Haskell and floppy disks in Norwegian government
gundersen.net
gundersen.net
Notice that the company he works for gets the records that are to be distributed in EBCDIC format.
According to Wikipedia that can be traced back to IBM punchcards! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC
And i'm not surprised, likely older, doctors cling to their DOS interfaces. I recall watching cashiers operating similar ones at various stores, and once you have the keys down navigating the interface can be quite fast.
Also, you never have to worry about some errant popup or other stealing focus...
I have discussed the topic of medical software with my father extensively, who is a M.D. in a rural town in Norway.
The reason is efficiency. As a doctor you are required to look up a lot of information on the patient, while maintaining a conversation with them. This is only really possible with a keyboard only interface. The older DOS systems does this, and the newer GUI based packages largely does not.
Maybe it's rather the resolution and small fonts that are hard to read with growing age and the developing eye cancer from looking at 240p fullscreen goodness for too long. I know it's true in my case.
The basic benefit of these interfaces seem to be about single keys (F keys mostly) for reaching major functions.
I am guessing that once the patients id number has been entered, a single key brings up the journal, and one can page through entries (and their content) using single presses (next/prev entry, page up/down style).
You can rebind stuff. As an example, the magit mode for rebasing has a whole bunch of one-key functions, specifically optimised for the task at hand. A "doctor-mode" might have exactly those F-keys do what you describe. But anyway, this is a case of me wanting to do everything in Emacs :P. At least that would allow the rest of the system to be upgraded, instead of running DOS(box) or whatever they do now...
Anyway, way OT.
One of which was probably Elkjøp, the Dixons in the North? They have a text based system in-store for looking up stock. I occasionally work on a product that is similar to Elkjøp's and also for retail, and although we have a web version of the text based legacy system many users still use the text-based system because it is fast, has no pictures to wait on and all major functionality is mapped to F-keys.
The F-keys are a major boost for users, even on the web-based port (same back end (COBOL) ported frontend to GUI). When we get new employees they almost always suggest remapping shortcuts from function keys to ctrl-shift-something, which is a stupid idea for 4 reasons:
1. you now have a new key combination to learn
2. the new combination requires pressing more keys that just a single F-key
3. shortcuts in the browser are predefined and now we have to override them (as we do for F1=help, but less often)
4. the function keys are there for exacltly the reason we use them
I completely understand why doctors and others, like in retail, want to continue using text based systems. No CSS painting, no complicated layouts, no ditractons.
On the down side: backend in COBOL in 2015 - you limit your pool of available talent.
We were promised they were just teething troubles and would all be fixed for the final rollout. Of course, they weren't and Eclipse was universally despised within the Group stores. Dixons Group ran into massive financial trouble shortly afterwards, although no word either way on whether the new till / stock control system was a factor. Amazing how it all comes flooding back!
It still makes me shudder when I go into a Dixons Group store and see Eclipse still in use. I almost break out into a cold sweat.
EDIT clarification
As for the ergonomics issue, i think that is known as "gorilla arm".
My personal take there is that screens for input and screens for output should be put at very different orientations. A input screen really belong at a near flat angle, much like with a keyboard.
Also, i wonder if the resurgence of pressure sensitivity (See Apple's force/3D touch as an example) will make for some change in this. Especially if one combine it with some kind of tech that can give the screen software controlled textures.
Having to upgrade keyboards with physical key-caps is a nightmare. You have to send an actual person (a human!) out to do upgrades.
Intersting point about controleld textures, any idea how you can see that being used in a shop POS? With only a minute's thought the first thing I came up with was allowing blind people to work retail ... everything is automated now anyway, you don't even hand cash to a human, you just stick it in a hole.
Yeah, imagine that. To hell with the people who have to use those interfaces day in and day out. /s
Why can't you send them to the store and get someone there to swap the keyboards?
Also consider the cost of custom keyboards for shops, no t just hte layout but the quality of these items, keypresses thousands of times a week. When something breaks and you aren't sure what it, raspberry jam under a key, or a broken screen. It's easier to diagnose and fix a screen or remote software. I can't use your physical keyboard over a network.
As a .NET developer myself I certainly don't envy the guys who had to deal with all our complaints from the shop floor, and of course the ageing SCO system had to be replaced with something. These days it would probably be something lightweight and browser based as opposed to a full-blown WinForms application, pretty much emulating the old terminal-based setup (hardware-wise if not interface-wise). The keyboard navigation and super-low-latency feedback of the old system would still be a huge challenge, though.
Frankly i find myself wondering if it is high time that computer education is split between computer science and computer engineering.
It seems to me that much of the ailments of the computing world is that people keep bringing stuff from computer science into the larger world virtually untested.
For me, floppies started failing when I didn't need to use them as often. The drive would get dusty from lack of use, and I'd put a disk in and it would be destroyed. I ended up using one floppy as a "cleaning disk" for the rare occasion when I needed to use the floppy. I'd attempt to do something on the disk and the activity would make it safe for the next disk I put in (generally).
It to a coworker and my self 2 days to install the pilot site for only 5 users.
I remember saying to my boss that about the www that when the it becomes more mature we could save so much time in product roll out.
I have yet to find a web app that can make up its mind about being a app or a site.
Maybe the problem is more that they invariably existing inside a chrome-less browser window, but sooner or later some niggle shows up that you can't find on proper native UI.
Confirmed from my experience too. Luckily, archives with recovery records sometimes saved the day.
You wouldn't need a bootloader like grub unless you're trying to boot from the floppy.
Maybe your bike was generating a magnetic field?
Someone could intercept a floppy and read/write its data, but putting malware on it and getting the receiver to execute it unnoticed is going to be much harder than with a USB drive. Putting a floppy into a drive literally does not cause any code to execute - it's only when commanded to, i.e. when the drive is accessed, that things start happening. There's no AutoPlay for floppies. Contrast this with the whole USB enumeration process.
Opening an envelope is easy, doing so without being detected day in day out is hard.
Actually there was a joke going around here in Germany when the NSA scandal broke, talking about how jealous all the ex-Stasi guys must be that the NSA had beaten them at their own surveillance game...
I also wouldn't trust a floppy controller's firmware any more than I would a CD or USB controller's firmware.
Our customer had edited a doc on her husbands pc and got infected - the pre boot checks caught it.
http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Floppy-Drive-FL-UDRV/...
As a norwegian, I have to say its good to see these guys have a sense of humour about their (honestly) pointless work :)
> The government seems to finally close down floppy distribution at the beginning of 2016, forcing any remaining doctors over to newer electronic patient journals. Sadly, the chosen strategy is just to offer paper printouts instead, requiring error-prone rekeying at the doctor’s office.
It seems like these guys have a potential business in selling a device/appliance to bridge the "secure electronic option" to floppy gap (without relying on paper): Basically make doctors do this work themselves. A laptop (running locked down Linux for security reasons) and a USB floppy drive. You can easily charge 10x hardware cost, so no need to skimp, and you can support by exchanging the entire setup via post.
The lock-in is provided by the extreme niche-ness of the market the conservatism of these doctors. These floppy-guys have a unique position in the market, they know exactly what to do -- they are basically the only ones who can credibly pitch these doctors at all. Once they've bought a solution that actually works, is stable and compliant etc., these doctors are not going to shop around to save maybe $1-2000/year (or whatever you can charge in maintenance), it's simply not worth their while and the risk. Remember, these are not scrappy little outfits, they have cash to spend, and they will spend it if you can supply stability and continuity.
"Classified info on a Lenovo Thinkpad?"
Haha, oh boy.