Technology Means It Would Be Easier to Leave the Euro Than It Was To Join
When I wrote the piece about Michael Spencer’s thoughts on the drachma, I didn’t think the whole thing through. I didn’t think about all the new notes that would need to be printed and the conversion of cash machines.
But this article sets it all out. It also contains this interesting paragraph.
“It also rather depends on how individual institutions adapted their systems to the original change-over to the euro,” says Lewis. “My guess is that many organisations in Greece might simply have put a converter around their existing systems, rather as some UK companies did when we went decimal in 1971 – we discovered in the run-up to the year 2000 that at least one major insurance company’s accounts were still running in pounds, shillings and pence!”
So we were still using £sd in 2000. I’ll also admit that in some of the systems I’ve programmed, where we displayed data in Iranian dates or Korean currency, what went on underneath wasn’t pretty. But it worked!
So how did I find the article. A friend told me that De La Rue were printing drachma notes. So I used Google and found that Greece would probably use its own security printer.
Although the De La Rue share price was up by one percent today.
The Sharing of Patient Data
David Cameron is getting a lot of criticism about his plans to anonymously share patient data with private companies.
As someone, who has lost two close relatives to difficult cancers and suffered a serious stroke, I can’t see what the problem is about, if the patients personal details are kept confidential.
I was once told by a senior research manager of a big German pharmaceutical company, that only about fifteen percent of medical databases have been analysed to any great extent. He felt that it would take an increasing part of medical research.
My son was part of a major trial being coordinated by a renowned British University. I was invited to see their work and was totally impressed at the care they were taking to make sure the data was correct and properly safeguarded. They were also looking for patterns in the data, as any clue, however small, might be invaluable in the fight against disease.
One thing that has to be said, is that if you are looking at any database for patterns, then that database must be complete, with no errors in the data. I have come across researchers, who when they are trying to prove something in a field like archaeology, first clean the data of anything that doesn’t fit their theories.
That is the biggest problem in research.
The Anonymous Widower 