A major related problem is that hospitals and other organizations get stuck using poorly-implemented devices because they are too fucking expensive to replace with something else. The expense in and of itself isn't totally unreasonable, because manufacturers of medical devices need to comply with a great deal of regulations and safety testing. However, that doesn't help the users any.

The hospital I work at, for example, bought a software suite years ago for our pharmacy and financial departments to use, and about a year ago it was rolled out to all other departments in our transition to electronic records. This software is some of the most clunky, ham-fisted crap I've ever seen. We despise the software for a great number of reasons (not the least of which is that it actually takes 2-3x LONGER to do anything than it did with our old paper records), and with the push to get all hospitals and medical offices using electronic records, something better would be most welcome. Unfortunately, with what we paid (and continue to pay) for the software contract, there's no budget to get something different and probably never will be because as far as the board is concerned it does what we need it to do.

Where the hell can I buy one of those tiny laptops they're giving out to the mine detector rats?!

If you want to see the digital equivalent of tumbleweeds, go check out MySpace. Just for the hell of it, I logged into my MySpace the other day for the first time in many months, and the only thing I saw there was dozens of bulletin posts by one band whose posts I used to ignore every couple days. About 4 years ago, MySpace added a bunch of worthless features (apparently trying to copy the increasingly popular Facebook) and increasingly in-your-face advertisements, and not coincidentally most people made the migration to Facebook. Then about 2 years ago, Facebook started adding a bunch of features that reminded a bunch of us of MySpace's missteps... but oddly enough, people didn't migrate away. They do seem to have a much better thought-out system, and their people-searching is top notch. Facebook probably will go away in a few years and be replaced by something else, but it's definitely not fading away in the foreseeable months.

Exactly. Now take that a step further: these tardfucks can't even find their own collection of accurate information about you IN THEIR OWN FILING SYSTEMS. Can you even imagine the headache of trusting so many of these incompetent, dysfunctional organizations to keep your information current and accurate in such a centralized database?

I work in the healthcare field, and I can assure you that at least 95% of people don't even bother to keep an updated written list of their medications in their purse or wallet. The tiny minority of people who would even CARE to input their information and keep a QR code sticker handy are the same people who know their medications/doses, so do not even need this service. The only way this could possibly work is if each person used only one pharmacy ever, AND if the pharmacy was allowed to provide this information to anybody with the software to scan the QR code (a very dicey proposition, given that HIPAA outlaws access to "protected health information"), AND if everyone was willing to carry something with this QR code on them at all times. I can tell you right now, I wouldn't carry anything extra, so unless the QR code is added to my drivers license I won't have one with me.

Why in the actual fuck would we have to jump the conclusion that people would use this to play games while driving? Is people playing games on their smartphones while driving already a major problem?

About 5 years ago, Best Buy was called out for deceiving customers. People started noticing they'd get a price off Best Buy's own website, go to buy it in the store, and find that the sticker price was higher. They'd ask an employee and be told they were wrong, and the employee would pull up the product on the computer and show the customer that the price was actually what's marked on the sticker and that sale must have ended. What they had actually done was set up an internal website that looks identical to the online version, BUT THE PRICES WERE HIGHER.

http://consumerist.com/2007/02/best-buys-secret-employee-only-in-store-website-shows-different-prices-than-public-website.html

That's a bit of an oversimplification. Though that definitely does occur with some (I'll even grant you many) doctors, a more accurate simplification is that we over-test for liability reasons, (and if the patient has insurance or medicare, they are much less likely to refuse needless tests that they can't afford). Consider a patient presenting to an ER with a complaint of chest pain. This is a very common complaint with many possible causes, and I'd roughly estimate that at least 95% of them are not having a heart attack. Much more commonly the chest pain is due to anxiety, or muscle pain, or inflammation of the cartilage attaching the ribs to the sternum.

However, only a handful of ER doctors would be comfortable sending the patient home, so these people are almost always kept overnight for observation ($) and receive a series of blood tests ($$), EKGs ($$$), a cardiac echo ($$$$) and cardiac stress test ($$$$$), and many have a cardiologist consulted for his opinion ($$$$$$). After all of this, the patient is discharged the next day with none of us knowing anything more than we knew before they arrived. We're not like a restaurant: even if the meal came with all kinds of toppings and sides you didn't ask for, you're still responsible for the bill.

This quandary is similar for many health problems (abdominal pain being another very common complaint with dozens of possible causes but only a handful of them serious). As the expression goes, "when you hear hoof-beats: think horses, not zebras". It's a sensible expression, but instead of following it we do every test conceivable for zebras, because we're terrified that one of these times the zebra's going to come charging out of the shadows and trample our finances in court. The worst part is, the insurance companies tacitly encourage this needless testing because the zebra tests are a lot cheaper than the actual zebra and its accompanying lawsuit if it's not caught.

This is a good point. Largely, though, most of the people in any given audience aren't the inquisitive type, they're just there to be mystified and entertained. There's nothing inherently wrong with this, but the rest of us are in the minority of people who are always looking to figure out how everything works.

Great success!

Qi is in the Scrabble dictionary, fine. But can we all at least agree that just slapping a "Q" onto a DL or TL tile next to a random "i" is in fact a dick move?

Of course she gets to wait. They can chop off the useless organic hand and install the "toy robot hand". Then, when technology is sufficiently advanced, they can just chop off the "toy robot hand" and install the Power Fist! When that gets old or tech advances again, they can chop off the Power Fist and install the like-new organic vat-grown stem cell hand! I just realized: while I'm not going to cause any harm to my actual hands, I might secretly be hoping for a catastrophic hand injury... This is gonna be awesome!