[Gllug] Dealing with "Word-Only" organisations

[Christopher Hunter]

On Mon, 2010-11-08 at 17:03 +0000, general_email at technicalbloke.com 
> Yes I remember the NHS standard issue ugly steel cages, they were such a 
> pain in the arse. Every time we decommisioned a PII vintage machine we 
> had to unscrew these ruddy huge bolts leaving a great big holes in 
> peoples desks and a massive patch of unfaded surface. Still, they were 
> happy to have twice as much deskspace!
> 
> Last time I saw the inside of an MRI lab (about 5 years ago) they were 
> still running proper workstations, SGIs IIRC. That was the only place on 
> the whole hospital campus where there were non-Win2K desktops though.

Papworth Hospital installed an ICD in me - an "Implanted Cardioverter
Defibrillator", as a "belt and braces" protection after some major heart
surgery.  

I was VERY relieved to find that the laptop that is used to programme
these ICDs does NOT run Windows!  It appeared to run a Debian variant
with a XFce desktop, and booted straight into the application.  The
laptop communicated with the ICD using a "wand" which inductively
coupled to it.

Every six months they download the data from the ICD, which gives very
full details of battery condition and any medical interventions the
thing has done.  Unfortunately, the battery doesn't last forever, so I
have to have another operation next year to replace it...

C.



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