OpenEuphoria

RE: How big is Euphoria clan

• Posted by Andy Cranston <andy_cranston at LWSYS.FSNET.CO.UK> Mar 22, 2001
• 493 views

At 03:52 PM 3/22/01 -0800, you wrote:
>On 22 Mar 2001, at 15:37, Alvin  Koffman wrote:
>
>> I remember reading about the mars rover and the 16 bit bus it has 
>> thinking "you mean they spent hundreds of millions on this thing and 
>> only put a #@%&ing 286 on it?"
>
>Yup, that's cause the lines on the cpu were wide enough to absorb gamma 
>radiation and still function. After the 286, line width and spacing shrank, 
>insulators got thinner, and the radiation was able to knock enough electrons 
>around to cause problems. There is a NASA brief floating around on this 
>somewhere. I think i remember the Hubble telescope used an 8086 at the 
>beginning, and was upgraded to a 286. I wouldn't be surprised if the shuttle 
>uses only 286's too.
>
>Kat

Sometimes when you really do not want something to go wrong it is safer to
use a technology that has been proven with two key factors:

    Time

and:

    Wide usage

Time means the technology has been around a while and is (hopefully)
trusted to a certain extent.  Yes "trusted" is an emotive term.

Wide usage means more than a few people and/or groups have had a fiddle
with it and (hopefully) gotton most/some of the bugs out.  In the last
sentence "more than a few" is a vague statement.

What it boils down to is how much confidence can you put in human crafted
hardware and software.  A yes or no answer is meaningless.  As is an "X"
percent certainty answer.  I'm reminded of two "case in points".

The first is that near the Year 2000 bug to combat fears of aircraft safety
all software control managers of a "certain international airline" were
required to be airborne on flights over the millenium.  Yep at midnight.

The second is an older non-IT issue with bomb disposal in the UK.  The chap
in charge of procedures for bomb disposal had a new theory on how to
diffuse the latest UXB (UneXploded Bomb).  Rather than pass the instruction
down the line he insisted he diffused the first half dozen himself.  Now
why don't they make managers like that anymore :-]

Conclusion?  Features are nice - stability is perfection. YMMV

Andy.