Re: Ada in Iraq

[john@nospam.demon.co.uk (John McCabe)]

[-- Warning: decoded text below may be mangled, UTF-8 assumed --]
[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1612 bytes --]

On Thu, 24 Apr 2003 10:19:09 -0700, Jerry Petrey
<"jdpetrey<NOSPAM>"@raytheon.com> wrote:


>I'm proud to be from a country with the guts to stand up against such
>people rather than burying their heads in the sand and talking about �peace and
>love� while the murderers continue their sprees.  We are not perfect but we try
>to do something to help give freedom to those to whom it is withheld.

[OFFTOPIC]
Interesting comment, as was the comment on UK TV by one of your
government officials. I can't remember the exact context, but it was
something akin to him being asked how he saw Iraq etc fitting in to
the American Empire. The response was: "well we don't have an empire -
yet".

Of course, even if Iraq did become part of the US Empire, like the UK
appears to have become (!), there would be much more freedom of speech
etc than under Saddam Hussein's regime, but don't for a minute think
that this war was *all* about freeing the Iraqis from oppression and
stopping Iraq from being a threat to 'world peace'.
[/OFFTOPIC]

>I think Ada makes safer systems that minimize loss of civilian lives in many
>hi-tech applications (not only weapons).  What I am concerned about is the
>movement away from it today in so many areas.  I think there will be many more
>unnecessary losses of lives in the future for these decisions, however well
>intentioned they are.

I agree. Although I no longer work with Ada :-( I would have
difficulty with the moral issue of working on safety critical and
similar systems that used C/C++/Java.

Best Regards
John McCabe

To reply by email replace 'nospam' with 'assen'