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Date: 7 Jun 93 23:05:44 GMT
From: eachus@mitre-bedford.arpa  (Robert I. Eachus)
Subject: Re: Data shows Top 50 Software Vendors not using Ada
Message-ID: <EACHUS.93Jun7180544@spectre.mitre.org>
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

In article <SRCTRAN.93Jun5164025@world.std.com> srctran@world.std.com (Gregory 
Aharonian) writes:

  >    Air traffic control systems route some of their real time information
  > over commercial phone lines (if you remember some of the stories from ATT's
  > Manhattan problem a while ago).

  Greg you apparently have no concept of what a fail-safe system is.
The result of the ATT failure in Manhattan--which was not really a
software failure--was to leave many planes sitting on the ground for
hours BECAUSE there was no way to confirm that other centers could
handle the load.  Flights already in the air were not affected,
because they already had confirmed routings.

  >     If someone really studied this problem, I bet you would find
  > out that the number of civilian-potential deaths from informaiton
  > systems accidents surpasses the number of military potential
  > deaths in peacetime, and probably equivalent to potential deaths
  > in today's sanitary wartimes.

     Again a fundamental misundertanding.  Of course the number of
civilian-potential deaths is greater, in peace or wartime, because it
is usually civilians who suffer the consequences.  For peacetime
examples, there may have been a few military personnel on KAL 007 or
on the Iranian airliner shot down in the Persian Gulf, but most of the
casualties were civilians.

     In the Gulf War, many Iraqi soldiers were intentionally killed by
allied airstrikes.  Most of the people killed by accident were
civilians.  Keeping today's sanitary wartimes sanitary means keeping
all weapons under control and on target to the greatest extent
possible.

  >	Soldier's lives should be protected at all costs, except for
  > bankrupting the country they are defending, because civilian
  > livelihoods and lives (i.e.  the people paying the taxes to
  > protect the soldiers) are killed.

     Again a fundamental misunderstanding.  Soldier's lives are NOT
protected at all costs, what comes first is completion of the mission.
The primary mission of the Department of Defense is to keep the peace,
because that is the easiest way to protect the American people.

     Let me try to explain that differently.  Letting the other guy
shoot first is not good tactics.  But the Cold War never got hot
because many soldiers on both sides took all possible reasonable--and
many unreasonable--risks to avoid starting a shooting war.  Shooting
wars are hard to stop and tend to spread.

--

					Robert I. Eachus

with Standard_Disclaimer;
use  Standard_Disclaimer;
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