my lab

No.

JKKK, always jumping to conclusions.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong.

JKKK isn't very bright.

Commodore used their MOS Technologies 6522 for IEEE-488 interfacing. Both the standard version, and their modified serial version.

can be

all=20

Like MS Vista works? Like many MS compatible products? Like the Tacoma narrows bridge? Please study up on engineering failures, it might help you gain humility.

Vista isn't engineering. There's no math, no theory, no science in writing C++ GUIs. Read "Showstopper!" and then read some Windows source code.

I have a pretty good collection of books about engineering failures (mostly civil and software stuff), company failures, scientific fraud, and engineering philosophy.

Just a few in reach on the shelf...

The Hubbel Wars

Plastic Fantastic

Engineering in History

Why Things Fall Down

Why Things Don't Fall Down

The Undergrowth of Science

Why Things Bite Back

Fatal Defect: Chasing Killer Computer Bugs

Showstopper!

The World's Worst Aircraft

The Truth About Chernobyl

F'd Companies

The Moth in the Machine

and a bunch more, probably upstairs.

Read any of these? Any suggestions for others?

But humility? Our stuff usually works first time, without prototypes, because we doubt everything and triple-check everything.

John

John Larkin wrote: > JosephKK wrote: >> Like MS Vista works? Like many MS compatible products? Like the >> Tacoma narrows bridge? Please study up on engineering failures, it >> might help you gain humility. >

1. Normal Accidents, by Charles Perrow. Really good book on the way that tight coupling, nonlinearity, and transformation processes interact to produce system failures.

His more recent one, "The Next Catastrophe" is way too shrill--he's been drinking the anthropogenic Kool-Ade. (Not that there isn't a lot of genuinely stupid stuff for him to complain about--it's just his tone, and his relentless call for boatloads of new regulation. Superfund, anyone?)

1. The Inmates Are Running The Asylum. "What do you get when you cross a toaster with a computer? A computer." All about the stupid arbitrariness of software-driven things.

1. "To Engineer Is Human" by Henry Petroski. About how engineering failures drive engineering progress. Talks about the Hyatt Regency walkways, the Tacoma Narrows, etc.

2. "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjorn Lomborg. By a tree-hugging Greenpeacey Scandinavian professor (but I repeat myself). He teaches statistics, and thought it would be a great project for his students to look at how the environmental movement uses stats to back up their claims. Results: *almost none of them stand up*. He found that claims that the environment was getting steadily worse were all smoke and mirrors--on every single metric he could find, things had improved a great deal in the last 20 years. It's really a devastating critique of the lies and malfeasance of NGOs from somebody who used to be a True Believer. (The howls of anger from the Left were even louder than you might expect--this threatens to derail their gravy train.)

1. "Who Really Cares?" by Arthur Brooks. Another former true believer who decided to document how much more generous liberals were with their own money, and got mugged by reality. It turns out that as a proportion of income, the working poor are far more generous than people on public assistance at the same income level, and religious conservatives give

It's a real tribute to his honesty, because he's still a liberal politically, but he now believes in 'compassionate conservatives', and is trying to get liberals to be more generous with their own money for a change.

1. The reports of the Presidential Commissions on the Challenger and Columbia disasters. Really good on how production pressure, organizational cowardice, and (if you read between the lines) executive failures cause disasters.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Got that, somewhere around here. Good one.

This is a great book. The people who give the most get the most. People who Believe are happier and healthier than those who don't.

There aren't enough books about the philosophy and psychology of engineering. Given how many engineers there are, and how much we affect the world, you'd think more people would be interested in us.

Hey, I gave away another of your books yesterday, to some Canadians who unaccountably had never heard of it.

John

Thanks--that'll be another 8 minutes' worth in my son's college fund.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

He gave a decent TED talk on his premise. The compassionate left unleashed a vicious witchhunt against him over that book and their emotional (vs. intellectual) disagreement over how to do the most good in the world. It was pretty much a lynching. "Inclusiveness" and "embracing a diversity of opinions," I think they call that. I'm not sure if he survived it.

Facts vs. emotion. Disagree, and they'll ruin you.

Too bad. I was disappointed that, rather than just explain how Price- Waterhouse-Cooper's estimate of her bill was wrong, Nancy Pelosi just called 'em demons and threatened to slaughter 'em.

e.g.,

"Anyone who had any doubts about the need for [a government-run] option need only look at the behavior of the health insurance industry this week," Pelosi said.

The speaker has been on the attack against health insurers for months, but the latest developments clearly strengthened her resolve to make them pay. She also said the House was now considering adding to its health care bill a $6.7 billion-a-year fee on insurance companies that is part of the Senate Finance package.

"There are some things we'd like to see happen to the insurance companies that they might not like," Pelosi said.

Light on the facts, heavy on the bluster.

-- Cheers, James Arthur

only

can be

distance

it all=20

Parts of a few, thanks for the list, it goes into my shopping list.

fraud,

Also added my must read list.

I updated the firmware this weekend and tried using Tera Term Pro to communicate with the HP 6034A. Got the same result - floods the terminal emulator with what appears to be or linefeeds. Weird.

Hang a scope onto a few data lines and take a look. This is not normal, unless the HP6034 is defective. Is there some mode where the HP6034 functions "talk-only"? I don't know for power supplies but for analyzers that would be the print function. This must result in a data packet of constant and well defined volume.

"The Hubble Wars" is especially good. The arrogant mirror grinders decided their mirror was so good that only one test fixture was good enough to check it. Basic, routine crosschecks were scorned. A good amateur telescope maker could have detected the figure error. It never made an image before it was launched into orbit.

When the telescope wouldn't focus and a meeting was called to find out why, and the real problem began to emerge, one of the optics designers stepped out into the hallway and vomited.

John

I can easily imagine that--a billon dollar c*ck-up, right in the public eye like that would sure give you that sinking feeling. The fact that Kodak's mirror--still on the ground--tested perfect must have made it feel even worse.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

te

rote

ff

ut

might

he

ver

he

ago,

Try the following using TeraTerm Pro

ID?

Does this command sequence work better?

Abdul (Prologix)

only

over

and can be

distance

it all=20

Oh no. That is not the whole story. The original testing design had testing that provably would have detected/prevented the problem. That testing was eliminated by a Proxmire style cost cutter. Then another Proxmire style cheater detector tried to raise hell about the deleted testing and was suppressed.

Word of mouth and legerdemain, but my dad never lied to me about these kinds of things. If you know how to look the ripples were detectable. The same ripples are still preserved in various Congressional records.

be

all

Of course it's not the whole story. Read the book for more.

John

That isn't quite true. Some of the routine cross checks *were* done and with hindsight showed the fault but were dismissed at the time as systematic errors in the much cruder procedures. In part it was management failure under time and cost pressure rather than an engineering problem. The primary null tester design was the gold standard and would have worked if it had been assembled and used correctly. The other two null testers correctly showed the spherical abberation but were believed at the time to be in error.

PE manufacturing cocked it up. At the time it was the smoothest manmade surface ever produced. The backup mirror by Kodak that didn't fly was perfect in figure but not as nicely polished. I think it is now in a Washington museum.

That may sound bad to you but the additional support structures to do that even as a zenith transit instrument in the Earth's gravity would have needed a lot of extra investment when they were being told to cut costs so the project could actually go ahead. Chances are if they had tried to do it right from an engineering perspective the entire thing would have been cancelled for cost overrun. And no-one wanted that.

It didn't help that because of the Shuttle explosion the HST spent so long on the ground after being built that ground based observations and newer CCD technology moved onto its turf very quickly. It was a real shock when the HST would not focus properly at first light.

I am not surprised. They figured the main mirror very precisely to the wrong curve. Although since it was neither spherical nor parabolic the average amateur telescope maker would not have been able to test it reliably without a null corrector. The level of error was huge in optical terms relative to the complex curve that was needed. But you cannot judge those sorts of curves with a pinhole and a razor a la ATM.

I suspect there is an element of truth to what JKK says, but I knew parts of the team that did the HST image deconvolution code and a holographic determination of the figure error. The methods were borrowed from big dish radio astronomy. AFAIR the fault was manufactured in by excessive reliance on the primary test jig and ignoring hints from other less accurate tests that something might be amiss.

I have previously posted a link to the NASA engineering report on the HST optics last time JKK blamed Proxmire for the HST mirror fault.

Regards, Martin Brown

As I said, for the details read the book.

John