From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,63ceef1cf4561e32 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Scott Ingram Subject: Re: Customer balks at Ada -- any hope? Date: 2000/07/26 Message-ID: <397F442E.E132EFDF@silver.jhuapl.edu>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 651116432 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <8l01s4$gnr$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8l2pqo$im7$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3974F7A1.E806B092@silver.jhuapl.edu> <8ln7q5$t1o$2@news.btv.ibm.com> X-Accept-Language: en Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: usenet@houston.jhuapl.edu X-Trace: houston.jhuapl.edu 964641838 15815 128.244.80.107 (26 Jul 2000 20:03:58 GMT) Organization: Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, Laurel, MD, USA Mime-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: 26 Jul 2000 20:03:58 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-07-26T20:03:58+00:00 List-Id: Dale Pontius wrote: > > In article <3974F7A1.E806B092@silver.jhuapl.edu>, > Scott Ingram` writes: > > wv12@my-deja.com put out some flame bait to which I responded: > > > >> C has been known to control big, expensive hardware. One such > > > > C has controlled big, expensive hardware...and people died. > > > Point of curiousity - can you expand on this? Tales of death > due to software error are surprisingly uncommon, given what we > seem to consider the poor general state of software development. > > Dale Pontius > NOT speaking for IBM The device I was thinking of was a medical radiation generator for the treatment of cancer. However, a reference that Ken Garlington gave earlier on c.l.a. led me (eventually) to a report on the Therac-25 which I believe is the machine that made it into urban legend as the killing machine. I have not completed reading the report yet, but I also have not discovered any incidents of morbidity directly attributable to the massive radiation overdoses that some patients were exposed to. A Google search on "therac 25" pops up about 1050 links. -- Scott Ingram Vice-Chair, Baltimore SIGAda Sonar Processing and Analysis Laboratory Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory