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#111
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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 ----== Posted via Newsfeeds.Com - Unlimited-Uncensored-Secure Usenet News==---- http://www.newsfeeds.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 120,000+ Newsgroups ----= East and West-Coast Server Farms - Total Privacy via Encryption =---- |
#117
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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
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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
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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
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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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