Indeed:
" Definition of "safety critical" for the uninformed: You screw up, it gets through... people die. "
Alright sir. A simple enough definition when the objective is to ' not die '. To,...not meet with catastrophy or extreme compromise.
In the civilian world, the objectives go from ' will not start' to say, ' the release of radiactive material' for ALL of which major civil suits can be filed.
If a warrior is killed in battle by a software glitch which being a glitch does not always show itself or fail in the same way, inside of a leviathan of steel and Uranium - nuclear submarine- you may not even know what went wrong to fix, AND NO ONE on the sub or their relatives can sue the Department of Defense because the DOD cannot be sued when in the act of war,..." actively prosecuting armed conflict against an assessed or appointed enemy."
In the civilian world, US, Europe,Japan, etc., everyone does not die, but someone ALWAYS has to pay! But,...I understand your point.!
Your questions is the kind of question that: A) Children in their wide-eyed innocence would ask. or B) Blooming genius would ask out of fortituded and courage and be shunned.
I beg you to take the compliment that A) and B) bestow upon you.
To answer you;
your simple question begs a complex answer,...here goes,... Hardware is a physical commodity whose use is subject to, The laws of thermodynamics, the Law of Gravity , the restrictions of the Laws of Entropy and choatic disorder, laws of motion, etc. in truth, anything that is itself physical matter or electromagnetic energy may interact with this physical object and derange it into a source of physical harm to another physical object/person. Hardware can touch you and is seen, felt, touched, etc., etc., etc... Software can -CAUSE- physical harm, through function or malfunction, through placement or misplacement/displacment etc., etc. but is not the thing that , you guessed it, made actual contact. Accident investigation can be expensive, yes? Yes! But imagine the expense of PROVING that software was intended, or intentionally recreated or created, copied or reverse engineered to introduce fault that led to harm or catastrophic event. Multiply this expense at the end and beginning,..huh? At the creation of said device and at its discovery at the scene of a mishap it must then be examined for possible even probable fault against a model that should predict said apparent failure EVEN THOUGH said model cannot completely emulate all possible causes of fault/failure. ( a hackers-black hat- code as opposed to a hackers - white hats- code) Each has their own style and methods to achieve a particular end. Modern software construction is not so strictly controlled/modelled that there is only ONE WAY, one predictable and inescapable way to make a function in cyber reality / software development - see what I mean?!? The ability to check software would require software codes of conduct WAY PAST Posix or any present idea of standards or conformity. To prove something or test something we must have limits on what that ' something' can do or be even if it can do or be a lot of things,...software does not have that and proprietary software makers will spend megatons of money to make sure such standards NEVER come about until they( one company) owns the entire theater of software deveopment: Examp: Microsoft helped create the POSIX standard but their own software is not POSUX compliant,..sheeesh!
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed: " Definition of "safety critical" for the uninformed: You screw up, it gets through ... people die. "
Alright sir. A simple enough definition when the objective is to ' not die '. To,...not meet with catastrophy or extreme compromise.
In the civilian world, the objectives go from ' will not start' to say, ' the release of radiactive material' for ALL of which major civil suits can be filed.
If a warrior is killed in battle by a software glitch which being a glitch does not always show itself or fail in the same way, inside of a leviathan of steel and Uranium - nuclear submarine- you may not even know what went wrong to fix, AND NO ONE on the sub or their relatives can sue the Department of Defense because the DOD cannot be sued when in the act of war,..." actively prosecuting armed conflict against an assessed or appointed enemy."
In the civilian world, US, Europe,Japan, etc., everyone does not die, but someone ALWAYS has to pay! But,...I understand your point.!
Indeed:
.
Your questions is the kind of question that:
A) Children in their wide-eyed innocence would ask. or
B) Blooming genius would ask out of fortituded and courage and be shunned
I beg you to take the compliment that A) and B) bestow upon you.
To answer you;
your simple question begs a complex answer,...here goes,...
Hardware is a physical commodity whose use is subject to, The laws of thermodynamics, the Law of Gravity , the restrictions of the Laws of Entropy and choatic disorder, laws of motion, etc. in truth, anything that is itself physical matter or electromagnetic energy may interact with this physical object and derange it into a source of physical harm to another physical object/person.
Hardware can touch you and is seen, felt, touched, etc., etc., etc...
Software can -CAUSE- physical harm, through function or malfunction, through placement or misplacement/displacment etc., etc. but is not the thing that , you guessed it, made actual contact.
Accident investigation can be expensive, yes? Yes!
But imagine the expense of PROVING that software was intended, or intentionally recreated or created, copied or reverse engineered to introduce fault that led to harm or catastrophic event. Multiply this expense at the end and beginning,..huh?
At the creation of said device and at its discovery at the scene of a mishap it must then be examined for possible even probable fault against a model that should predict said apparent failure EVEN THOUGH said model cannot completely emulate all possible causes of fault/failure. ( a hackers-black hat- code as opposed to a hackers - white hats- code) Each has their own style and methods to achieve a particular end. Modern software construction is not so strictly controlled/modelled that there is only ONE WAY, one predictable and inescapable way to make a function in cyber reality / software development - see what I mean?!? The ability to check software would require software codes of conduct WAY PAST Posix or any present idea of standards or conformity.
To prove something or test something we must have limits on what that ' something' can do or be even if it can do or be a lot of things,...software does not have that and proprietary software makers will spend megatons of money to make sure such standards NEVER come about until they( one company) owns the entire theater of software deveopment: Examp: Microsoft helped create the POSIX standard but their own software is not POSUX compliant,..sheeesh!