Yes... and reviewing 8 year old ultrasound results won't help with those.

The 'customer' being someone who has received free healthcare, and is now demanding clinically irrelevant data that would cost a huge amount of money to provide.

Not for ultrasound, unless you want a really silly opinion. You can really only assess what you're seeing when the probe is in your hand.

That's correct - the result is the report, not the images. Chances are, the images would be of no practical use 8 years later, unless the guy wants to engage in litigation in which case he could probably obtain copies of the raw data but perhaps not format converted.

I suspect the data is stored in a 'raw' imaging format which is unique to that scanner - it may well be on CD - but probably not usable in any modern machine or computer, just as would be the case if you had a CD full of Canon or Nikon raw DSLR images and no plugin.

It's not the scan that matters, it's the written report of the person who did the scan, which is why it's not customary not to keep copies of ultrasound scan videos/stills up to date. Ultrasound is a dynamic examination where what you see at the time matters most - the still images only provide a legal backup in case someone challenges the sonographer's conclusion. Video is being used more extensively now, but often video images are not kept long-term as they're large files that are expensive to store.

It is unreasonable - there's no medical use to seeing the images from an 8 year-old scan, only the written report will be actually helpful for his ongoing medical care. Unless, of course, he want to challenge decisions/conclusions made at that time which would be an issue of litigation, not of medical care.

What he's requesting is unnecessary. He wants copies of the images/videos from his cardiac echo from years ago. It's pretty common not to store that kind of data for very long, only the written report (which he already has). I would think these archive copies have been kept (unfortunately) to avoid litigation in case anyone ever makes a complaint. They're unlikely to be of any relevance to his ongoing healthcare, which is why the hospital trust has asked for this money - it's because they would have to buy the old equipment back again to make the format conversion for information which would likely be of no medical use. That's why they didn't do the format conversion at the time.

That's not the ruling, the ruling is at the bottom.

A Mac doesn't cost 1.5 to 2 times more than a similarly specked PC.

Sorry, is there some other requirement to make a playable CD? Obviously it needs to be the right sample rate and so on, but software will do that automatically. It's entirely possible to create a valid audio file that can be pressed on vinyl and won't play. To my knowledge, it's not possible to create a valid audio file that won't play when burnt to CD, unless it's clipping.

A large bass waveform on vinyl can make the stylus literally jump out of the groove. Lots of hard work goes into cutting a vinyl master, it's very easy to make an unplayable record. With CD all you have to do is make sure it doesn't clip. I love my vinyl collection, but what you've written is bullshit.

Pull-down menus weren't invented by Xerox, their GUI used a modal button bar at the top of each window. You can see photographic evidence of the Apple development process here. I know Apple get criticised for being derivative, but they did invent this GUI element, and their early attempts used a per-window model, which they eventually rejected for a global bar. You think per-window is better; as someone who used Windows for many years, then various Linux distros exclusively for 5 years, then latterly Mac OSX, I vastly prefer the global menus. It's a matter of opinion.

Actually, pull-down menus were invented there - by Apple, when they were working on the Lisa and Mac GUIs. It's always been that way, some like it, some don't. I find it great on my MacBook Air that screen space isn't wasted by duplicating dozens of near-identical menus, and I personally don't find it a problem when I connect up to my Cinema display. I find it quicker to Cmd-tab between applications and know that the menus are always in the same place no matter how I arrange things on the display. I can also do things like have a window nearly completely off the edge of the screen (e.g. referring to a web page whilst coding) but still being able to access all the menus, so I don't have to drag the window back on to create a bookmark then close the window. There's pros and cons to both models.

As you say, it's a preference. I find it annoying using operating systems with menu bars all over the screen, as I tend to keep my mouse hovering near the top of the screen and Cmd-tab between applications, which is broken by Windows-style UIs, unless I keep everything maximised.

I'm confused about why you can't tell what app the UI relates to. The name of the application that has focus is always shown at the top-left of the screen.