Any software/hardware device that is going to be used in the medical field is going to undergo many hours of intensive stress testing, whether it is running WinCE, Linux, QNX, VxWorks, iTron, or a homegrown solution.
No OS can be trusted implicitly, nor can hardware be trusted completely. However, at some point the definition of "good enough" must be decided and testing done to ensure that "good enough" level of availability.
You want to implicitly distrust a medical device running WinCE or Linux, but it is simply a gut reaction and not based on anything more than that. A device in the wild running WinCE or Linux has had to undergo and pass the same level of testing as a device running another OS to be admitted into medical usage. They are for all intents and purposes equivalent, with the same possibility for failure.
It of course depends on your definition of "real time". And in the end everyone and their mother's got a hard real-time kernel for their OS of choice, even WinCE (though the name of the 3rd party that offers this extension slips my mind at the moment).
No doubt QNX is a good enough embedded system. So is VxWorks, so is WinCE, so is Linux. That's completely besides the point.
1) It isn't the operating system controlling the grinding of lenses or correcting the tilt of the TGV. It is a function of the hardware to do these things. That they report back to some software (which could frankly be run on any embedded OS) which then tells them what to do next is almost irrelevant.
2) An OS is the least important part of an embedded system. It is perhaps the most replaceable part. This is why WinCE is such a poor choice when it comes to UIs. Why do you need the OS to define the UI shell for you when what really matters is the final software that will be visible.
An embedded system simply described looks like this:
Software->OS->Hardware
The OS part of the picture is completely interchangeable and hardware too, to some respect.
Proclaiming the joys of QNX is as silly as proclaiming the joys of Linux or VxWorks. What really matters at that level is not the OS but the support that the system integrator can provide to the OEM. In that situation it is WinCE that comes out ahead of the pack.
The genre is too large to simply say "this is good".
Now I'm going to say something that's going to get me flamed.
Check out Kenny G. No seriously. Stop laughing.
Kenny G represents the future of Jazz, for better or worse. Soprano sax in the fore and a solid trio in the backup is the type of music coming out of the Jazz world for years to come. Take a listen to any recent Jazz album and you will find easily followable rhythms and very few solo excursions anymore.
As an art form, Jazz has essentially played itself out. This is as much a result of its maturity as it is a result of the intrinsyc drawbacks of the style. The style allows the artist complete freedom and this was exploited for years in the form of gratuitous solos and wildly off-beat excursions. There is only so far you can go with that kind of artform because eventually it all has to come back to the essential 4 4 beat and at that point Jazz loses all its magic.
It's a shame that the best American musical artform is on the verge of dying (BSD trolls begone!), but there's simply nowhere for the music to go except into Kenny G-like easy listening, no chance taking, simple, boring, and unsatisfying albums.
It's kind of like being an Altair aficianado. The only thing you can do is look to the past because they just don't make what you want anymore.
Re:There isn't much left of this dead horse
on
Settling SCOres
·
· Score: 0, Troll
I'm sorry. I must have SCOnfused this website for a news outlet.
If you live in the wilderness, is getting broadband really a priority?
As it is, most residential areas have telephone coverage. As the internet gets more mature, the need for broadband lessens because of improvements in packet technology and of course data compression. What was possible 5 years ago on a 56K modem doesn't even compare to what you can do with the Internet today with even a lowly 28.8. The improvements are just so vast.
So what's the big deal with broadband? So you get to view Slashdot 2 seconds faster. So you get to look at the daily news on MSNBC 2 seconds faster. So what? We are talking about lengths of time that don't even register on our awareness.
Look, people who live far away from civilization chose that lifestyle. One big reason was to get away from all this technology crap. Let those hermits live in peace. Not everyone needs or wants the latest and greatest, sometimes they just need the simple and natural.
Why wouldn't it be better to have custom software that helps the government employee do his job? What business of yours is it that the thing conforms to arbitrary standards?
Are standards more important than having the right tool for the right job?
I will take a stupid and lazy government any day over a stupid and industrious one. Hell, I'd take a stupid and lazy government over a smart and industrious one.
Even Windows is "Open Source". If you really want the benefits that we are all talking about here we need to think about how we can encourage the use of Free Software (rather than bastardized Open Source Software).
Take a look at the FSF website for more information regarding the benefits of Free Software.
The problem with all this "Open Source" software advocacy (and the main reason there is no effective advocacy of it in government) is that there are too many interpretations of what it is. You have everything from ESR's idiotic concept of non-Free OSS all the way to Microsoft's pay2play OSS. If everyone would simply get on the same page with the correct FSF interpretation of FREE SOFTWARE, advocacy of FS would be much more effective.
It's pretty clear that IE's problems are slowly but surely being squashed. When you have a user base as large as IE's, it is inevitable that these problems will be found quickly and exploited and then fixed. We can take this as an indication that the larger the user base of a software product, the faster bugs will be found and eliminated.
Now take Mozilla and Opera as opposing examples. The user base for these two browsers combined is infinitesimal compared to IE. It thus stands to reason that all of the bugs and vulnerabilities of these browsers lay dormant, waiting for someone to come along and exploit them. But without a serious user base hammering away at the product all of these problems lie wide open for any hacker to come along and abuse. Just because you don't use Microsoft products doesn't mean that you aren't vulnerable.
You are probably more vulnerable, when you take into account the lack of users and lack of accountability of the OSS project developers.
If you are running WinXP, you can set up Windows Update to download the latest patches anytime you are connected to the web. This will get you the latest updates just about every time you use your computer.
If you turn off this feature, it's really your own fault that you get hacked. If it is true that most attacks occur *after* the patch has been issued, there is no one to blame but the user.
But I'm sure we can twist this into an anti-MS thread anyway.
If there's anything that Apple does right it's that they make sure they do everything right the first time and then spend the rest of a product's life screwing it up.
So when it comes to making an online store, you can bet they didn't just throw together a couple of servers and hack up some Perl. They spent months getting everything right from the frontend UI to the backend load-balancing servers. They've no doubt got a nice server farm and fat pipe running to the internet just in case they do get hit like a redheaded step child.
Apple was ready for business, that's why the store went off without a technical hitch. That they were running XServes just shows that they have extra servers lying around. God knows they aren't being bought in the general server market.
Maybe not directly, but if you don't believe they are working behind the scenes to exacerbate face grease, then you haven't been watching their slow accumulation of P&G stock.
Slashdot Mirror
Does Tolkien ever get around to tying all these loose ends together?
Will there be hour after hour of battle scenes again?
How about CGI? What percentage of the movie can be easily projected to be CG and what amount would necessarily have to be actors?
Do you think that Jackson can tear himself away from the computerized stuff long enough to actually tell a story in this one?
Serious questions from someone who has serious reservations recommending Fellowship of the Rings and The Twin Towers to others.
That is a ridiculous statement.
Any software/hardware device that is going to be used in the medical field is going to undergo many hours of intensive stress testing, whether it is running WinCE, Linux, QNX, VxWorks, iTron, or a homegrown solution.
No OS can be trusted implicitly, nor can hardware be trusted completely. However, at some point the definition of "good enough" must be decided and testing done to ensure that "good enough" level of availability.
You want to implicitly distrust a medical device running WinCE or Linux, but it is simply a gut reaction and not based on anything more than that. A device in the wild running WinCE or Linux has had to undergo and pass the same level of testing as a device running another OS to be admitted into medical usage. They are for all intents and purposes equivalent, with the same possibility for failure.
It of course depends on your definition of "real time". And in the end everyone and their mother's got a hard real-time kernel for their OS of choice, even WinCE (though the name of the 3rd party that offers this extension slips my mind at the moment).
No doubt QNX is a good enough embedded system. So is VxWorks, so is WinCE, so is Linux. That's completely besides the point.
1) It isn't the operating system controlling the grinding of lenses or correcting the tilt of the TGV. It is a function of the hardware to do these things. That they report back to some software (which could frankly be run on any embedded OS) which then tells them what to do next is almost irrelevant.
2) An OS is the least important part of an embedded system. It is perhaps the most replaceable part. This is why WinCE is such a poor choice when it comes to UIs. Why do you need the OS to define the UI shell for you when what really matters is the final software that will be visible.
An embedded system simply described looks like this:
Software->OS->Hardware
The OS part of the picture is completely interchangeable and hardware too, to some respect.
Proclaiming the joys of QNX is as silly as proclaiming the joys of Linux or VxWorks. What really matters at that level is not the OS but the support that the system integrator can provide to the OEM. In that situation it is WinCE that comes out ahead of the pack.
When you make a tunafish sandwich, sometimes you've got to drown a few dolphins.
The genre is too large to simply say "this is good".
Now I'm going to say something that's going to get me flamed.
Check out Kenny G. No seriously. Stop laughing.
Kenny G represents the future of Jazz, for better or worse. Soprano sax in the fore and a solid trio in the backup is the type of music coming out of the Jazz world for years to come. Take a listen to any recent Jazz album and you will find easily followable rhythms and very few solo excursions anymore.
As an art form, Jazz has essentially played itself out. This is as much a result of its maturity as it is a result of the intrinsyc drawbacks of the style. The style allows the artist complete freedom and this was exploited for years in the form of gratuitous solos and wildly off-beat excursions. There is only so far you can go with that kind of artform because eventually it all has to come back to the essential 4 4 beat and at that point Jazz loses all its magic.
It's a shame that the best American musical artform is on the verge of dying (BSD trolls begone!), but there's simply nowhere for the music to go except into Kenny G-like easy listening, no chance taking, simple, boring, and unsatisfying albums.
It's kind of like being an Altair aficianado. The only thing you can do is look to the past because they just don't make what you want anymore.
I'm sorry. I must have SCOnfused this website for a news outlet.
You'll probably need at least one of these. And lots of these.
Incidents and accidents. Hints and allegations.
And yet we have NO NEW INFORMATION ABOUT ANYTHING PERTINENT.
And yet, it is quite normal.
Perhaps it is time to think about 'organizing'.
If you live in the wilderness, is getting broadband really a priority?
As it is, most residential areas have telephone coverage. As the internet gets more mature, the need for broadband lessens because of improvements in packet technology and of course data compression. What was possible 5 years ago on a 56K modem doesn't even compare to what you can do with the Internet today with even a lowly 28.8. The improvements are just so vast.
So what's the big deal with broadband? So you get to view Slashdot 2 seconds faster. So you get to look at the daily news on MSNBC 2 seconds faster. So what? We are talking about lengths of time that don't even register on our awareness.
Look, people who live far away from civilization chose that lifestyle. One big reason was to get away from all this technology crap. Let those hermits live in peace. Not everyone needs or wants the latest and greatest, sometimes they just need the simple and natural.
Code that you did not allow onto your computer is code that you didn't allow, regardless of whether it is destructive, constructive, or benign.
I am selling this eFork for only 3 EZ(tm) payments of $9.95!
The eFork is made of the same Space Age material encapsulating the Astronauts!
No assembly required!
Easy to use! Just stick it into any electrical outlet and be amazed!
Email me for more information.
OpenBSD needs to catch up a bit. This is release 0.7 but OpenBSD is still using 0.5.
Hopefully the new version will be approved and performance gains realized.
Why wouldn't it be better to have custom software that helps the government employee do his job? What business of yours is it that the thing conforms to arbitrary standards?
Are standards more important than having the right tool for the right job?
I will take a stupid and lazy government any day over a stupid and industrious one. Hell, I'd take a stupid and lazy government over a smart and industrious one.
Even Windows is "Open Source". If you really want the benefits that we are all talking about here we need to think about how we can encourage the use of Free Software (rather than bastardized Open Source Software).
Take a look at the FSF website for more information regarding the benefits of Free Software.
The problem with all this "Open Source" software advocacy (and the main reason there is no effective advocacy of it in government) is that there are too many interpretations of what it is. You have everything from ESR's idiotic concept of non-Free OSS all the way to Microsoft's pay2play OSS. If everyone would simply get on the same page with the correct FSF interpretation of FREE SOFTWARE, advocacy of FS would be much more effective.
Are you going to sue them if they violate any of those stipulations?
It seems like an exercise in futility.
Someone heard something that someone said that someone else knew someone in some other division that stole Linux code and put it into the SCO code.
Hints and allegations! Jump on it!
It's pretty clear that IE's problems are slowly but surely being squashed. When you have a user base as large as IE's, it is inevitable that these problems will be found quickly and exploited and then fixed. We can take this as an indication that the larger the user base of a software product, the faster bugs will be found and eliminated.
Now take Mozilla and Opera as opposing examples. The user base for these two browsers combined is infinitesimal compared to IE. It thus stands to reason that all of the bugs and vulnerabilities of these browsers lay dormant, waiting for someone to come along and exploit them. But without a serious user base hammering away at the product all of these problems lie wide open for any hacker to come along and abuse. Just because you don't use Microsoft products doesn't mean that you aren't vulnerable.
You are probably more vulnerable, when you take into account the lack of users and lack of accountability of the OSS project developers.
If you are running WinXP, you can set up Windows Update to download the latest patches anytime you are connected to the web. This will get you the latest updates just about every time you use your computer.
If you turn off this feature, it's really your own fault that you get hacked. If it is true that most attacks occur *after* the patch has been issued, there is no one to blame but the user.
But I'm sure we can twist this into an anti-MS thread anyway.
Java can be used to make these A-list games, but the hardware doesn't exist to run them at any reasonably acceptable speed.
Urban legend points to Harrison Ford having a bad case of the runs that morning.
If there's anything that Apple does right it's that they make sure they do everything right the first time and then spend the rest of a product's life screwing it up.
So when it comes to making an online store, you can bet they didn't just throw together a couple of servers and hack up some Perl. They spent months getting everything right from the frontend UI to the backend load-balancing servers. They've no doubt got a nice server farm and fat pipe running to the internet just in case they do get hit like a redheaded step child.
Apple was ready for business, that's why the store went off without a technical hitch. That they were running XServes just shows that they have extra servers lying around. God knows they aren't being bought in the general server market.
Maybe not directly, but if you don't believe they are working behind the scenes to exacerbate face grease, then you haven't been watching their slow accumulation of P&G stock.