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Gaberlunzie was delighted to discover that a cartoon for programmers exists in the US, and in his ignorance wonders why this has never developed in the UK. This was an article in the New York Times, slightly shortened. For a certain subset of Internet users, “Sudo make me a sandwich” may as well be “Take my wife ... please.” Perhaps some explanation is in order. Before giving up the goods, however, we should heed the warning of Randall Munroe, the 23-year-old creator of xkcd, a hugely popular online comic strip (at least among computer programmers) where the sandwich line appeared. Mr. Munroe believes that analysing a joke is like dissecting a frog — it can be done, but the frog dies.

Hot on the heels of The Ministry of Defence publishing Sir Edmund Burton's report into the lost laptops of January 2008, containing the personal details of individuals who expressed interest in joining the Armed Forces, comes news that a senior hospital manager has been suspended after a laptop containing unencrypted personal data of more than 20,000 patients was stole from the NHS staff member's car in an Edinburgh carpark. And in Edinburgh, another furore as a USB memory stick has gone missing also with confidential NHS patient information.

One day after Azzuri launched its Azzurri Communications today launches Instant Retailer, an innovative new service that uses the 3G mobile network to deliver on-demand voice, data, fax and Internet connectivity wherever and whenever it is required, Martin McColl Ltd, claimed as the country’s largest chain of convenience and newsagent stores, has entered into a 5-year fully managed service agreement with East Kilbride based Azzurri and will adopt Azzurri’s Retail Application Network (RAN) across its 1300 stores including 160 stores throughout Scotland.

Margaret Clarke has been promoted from acting principal to the new principal of Hamilton College. Prior to joining in August 2006 she held several education sector senior posts. A mathematics teacherin Dundee in 1978, she subsequently added a teaching qualification in computing to her CV in 1983. Over the next 20 years, she was involved in developing new material and courses with the Scottish CCC, Scottish Examinations Board, and latterly with the SQA.

Geberlunzie, struggling with 4-pin bank security numbers (at least two that keep getting used for the wrong card) phone banking security numbers (another couple) to say nothing of email passwords (alpha-numeric) about three, was rather less than thrilled to fall into the comfort of the local Edinburgh library and discover the bar code plastic library card is now scanned and needs another memorable pin!

The MoD has signed contracts with industry to build the two future aircraft carriers (CVF). The contracts in the region of £3bn, were signed with the newly-formed British shipbuilding company BVT Surface Fleet and the Aircraft Carrier Alliance onboard HMS Ark Royal. Glasgow-based Thales secured £425m for design and engineering; BVT Surface Fleet secured £1.325m for construction of both ships at Govan and Portsmouth; Babcock Marine taking £675m for bow section and final assembly at Rosyth; BAE System has £300m for construction at Barrow-in-Furness yards and BAE Systems INSYTE has £275m for design and supply of mission systems.

Raytheon Company demonstrated the potential to employ a UK adaptation of the US-deployed Distributed Common Ground System (DCGS) to provide a more accurate, timely understanding of an adversary and their actions. The demonstration took place during the 2008 Coalition Warrior Interoperability Demonstration in Portsmouth, U.K. The Raytheon team used key technologies, including DCGS and the DCGS Integration Backbone (DIB), to integrate existing applications, data bases and shared services from diverse intelligence suppliers and users providing UK forces with network-enabled solutions.

A construction surge in transoceanic cable is under way. The new cables will connect the world more closely than ever, add far more bandwidth, and provide enough redundancy for data signals to survive accidents and outages. At present, the transoceanic information system has enough capacity, but that could soon change, and the system has some physical vulnerabilities. In January, an anchor tore two cables linking Europe and Egypt, causing massive outages.

I had no idea what was going on, Murray was reported as saying later. He had slammed the ball down the middle of the court, and started to moved towards the net. Malissehad raised his hand. Malisse wanted to challenge the call with the Hawk-Eye ball-tracking system. Umpire Lars Graff thought that he was indicating that he had not been ready to receive. Graff did not react. Malisse sat on his racket thinking there was a gremlin in the Hawk-Eye computer, and Murray carried on being applauded.

IT services provider Alchemy Plus, is using DataCore's SANmelody software to provide a hosted server virtualisation farm environment for small businesses, und a 'pay as you use' utility computing frameworks. The Alchemy data center is located in Dingwall in the Scottish Highlands. David Massey, CTO at Alchemy Plus, said, “We wanted to bring the power and efficiencies of virtualisation to smaller organisations that typically were only running a single server or a couple of servers at most. We knew in order to succeed that we would have to develop a model that was as cost effective as it was functionality rich, using the principles of utility computing – a concept where the customer only pays for what is used.”

Plexus Systems, provider of Plexus Online on-demand software for the manufacturing enterprise, announces the availability of fully integrated Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) functionality. Manufacturers access comprehensive and integrated PLM capabilities in the Plexus Online Software as a Service (SaaS)

Edinburgh based firm Big DNA Ltd, which is developing new methods of delivering vaccines, has been awarded a SMART award of £70,000. SMART Scotland gives grants to small and medium sized enterprises to help support R&D projects representing a significant technological advance for UK industry or a sector.

BT has joined forces with Retalix Ltd to launch a range of products and services which will meet the entire in-store technology requirements of food and convenience retailers in the U.K. The co-operation agreement brings together Retalix's industry-established store technology platform with BT's team of retail experts, with a track record of delivering successful store infrastructure implementations across a variety of retail store types. Combined with its communications and network capabilities IT, BT will be able to offer a new end-to-end grocery solution to the UK marketplace.

In Scotland, adopting or sponsoring a zoo animal is quite commonplace and elsewhere people are encouraged to adopt vineyards or olive trees, while Laphroaig offers a virtual piece of peat for its malt aficionados. Now in the US, two Maine brothers have found a way to offer consumers the chance to adopt a Maine lobster trap an idea which just might lend itself to the Scottish lobster industry.

Swiss Debiotech and STMicroelectronics have introduced evaluation prototypes of a unique miniaturised insulin-delivery pump. The tiny device can be mounted on a disposable skin patch to provide continuous insulin infusion, enabling substantial advancements in the availability, treatment efficiency and the quality of life of diabetes patients. The breakthrough Nanopump, which relies on microfluidic MEMS echnology, has successfully passed initial testing stages and is now ready for volume manufacturing.

Azolve, which specialises in business improvement solutions for both corporate and public sector companies, has opened an HQ in the Midlothian Innovation Park, and plans to expand its workforce in Scotland. The software consultancy from North Yorkshire has relocated to the Midlothian Innovation & Technology Centre, Pentlandfield Business Centre, Roslin, to exploit strong market demand this side of the Border, while retaining a sales base in Harrogate.

Gaberlunzie, whose job it is to cover conferences, was browsing Alaska's Anchorage Daily News, and delighted to note that the Scottish Highland Games was quite a revenue contributor at ,614. That said however, there's nothing like networks, computer vision and pattern recognition or dependable systems and networks to bring in the real money of ,777,445. Perhaps Scotland's tourist board should plan it so that having brought the delegates in to high technology,, they could well be persuaded to hang on a day or two to visit a relaxing, and colourful event too.

Amanda Lafferty put the Interprise Suite through its paces at an Edinburgh launch by Glasgow based Turnkey Computer Technology. Her phrase seems to sum it up. This accounting software suite, (which looks like giving SAGE a run for its money, has solved issues such as COGS, FIFO, and multicurrency) offers a pre-set company set-up in the provision of ERP/CRM/Accounting.

Leading epilepsy charity, The National Society for Epilepsy (NSE), warns that people with photosensitive epilepsy to exercise caution when using the internet. With download speeds getting faster, companies are increasingly using more and more sophisticated ways of advertising their products, such as flashing images, which may lead to those with photosensitive epilepsy to have a seizure. Online users, sensitive to images should change browser settings :-
Internet Explorer: Go to Tools: Internet Options, choose Advanced, scroll to Multimedia, deselect Play animations in web pages.
Firefox: Go to about:config and set image.animation_mode to none.
* Opera: Press F12 and deselect Enable GIF animation.

BT E-Health Insider Awards is a competition dedicated to highlighting and rewarding the hard work and bright ideas of information and communications technology professionals in UK healthcare. The sponsors include Cisco, NHS, EMS, EMIS Fujitsu, McKesson, Microsoft, Quicksilva and IMS Health. There is no entry fee. but submissions for the BT e-Health Insider Awards 2008 must be received no later than 4 July 2008.

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