2011 — 3 August: Wednesday
There's some wondrous Bach brightening an otherwise very dull-looking morning as I sup my cup.1 Still, perhaps it won't be quite so hot and sticky today, which would be nice.
Guvmint computing
Returning, sadly, to yesterday's theme. Source and snippet...
The Department of Health will not deliver the £11bn programme intended to create electronic records for all 55 million NHS patients in England and has been "unable to demonstrate" any benefits for the taxpayer, according to a scathing report from MPs. The Commons public accounts committee said parts of the national programme for IT have proved to be unworkable. The Department of Health has so far spent £6.4bn on the programme, which was launched in 2002, including £2.7bn on patient records. MPs said the intention of creating electronic records was a "worthwhile aim" but one "that has proved beyond the capacity of the department to deliver".
I doubt that can all be ascribed to their use of IE6 (but you never know). This isn't news to any reader of "Private Eye", of course, but still forms yet another brick in the wall on which is daubed graffiti describing the UK's atrocious record of public large-scale computing botches. Christa's theory was that, if they were spending their own money — which they actually are, of course — they'd be a jolly sight more careful. I remain unconvinced as I'm fully aware of the issues surrounding any program longer than about three lines and written by any programmer in any language on any system.
Recall Knuth: "I've proven it's correct but I haven't tried it, so I've no idea if it works."2 I can merely hope that Amazon's ordering system, and my bank's credit card system, co-operate in delivering me that Tablet PC I ordered a few hours ago when my resistance was low. One has to wonder why the operating system is called "Android".
This is very witty.
A new world...
... awaits me, it seems.
Should be enough to get me started, methinks. [Pause] The sun has appeared (at 09:48). Time for a spot of food shopping.
Alas, it's still time for food shopping — in fact, we've now wandered over into afternoon territory — but I got badly distracted by some foolish attempts to beef up my Gateway XP machine by adding another 500GB SATA drive, the better of my spare graphics cards, and another GB of RAM (even though the 32-bit cripple would only be able to make sensible use of half of it). I've had to back out each of these fine changes (apart from the SATA drive) in turn just to persuade the poor wee temperamental beastie to boot.
It's official:
Food shopping is now postponed until tomorrow. It will, if the forecast is correct, be pouring with rain then, so won't eat into valuable country walking time. But at the moment it's far too hot out there. I know it is 'cos I'm just back from delivering a box of PC bits to Brian. If he manages to re-assemble them he should find himself with a faster PC (the HP MPC Core2Duo that IBM so kindly subsidised back in October 2006) than he's currently been struggling with. And it gives me a tiny bit more space to move around in. Simplification is the name of the game. That, and reducing the number of different platforms.
My next cuppa awaits my attention. It's 15:53 and a balmy 79F down here. And Mr Postie's just dropped off my next round tuit:
That nice Vince Cable is apparently on the point of decriminalising the act of copying such things to one of my PCs, too. Isn't that timely? And about time too?
I've been sitting...
... outside at the side of the house on a garden chair that's been unused since the "farewell" visit of the Birmingham cousins back in August 2007. It's quite odd to be reading out there with the help of the council's new, white, street-light and still able to see colours. But I've come back in (it's 22:36 and time for some supper) to take shelter from a variety of insects.