Don't be foolish. I'm a programmer/analyst for a company which owns 11 hospitals and I can tell you that the security of patient information is taken very, very seriously.
One of the basic tenants of the patient/doctor relationship is confidentiality. A nurse where I work recently was posting on an online medical board and gave just enough information about a case that the patient might be identifiable. She was fired.
What happens if your employer finds out that you have a possibly terminal illness? Does this affect your promotion schedule? Do you want your neighbors to knows that you have an STD? Are you less likely to go see a doctor about awkward problems if it's possible the information might become public?
We have extensive security measures to protect information from doctors and nurses who don't require immediate access to patient data. We have an entire security subsection for employees and vip's who are admitted, so that even IS folks can't see their co-workers data.
To sum up, patient data requires more security in our environment than anything else, including payroll, billing and corporate strategy. I would probably recommend a SecureID type solution for a case like his.
I'm disappointed to see this post labeled 'insightful'. People see a modem which doesn't work with Linux and immediately scream CRAPPY WINMODEM when there is a significant difference between the dsp-driven modem shipped by IBM and the winmodems shipped by 3com. It would make just as much sense for me to have been yelling WIN-TV-CARD or WIN-SCSI-ADAPTER at my hardware prior to the development of Linux drivers for them.
The winmodems have no other purpose than to be cheap. Even under windows, they are inferior to a normal modem because they offload processing onto the CPU.
The Thinkpad, OTOH, uses a DSP to drive their modem and sound (which, btw, is supported by Linux). It has to be initialized at boot-time, but does all the necessary thinking by itself. Just because there is no driver for Linux doesn't change the fact that it's a perfectly wonderful modem.
There is, of course, an issue about how much support IBM has given developers for this particular project, but please save the "cheap-ass hardware in name brand laptop" rant for elsewhere. IBM's laptops are nearly without peer in their engineering and attention to detail.
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One of the basic tenants of the patient/doctor relationship is confidentiality. A nurse where I work recently was posting on an online medical board and gave just enough information about a case that the patient might be identifiable. She was fired.
What happens if your employer finds out that you have a possibly terminal illness? Does this affect your promotion schedule? Do you want your neighbors to knows that you have an STD? Are you less likely to go see a doctor about awkward problems if it's possible the information might become public?
We have extensive security measures to protect information from doctors and nurses who don't require immediate access to patient data. We have an entire security subsection for employees and vip's who are admitted, so that even IS folks can't see their co-workers data.
To sum up, patient data requires more security in our environment than anything else, including payroll, billing and corporate strategy. I would probably recommend a SecureID type solution for a case like his.
The winmodems have no other purpose than to be cheap. Even under windows, they are inferior to a normal modem because they offload processing onto the CPU.
The Thinkpad, OTOH, uses a DSP to drive their modem and sound (which, btw, is supported by Linux). It has to be initialized at boot-time, but does all the necessary thinking by itself. Just because there is no driver for Linux doesn't change the fact that it's a perfectly wonderful modem.
There is, of course, an issue about how much support IBM has given developers for this particular project, but please save the "cheap-ass hardware in name brand laptop" rant for elsewhere. IBM's laptops are nearly without peer in their engineering and attention to detail.