door, over to the front door and press the locking button, then when you close the back door (using a portion of your anatomy not encumbered) the car locks.

When I had occasion to try this trick (getting a cardboard box off the back seat), I managed to shut my tie in the car door (I know, I know). I had the keys in my pocket, but not the flexibility to get my hand into the required pocket without dropping the box (obviously full of fragile valuables). I ended up propping the box between my goulies and the car door while I wormed my hand into my offside trouser pocket and freed myself. "where have you been?" says the wife...

BOFH: The devil's in the contract details

Re: Feels like oracle

So nobody here has ever bought NHS Lab Support software then?

That hardware will be more reliable if you stop stabbing it all day

Re: Try working with a smart user

Sort of the opposite problem. Software designed (not by us -- we just configured it) in the days of 640x480 screens when expanded to full-screen on an 800x600 monitor had a whole load of empty space. When the users wanted more options on the screen, we had to tell them that the empty space was imaginary and couldn't be used.

Tech support world record? 8.5 seconds from seeing to fixing

Those iMac handles proved handy for the scrote that walked into the university lab round the corner from ours and walked off with a computer and somebody's PhD thesis.

What's a "backup"?

Footnote: that's when we finally activated the security doors that the NHS had fitted, but the university refused to use...

NHS to launch 'real-time surveillance system' to prevent future pandemics

Re: Give the negativity a rest, guys, this is pretty amazing stuff

If you've ever worked in a diagnostic healthcare setting, you'll be aware of the difficult path that you have to tread between privacy and having the data you need to carry out your analyses and diagnoses.

Not having correct and full data is as much of a nightmare for us as the privacy issues are to data people. (I've worked both sides as a medical technologist who shifted to data services)

Re: Give the negativity a rest, guys, this is pretty amazing stuff

You know that "real-time" is a designation given to a technology, right?

Here you go https://www.ebi.ac.uk/training/online/courses/functional-genomics-ii-common-technologies-and-data-analysis-methods/real-time-pcr/

Hide the keyboard – it's the only way to keep this software running

Re: Small boys are good problem finders

A 1yr+ baby is a toddler. Any parent knows that nothing is safe round a toddler.

--> little angels...

Smart homes may be a bright idea, just not for the dim bulbs who live in 'em

Re: Abrilliant article that I will reference in future

@Mast1

Other appendages are available...

Missing Thunderbirds footage found in British garden shed

Re: That film...

@Martin Peake

Mums are like that. They never understand what they've done wrong.

I remember coming home one sunday afternoon and discovering my young cousins playing with my Airfix models!!! Hours, they took me. Hours!!!!

BOFH: AI consultant rapidly transitioned to new role as automotive surface consultant

Re: Human-fired power station

Harry Harrison's wife sat on my lap at an SF convention in Edinburgh once, where she told scurrilous stories about Harry's fellow SF illumati...

Footnote: there were a lack of chairs...

Crack coder wasn't allowed to meet clients due to his other talent: Blisteringly inappropriate insults

Re: Never for rudeness, but..

Ah, the old mercury ones -- long banned by the NHS. Although our last GP once made sure his door was shut, then fished his mercury equipment out of the cupboard to take my blood pressure.

Zen Browser is a no-Google zone that offers tiling nirvana

"So tiling child windows is a thing again?"

Like good old Opera 12. I miss Opera 12.

""Moonchild" and his minions have created such a toxic dumpster fire on their community fora"

Not been there for a while, have you. They're generally quite helpful these days after the most toxic guy threw his toys out of the pram and went home a year or so ago.

Like somebody above, I use Pale Moon on a daily basis and generally don't have any trouble.

The origin of 3D Pipes, Windows' best screensaver

Re: My main memory of these ...

Sorry, I thought you said "anaesthetic"...

In homage to Jurassic Park, researchers store DNA in amber-like polymer

Re: Big money ahead

I'm putting this in my funeral instructions right now. Then in the far future, the intelligences descended from cockroaches will use my DNA to create a population for their new attraction "Brexit Park". I'll be the bad-tempered one...

Techie installed 'user attitude readjustment tool' after getting hammered in a Police station

I used to have...

When I did IT support in a Bacteriology Lab, I used to have a stick with a nail in it* (an implement a boss was given as a joke man management tool) that I inherited from a retiring boss. It turned out to be most useful as a device for fetching wires from under desks and lab benches.

*essentially a broom handle with a three inch nail driven an inch into it, H&S assured by the head of the nail being uppermost.

We need a volunteer to literally crawl over broken glass to fix this network

Re: The last business exhibition

...but think of the networking opportunities...

I didn't touch a thing – just some cables and a monitor – and my computer broke

Re: Blonde moments

I once got called to a Microbiology lab PC that wouldn't turn on, to find the user vainly stabbing at the big silver DELL "button" instead of the tiny recessed power button that Dell helpfully supplied.

(a few years earlier, the same user didn't realise that the monitor power switch was different from the computer power switch, although in her favour, she was really computer-phobic and had managed to avoid using them for ages.)

Software support chap survived breaking his customer

Re: Ouch!

In my role as general IT support for a diagnostic lab in a teaching hospital in the 90s, I was asked to give a talk to our BSc Honours students to show them how to use the two DOS-based PCs that we had for general Word processing use. (Prior to acquiring those, our lecturers did papers by longhand and one of the office girls would type them up). I chatted to one of them a couple of days before I gave the talk and realised that they mostly knew the stuff like how to start and close Word, but they didn't have a clue about saving and backing up their work. They each had a floppy disk...(5.25, so genuinely floppy.)

I re-jigged my talk to start with me holding up a floppy and saying "this is a disk". I then crumpled it up and said "and now it's corrupt and your thesis is gone..."

Only then did I give them the talk about closing Word AFTER saving and BEFORE taking the disk out...

Do not touch that computer. Not even while wearing gloves. It is a biohazard

Re: Taking the piss?

Just urine? pffft, lightweight!

What's brown and sticky and broke this PC?

Didn't think it was chocolate

I worked in a diagnostic microbiology lab where they processed samples from every area of the body you could imagine (and quite a few you probably shouildn't). When the keyboards on the bench PCs stopped working I threw the dead one in the autoclave and supplied a new cheapy one from my store.

The story of how I persuaded computer services to allow me to purchase a quantity of keyboards has been told before. Suffice it to say, it involved inviting them round to see the lab and making sure we were processing "special" stuff that day. My purchase requests for keyboards and mice were never turned down again...

WTF? Potty-mouthed intern's obscene error message mostly amused manager

Strictly speakin there isnae an apostaphe in "disnae" (or "speakin" or isnae) 'cause they're actual words, not abbreviations or dialect. So dinnae tre tae pit wan in!

New year, new bug – rivalry between devs led to a deep-code disaster

Re: Rewriting in assember 'to go faster'?

@martinusher

Might be handy to go back and read some of the earlier comments rather than just jumping in.

[HINT: this is Amiga era software...]

Sysadmin's favorite collection of infallible utilities failed … foully

I used to defrag my Amiga HD regularly. Start it going and plonk the kids down in front (they were very young) of it to watch the little squares fly about. An easy way to get a quiet couple of hours to drink coffee.

Bank boss hated IT, loved the beach, was clueless about ports and politeness

I didn't know you could actually force a printer USB plug into the socket on the printer upside down, but Liz managed...

User read the manual, followed instructions, still couldn't make 'Excel' work

@Prst. V Jeltz

It's always worthwhile making a personal visit to someone who can grease the wheel that usually grind your work to a halt. In my case it was the Prof's secretary. Nice woman, but couldn't save a document properly, but she knew which forms to fill in and ALWAYS got the Prof to sign them...

PS Prst. I don't know if your post does anything towards counterpointing the surrealism of the underlying metaphor...

Why have just one firewall when you can fire all the walls?

Re: "could hear the telescope motors start humming"

"Sounds very much like software written by scientists rather than engineers."

Sounds very much like software lashed together at the last minute and in somebody's "spare" time by scientists rather than engineers.

There, fixed that for you.

Lawyer guilty of arrogance after ignoring tech support

Re: Are you sure, this isn't the plot of an IT Crowd epsiode?

We had a nice IT lady who,when she answered a ticket like these, would tell the punter that they had a batch of faulty cables and could they check the serial number on theirs. Most people said something like "Oh, it's fixed itself" and hung up at this point....

CompSci academic thought tech support was useless – until he needed it

Re: "supposed expert who turned out to be anything but"

When they were issued with laptops, I suggested that it might be beneficial for our medical staff to attend basic computer classes set up be the NHS Trust I worked for. I was told "but that's wht we have you, isn't it?"

(I was ACTUALLY told "why would I keep a dog, but bark myself?" but that comment was rescinded when I mentioned it to my line manager.)

It's 2023, so Lenovo made a bendy smartphone concept all about hybrid cloud AI

Isn't it...

...the terror of the Autons...

One door opens, another one closes, and this one kills a mainframe

Re: IBM, too, maybe...

That was how I discovered that you're not supposed to fill the boot of your car with paving slabs. Going round corners was a bit problematic...

That's gas: CO2 found on Europa surface may hint at some possible sign of life

It's

It's spill over from the beer pumps...

That's no moon!!!

How is this problem mine, techie asked, while cleaning underground computer

Re: Dirt

Yes, very good.

BMS = BioMedical Scientist

Since 1971, we've been :

Medical Laboratory Technician (MLT)

Medical Laboratory Scientist (MLS)

Medical Laboratory Scientific Officer (MLSO)

and currently BMS (see above)

NOT Lab Technicians (apparently)

Re: Dirt

I did first line IT support for a diagnostic bacteriology lab. The hospital also had a Computer Services Unit who did complicated stuff, and had to sign off on all IT equipment supplies. After the second time I unstuck nameless gunk from a lab keyboard, I thought sod this and put in an order for ten of the cheapest keyboards I could find. CSU denied the request and told me that I could ask them for a new keyboard if I needed one, and they would take the old ones away and clean them.

I invited their boss to come over and have a look. When he arrived, I did the full visitor's thing -- plastic "one-size-fits-all" lab coat, latex gloves for them and a Howie coat buttoned up to the neck and gloves for me, then took them down to the Faeces Lab. I didn't let them look through the door window, I took them right inside to witness the staff prepare faeces for culture, then move to the PC and enter the details of what they'd just done. (Mostly, the guys took off their gloves before touching the keyboard, but gloves are starchy and their fingers leave gunk all over the keyboard -- also at busy times, the gloves just stayed on.)*

As we came out of the lab, I showed the CSU guy where to wash his hands (and made him do it twice.) He ok'd the requisition there and then and always sent round a minion if anything needed done in the future.

[*If you've never worked in Microbiology, you should know that the gloves are precautionary and folk who habitually got -- matter -- on their hands would face the wrath of Dave, the senior BMS]