A sixteen year old boy was killed in broad daylight. Apparently he was involved in a fight between two gangs of youths; there are a lot of gangs in Newham and as far as I can tell they are fairly nebulous things. Having had my ambulance kicked and punched by a gang (luckily while I wasn't in it) I can easily see how the violence had escalated. Sympathies to the family; how do you keep your teenage sons inside during daylight hours?
When I next work out of Newham, I'll no doubt hear the full story, I suspect the police won't have many witnesses to the murder itself.

Baghdad Burning tells us that the Governing Council of Iraq (you know...the people who are all trying to carve out their own little piece of the country) are to introduce Shari'a (Islamic) law. This wouldn't be so bad if the men who run the religion could agree on the issues. Islam has always been for womens rights, yet it is the interpretation of the Quran, by men, that leads to oppression.
While Iraq had a secular government women had equal rights...now it looks like it's all going to change for the worse. Go read the link, and see how the Americans have "freed" the Iraqi people.

Newham General (the hospital I tend to find myself at most often) is to undergo improvements under a new Private Finance Initiative (PFI). The article says that the A+E has undergone improvement...but in my eyes it is still too small for the number of patients that it sees. The department was designed with 14 cubicles, but they have had to split each cubicle in two by using curtains in order to have enough trolleys to cater for patients. These cubicles are designed for one patient, yet are now holding two, which obviously has a detrimental effect on patient privacy, dignity and confidentiality. It also makes it a bugger to get a patient off my ambo trolley onto a hospital trolley.

Also they are selling St Andrews at Bromley by bow in order to pay for the shiny new Newham hospital. I suspect that there will be a further fall in the services for the mentally ill. No surprise there then...

Bless their little cotton socks - They are changing the Comment system back to something even more reasonable.  You've got to appreciate anyone who notes that their users don't like the new feature - and actually change things for the better.

Do you think Microsoft would do such a thing?

It looks like a cheaper version of the Segway will be making its way to the UK in the next couple of months.
What this means is that there will just be more ways for people to injure themselves - even if it is allowed on the pavement, the streets around here require four-wheel off-road capability. I have visions of people falling off at 10mph wearing no safety equipment.
...Pardon me while I have a little giggle...

Apparently Alistair Darling is "very serious" about satellite tracking of cars in the U.K in order to charge us for the use of the roads. It's not as if we don't pay enough road tax, or enough tax on our petrol (to put this in perspective Americans pay 27 pence per litre, France pays 56 pence per litre while the U.K pays 81 pence per litre, of which 61.5 pence is Tax)
So now the plan is to fit every car with a satellite tracking system so that you can be charged an amount depending on which road you drive on (1.6p/mile for country roads, 16p/mile in towns). Neglecting the need for everyone to have such a system fitted to their car (and in Newham alone 3,802 in the year 2002/03 were found without road tax) but anyone with even the slightest fear of "big brother" would be worried that the government could track where you drove so accurately.
The plan is for this system to be in place by 2013 although there are plans that lorries will be monitored by the scheme by 2006, I suppose our only chance is that the government make a huge pigs ear out of it by using the lowest bidders (something they tend to go for when privatising other public companies)

It beggars belief but Kazaa is threatening to sue ISPs who host Kazaa Lite. Don't Sharman Networks (the company that owns Kazaa) see the hypocrisy in threatening someone with the DMCA for copyright infringement?
Americans are funny.

This article suggests that the NHS might defect to SUN Linux away from Microsoft. If they do, will it mean all those hard working MSCE Engineers would then be out of a job?
The problem with this idea is that (no matter how much you dislike Microsoft) most people happy to use a computer have learnt from using their computer at home, which would usually mean Windows. Will these non-IT people (nurses, admin staff, doctors, etc) have the confidence to use applications that are not familiar, and if not, how much will retraining cost?

Welcome to the new home for my blog, with a brand new name and a new host. Because Blogware is more complex than Blogger, it might take me a little while to work out how to use it effectively. For a start off I don't yet know how to edit the plain HTML of the page so I can get my GeoURL stuff working, but others have managed it so I'm sure I can...
...eventually.