They also might remember the Health and Social Care Act of 2015 which makes a hospital liable if patient care is adversely affected by not sharing patient data with another hospital.
If only there were some National body in the NHS UK... we could call it NHS Digital for instance, who you might charge with the task of setting up some data centres, using some third parties like Accenture, CSC (now DXC), BT and Fujitsu to provide them..
I've been challenged to consider a cloud solution for a Radiology refresh. The problem I have is the cost of transferring 400TB of data to the Cloud - and supporting a growth of 3TB a month for the foreseeable, and making it cheaper than the JBOD alternative.
Doctors are very educated people - spent most of their 20s in higher education, and they do look down their noses at IT people. They think they understand computers, and this may be their problem. I have endless debates with clinicians about doing 'skills transfer' of my knowledge and experience to more junior members of staff - why can't they do the job I do? I have to bite my lip to stop making pointed remarks about having spent 40 years working in IT, I know that skills transfer is not something that can easily be achieved. Sheesh, those Its Better Manually people thought I could perform a skills transfer of supporting a huge CRM system to a bunch of people four time zones away with a set of slides and a 2 hour conference call.
At least some of those WinXP devices are embedded in some clinical solution; one hospital I know of had a leak in to their network from a remote third party administrator logging in to a medical imaging device. They were still running WinXP since their device is a medical device that has been certified at a particular software level, and can't easily be patched or upgraded.
When the crypto miners disappear, there may be a glut of NVidia cards on a certain popular auction site.. or maybe they will start to think of something more useful to do with all of that compute power designed to work on massively parallel problems. They might start doing a bit of Computer Aided Detection for radiologists using AI for instance, or sell their services to hospitals and universities to do genome processing, or sell their compute cycles to companies doing research into battery technology, or finding new antibiotics; or research into using Thorium for nuclear reactors, or at the very least hand some compute power to SETI.
Well, give them something of a break. A bunch on the list have *died*.
I do admit though that the bands I listen to still had very little impact on the singles charts; Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Led Zep..
I have enough smatterings of languages to almost hold a conversation in a number of them. This of course means I can't hold a whole conversation in any of them, so I was delighted a few years ago to be in a bar in Luxembourg having a wide-ranging, deep and wide conversation with a European diplomat in a number of languages at the same time. If I couldn't find the right French word in the middle of a sentence, I would use the German, or at the very worst English (though he wasn't very good at all at English). He'd reply in bits of Spanish, Danish and so on. I even tossed in a bit of Russian for good measure. Halfway through the conversation he shared with me that we were instinctively using a technique that was his passion - the macaronic language Europanto - unfortunately now no longer a recognised language; it made far more sense to me than learning an entirely new, generic language.
I'd disagree. I have an HTC 10 that is suffering from an ageing battery and I need to wait another 9 months for a replacement from my supplier. It took a year for the battery life to start suffering badly, and now if it's dropped to 15% as it will do in 5-6 hours of normal use in a day, it will restart if I attempt to launch any app that happens to use the camera, for instance.
Further - the one reason we find it hard to mine rare earth oxides in the US is that the waste byproduct is Thorium, which we don't know how to deal with. If there were a way of consuming the Thorium, we could avoid importing rare earth products from the Far East..
The other one I have successfully used elsewhere is an Asterisk VoIP server. Cisco phones are cheap on auction sites; use the existing network, set up SIP on the phones, or install Zoiper (other SIP clients are available) on peoples mobile phones so they register automatically when they come in the building.. It's very different set of skills, but help is available for setting up Asterisk on Linux and could be a step in the right direction for your company if you're not VoIP already. Getting a small department up on VoIP and benefiting from the call routing/failover/voicemail/group call pickup/voice menus/automated telephone directories..
What I would do is to give them a machine, park it on their desks and get them to install Linux on it. Tell them you want them to install and configure something that will be of use to you running on Linux. There must be something your department is missing that is sorely needed that they can get going, and at the same time pick up some skills in configuring Linux and installing software, patching, maintaining, backing up, monitoring etc. It's important that you don't give them artificial problems to solve - it needs to be real, and useful if they get it working well so there is real payback for this investment in time. Perhaps a web service like a CMDB, or a knowledge base - install Apache, Samba etc.
Perhaps there is a production service that you want monitored; they could install Zabbix as a service, and then get them to install the agents on servers, produce the dashboard, monitor it daily and identify and fix issues that are shown up.
Perhaps you need a backup service for all of your desktop machines. Get them to install Amanda as a backup server. Install a tape drive, create a backup regimen.
Get them to install some virtualisation software - build a test model of a production service with the same software levels where you can test changes &c.
AND get them to document everything, coz when they go you will want them to hand it over to someone else as an easily maintained service. If it sticks, and they get enthused, then let them do some simple changes on the production services, and so on. If the only cost to you is to move some existing machine that isn't being used elsewhere, and all of the software is free as in beer, what harm could it do? Give them two machines each, get them to set up clustering, HA, PostGreSQL running in an active/active configuration.. or let them use their imaginations.
.. which is why I was delighted when Apple decided to use PowerPC for its products, and was equally hacked off when they dropped it again. But then ARM happened, so it's not all bad. Intel still has meaningful competition; does Google? Facebook? Amazon?
When we used to make our own hi-fi because that was the only way we could afford sounds. The BD1 turntable was - well, basic I think the word is, but I couldn't beat the value. I made a wooden plinth for it, spent two weeks wages on a Transcriptors Fluid arm and Shure cartridge. This was for playing LPs, people. I was given a pair of Riga loudspeakers, and I made a stereo amp from a project in Practical Electronics magazine. I think Nursery Cryme by Genesis was the first LP that I played on it. Oh, nope, I just remembered - Deep Purple in Rock.
When you could tell the quality of your transistor radio because the name told you how many transistors there were inside.. 8 was good, 12 was sooo much better (thanks, Zenith).
TBH, where GUIs are desired for cluster management &c, it's often easier to present an HTTPS service on the nodes (or head nodes) so you can point a browser at it. I am working at the moment with an HPC build in a hospital; I have to use their VPN solution to get into the cluster, and that routes me to a Windows box to act as a jump-off point with an account on the local AD. Of course the Windows box has a web browser (ancient) - so that comes in quite handy. The hospital IT department won't install an X server on it, so thankful am I that most of the GUI tools can be run from a browser.
I had to find a terminal emulator that I could use without installing, so Teraterm came to the rescue again. Lovely program that stores its settings in the directory it is launched from as well.. There are still some cluster tools that either require X or a client that needs installing (more sucking of teeth from the IT department. I found one set of cluster tools launches Firefox and provides a plug-in for it, but IT won't install Firefox.I can't find an X server that doesn't need to be installed on the Windows box either.
You know the old saying - "It's better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission" ?
Not so much in this case. Far better to ask for permission for legitimate research into IS, jihadi weapon use, construction of WMD, than to try to wheedle out of a prison sentence.
I worked at IBM for 27 years, so I speak with a modicum of knowledge. I wrote a management memo twenty years ago that said as long as IBM failed to recognise that few of our customers needed them to prevail, and they could go elsewhere for competitively priced solutions without fear of loss of a quality solution, or reputation then IBM could kiss their shiny metal asses goodbye. From when I joined the company, and they were the largest IT company in the world, nearly ten times bigger than their nearest rivals (who were Digital by the way) they had already fallen a long, long way. Now look at them, grasping on to AI as if it is going to save the company any more than it did with "Expert Systems" in the 80s.
I'd still personally specify a big AIX/POWER architecture engine over any other big machine, but it is getting so much tougher to win that battle with decision makers.
I'd argue that it makes sense to offshore to India, to Lithuania, to Africa, to Brazil. This is an information industry, and it is eminently portable to anywhere with decent connectivity. If there are some presumably temporary currency exchange, living costs or lifestyle differences that some tech company will exploit, in the race for the bottom then all tech companies will need to consider it.
The difference for me is that we pay a high premium for IBM, and expect #1 performance for that premium. If we are getting also-ran kind of performance for premium dollar, then you'll gradually lose revenue quarter on quarter.
Dear IBM, you're playing a game you can't win. Change the rules. Deliver premium performance so your existing price points can be supported, and you have delighted customers. Or shut the doors. Your choice.
Technology is at a point where the entry price is so high for a new development it is very largely driven by Big Pharma, Big Tech and Big Data. Where all ideas come from the Big Ideas factories, all the ideas guys have been tamed, and work within the boundaries of the Big Ideas factory. Only the super-rich (Elon, we love you) have the capability to invest.
Slashdot Mirror
They also might remember the Health and Social Care Act of 2015 which makes a hospital liable if patient care is adversely affected by not sharing patient data with another hospital.
If only there were some National body in the NHS UK ... we could call it NHS Digital for instance, who you might charge with the task of setting up some data centres, using some third parties like Accenture, CSC (now DXC), BT and Fujitsu to provide them ..
I've been challenged to consider a cloud solution for a Radiology refresh. The problem I have is the cost of transferring 400TB of data to the Cloud - and supporting a growth of 3TB a month for the foreseeable, and making it cheaper than the JBOD alternative.
Doctors are very educated people - spent most of their 20s in higher education, and they do look down their noses at IT people. They think they understand computers, and this may be their problem. I have endless debates with clinicians about doing 'skills transfer' of my knowledge and experience to more junior members of staff - why can't they do the job I do? I have to bite my lip to stop making pointed remarks about having spent 40 years working in IT, I know that skills transfer is not something that can easily be achieved. Sheesh, those Its Better Manually people thought I could perform a skills transfer of supporting a huge CRM system to a bunch of people four time zones away with a set of slides and a 2 hour conference call.
At least some of those WinXP devices are embedded in some clinical solution; one hospital I know of had a leak in to their network from a remote third party administrator logging in to a medical imaging device. They were still running WinXP since their device is a medical device that has been certified at a particular software level, and can't easily be patched or upgraded.
When the crypto miners disappear, there may be a glut of NVidia cards on a certain popular auction site .. or maybe they will start to think of something more useful to do with all of that compute power designed to work on massively parallel problems. They might start doing a bit of Computer Aided Detection for radiologists using AI for instance, or sell their services to hospitals and universities to do genome processing, or sell their compute cycles to companies doing research into battery technology, or finding new antibiotics; or research into using Thorium for nuclear reactors, or at the very least hand some compute power to SETI.
At least HPCs might become more accessible.
Agreed - for example Sia must have written songs for pretty much every contemporary pop Diva.
Well, give them something of a break. A bunch on the list have *died*.
..
I do admit though that the bands I listen to still had very little impact on the singles charts; Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Deep Purple, Led Zep
Indeed a lot of bands came into being since they couldn't get anyone else to play the stuff they had composed.
I have enough smatterings of languages to almost hold a conversation in a number of them. This of course means I can't hold a whole conversation in any of them, so I was delighted a few years ago to be in a bar in Luxembourg having a wide-ranging, deep and wide conversation with a European diplomat in a number of languages at the same time. If I couldn't find the right French word in the middle of a sentence, I would use the German, or at the very worst English (though he wasn't very good at all at English). He'd reply in bits of Spanish, Danish and so on. I even tossed in a bit of Russian for good measure. Halfway through the conversation he shared with me that we were instinctively using a technique that was his passion - the macaronic language Europanto - unfortunately now no longer a recognised language; it made far more sense to me than learning an entirely new, generic language.
It's "Romani ite domum" as you well know.
I'd disagree. I have an HTC 10 that is suffering from an ageing battery and I need to wait another 9 months for a replacement from my supplier. It took a year for the battery life to start suffering badly, and now if it's dropped to 15% as it will do in 5-6 hours of normal use in a day, it will restart if I attempt to launch any app that happens to use the camera, for instance.
Further - the one reason we find it hard to mine rare earth oxides in the US is that the waste byproduct is Thorium, which we don't know how to deal with. If there were a way of consuming the Thorium, we could avoid importing rare earth products from the Far East ..
The other one I have successfully used elsewhere is an Asterisk VoIP server. Cisco phones are cheap on auction sites; use the existing network, set up SIP on the phones, or install Zoiper (other SIP clients are available) on peoples mobile phones so they register automatically when they come in the building .. It's very different set of skills, but help is available for setting up Asterisk on Linux and could be a step in the right direction for your company if you're not VoIP already. Getting a small department up on VoIP and benefiting from the call routing/failover/voicemail/group call pickup/voice menus/automated telephone directories ..
What I would do is to give them a machine, park it on their desks and get them to install Linux on it. Tell them you want them to install and configure something that will be of use to you running on Linux. There must be something your department is missing that is sorely needed that they can get going, and at the same time pick up some skills in configuring Linux and installing software, patching, maintaining, backing up, monitoring etc. It's important that you don't give them artificial problems to solve - it needs to be real, and useful if they get it working well so there is real payback for this investment in time. Perhaps a web service like a CMDB, or a knowledge base - install Apache, Samba etc.
.. or let them use their imaginations.
Perhaps there is a production service that you want monitored; they could install Zabbix as a service, and then get them to install the agents on servers, produce the dashboard, monitor it daily and identify and fix issues that are shown up.
Perhaps you need a backup service for all of your desktop machines. Get them to install Amanda as a backup server. Install a tape drive, create a backup regimen.
Get them to install some virtualisation software - build a test model of a production service with the same software levels where you can test changes &c.
AND get them to document everything, coz when they go you will want them to hand it over to someone else as an easily maintained service. If it sticks, and they get enthused, then let them do some simple changes on the production services, and so on. If the only cost to you is to move some existing machine that isn't being used elsewhere, and all of the software is free as in beer, what harm could it do? Give them two machines each, get them to set up clustering, HA, PostGreSQL running in an active/active configuration
.. which is why I was delighted when Apple decided to use PowerPC for its products, and was equally hacked off when they dropped it again. But then ARM happened, so it's not all bad. Intel still has meaningful competition; does Google? Facebook? Amazon?
I once typed in the whole of the small-C compiler into a Z80 machine I made.
When we used to make our own hi-fi because that was the only way we could afford sounds. The BD1 turntable was - well, basic I think the word is, but I couldn't beat the value. I made a wooden plinth for it, spent two weeks wages on a Transcriptors Fluid arm and Shure cartridge. This was for playing LPs, people. I was given a pair of Riga loudspeakers, and I made a stereo amp from a project in Practical Electronics magazine. I think Nursery Cryme by Genesis was the first LP that I played on it. Oh, nope, I just remembered - Deep Purple in Rock.
When you could tell the quality of your transistor radio because the name told you how many transistors there were inside .. 8 was good, 12 was sooo much better (thanks, Zenith).
TBH, where GUIs are desired for cluster management &c, it's often easier to present an HTTPS service on the nodes (or head nodes) so you can point a browser at it. I am working at the moment with an HPC build in a hospital; I have to use their VPN solution to get into the cluster, and that routes me to a Windows box to act as a jump-off point with an account on the local AD. Of course the Windows box has a web browser (ancient) - so that comes in quite handy. The hospital IT department won't install an X server on it, so thankful am I that most of the GUI tools can be run from a browser.
.. There are still some cluster tools that either require X or a client that needs installing (more sucking of teeth from the IT department. I found one set of cluster tools launches Firefox and provides a plug-in for it, but IT won't install Firefox.I can't find an X server that doesn't need to be installed on the Windows box either.
I had to find a terminal emulator that I could use without installing, so Teraterm came to the rescue again. Lovely program that stores its settings in the directory it is launched from as well
>> Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
.. you use embedded hex codes to type that?
I didn't have lower case on my ASR33
You know the old saying - "It's better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission" ?
Not so much in this case. Far better to ask for permission for legitimate research into IS, jihadi weapon use, construction of WMD, than to try to wheedle out of a prison sentence.
It's going to be tough on reporters.
I worked at IBM for 27 years, so I speak with a modicum of knowledge. I wrote a management memo twenty years ago that said as long as IBM failed to recognise that few of our customers needed them to prevail, and they could go elsewhere for competitively priced solutions without fear of loss of a quality solution, or reputation then IBM could kiss their shiny metal asses goodbye. From when I joined the company, and they were the largest IT company in the world, nearly ten times bigger than their nearest rivals (who were Digital by the way) they had already fallen a long, long way. Now look at them, grasping on to AI as if it is going to save the company any more than it did with "Expert Systems" in the 80s.
I'd still personally specify a big AIX/POWER architecture engine over any other big machine, but it is getting so much tougher to win that battle with decision makers.
I'd argue that it makes sense to offshore to India, to Lithuania, to Africa, to Brazil. This is an information industry, and it is eminently portable to anywhere with decent connectivity. If there are some presumably temporary currency exchange, living costs or lifestyle differences that some tech company will exploit, in the race for the bottom then all tech companies will need to consider it.
The difference for me is that we pay a high premium for IBM, and expect #1 performance for that premium. If we are getting also-ran kind of performance for premium dollar, then you'll gradually lose revenue quarter on quarter.
Dear IBM, you're playing a game you can't win. Change the rules. Deliver premium performance so your existing price points can be supported, and you have delighted customers. Or shut the doors. Your choice.
Technology is at a point where the entry price is so high for a new development it is very largely driven by Big Pharma, Big Tech and Big Data. Where all ideas come from the Big Ideas factories, all the ideas guys have been tamed, and work within the boundaries of the Big Ideas factory. Only the super-rich (Elon, we love you) have the capability to invest.