Comments on Osheroff (1995)
Computers in Clinical Practice: Managing Patients, Information,
and Communication,
J.A. Osheroff (editor),
Am. College of Physicians, Philadelphia (PA), 1995, xxii+241 pp.
(Customer Service Center: 215-351-2600 or 800-523-1546, ext. 2600.)
Preface
- x: N.B. e-mail address for editor.
- xviii: N.B. 1985 article on information requirements in practice.
- xxii: No updated information available for the moment, a new
edition is planned.
- 7: All operating systems crash, not just Unix.
- 9: It's misleading to refer to a `network' as an `operating system'.
- 9 ff: The standard abbreviation for `byte' is 'B', not 'b', so
`megabytes' should be `MB'. `Mb' means `megabits'. (See also
p. 182.)
- 16: It may be overkill to do a full backup every day.
A common strategy is to do a weekly full backup and daily
incremental backups (see p. 191).
- 33-34: Logically, the section on OCR should
come right after
the section on scanning. Also, OCR for machine-printed text is more
mature than voice recognition.
- 39: How was the article located and copied?
- 40: Being `online' doesn't necessarily imply the use of a modem
and telephone lines. The term also applies to being directly
connected to a network.
- 66: The odds should be expressed as `3 to 97',
not `3 in 97'.
- 70: How can one use DXplain via the Internet?
- 71: What do the `diseases' and `findings' numbers mean?
Can they be compared?
- 131: The statement that `you must send a
request to the "list owner"' is contradicted in
the next sentence.
- 132: Whether messages are arranged according to subject
depends on the particular mail or news reader being used.
- 133: It's important to note that the speed of the Internet
depends on the speed of the slowest link on the route taken
by particular data, and on the amount of traffic at the time.
- 134: It's misleading to refer to Gopher and Mosaic and `interfaces'
FTP and Telnet. The Gopher protocol is different from FTP and
very different from Telnet.
The World Wide Web protocol used by Mosaic incorporates
both FTP and Gopher, and can also invoke a Telnet session.
- 134: Even before Gopher it was possible to find
things on the Internet without knowing precise locations,
by using Archie and by using FTP to browse within archives.
- 134: The word `archaic' should be `arcane'.
- 134: One should say `Gopher servers on the Internet'
rather than `the Internet Gopher'.
- 134: The term `commercial online vendors' is redundant and
ambiguous. It would be more precise to say 'vendors of Internet
access'.
- 135: The paragraph starting `Mosaic is an exemplar ...' is
awkwardly worded. Say that `Much like Gopher, Mosaic
enabled a point-and-click interface' seems to imply that
Gopher used a graphical interface. And Mosaic took things
not `one important step further' but at least three important steps:
use of multimedia, formatting commands within documents, and
links within documents. Note that plain-text files, as used
by Gopher, were not entirely unformatted: they could contain
indenting, blank lines, etc. Gopher documents could also be
formatted `just as on the printed page', it's just that the
formatting was primitive; and the word `however' should
be `moreover'.
- 135: Gopher, FTP and Telent also require the use of SLIP or PPP.
- 144: 28.8-kbaud modems are now common.
- 145: Many vendors of on-line access now provide Web access.
- 146: The distinction between SLIP/PPP access and the `traditional'
method is not made clear (not that I have a more clear explanation
to offer).
- 149: CD-ROM's are 5.25 inches, not 3.5 inches.
- 152: PhotoCD is not restricted to images taken from 35-mm film.
(Note that the term is a trademark and should be written as one
word, capitalized.)
- 152: It may be misleading to speak of adding a session to a
CD-ROM after it has been `printed'. This can only be done
with CD-ROM's which have been recorded electronically, as
opposed to mechanical `pressing' (or `printing').
- 152: The main factor leading to the widespread acceptance of
CD-ROM's for reference material is probably their capacity
for graphics and audio, not for text.
- 152: A clear distinction should be made between `searching'
and `browsing'.
- 152: It seems confusing to me to distinguish
`phrase-based searches' and `proximity
searches' from `text-word searches'.
- 153: Unix also has a graphical interface.
- 156: The value of natural-language searches should be discussed.
It's misleading to suggest that the example question would
be answered with a `yes' or `no', or even necessarily
be interpreted correctly.
- 159: It's debatable whether Macs have more built-in multimedia
features or more friendliness.
- 160: Computer illiterates should put more emphasis on buying good
support than on buying a Mac.
- 160: The distinction between home and office requirements is not clear.
- 182: A bit is the smallest unit of
information, period, for computers or otherwise.
- 182: It should be mentioned that an 8-bit byte permits 256
different values. The abbreviation for `byte' is `B'; `b'
stands for `bit'. (See also p. 9.) Should perhaps
mention that `k' stands for 1000 while 'K' stands for 1024,
and that the latter is a power of 2.
- 182-183: The term `disk storage' should be used consistently instead
of just `storage', which can legitimately be applied to RAM,
ROM, tapes, etc.
- 183, 186: The references to `CPU' and `CPU box' are confusing.
The term `system box' would be better.
- 183, 185: A buyer should define software requirements before
thinking about hardware.
- 185: Unix is an operating system, not a `specialized network
environment'.
- 186: Note that Power Macs run Windows and DOS applications
via software emulation, which is very slow.
- 186: The speed of a CPU is determined by much more than just
number of bits and clock speed.
- 187: EGA is more powerful than CGA, not less.
CGA provides more than one colour; VGA provides 256 colours,
not 16.
- 187: Image quality is determined by the number of pixels, not
by the number of pixels per inch; `dot pitch' is also important.
Refresh rate should be discussed in terms of flicker, not
redraw speed. Colour is very important for many applications,
not just because it's `easier on the eye'.
- 188: Virtually all keyboards have function keys. A trackball
is not a mouse, although the mechanism inside is similar.
Touch screens should be mentioned as an alternative input
method, certainly more so than voice recognition.
- 189: Thermal transfer should be mentioned in the first list
of printer types; it's much more common than LED and LCS.
True colour laser printers exist, although they're expensive.
Inkjet and laser printers are not impact printers. A discussion
of different types of black-and-white printers would be more
useful than the emphasis on colour. PostScript should be
mentioned as a feature to be considered.
- 196: It should be emphasized more that subdirectories can be
deeply nested. This is obscured by the emphasis on the filing-cabinet
metaphor.
- 198: Distribution of an application (as opposed to a database)
on CD-ROM doesn't reduce
hard-disk requirements much because the application must still be
installed on the hard disk.
R.Funnell@med.mcgill.ca
Last modified: Tue Apr 23 13:35:09 1996