Computer Disasters Inc.
Some years ago, I was discussing, what we might do with someone in Metier, if the whole venture had gone bust. I suggested an idea, which keeps coming back to me called Computer Disasters Inc.
NatWorst now is in need of such a company, which I envisaged as the Red Adair of the computer industry. NatWorst will certainly be paying out fees on a scale Red Adair would have thought reasonable.
Access To Medical Records for Research Purposes
The Times today has an article entitled, NHS red tape ‘is strangling life-saving medical research’, which says it all.
If you consider that Richard Doll, proved the link between smoking and lung cancer using medical records, you realise how important this is, especially as the NHS database is the largest medical database in the world.
I don’t care what any researcher does with my medical records, provided what they do is morally acceptable.
Surely what you do is allow researchers to run queries on the database, provided the research has been approved by the NHS.
The Last Match on ITV
Tonight’s match is last one, that I’ll have to watch on ITV. Yippee!
But I’ll be listening to the match commentary on my laptop.
It’s certainly the best way to watch football with adverts.
I wonder what percentage do it this way or listen to a radio for the commentary?
The Return of NatWorst
Some years ago, I used to do the programming and processing for a company called PressWatch, that rated the coverage of major companies in the UK printed media.
Some time before I programmed the system, NatWest had a string of bottom places and were labelled NatWorst by some financial journalists.
It would appear from its current computer problems, that along with other banks in the RBS Group, it is attempting to claim the bottom place again. Read about it here.
The article says it is a computer glitch. I would describe it as a computer disaster.
A computer glitch is what I’ve just suffered from Nationwide. They said my credit card statement would be ready online on Wednesday. It didn’t arrive until today. But at least, it didn’t cost me any money, although I did worry, that there might have been some illegal transactions, they were sorting out. Especially, as it’s the VISA card, I use for Olympic tickets. But all is now fine.
Codebreaker At The Science Museum
This morning, I went to see the exhibition about Alan Turing called Codebreaker at the Science Museum.
Posters for Codebreaker
it is actually only a small exhibition, but with good quality and some unusual exhibits, including a differential analyser built out of Meccano.
There was also some exhibits and documents on Turing’s personal life, including the Coroner’s report on his suicide.
The exhibition says that his mother thought his death may not have been suicide and in his Wikipedia entry, this is said.
Turing’s mother argued strenuously that the ingestion was accidental, caused by her son’s careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Biographer Andrew Hodges suggests that Turing may have killed himself in an ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability. Hodges and David Leavitt have suggested that Turing was re-enacting a scene from the 1937 film Snow White, his favourite fairy tale, both noting that (in Leavitt’s words) he took “an especially keen pleasure in the scene where the Wicked Queen immerses her apple in the poisonous brew.”
If you look at others like Turing, such as Newton, you find characters very much on the edge. I used to work with a programmer, who always sang and made strange noises as he coded. He argued that programming was such a logical business, you had to do something mad to balance the mind. Turing wasn’t a programmer in the sense we think now, but he was someone steeped in logic and I suspect the same applied to him.
Sadly, in today’s world, Turing would probably be treasured in much the way Stephen Hawking is.
At least now, hopefully his sexuality would not have been the problem it was in the 1960s.
One Line Spam E-Mails
I have seen a large increase in the number of one line spam e-mails over the last week or so.
Typically, the e-mail has the following characteristics.
- There is rarely a Subject
- The sender maybe someone you know and the e-mail address is not encoded.
- The e-mail is copied to lots of other people, who often are connected to the sender. I’ve just received one from Australia and it is copied to masses of people in the country.
- The body of the e-mail consists of a single complicated link. Don’t click this, as you’ll get infected with a virus or an advert for a drug you don’t need.
So what should you do if you get such an e-mail?
Ask Leo has the details here. Read it.
He says that the sender’s e-mail account has been hacked, so contact them immediately and get them to run a virus check on their computer and change their password and account recovery questions.
I would also advise, that if they use HOTMAIL, GMAIL, YAHOO or any other free e-mail to move away from that account and get a new account. I know it’s a pain, but they could use your account to send other things that you might not like, as they have your current ID and password.
Read Leo as I said and if you don’t believe me, believe him.
I have had five of these e-mails in the last couple of weeks; two from friends, a couple from Australia and another from who knows where.
The frequency seems to be increasing.
A Note For Those On The Other side of the World
The BBC is streaming their coverage of Royal Ascot on the web.
It’s a long way for all those pixels to go.
Turing Remembered
The BBC has an excellent article about Alan Turing on its web site. Interestingly, the article is by Vint Cerf, a guy I saw lecture at the University of Hertfordshire a few years ago. They also share a birthday of June 23rd.
The article has been published because next year, the Science Museum will be mounting an exhibition on Turing. That should be well worth a visit.
Facebook Is a Pain
I keep getting people wanting me to join Facebook. I’m afraid, I don’t join any social networking site, that will have me as a member. I was a member once, but I cancelled it a few months ago.
People Shouldn’t be so Thin-Skinned
There is a story in the Standard last night entitled Tantrum of the Opera. A Twickenham housewife tweeted to her friend that although she had seen the musical eighty times, she couldn’t stand the star. It has now developed into a full-blooded row.
I would make three conclusions from this.
In the first place the comment was only tweeted to a friend and thus the star is being a bit over the top.
Secondly, the lady has seen the musical eighty times, and so as she is effectively paying some of the star’s wages, she deserves a little respect.
Lastly, if I was producing a musical, I know someone, who I wouldn’t be employing.
They were also discussing another case on BBC Breakfast this morning, where someone made a comment about an X-Factor contestant. She has now suffered months of abuse.
She was possibly a bit unwise to say what she says, but it does illustrate, why you should always be careful what you say on social networking sites. However to abuse the lady and call her all sorts of unwise things in totally wrong.
The sooner we have a high profile case, where one of these so called trolls, gets some time at Her Majesty’s pleasure, the better. It will be interesting to see how much abuse the judge gets.
I have had a bit of abuse in my time over this blog and suspect it was because the post was about an odious foreign government.
The Anonymous Widower 