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0 pointsDocTomoe11mo ago0 comments

> I remember feeding disk number 27 out of 33 only to get a "bad sector" error an hour into a software install. I'm still salty about that one.

That's why mission-critical systems have several sets of floppy disks, and disk-multiplication stations.

> Would you? Really? Or would you recoil in horror at the very idea?

Depends. If the old system is certified and has all error modes defined, while the other new system is a black box with exciting new ways to screw up, I'd go old system ten out of ten times. Which incidentally is why NASA uses ancient chips when they build new robotic drones.

> I worked on a large scale DOS-era software virtualisation project where we moved ~20K users onto a Windows + Citrix platform.

Respectfully: How many lives would you have extinguished had your new system failed? How many failure modes did you encounter during your virtualisation project? How many external systems - which also relied on a very specific way of doing things and would have murdered people if talked to wrongly did you interface with?

No need to answer. We have all had such projects. We know things break before, during, and after the switchover. Only in some environments, systems absolutely cannot break, ever. Aviation is not your average 'let's get us a new mail server' migration project.

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jiggawatts11mo ago

> How many lives would you have extinguished

I’ve worked on life & death Citrix modernisation projects several times: the local equivalent of the 911 emergency phone call centre and then computers on wheels used for during paediatric surgeries. A help line for suicidal children too.

People conflate the usecase with the technology, assuming that “important thing” must have some mystical properties that requires legacy or some other “special flavor” of IT architecture. They’re wrong.

The best example of this flawed thinking was some person arguing with me about the computer upgrade that F-22 fighters are receiving this year… to the same level of performance as a first-gen Apple Watch!

Of course, that costs an absurd amount of money and is already delayed.

“But it’s a stealth fighter!” people will argue until they’re blue in the face.

Sure. Yes. But that’s a property of the outside surface, not the computer inside.

Other modern fighters, including stealth fighters, have hilariously better computers for a fraction of the cost. The F-22 procurement process was corrupted and some vendor is doing the minimum, twenty years late, at ten times the price. That’s what happened. Everything else is a “story”. A fiction. A cover of the ass type.

Same thing here. There’s a contract for providing IT services to the FAA. It’s a bad contract. That’s what happened. That’s all. There is no mystical or magical capability provided by floppies that can’t be better served by, for example, USB thumb drives.

trollbridge11mo ago

Are you aware the hardware in an F-22 has to be hardened against an EMP?

jiggawatts11mo ago

At the risk of replying to someone with "troll" in their username...

Yes, but the entire point is that other fighter planes have identical requirements but don't have comically out-dated avionics.

Don't guess. Don't make up stories. Don't carry water for incompetent people that are protecting their own backsides.

Compare. Look at what other, more competent people have done, and use that as your benchmark.

That's always the key with these things. You don't have to be an expert. You don't have to have secret knowledge. Other people do. Just look at what they've achieved (or haven't), and compare against that.

When people come up with excuses, you don't have to believe them, even if they're experts in an esoteric, specialist field such as "nuclear-war-resistant stealth fighter design". Even if they're some sort of "authority", so are other people that designed their own stealth fighters.

This is a very useful life skill. Use it!

As a random example, there's countless arguments from "experts" such as economists, politicians, and industry thought leaders about how unaffordable universal government-funded health-care would be in the United States. Meanwhile, dozens of similar countries have done it for decades! Just look at the success of other countries and then dismiss the excuses you hear back at home out of hand because now you know: they're just excuses, not reasons.

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jiggawatts11mo ago

> How many lives would you have extinguished

Of course, that costs an absurd amount of money and is already delayed.

“But it’s a stealth fighter!” people will argue until they’re blue in the face.

Sure. Yes. But that’s a property of the outside surface, not the computer inside.

trollbridge11mo ago

Are you aware the hardware in an F-22 has to be hardened against an EMP?

jiggawatts11mo ago

At the risk of replying to someone with "troll" in their username...

Yes, but the entire point is that other fighter planes have identical requirements but don't have comically out-dated avionics.

Don't guess. Don't make up stories. Don't carry water for incompetent people that are protecting their own backsides.

Compare. Look at what other, more competent people have done, and use that as your benchmark.

This is a very useful life skill. Use it!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse