And they say mac's dont Crash: Part 2

David Jimerson said:
OT:

Micrsoft's Flight Simulator is indeed the best one. But I can't for the life of me figure out why it's so popular.

I mean, I get air combat flight sims. I play those (or used to) frequently. Big fan.

But why would anyone want to hop in the cockpit of a 747 and fly it above the clouds across the Pacific Ocean in real time? Just don't get it.
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Im not sure about that, but i played the MSFS X and all i did was mess around with the hang glider...
 
Anhar Miah said:
Erm as far as I understand Missile guidence systems use custom built embedded hardware (motsy ECL ICs), I would be surpised they would use anything like Unix OS (and related hardware). Now if you meant the F&C units then thats a different matter.
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Maybe true for missile guidance systems (I can't confirm that - didn't work in that area). However, I worked on a Radar detection system written in Ada running on a DEC OS (HP Unix). And it picked up any flying objects (missiles included). I can't give more info than that. But let's say Unix is key for military software development. We didn't even have MS Windows on our desktops. I know that embedded systems are required for the components but the detections and processing are done externally.
Also note that the LynuxWorks, an RTOS (LynxOS) embedded OS system development company which is completely Unix like (it's latest OS is Linux interchangeable. Binaries compiled on Linux will run on it) is now standard in many US military systems: http://www.lynuxworks.com/solutions/milaero/milaero.php3. See their OS training requirements here: http://www.lynuxworks.com/support/courses/posix.php (I don't see Windows mentioned anywhere)

I also attached a spec for a radar processing system adapted from the german air force system (not the one I worked on but see page 3 of the document "Radar Data and Display Unix"; and page 4 "Operating System"). By the way this was plucked from the net so it's NOT a confidential document.

However, I agree with the other statement you made; as long as humans are programming, there will be bugs which may lead to crashes. We had our fair share of bugs on our systems but the testing infrastructure was good enough to snuff out (I hope) 99% of them.

I love both MS Windows and Unix. They have their strengths and weaknesses. Windows is good because there are tonnes of software available - it's also more user friendly than your typical Unix environment. Unix systems I love because they are stable and I understand them better. Mac OSX is, to me, a hybrid. It gives me great software (still not as much as Windows) and stability. No, I wasn't bought over by any marketing campaign. However, I believe that MS Windows have one of the best marketing team. It's only recently that we've been bombarded by Apple advertisements.
 

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Anhar Miah said:
Interesting, ADA programming langauge is still going strong.

"Ada Lovelace" lives on ;)
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Yep. They say that if you manage to compile in ADA your code is bullet proof :)
 
i've had a panasonic full dv deck give my computer a run for its money. it was making all of my firewire drives not mount and if they were mounted and i plugged the deck in they would get booted. drove me nuts.
 
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