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Separated by a common language
Nov. 19th, 2009 02:18 pmLast week while I was on holiday and earlier this week I suffered a large number of "refused deliveries" of the newsletter. I kludged round it on Tuesday by turning the delivery to the bouncebacks from Blind Carbon Copy to Carbon Copy, and then sending the publication out in small batches. But I also notified IT to see if they could discover which dastardly spam filterer was generating false positives. (Incidentally, if any company tried to sell me software, I would test it by putting through an "ok" image/email and seeing if a false positive was generated -- the sales staff of these products are much better at showing how good it is at stoping stuff, but not so hot when it comes to showing you how good their product is at letting innocent stuff through).
Anyhoo, when I opened up Word 2007 this morning, things looked odd. To whit, the default text had reverted to Calibri, the paragraph spacing had returned to default, and a few other changes. Odd, I thought, but then carried on. Perhaps IT have been loking at my computer to see if any settings are causing the rejections.
It was only when I came to send out the newsletter that I realized the horror of my situation. I clicked the custom macro button on the toolbar and ... nothing. I opened up the macro box and ... nothing, no macros at all. I checked my settings - enable macro was on. I phoned IT. They denied having anything to do with it.
Luckily I found a three-year old Word document that had the most important code in it. I had a complete back-up on the home machine, apart from one small part that took me ages to fix.
But I was still puzzled. How had this happened?
I Googled away until I found the following, which happened to someone else:
And, guess what,the previous day I had been doing some "tidying up" and, because I type on a US keyboard using mainly US spelling, I changed my "primary editing language" from English (UK) to English (US).
As far as Word 2007 is concerned, this is the same as changing the default language from Finnish to Serbo-Croat. The old normal.dotm is renamed and a new normal.dotm is created. So, obviously, when I opened up Word the following day, all shortcuts, all macros, all preferences, had been wiped.
Unlike the chap above, I eventually discovered that my "old" Normal.dotm still had all of my original macros. A bit of file renaming restored my position to that of an English (UK) primary editing language, but all shortcuts, customizations and macros intact. Only cost me an hour or 90 minutes. Microsoft is shit.
++++++++++
About eight years ago I went to a lunchtime seminar on asbestosis, its various incarnations, symptoms (or, in the case of pleural plaques, lack thereof) and other matters medical. One of the research guys there (who had pissed off to an American institution because, basically, the institutions here just didn't have the funds needed) said that one of the major problems over the next decade or so would be the "magic bullet" cancer cures that were currently being developed, but which would impose incredible costs on the world's health services (or insurers).
Today the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence decided that one such drug -- Nexavar -- was far too expensive thank you very much, even though it is likely that it would extend the life of liver cancer sufferers significantly.
Liver cancer, of course, isn't "sexy". If it had been breast cancer, or prostate cancer, I reckon the drug would have been nodded through. But liver disease is as associated with drinking as much as lung disease is associated with smoking.
But the conflicts that this situation brings up (and it will be repeated again and again over the next 10 years) raise uncomfortable questions that people just don't want to ask. NICE seems to think that the drug developers should give away for nothing the drug that has cost them fortunes to develop. Or, if they don't give it away, at least charge no more than it costs to produce. "Research and Development" costs have no place in the NHS canon, and the fact that unless Bayer can make a lot of money on this drug then it can't afford to spend lots of money on researching future drugs that will help other cancer sufferers survive --- well, like I say, it's an issue that no-one seems to want to address.
But, well, there's another issue here. Life isn't fair. We seem to have an odd attitude to money. It's quite reasonable for money to be used to buy some things (things that "don't matter"?) but when it comes to stuff that can extend life, the concept of "nice if you can afford it" goes out of the window.
Except that it doesn't. If you or I could afford bi-monthly full physicals, an early stage of cancer would be far more likely to be detected than it is at the moment. And yet I neither see nor hear demands that such medical checks should be available on the NHS. But once you've GOT the disease, then capitalism goes out of the window. Capitalism applies to prevention, but not to cure.
Such a division strikes me as needlessly foolish, not least because of the old saying that prevention is better than cure.
And the NHS has never been "fair" anyway. The entire system is structured in such a fashion that money is distributed to the wrong people at the wrong time in an inefficient manner. Get a "lucky" illness in the right place, and your treatment will beat anything that the private sector has to offer. But suffer from a non-sexy disease (any mental health issue, for a start) and your chances improve dramatically the more money that you have.
So, for sure, say that everyone, rich or poor, should be entitled to a £3,000 a month medical treatement if they need it. But don't then procrastinate on why the same sort of money isn't available to help those who are unable to help themselves -- the mentally disturbed, the plain socially inadequate --- where the main line appears to be "well, if you are prepared to go private, there's The Priory..."
I think our NHS is, in the main, great. I wouldn't swap it for any other system, with the possible exception of France/Germany. It's hopelessly inefficient in many places, it's overburdened with targets and non-medical staff, but despite all that it's a bloody brilliant system. However, it was designed for a different era, and the fact that its precepts no longer function today (is infertility really something that merits NHS treatment? To be honest, I don't think so? And wouldn't it be better for people to embrace diversity than for cosmetic surgery to be provided for free?) is something that politicians and people within the NHS system don't want to look at. Someone, sopme day, will have to draw very uncomfortable boundaries.
The weird thing is, it's already been done (overdone, some might say) in the Dental service. A system where the "cosmetic" lines were drawn has resulted in a situation where the basic care that should be within the NHS has virtually vanished. It's now cheaper for me to actually buy most medication directly from the chemist than to get it from the same chemist on an NHS prescription. Go figure.
So, should that £3k a month be handed over to liver cancer sufferers, or should it be a case of "now, if you were richer..."? It's oh so easy to say "yes" (of course, it's easier to make the drugs company out to be the bad boy here -- that being the drugs company that developed the drug, would it?) but that money has to be diverted from somewhere (although I suppose we could increase QE....). So, I suggest diverting it from infertility treatment clinics. Oh yes, I can see how well that would go down.
___________________
Anyhoo, when I opened up Word 2007 this morning, things looked odd. To whit, the default text had reverted to Calibri, the paragraph spacing had returned to default, and a few other changes. Odd, I thought, but then carried on. Perhaps IT have been loking at my computer to see if any settings are causing the rejections.
It was only when I came to send out the newsletter that I realized the horror of my situation. I clicked the custom macro button on the toolbar and ... nothing. I opened up the macro box and ... nothing, no macros at all. I checked my settings - enable macro was on. I phoned IT. They denied having anything to do with it.
Luckily I found a three-year old Word document that had the most important code in it. I had a complete back-up on the home machine, apart from one small part that took me ages to fix.
But I was still puzzled. How had this happened?
I Googled away until I found the following, which happened to someone else:
• I opened Word 2007 to find all my custom keyboard shortcuts and macros had disappeared.
It appears to have happened after I changed the Primary Editing Language from English (UK) to English (US) and quit all Office programs (using the Language Settings button under Word Options).
•
I checked the Application Data\Microsoft\Templates folder and found there is no Normal.dotm file there. There is a file called Normal.dotm.old that, judging by the timestamp, was modified when I quit all Office programs.
I tried saving a copy of Normal.dotm.old as Normal.dotm. This did not restore the shortcuts or macros.
• Follow-up on this. I just conducted an experiment.
1. With no Normal.dotm in Application Data\Microsoft\Templates, I opened Word and created a new keyboard shortcut.
2. I quit Word, and as expected, a Normal.dotm appeared in Application Data\Microsoft\Templates.
3. I opened Word and used the keyboard shortcut. It worked.
4. I quit Word. Normal.dotm did not disappear from Application Data\Microsoft\Templates.
5. I opened Word again and changed the Primary Editing Language back to English (UK).
6. I quit Word. Normal.dotm was still in Application Data\Microsoft\Templates.
7. I opened Word. Normal.dotm disappeared from Application Data\Microsoft\Templates.
• I guess this explains it: changing the Primary Editing Language causes Normal.dotm to disappear. I guess I won't do that again
And, guess what,the previous day I had been doing some "tidying up" and, because I type on a US keyboard using mainly US spelling, I changed my "primary editing language" from English (UK) to English (US).
As far as Word 2007 is concerned, this is the same as changing the default language from Finnish to Serbo-Croat. The old normal.dotm is renamed and a new normal.dotm is created. So, obviously, when I opened up Word the following day, all shortcuts, all macros, all preferences, had been wiped.
Unlike the chap above, I eventually discovered that my "old" Normal.dotm still had all of my original macros. A bit of file renaming restored my position to that of an English (UK) primary editing language, but all shortcuts, customizations and macros intact. Only cost me an hour or 90 minutes. Microsoft is shit.
++++++++++
About eight years ago I went to a lunchtime seminar on asbestosis, its various incarnations, symptoms (or, in the case of pleural plaques, lack thereof) and other matters medical. One of the research guys there (who had pissed off to an American institution because, basically, the institutions here just didn't have the funds needed) said that one of the major problems over the next decade or so would be the "magic bullet" cancer cures that were currently being developed, but which would impose incredible costs on the world's health services (or insurers).
Today the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence decided that one such drug -- Nexavar -- was far too expensive thank you very much, even though it is likely that it would extend the life of liver cancer sufferers significantly.
Liver cancer, of course, isn't "sexy". If it had been breast cancer, or prostate cancer, I reckon the drug would have been nodded through. But liver disease is as associated with drinking as much as lung disease is associated with smoking.
But the conflicts that this situation brings up (and it will be repeated again and again over the next 10 years) raise uncomfortable questions that people just don't want to ask. NICE seems to think that the drug developers should give away for nothing the drug that has cost them fortunes to develop. Or, if they don't give it away, at least charge no more than it costs to produce. "Research and Development" costs have no place in the NHS canon, and the fact that unless Bayer can make a lot of money on this drug then it can't afford to spend lots of money on researching future drugs that will help other cancer sufferers survive --- well, like I say, it's an issue that no-one seems to want to address.
But, well, there's another issue here. Life isn't fair. We seem to have an odd attitude to money. It's quite reasonable for money to be used to buy some things (things that "don't matter"?) but when it comes to stuff that can extend life, the concept of "nice if you can afford it" goes out of the window.
Except that it doesn't. If you or I could afford bi-monthly full physicals, an early stage of cancer would be far more likely to be detected than it is at the moment. And yet I neither see nor hear demands that such medical checks should be available on the NHS. But once you've GOT the disease, then capitalism goes out of the window. Capitalism applies to prevention, but not to cure.
Such a division strikes me as needlessly foolish, not least because of the old saying that prevention is better than cure.
And the NHS has never been "fair" anyway. The entire system is structured in such a fashion that money is distributed to the wrong people at the wrong time in an inefficient manner. Get a "lucky" illness in the right place, and your treatment will beat anything that the private sector has to offer. But suffer from a non-sexy disease (any mental health issue, for a start) and your chances improve dramatically the more money that you have.
So, for sure, say that everyone, rich or poor, should be entitled to a £3,000 a month medical treatement if they need it. But don't then procrastinate on why the same sort of money isn't available to help those who are unable to help themselves -- the mentally disturbed, the plain socially inadequate --- where the main line appears to be "well, if you are prepared to go private, there's The Priory..."
I think our NHS is, in the main, great. I wouldn't swap it for any other system, with the possible exception of France/Germany. It's hopelessly inefficient in many places, it's overburdened with targets and non-medical staff, but despite all that it's a bloody brilliant system. However, it was designed for a different era, and the fact that its precepts no longer function today (is infertility really something that merits NHS treatment? To be honest, I don't think so? And wouldn't it be better for people to embrace diversity than for cosmetic surgery to be provided for free?) is something that politicians and people within the NHS system don't want to look at. Someone, sopme day, will have to draw very uncomfortable boundaries.
The weird thing is, it's already been done (overdone, some might say) in the Dental service. A system where the "cosmetic" lines were drawn has resulted in a situation where the basic care that should be within the NHS has virtually vanished. It's now cheaper for me to actually buy most medication directly from the chemist than to get it from the same chemist on an NHS prescription. Go figure.
So, should that £3k a month be handed over to liver cancer sufferers, or should it be a case of "now, if you were richer..."? It's oh so easy to say "yes" (of course, it's easier to make the drugs company out to be the bad boy here -- that being the drugs company that developed the drug, would it?) but that money has to be diverted from somewhere (although I suppose we could increase QE....). So, I suggest diverting it from infertility treatment clinics. Oh yes, I can see how well that would go down.
___________________
