comp.lang.ada
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: "Pat Rogers" <progers@NOclasswideSPAM.com>
Subject: Re: Customer balks at Ada -- any hope?
Date: 2000/07/26
Date: 2000-07-26T00:00:00+00:00	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <dAIf5.183$wE4.32187@nnrp3.sbc.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: 397F442E.E132EFDF@silver.jhuapl.edu

"Scott Ingram" <scott@silver.jhuapl.edu> wrote in message
news:397F442E.E132EFDF@silver.jhuapl.edu...
> Dale Pontius wrote:
> >
> > In article <3974F7A1.E806B092@silver.jhuapl.edu>,
> >         Scott Ingram` <scott@silver.jhuapl.edu> 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.

Nancy Leveson's book Safeware indicates deaths were actually a result,
but not in all cases.  (She also states that the software was
developed in assembly language.)

--
Pat Rogers                            Consulting and Training in:
http://www.classwide.com      Deadline Schedulability Analysis
progers@classwide.com        Software Fault Tolerance
(281)648-3165                       Real-Time/OO Languages

Adam ... does not deserve all the credit; much is due to Eve, the
first woman, and Satan, the first consultant.
Mark Twain






  reply	other threads:[~2000-07-26  0:00 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 61+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2000-07-17  0:00 Customer balks at Ada -- any hope? mjsilva
2000-07-17  0:00 ` Ken Garlington
2000-07-18  0:00   ` Samuel T. Harris
2000-07-18  0:00     ` Ken Garlington
2000-07-18  0:00       ` Scott Ingram`
2000-07-18  0:00         ` Scott Ingram`
2000-07-18  0:00         ` Larry Kilgallen
2000-07-18  0:00           ` Scott Ingram`
2000-07-18  0:00             ` Larry Kilgallen
2000-07-19  0:00             ` David Starner
2000-07-19  0:00         ` Ken Garlington
2000-07-19  0:00           ` Scott Ingram`
2000-07-19  0:00             ` Ken Garlington
2000-07-20  0:00               ` Samuel T. Harris
2000-07-21  0:00                 ` Ken Garlington
2000-07-17  0:00 ` mjsilva
2000-07-18  0:00 ` Ted Dennison
2000-07-18  0:00   ` mjsilva
2000-07-18  0:00 ` Tucker Taft
2000-07-18  0:00   ` mjsilva
2000-07-18  0:00     ` Scott Ingram`
2000-07-18  0:00       ` Scott Ingram`
2000-07-18  0:00       ` nabbasi
2000-07-19  0:00         ` Pascal Obry
2000-07-19  0:00           ` Florian Weimer
2000-07-28  0:00             ` Robert I. Eachus
2000-07-28  0:00               ` Philip Anderson
2000-07-28  0:00                 ` Ken Garlington
2000-07-31  0:00               ` Harry Erwin
2000-07-31  0:00                 ` Ted Dennison
2000-07-19  0:00         ` Rennie Allen
2000-07-19  0:00           ` nabbasi
2000-07-18  0:00   ` Stanley R. Allen
2000-07-18  0:00     ` Rennie Allen
2000-07-18  0:00       ` Stanley R. Allen
2000-07-20  0:00         ` Joseph C Williams
2000-07-21  0:00           ` Ted Dennison
2000-07-18  0:00 ` Larry Kilgallen
2000-07-18  0:00   ` Scott Ingram`
2000-07-18  0:00   ` Larry Kilgallen
2000-07-18  0:00 ` wv12
2000-07-18  0:00   ` Larry Kilgallen
2000-07-19  0:00     ` Kieran Mckey
2000-07-19  0:00       ` fdebruin
2000-07-19  0:00         ` Ken Garlington
2000-07-19  0:00           ` Kieran Mckey
2000-07-19  0:00       ` Customer balks at Ada -- any hope?--Warning Significant Thread Drift Ahead Jeff Creem
2000-07-20  0:00         ` Kieran Mckey
2000-07-28  0:00           ` Robert I. Eachus
2000-07-18  0:00   ` Customer balks at Ada -- any hope? Scott Ingram`
2000-07-26  0:00     ` Dale Pontius
2000-07-26  0:00       ` Scott Ingram
2000-07-26  0:00         ` Pat Rogers [this message]
2000-07-26  0:00         ` Florian Weimer
2000-07-27  0:00           ` Ken Garlington
2000-07-19  0:00   ` mjsilva
2000-07-19  0:00   ` Ken Garlington
2000-07-24  0:00 ` Richard Riehle
2000-07-25  0:00   ` mjsilva
2000-07-25  0:00     ` Gary Scott
2000-07-25  0:00     ` gdemont
replies disabled

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox