NHS IT is unbelievably restrictive, partly due to misguided security policies and partly due to outdated hardware and software (Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP is typical). So staff are always going to do whatever they can to bypass the bollocks and use time and labour-saving 21st century technology. As they're medics and not techies, this will be done with high-street defaults rather than more appropriate security. The solution is obvious: the IT departments need to catch up with 2015 technology.
Posts by Neil Hoskins
424 publicly visible posts • joined 25 Jul 2007
Phone-fondling docs, nurses sling patient info around willy-nilly
Cambridge boffins: STOP the rush to 5G. We just don't need it
NHS quango fatcats spend £2m tax dosh on iPads and iPhones
DRUPAL-OPCALYPSE! Devs say best assume your CMS is owned
Mobile coverage on trains really is pants
EE accused of silencing customer gripes on social media pages
Conspiracy Theory
I just got back from a touring holiday in Spain and France which had been planned around use of mobile technology (on T-mobile) for using booking.com, location services, etc etc. Three days in, PAYG roaming just stops working. You can imagine I was more than a little miffed. My formal complaint when I got back is still not answered, maybe because I used profane language ("bloody inconvenient", I think I said). So how about this for a theory:
- EU forces providers to bring down the cost of roaming
- Some customers (me) are on old tariffs that are extremely good value by present-day standards
- So you give those customers lousy service in the hope that they'll change to a more reliable tariff or leave completely.
- Customer decides to move to Vodafone but in the meantime will cause a stink on social media
- Such discontents on social media must be silenced.
Video of US journalist 'beheading' pulled from social media
Microsoft Cortana EULA contains the Greatest Disclaimer of ALL TIME
Giant pop can FOUND ON MOON
Nokia: What to do with our euro BEELLIONS... Eh, let's spaff some on connected cars
Re: Nokia sat nav
I only just found out that the current Lumias don't do re-routing according to traffic conditions, so my N8 has been pulled out of the drawer; so much for convergence. Maybe Nokia should spend some of their billions on bringing Here Drive back up to the standard it was several years ago on Symbian. With Google now pushing towards offline maps, Nokia are in severe danger of being left behind in mapping, just as they were with smartphones. With mapping gone, there won't be much left and they'll have to go back to selling wellies.
Dropbox defends fantastically badly timed Condoleezza Rice appointment
Reg tries out Google's Chromecast: Yep, we even tested smut sites
How Britain could have invented the iPhone: And how the Quangocracy cocked it up
I don't think...
... the iPhone's success was because of its touchscreen; I think it was because it was made by Apple and was therefore cool and shiny. The fanbois and bloggers and tech-journos-who-should-have-known-better like the BBC's Rory Cellan-Jones then wouldn't stop blathering on about the sodding thing. The only reason that everybody has followed suit is that the Apple spin doctors have convinced everybody that that's what they want. Personally, I hate bloody capacitive touchscreens: most people's fingers are too fat to get any real control, and you end up with smudges all over your screen - it's complete madness.
First the Yanks, now us: In-flight mobe use WON'T kill us all, say Eurocrats
Finns, roamers, Nokia: So long, and thanks for all the phones
Terror cops swoop on couple who Googled 'backpacks' and 'pressure cooker'
Pen+tablet bandwagon finally rolling, Nvidia leaps aboard
Living with a 41-megapixel 808 PureView: Symbian's heroic last stand
Other significant selling points:
- Removable battery: you can either replace a clapped-out one or upgrade to an enormous Mugen replacement that will last you several days away from mains power.
- SD card so you're not going to run out of storage. You also used to be able to install apps to SD card on Symbian but I don't know if this is still the case.

"BBC’s iPlayer arrived on Symbian first"
Couldn't swear to it, but I have a distinct memory of them doing it for the iPhone first, despite it being just an over-hyped feature phone (at the time), and the ubiquity of Nokia and Symbian (at the time). Or maybe it was downloading that iPhone got first; something really annoyed me anyway.
Fraudster gets ten years after selling fake 'ionic charge' bomb detectors
But...
...from what we've been reading on these pages over the years, it's just an extreme example. Most of the devices and security measures in place at airports are a complete sham, to keep the public scared and the terrorists thinking they might get caught. They're still taking drinking water off passengers, despite the fact that there was never a viable liquid bomb plot. At Schipol, they make you stand in a big perspex box that looks like it's out of Star Trek, which I can say with a fair degree of confidence, does FUCK ALL.
It was the Reg what won it: Online Hitchhiker's Guide thriving

Mobile
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a wholly remarkable book, was, of course, primarily a mobile device. Douglas Adams foretold the popularity of smartphones and connected tablets while we still thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea. Which is why I've always been puzzled about the H2G2 site being aimed primarily at desktops. There does, in fact, seem to be some content at h2g2.mobi, but this looks really cut-down: text-only, in fact. What is needed is something aimed primarily at 4" and 7" devices.
EE extends network: Soon, 1 million users will pay us for 4G
WHITE WHALE spent 4 years trying to tell us something, then stopped
Galaxy S III dumps universal search, tries to dodge Apple's sueballs
Being a skinny is much more unhealthy than being fat – new study

Here we go again...
I think you may be confusing correlation with causation. Underweight people are probably underweight due to an underlying pathology; that is, they're already ill. Overweight people are likely to be overweight because they eat too much but are otherwise healthy... for the time being.
Swiss space-cleaning bot grabs flying junk, hurls itself into furnace

Chocs and clocks?
OK, I know you're just making a little joke, but this perception of the Swiss has annoyed me ever since I visited one of their machine-tool companies in the eighties. For years I had to listen to Thatcherites saying that we could base an economy on financial services, "like the Swiss", knowing it to be utter bullshit.
A preview of SOPA: Web shut down before my eyes
Olympics volunteers urged not to blab online
Netflix UK to stream BBC shows
Nokia's Great Lost Platform
Nokia's Windows comeback: Great but what's next?

Nothing new under the sun
I'm glad you pointed-out that the People app isn't really a new idea, since my N900 has something very similar. But that's the whole point about the mysteries of marketing, isn't it? Bill Gates was trying to shove tablet PCs down our throats years before the iPad. There were UIQ touchscreen smartphones years before the iPhone. As far back as the seventies, I remember Yamaha bringing out a bike with a "revolutionary" square-four engine, but some grey-haired old duffer then remembers that a British company had tried something similar about a hundred years previously. It's all very, very strange.
Leo DiCaprio slated to play Turing in biopic
Canonical ARMs Ubuntu for microserver wars
Nokia WinPho handset resurfaces in factory flick
Educating Verity the OU way
Moderatrix kisses the Reg goodbye
Nokia's Windows phone outed on video
America demands definition of fourth generation
Hannspree Hannspad 10.1in Android tablet

Skype
Skype was never going to be very good on mobile devices, being dependent upon always-connected 'supernodes' whose owners don't mind their resources being gobbled up. It's not even very good with networked modern desktop devices. If you want to make free/cheap VoIP calls, use SIP, if you want to make video calls to the grandchildren in Australia, use Google Talk or similar. (And no, I have no idea if google talk video works on android; it doesn't work too well on my N900 but no worse than Skype.)
Nokia unveils Contractual Obligation Meego Phone

I tend to agree
The Maemo tablet series bubbled along quite happily in the background until they made the catastrophic decision to chuck it all in the bin and start again. This is the 'start again' and I must say it looks quite good. I agree the average spoilt-rich-numpty doesn't give a toss what OS his/her phone is running. The UI looks intuitive and simple. The third party apps look good (they've had plenty of time to get them right, let's be honest). If the price is right and it's bug-free on launch, I think it may well sell. Apart from anything else, it's an alternative if the first windows devices turn out to be crap. Certainly the flash support and tethering-out-of-the-box is one in the eye for the fanbois.
Earth may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade
IATA: this iPad could BRING DOWN A PLANE
IAEA: Handling of Fukushima has been exemplary
What is UltraViolet™ and why should you care?
Nokia betas some DLNA love
Twitter forced to hand over user details to English council

"...celebrities said to have taken out injunctions..."
If that's what this debate has been reduced to then it's a real shame. To me it was always more about not being allowed to say that Banker A has been found to be incompetent, or that Russian B trying to buy an English football club is an ex-con.