Tag: Turkey

NHS IT projects are turning into turkeys

Posted on July 2, 2015 by - News

turkeyIt is starting to look like a whole clutch of NHS IT projects are about to turn into embarrassing turkeys and gobble their way to the Treasury to look for more cash or be carved up before Christmas.

The increasingly expensive GP Extraction Service IT system has been deemed “not fit for purpose” by the government’s spending watchdog. For those who came in late, the GPES IT system was supposed to extract data from all GP practices in England.

All a great idea but costs have gone from £14 million to £40 million. More than £5.5 million of that has been wasted on write-offs and delay costs.

The ever grumpy National Audit Office (NAO) noted that the GPES has so far managed to provide data for just one customer, NHS England, and even that was four years later than originally planned.

However the NAO said the need for the service remains and further public expenditure is required to improve or replace it.

The NAO said additional costs have been incurred through a settlement with one of the main suppliers, Atos.

According to the Major Projects Authority, NHS IT remains in a poor state, with the Department of Health having the highest number of IT projects rated as “unachievable”.

On the list set for more woe is the Care.data programme, the NHS Choices website, and the department’s new network project.

The new e-Referrals system was also pulled offline recently meaning that hospitals and GPs across England had to resort to fax machines in order to refer patients.

 

Why did Minecraft get the works?

Posted on March 11, 2015 by - News

turkTurkey has been fast becoming a place where anything can get banned from the internet for the lamest excuses.

You can be banned for insulting the dead hero Atatürk, you can be blocked for revealing tapes proving government corruption and not it seems you can be censored for playing Minecraft.

A Turkish ministry claims that the game is “too violent” after a report from Turkey’s Family and Social Policies Ministry.

The decision whether or not to band Minecraft is currently in the hands of the Turkish courts as the ministry has submitted their report of the game being too violent to the legal affairs department, as well as instructions for the legal process to begin the ban.

A portion of the report was said to say:  “Although the game can be seen as encouraging creativity in children by letting them build houses, farmlands and bridges, mobs [hostile creatures] must be killed in order to protect these structures. In short, the game is based on violence.”

It seems that the Ministry is little concerned that kids might grow up confusing the game world and reality, possibly even “going as far as torturing animals without knowing what kind of pain they’re causing the creature”.

We guess that like other countries concerned about game violence, Turkey is a peaceful place which does not have any violence at all. Any that happens of course is not born out of a frustration with a corrupt, increasingly autocratic government, but Angry Birds or Tetris which were never banned.

Apple’s bendy turkey now faces hair-gate

Posted on October 8, 2014 by - News

appleIt looks like Apple’s reputation for design success is hair today, gone tomorrow.

Already the iPhone 6 range has had to deal with the fact that its aluminium frame can be bent but now has to deal with the fact that its design pulls out the hair on your head and beard.

Twitter users have made #hairgate a rising social media trend.

The problem happens where the aluminium meets the glass which has a space which is ideal for catching hair and pulling it out.  If only there was a company which was famous for its design which did not make such basic mistakes.

Apparently Apple fanboys are divided as to whether treat #beardgate as a separate trend, or simply as a subset of #hairgate. Other Applefans cannot grow a beard and don’t care.

Apple has been refusing to comment about it. However, if its press office had been required to handle the Black Death it would have waited six months before claiming that it only affected a small number of people.

Apple’s silence is fuelling a range of gags. The Twitter account of the Atlanta International Fashion Week speculating that it may be an elaborate plot against hipsters for whom facial hair has become de rigeur. Another user tweeted: “Congrats, Apple, for finally getting hipsters to shave”.

Gillette posted: “Your phone may be smarter than ever, but leave the shaving to the experts.”

The tame Apple press is rushing to quote the standard Apple fanboys in denial posts instead.

“I have iPhone 6. Doesn’t bend and doesn’t snag hair. Who thinks up these things? Apple haters? Competitors?” tweeted John Wooten.

After all, who wants to be the idiot who spent a fortune on a phone so poorly designed it bends and rips your hair out. Only a complete moron would do that – so it is better to pretend you bought a great product, claim it is perfect and people will not laugh at you.

Apple’s design for an iWatch was also mocked by Swiss Watch Makers which said that it looked like it had been designed by a first year design student.

X86 server market gets boost

Posted on January 8, 2014 by - News

server-racksIt’s not all bad news for Intel, which is beginning to be affected by peoples’ disinterest worldwide in buying expensive X86 notebooks.

According to IDC, the X86 server market in the middle east and Africa had significant year on year growth in the third quarter of 2013, expanding by 9.9 in volume and 10.6 percent in revenue.

The Saudi market showed year on year volume growth of 16.4 percent, but other sturdy markets included the UAE.

The Egyptian market slumped 36.6 percent because of political instability, while perhaps more surprisingly the Turkish market also showed a drop on server unit shipments of 8.8 percent compared to the same quarter in the previous year.

Morocco and Tunisia saw growth of 35.7 percent and 21.8 percent respectively and the North Africam region in toto rose by 20.4 percent in volume.

Kenya and Nigeria showed rises of 67.1 percent and 62.8 percent respectively, while South Africa saw a 6.6 percent rise year on year.

Blades were the flavour of the month in the regions surveyed, showing a market share of 30.4 percent in the overall server mix.  Dual socket servers, however, dominate the sector with 75.1 percent unit share.

Emerging markets open up to increased data centre investment

Posted on January 21, 2013 by - News

datacentrebatteriesAccording to a report from Tariff Consultancy Ltd, which focuses on data centre development in 11 emerging markets, Russia and Turkey are way ahead of the pack.

TCL looked at Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Russia, Serbia, Turkey, and the Ukraine. Of these, the four largest are Russia, Turkey, Ukraine and Bulgaria respectively, though in the group, Russia by itself is expected to account for half of all data centre floor space by the end of the year.

Generally speaking, the size of the data centres are relatively small, TCL noted. In the 11 regions, the average size was just over 800 square markets, which is a great deal less than in established markets. The largest facility has up to 10,000 square metres of raised floor space. However, over the next five years, the total space should rise to 143,000 square metres, up from 109,000 at present – or a 30 percent increase going into 2018.

Pricing will also increase, with the average rack space rental increasing 10 percent up to 2018. The most expensive pricing is in the Russian market.

Trends outlined in the report mirror a transformation in the regions which are seeing more and more development and investment, both from foreign investors and by government, with a view to boost economic growth in the countries. This could also, of course, prove a boon to channel players looking for new markets to open up in. Ultimately, TCL concludes, the development of data centre space in these emerging markets proves high spec housing and hosting is no longer exclusive to established markets.