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Iced up Cirrus crashes



 
 
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  #111  
Old February 14th 05, 12:31 AM
Colin W Kingsbury
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"Matt Barrow" wrote in message
...

"Colin W Kingsbury" wrote in message
ink.net...



And the long range costs of software done haphazzardly is...what?


Much cheaper products and faster evolution in terms of features. Perhaps the
most famed software development outfit in the business (in terms of quality)
is the Lockmar group that built and maintains the guidance control program
on the Space Shuttle. They know of a small number (5 IIRC) bugs that cannot
be fixed without causing worse problems elsewhere.

Among other things, the computer this program runs on has not changed much
in 20 years- it is basically comparable to an Apple II in terms of
processing power. Second, five or so years ago they did a little accounting
and figured that over the years, the system had cost about $35,000 per line
of code. Now, Windows XP is up into the tens of millions of code by itself,
and MS Office is perhaps twice again as large. Do the math and you see we're
talking numbers into the hundreds of billions. So perfection (or as close to
it as is possible) would cost something like the size of the budget deficit.

While individual users have very little power over a company like MSFT, they
do in fact listen to their big enterprise customers like say Bank of America
who buy licenses tens of thousands at a time. For years, quality was not an
issue because the cost of failures (system crashes) was relatively low. But
this is starting to change because of awareness about security issues, among
other things. A large number of the security flaws that exist in Windows are
symptomatic of slapdash engineering. A virus that takes ten thousand
desktops down costs the BofA probably millions of dollars. So now these CIOs
are telling MSFT that they need to get their act together.

-cwk.


  #112  
Old February 14th 05, 12:52 AM
Steve.T
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I must politely disagree. And this is very much off topic to this N/G.

I have worked on very large projects (including a tracking system for
NASA). When QA is part of the planning process (that is, a group is
responsible for validation, certification and regression testing),
things are done a bit differently.

When automation is used to test the system being built, testing and the
results come back very quickly. Debugging done by the developers is
more efficient than when it is expected of the support people. The cost
of debugged lines of code drops.

One other thing about software development - high level language coding
vs. assembly language ("machine language") coding. The development
costs are quite high for assembly language, particularly when they have
to work right the first time. But when that development can be done in
high-level languages that have been debugged, cost of development drops
when compared to "machine language" development.

So when software development is controlled and driven by the marketing
arm of a company, too often you get buggy code that has not been
correctly documented. [I've worked under those conditions too.]

Regards,
Steve.T
PP ASEL/Instrument

  #113  
Old February 14th 05, 02:29 AM
Michael
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Would you say they (Cirrus) have become the new "doctor/lawyer
killer"?

That implies that the Bonanza was the old "doctor/lawyer killer" and I
can't say I'm really comfortable with that description. Any airplane
will kill the unwary. I think that once the insurance companies catch
on to what the Cirrus is, and it looks like they are getting there in a
hurry, the Cirrus will have an accident record no worse (and maybe
slightly better) than the Bonanza and similar airplanes.

And I don't believe there will EVER be such a thing as a fast, capable,
efficient airplane that will be safe to travel in for the average low
time pilot with average training.

Michael

  #114  
Old February 14th 05, 05:27 AM
Colin W Kingsbury
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"Steve.T" wrote in message
ups.com...
I must politely disagree. And this is very much off topic to this N/G.


Since when has that stopped anyone?

So when software development is controlled and driven by the marketing
arm of a company, too often you get buggy code that has not been
correctly documented. [I've worked under those conditions too.]


Well, you'll sooner have cats and dogs living together than marketing and
engineering getting along. I've lived on both sides of the aisle and as a
now general manager I can say unequivocally that software development
*should* be driven by marketing. If they are doing their job right, they
understand what will sell and that is the point.

Looking at this from a product management standpoint, it is all about how
much priority you assign to building quality versus building other aspects
of the product. There is no free lunch: quality costs time. It may pay
itself back over the long run but companies often live and die financially
in the short one, so choices must be made. I have worked at two companies
that over-engineered their products and died as a result.

The real failure here is that consumers have no good way to get a handle on
the quality of products they're considering buying. This is especially acute
with typical business systems that are not mass-marketed. There is no JD
Power/Consumer Reports survey for software like there are for new cars. So
even if a customer says, "I'm willing to pay 10% more for a 5% improvement
in quality," there's no way for them to find out who is in fact better.
Vendors therefore have little incentive to do better than anyone else. New
features on the other hand will logically be prioritized over quality
improvements in many cases because while no customer will pay 10% more for a
quality improvement that can't be measured, they will pay 15% more for a
catchy feature that is quite obvious. We can argue the details but the
purpose of a business is in the end to make a product customers are willing
to pay for. Traditionally quality has not been rewarded by the market.

As an economist, I see this as a classic market failure known as the
"prisoner's dilemma." Because of the lack of information (difficulty of
measuring relative quality objectively), the market fails to provide
higher-quality options even though customers clearly want them. This
coincidentally is the branch of game theory that won John Nash (the subject
of "A Beautiful Mind") his Nobel some years back.

-cwk.


  #115  
Old February 14th 05, 02:08 PM
Corky Scott
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On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 14:09:14 -0500, "Peter R."
wrote:

Viperdoc wrote:

However, in severe conditions I would not want to trust my
life to the supposition that TKS makes me invincible.


I cannot imagine there is any technology that makes a pilot "invincible."


Two or three years ago a professor here at the engineering school of
Dartmouth developed a deicing technique that he was claiming would
work on just about anything including tires, windshields, airplane
wings, or whatever.

It involved running a type of low voltage charge through the object.
The charge causes ice to outgas so that it cannot gain a purchase on
the object. It either slides off or is blown off.

I asked where this project was a year ago or so and was told that it
was now in the hands of private companies who are working on making it
a viable product.

Corky Scott
  #116  
Old February 14th 05, 02:59 PM
Peter R.
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Corky Scott wrote:

On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 14:09:14 -0500, "Peter R."
wrote:

Viperdoc wrote:

However, in severe conditions I would not want to trust my
life to the supposition that TKS makes me invincible.


I cannot imagine there is any technology that makes a pilot "invincible."


Two or three years ago a professor here at the engineering school of
Dartmouth developed a deicing technique that he was claiming would
work on just about anything including tires, windshields, airplane
wings, or whatever.

It involved running a type of low voltage charge through the object.
The charge causes ice to outgas so that it cannot gain a purchase on
the object. It either slides off or is blown off.

I asked where this project was a year ago or so and was told that it
was now in the hands of private companies who are working on making it
a viable product.


Perhaps, but my point is that no matter how foolproof a product might be,
if it requires any pilot input it will have the potential to fail the
pilot. This is certainly true in GA, where cost and other reasons limit
the type of technology that makes it to market.

--
Peter













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  #117  
Old February 14th 05, 07:11 PM
C J Campbell
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"Matt Barrow" wrote in message
...

"George Patterson" wrote in message
...


Matt Barrow wrote:

How many SR20/22's in the inventory and how many 182's?


For the last few years, production figures have been about the same for

both
birds.


Are those statistics only counting recent production aircraft?

--
Matt


No. George is confusing two sets of statistics. Perhaps he thinks you are
replying to his earlier post which did compare only recent production
aircraft.


  #118  
Old February 14th 05, 08:36 PM
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In article .com,
Steve.T wrote:
Jon:

Who granted your "engineer" status? I certainly hope it wasn't the NJ
Cosmatology Board.


The state of Texas has such a legal title.


There are no Software Engineers that I'm aware of, only a title for a
position, but no engineers. This is a legal thing, and why I ask,
because I also do software and have for years.

I decided to let the bugs in the software argument go lest I be called
a mainframe bigot.

Later,
Steve.T
PP ASEL/Instrument



  #119  
Old February 14th 05, 11:12 PM
Jon Kraus
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Again... sorry I should have spelled it out.... PP-ASEL-IA in this case
means:
Private Pilot-Airplane Single Engine Land-Instrument Airplane

Inspector Aircraft as you put it is not the correct term.. Inspection
Authorization is what you should have asked.. So your post, to be
correct should have said:

Do you have Inspection Authorization? In which I would have responded -
No I do not. :-)

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
Mooney 201 443H

Steve.T wrote:

Are you an Inspector, Aircraft?


  #120  
Old February 14th 05, 11:18 PM
Jon Kraus
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It's like calling someone as "combustible refuse engineer" when they
really are just a garbageman.

Or in your case a glorified carpenter? If you read the post I was
responding to you'd see I was joking about the "engineer" part...

Jon Kraus
PP-ASEL-IA
Mooney 201 4443H

 




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