Toyota Acceleration and Embedded System Bugs

An anonymous reader writes "David Cummings, a programmer who worked on the Mars Pathfinder project, has written an interesting editorial in the L.A. Times encouraging Toyota to drop claims of software infallibility in their recent acceleration problems. He argues that embedded systems developers must program more defensively, and that companies should stop relying on software for safety. Quoting: 'If Toyota has indeed tested its software as thoroughly as it says without finding any bugs, my response is simple: Keep trying. Find new ways to instrument the software, and come up with more creative tests. The odds are that there are still bugs in the code, which may or may not be related to unintended acceleration. Until these bugs are identified, how can you be certain they are not related to sudden acceleration?'"

Comments

Exactly

[Reality Master 101]

I have to say, it's this specific reason that makes me wary of anthropogenic climate change. A lot of the evidence is based on computer models, and anyone who has programmed computers knows how difficult it is to get anything computer related right. The most shocking thing about "climategate" to me wasn't the content of the emails, it was the fact that the computer models used were NOT openly available to all, and were not published with the research papers. And when you combine that with the insane complexity of the climate and the limitations of our computers, I can't help but feel that computer models are a blunt, crude tool at best, and at worst a tool of misinformation (even if the wielders have "good intentions").

I'm willing to accept that human activity is causing significant climate change, but don't use computer models to prove it to me. By all means, use computer models to gather clues about what to test. But computer models are manufactured evidence that can be made to say anything. Anyone using computer models to argue that seismic shifts in human culture are needed should be taken out and flogged until their real agenda is admitted. No one with any clue about computers would argue that they are infallible oracles of truth (or even infallible controllers of accelerator pedals).