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Re: The Airplane Example (was Re: StreamingXML)

• To: David Megginson <david.megginson@g...>
• Subject: Re: The Airplane Example (was Re: StreamingXML)
• From: Dave Pawson <davep@d...>
• Date: Fri, 31 Dec 2004 10:56:29 +0000
• Cc: XML Developers List <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <75cb920c041230133376fee8f5@m...>
• References: <830178CE7378FC40BC6F1DDADCFDD1D10276723C@R...> <30291DBF-590E-11D9-A33A-000393DC762C@m...> <1104439040.16585.131.camel@borgia> <75cb920c041230133376fee8f5@m...>
• Reply-to: davep@d...

On Thu, 2004-12-30 at 16:33 -0500, David Megginson wrote:

> 
> I find the airplane example interesting, since I just spent the
> morning with my head stuck under an airplane cowling (burned-out
> starter solenoid).  Obviously, my Piper is fly-by-loose-cable rather
> than fly-by-wire, but what makes airplane systems safe -- whether
> they're mechanical or electronic -- is not error-free design and
> implementation, but an enormous amount of redundancy.
> 
> The trick is to make sure that there are always at least two ways to
> do most things (in a cheap plane like mine; sometimes dozens, in
> commercial airliners) and that they are truly independent of
> each-other. 

I don't think that works on EFA and suchlike, particularly not 
in the realms of software. Provability and testing rules the day in
that domain. Reliability increases with parallel hardware systems;
Multiple processors similarly help to check each other, but the actual
routines used rely on different approaches.


-- 
Regards, 

Dave Pawson
XSLT + Docbook FAQ
http://www.dpawson.co.uk

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  • RE: Streaming XML (WAS: More on taming SAX (was Re: ANN: Amara XML Toolkit 0.9.0))
    • From: "Dare Obasanjo" <dareo@m...>
  • Re: Streaming XML (WAS: More on taming SAX (was Re: ANN: Amara XML Toolkit 0.9.0))
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  • Re: Streaming XML (WAS: More on taming SAX (was Re: ANN: Amara XML Toolkit 0.9.0))
    • From: Uche Ogbuji <Uche.Ogbuji@f...>
  • The Airplane Example (was Re: Streaming XML)
    • From: David Megginson <david.megginson@g...>

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