Posts by J 7

This 125mph train is fitted with LASERS. Sadly no sharks, though

t ful

why the objection to MTU engines? Don't forget that in an earlier life they were known as Maybachs and a lot were assembled by Bristol Siddeley. Oh for the sound of a Western at full chat...knocks a Deltic totally away

NHS XP patch scratch leaves patient records wide open to HACKERS

Much hot air been expended here by people who should know better. Its amazing how much gibberish the pairing of "NHS" and "IT" creates.

There are a number of underlying issues here, but the two main ones are due to the various goverment's fractionalising policies over the last 15 years which have led to reduction in size of organisational units, and the depletion of management skills. The worst of these was the dismembering of the PCTs and their replacement with GP-led CCGs. What did that achieve? The emasculation of any decent management within the NHS and its replacement by a bunch of empire-building ego-driven GPs, each with their own little private fiefdoms. There are several quality software suppliers to the NHS trying to bring order to the current chaos by offering upgrade routes, but finding themselves blocked by inept NHS management.

So why the delays in implementing Windows 7?

1) GP-led CCGs not seeing it as a priority. They prefer to spend their money on fancy offices

2) Fragmentation. There are too many contact points within the NHS to deal with, making finding someone to whom we can sell an upgrade solution damn difficult

3) Software issues. While most of the major clinical recording software packages will run on Windows 7, some will not, even now. Thats one of the reasons CSC left the GP market two years ago. Other suppliers have had a torrid time - one widely used package uses partly 8-bit CP/M code running in an emulator. Happily that package is now in the process of being killed off and replaced with a cloud solution, but its a hard job weaning the users off the old code.

Many other examples exist: a lot of plug-in software such as online test requests only work with Internet Explorer 7 or 8. IE9 or 10 kills the java routines. The NHS identity card software will only work with Java 6 v17. Anything newer kills it. The depreciation database used by a lot of Northwest trusts as a Citrix application will not work with a version of MSOffice newer than 2007.

The list goes on and on.......the problem is each trust has its own collection of software, much of it with a relatively small number of users on a national scale, but significantly locally. And many of these routines duplicate each other pointlessly. How many different labelling programs do you need? How many clinical systems do you need?

Its time for the government - or someone in authority to pull rank, knock heads together and order the CGGs what to do - with the threat of sanctions / sacking if they don't

Call of Duty, GTA V do not make youth more violent

GTA V

GTA V? Didn't Tangerine Dream do the score for that? First time I ever heard of the magic Tang's music being blamed for promoting violence.....If anything, music from them is likely to relax you

Trolls pop malformed heads above bridge to sling abuse at Tim Cook

Only way to get rid of trolls is to stop building bridges

"But without evil, there can be no good... so therefore, evil is good!"

Wasn't that the root theory of the Bogomil heresy? And doesn't bogomil share the same root word origin as buggery? Or was that just propoganda by the Inquisition?

I never realised Apple fans had a sexuality. I assumed they were all sterile asexual clones who were just turned on by technology and pretty toys, not by sex

Forget eyeballs and radar! Brits tackle GPS jammers with WWII technology

makes you wonder whether it would have been better to simply leave the Decca system in place instead of closing it in 2000. That did the job effectively. Installing eLoran is just reinventing the wheel

Clara goes to the dark side, with dark secrets revealed in Dark Water

which Cybermen

Are these Cybus Cybermen or Mondas Cybermen? If Cybus do we get another incursion from Pete's universe through the wormhole in the Torchwood Tower? Thats not so far from St Pauls.

Maybe another visit from Pete and Rose hunting transdimensional Cybermen is on the cards for next week?

DR LIPS warns: DON'T KISS that NEWT - it's got FLESH-EATING PLAGUE

she has an interesting tale

http://www.amphibians.org/grants/sabin-award/the-awardees/karen-lips/

Apple CEO Tim Cook: My well-known gayness is 'a gift from God'

I'm just surprised that anyone associated with Apple is capable of - or interested in - any flavour of sex. I always thought they were all asexual robotic clones

Multi Jet Fusion: THAT's HP's promised 3D printer, not crazy 'leccy invention

like most HP printers, the hardware will be robust and the software overblown useless fluff which is problematic to install

NASA: Spacecraft crash site FOUND ON MOON RIM

If the moon has a rim, does that mean the Clangers have to be careful not to fall off?

"was not traveling very fast, approximately 3,800 miles per hour "

whats that in lunar Mach numbers?

In space....no-one can hear you crash

Reg hacks see the woods or the trees In the Forest of the Night

how far is it by foot from the Natural History Museum to Trafalgar Square? They seem to have covered the distance remarkably quickly - and easily for a thick forest

If the trees were making that much oxygen you'd be getting spontaneous combustion occurring - yet fires were clearly not possible. Not only bad science, but contradictory

" if every episode was written by isaac asimov, produced by arthur c clarke, directed by stanley kubrick with laurence olivier as the doctor and marilyn monroe as his sidekick"

now that would be a neat trick, a real program "from the dark side" considering they're all dead.....

Vociferous - I said Torchwood moralities - not Torchwood characters. I see one person has followed the link and understands......

the truth is it

was really boring

plotless shit

'twas total crap.

The science doesn't even work. We all know what caused Tunguska, and it wasn't a coronal mass ejection

As for the kids.......aaaargh please shoot them

Given the school setting for this series, maybe they should consider bringing back Ian Chesterton and Barbara White. THEY knew how to keep children under control

Zippy one-liners, broken promises: Doctor Who on the Orient Express

re "The singer was cute"

I thought she looked a bit foxy personally

Frank Skinner as the next Doctor?

Methinks Frank Skinner would make an excellent doctor, far better than Capaldi

NASA tests crazytech flying saucer thruster, could reach Mars in days

"At 1G you can get from Earth to Mars in six days. Yes, six DAYs. LESS THAN A WEEK"

And on the seventh God rested. So God really WAS a Martian

Methinks the thrust observed is due to the cheap chinese capacitors cooking off and venting gas. Did they check the before- and after- mass of the test rig? Wouldn't take very much loss of mass to generate the tiny thrust observed

Supermodel Lily Cole: 'I got a little bit upset by that Register article'

Looks like they can't cope with negative comments - the website has just gone down while they were indulging in a spot of censorship

Ah here she is

http://infodoctorwho.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/siren-3.png

recognise her now?

SPB's mountaintop HQ menaced by wolves

Move all the wolves to Scotland, train them to eat anyone wearing Nationalist badges / rosettes. No need to worry about the independence vote then

Next Windows obsolescence panic is 450 days from … NOW!

Going to be a problem for the NHS. Most of their GP surgeries still run 2003 for their clinical servers, and Exchange Server 2003 for e-mail - which in itself causes headaches with Win 7 clients.

Most of the clinical systems will work with Win2008R2 server, but not 2012.

OK, not as big a problem as the NHS has at present, trying to upgrade the clients on a shoestring, but its going to be a logistical nightmare - theres not many who know the clinical software and how to put it all together

NHS tears out its Oracle Spine in favour of open source

what bothers me is how are the various bits of front-end software from Emis, iSoft and others going to interface with it?

all very well introducing a new Spine, but you may be forcing a rewrite of the patient booking and recording systems as well. And for some of the older systems thats not going to happen...

Steven Moffat fumes over Doctor Who plot leak

it was all crap anyway

if Moffat's plots were worth watching then I'd have more sympathy. But the truth is, since he took over the program has gone down the pan

Bring back Christopher Eccleston

Falklands hero Marine: Save the Harrier, scrap the Tornado

@ Admiral of the pink

the problem is not bombing houses - its bombing enemy combatants in close hand - to - hand fighting. No tanks in those hills, so the aircraft have to act as airborne support artillery. The blast radius of even a 50kg bomb would in many cases be more than the contact distance between the two sides. Add that to the natural inaccuracy (even LGBs can miss) and the risk of killing your own forces is too high. There have been well documented instances of UK troops pinned down by enemy fire, needing air support and all was available was a bombed-up Harrier - which was rendered impotent by the close contact distance

@ Robin Penny re petition

No new petitions allowed and the existing ones have been closed - unless they'd already hit 500 sigs

see http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/new

Harriers don't have guns

One overlooked problem with Julian Thompson's argument. The most important weapon a close-air-support aircraft can have is a gun. The Sea Harrier had them. The old Falkands -era Harrier GR3 had them. The Tornado has them. The current generation of GR7/GR9 Harriers do not due to technical problems, even though the yanks successfully mated guns to their equivalent AV-8B Harriers

Its not so long ago that this very website was quoting a British commander as describing the current Harrier's support capabilities as "fucking useless" due to the missing guns. The problem is that combat is at such short range that using bombs or rockets would be too inaccurate, besides which they're a "one shot" weapon: miss and you've nothing left. With a gun you can come back for a second attempt

In reality the ideal air platform for use in Afghanistan would be a stealthed version of the Argentine Pucara. Take one of those, redesign the fuselage and wings using materials and structures developed from stealth drones and you'd have a stable, accurate weapons platform with little chance of being detected

New Euro multicopter aims bitchslap at American X2, V-22

It'll be a bith cto fly....

This thing is going to have a problem in that the power to the two forward props will have to be asymmetric to balance the rotational torque of the rotor. As the rotor speeds up/down the problems in keeping the thrust of the two props balanced to stop torque rotation is going to be damned hard. As there is no tail rotor the props are going to have to be turning even at ground level to stop spin. No chance of safe exit in an emergency

Fairey Rotodyne

Westland should dust off the blueprints for the Fairey Rotodyne, they must still be knocking around the ofices in Yeovil somewhere

Re-engineer it using composites and you'd have something that could outperform any of these

Google's Microsoft browser outlives Wave nonsense

Google crapware

if I've read this right, it means that you need the plugin to view Google mail in IE.

Damn good reason to stop using Google mail (or Sky mail)

no way I'm letting their spying software loose on my network

Defence Minister 'to big up electropulse threat' - report

coincidence

is it coincidence that last nights episode of "Spooks" featured just such an EMP weapon used in central London???? (although it was used by the "good" guys to defeat a terrorist bomb in a submarine

Leonard Nimoy in 'no more Spock' shock

didn't do much for Time computers

He never came to the Time Factory - which was in Simonstone anyway, miles away from Bolton

He never came, so we never met him, and his adverts did sweet FA for our sales, though they cost us a packet in fees. After that all we could afford for the next advert was a scruffy old drunk who we called "Captain Apocalypse". Between the two of them they scuppered sale so well we nearly went bust four years before we finally did

Apple voids warranties over cigarette smoke, users say

fag smoke IS toxic

As someone who has worked in both computer repair and the manufacture of research chemicals, I for one know that cigarette tar IS toxic/carconogenic and I for one will not touch machines that show any significant degree of contamination with it

I used to work for Time Computers and they had the same rule: if the machine was deemed a health hazard it did not get fixed. It was sent back to the customer to clean out and remove any nicotine tar traces. Once that was done, then we'd repair it

its also worth pointing out that fag smoke also is responsible for a lot of system failures: it causes havoc with CD floppy and hard drives, and can short out motherboard sockets. I've also seen many cases where it has caused PSUs to flashover and burn with quite significant fire hazards

During my chemical career we used to take nicotine tar, and extract chemicals from it and sell the result as a carcinogenic standard. Basically it was used to test how toxic different batches of tobacco were. The stuff we produced had a known toxicity: it was known exactly how quickly an animal population subjected to it would take to develop cancers. (note the time period was days. Not weeks or months or years. Days)

Tar and residue from smoking is a biohazard and must be treated as such. To do otherwise opens an employer to all kinds of legal problems from a Health and Safety perspective