We’ve been an engineering driven company from day one – something that leads us to be frustrated with “analysts” and reporters who seem unwilling to challenge marketing. For example, here’s how a recent Investor’s Business Daily article starts: “With a
Auragen computers remembered
In the early 1980s, I worked for a start-up called Auragen Computers based in Fort Lee, New Jersey. We were making a 68K based fault tolerant UNIX based on a smart idea by Sam Glazer. Most of the software engineers
AMD powered 16 core systems are real
We’re finishing some tests on the IWill 8-chip 16 core server and seeing outstanding timing. RTCore can share Linux with cores or reserve them for real-time. On reserved cores the jitter time we have found to be fundamental never reaches
The long haul in the embedded software business.
Chris Lanfear from VDC systems asks FSMLabs has the product line, but lacks the market presence and awareness that other companies have invested in with venture-backed capital. We believe the company has largely bootstrapped itself over the years and while
PowerPoint and RocketScience II
In a previous note I objected to venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki’s requests (demands) for shallow and glib sales pitches in PowerPoint, but Professor Edward Tufte is also asking for sales pitches, just ones with more sober disguise. When you read
Digital Rights Management and Logic
The Sony DRM fiasco is due to a common failure of requirements management logic. If an engineered system relies on certain properties, whenever you add a new requirement, you need to check consistency. You have a boat that has EnoughCargoSpace
Power Point, Rocket Science and dangers of compelling stories
In American English, you can say that something is not too difficult by saying “it’s not rocket science.” We don’t have a good idiom for saying the opposite – that something is hard to understand, not bullet-pointable. Edward Tufte dislikes
Formal methods and academic computer science
Holloway [22] points out that the typical argument in favor of formal methods (that software is bad, unique, and discontinuous; that testing is inadequate; and that formal methods are essential to avoid design flaws) is logically flawed, and unnecessarily complex
Why programs fail and get hacked
“People’s distrust of the high-pressure engines was confirmed when the boiler of a stationary engine exploded at Greenwich on 8 September 1803. It was the usual tale; the boy who had been trained to work the engine went off to
Priority Inheritance: Hack or Error
The subject of priority inheritance has come up again on the Linux kernel mailing list and Torvalds correctly notes “Friends don’t let friends use priority inheritance”. Just don’t do it. If you really need it, your system is broken anyway.