Mailing List Etiquette was freebsd vs. netbsd
Aryeh Friedman
aryeh.friedman at gmail.com
Tue Jun 16 15:18:18 UTC 2020
On Tue, Jun 16, 2020 at 11:07 AM Chris Knipe <savage at savage.za.org> wrote:
>
>> Unless some program was hard coded for it then the code is different.
>> In many legacy applications such hard codings were made to maximize
>> performance and/or some other reason. It is these legacy applications
>> that in many cases make it so the doctor's office refuses to upgrade
>> (usually some ancient accounting or lab management program that would cost
>> an arm and a leg to replace/if replaceable at all [some medical devices are
>> not made any more but are still in use in many doctors offices]). Public
>> hospitals are even worse off in terms of funding and unless serious help
>> from the government is forthcoming are almost certain to be unable to
>> upgrade to something that doesn't require an ancient TTY 33A, DEC VT100 or
>> something like that to be connected (they are physically incapable of
>> interfacing to anything else). A good case in point is the "new improved"
>> ventilators that Trump sent to Elmhurst Hospital (here in Queens) where
>> incompatible with the pre-HL7 EMR they had and that's why the governor had
>> to ask for more (and agent orange haid [Trump] refused because he has the
>> same "newer is better" attitude you have... oh and he is also an all around
>> idiot).
>>
>> TL;dr -- You often have very little if any choice IRL about what tech is
>> actually in place and 24x80 is a universal lowest common denominator and
>> thus it should be kept.
>>
>>
> Again - what does this have to do with email and 80 characters? You don't
> read your email on a heart monitor, do you?
>
Since you've likely never needed to connect one you wouldn't know but they
can send email and text messages. Text messages (SMS) are limited to 140
characters thus if you need to send a longer message you need to
fragment. Also status reports are sent to the clients employees and
sometimes to patients and most of them use smart phones and thus have
*LESS* than 80 character wide screens and it still has to be readable for
them. Since 80 is a good compromise between all these demands it is a
good requirement for any email the system sends (we even have an automated
test to make sure no message has a line longer than 80 chars for this
reason).
--
Aryeh M. Friedman, Lead Developer, http://www.PetiteCloud.org
More information about the freebsd-questions
mailing list