On Sep 22, 1:15 pm, (Blanche Cohen) wrote:
Since when are software people licensed?

The products would have to be licensed.

Who does the licensing?

Same agency that approves products containing software in say, Boeing
777.

What are the exams? What is the followup to maintain it?

Oh, I see what you mean. The products would be certified, not just
the people who make them.

I just came back from a business trip and found my WinXP box dead.
As with every trip, I had shut everything down, disconnected the
power from the wall (actually, the UPS but that's another story).
Got home, reconnected everything, hit the power switch. Nothing.
Dead. I've already spent a couple hours diagnosing with no luck.

Hmm...should be something simple if it's not coming on. I'd pop the
case and take a look. Cheap voltmeter set to 15v DC will allow you
to check voltages at various points on board. I'd start with output of
powers supply.

I can see your scenario of a cheap, COTS PC running the systems in my
cherokee crashing on my at night in IMC. Sure. Right. And my lawyers
will be in touch with your lawyers.

Do I like paying $675 for a new AI? Nope. Or $3400 for a new NAV/COM?
Or $6000 + installation for a 430? Nope. But in spite of what we think
of the FAA bureaucracy, the engineering and related groups really are
quality-driven. When I get a TC/STC/TSO/Certified item, I have a warm,
fuzzy feeling that it will do what it's supposed to do, have a reasonable
MTBF, and that under day-to-day circumstances, I won't have any
surprises.

At no time in my professional career (very large software systems in
aerospace) have I *EVER* had that feeling
with a COTS software or hardware system in a mission-critical environment.

I can at least sympathize with the reservations that you and others
have about using COTS components (thanks, that's term I was looking
for). However, I once went to the dentist to get XRAY's by fancy new
machine that moves in an arc around entire face, and it malfunctioned
and started to crush my skull until dentist ran in and stopped it.
There is also that minor matter of Space Shuttles blowing up every few
years, despite being undergoing what is arguably one of the most
rigorous certification processes around.

The point is that I that think that the "beware the danger of COTS"
attitude is too extreme for the actual risk involved. There is always
some risk.

I ride my motorcycle 150 m.p.h. during Sunday rides, and each time I
mount, I know that an engineer at Dunlop might not have done his job,
so I say a little prayer.... Even though full blowouts are rare, it
could happen, and if it's the front wheel, in a turn, I'm almost
guaranteed a quick death. Some unfortunate riders have already
experienced this fate. Does that stop me from riding? No, because I
looked at the statistics. I look at the likelihood that I will die
from a poorly engineered part, and it's so low relative to other bad
things that can happen to me that I take the risk. So do many other
people.

So I think the same thing could happen in aviation. There is a trade-
off between pain and pleasure of assumption. There is probably a
point where the cost would be so low from using (well-engineered) COTS
components that the risk of using them is superseded by the value that
they would bring.

This is true for non-critical components in an aircraft, and might be
true for many critical components.

-Le Chaud Lapin-