[Novalug] On behalf of everyone in the IT industry - Sorry!

Bryan J Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org
Fri May 1 01:08:05 EDT 2015


On Fri, May 1, 2015 at 12:38 AM, Mark Smith <mark@winksmith.com> wrote:
> On Fri, May 01, 2015 at 12:18:15AM -0400, Peter Larsen via Novalug wrote:
>> > There are just many solutions that really shouldn't be a PC at all.
>> > Voting is one of them.
>>
>> Don't agree - not even a little bit ...
>
> +1

Which is the _exact_ attitude which results in this!

It's the masses of people who are not experienced in heavily
regulated, mission critical embedded designs of aerospace, control
systems, financial networks and government solutions that "make the
decisions."

They decide the architecture, OS and everything else, and that's why
we get this crap, open-ended, PC-based solutions.  Instead of those of
us who have developed embedded systems, under heavy, regulatory terms,
that strictly define    It's immediately what Diebold and IBM ran into
when they showed off their nexgen, Linux-based ATMs, voting machines
and other solutions, by the late '90s.

Kinda like what happened at Toyota.  The engineers designed the specs,
defined the boards, ensured the features, the certified run-time, and
even ran code audits on their code -- later verified by even NASA.
The problem was the technologists and management change the platform,
even if their code still remained the same.  And people died.

Because they decide "they knew better" than the engineers (let alone
P.E.'s who are _criminally_ liable) who have 30+ years experience.
No, sorry, you IT people will _not_ define these solutions.  That's
been part of the problem!  I'm adamant about this, having worked with
a lot of P.E.s in these embedded fields.

-- bjs



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