Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

This demonstrates how dependent we are on computers and how much we trust them… Basically

The crew — both new to the job — meant to go 12 miles to a specialist unit in Brentford, ESSEX, from King George’s Hospital in Ilford.

But instead of a 30-minute journey they ended up driving for four hours to Brentwood, MANCHESTER.
Instead of driving the eight miles from King George’s Hospital in Ilford, East London, to the mental health unit of Mascalls Park Hospital in Brentwood, Essex, the pair found themselves 200 miles off-track on the outskirts of Manchester before they realised their blunder and turned back.

The sat-nav with a mind of its own has undergone reorientation while the ambulancemen have been told to undertake a geography lesson and learn to think for themselves.

They drove for eight hours before finally delivering the patient. After the equipment sent them north, they covered 215 miles in about four hours. The way back was only slightly shorter and took more than 3½ hours.

In the old days they would have called and asked the dispatcher or someone for directions but the computer is always right correct? so they trusted it and ended up 200 miles off course.

Source: The Sun Online – News: Satnav ambulance 200 miles out

Thanks to: The Risks Digest for the link.

– Suramya

This is sad. 🙁

Foreign IP Telephony firms such as Skype and Yahoo! will not be able to sell their services to Indian businesses under a proposed government clampdown

Source: Indian call centres in VoIP clampdown

– Suramya

Yes, you read that correctly. Atleast thats what TracFone is arguing in court right now. Are they really that stupid? I mean come on, some people have used terrorism to scare people into giving up a lot of things but this one takes the cake.

Pre-paid cell phone company TracFone is arguing in court that allowing people to unlock their cell phones and use them with competing carriers will support terrorism.

This is getting beyond ridiculous. They should be fined for making such a stupid claim and wasting people’s time. There are a lot of reasons why people might want to unlock their phone and none of them support terrorism. Here are a couple:

* I want to use my phone in another country, I will have to unlock it before I can use it. (Yes had to get this done multiple times)

* Want to switch carriers. Oh you mean I should stick with a crappy service and pay more than I should if I want to use the phone I bought and like?

I am sure there are more but its late and I can’t think of any right now… Feel free to add any you might think of.

Source: 27B Stroke 6
How the exception was won

– Suramya