Text 48004, 88 rader
Skriven 2007-02-01 16:17:55 av Roy Witt (1:397/22)
  Kommentar till text 47975 av Michiel van der Vlist (2:280/5555)
Ärende: FidoNews 24:05 [02/05]: General Articles
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01 Feb 07 01:00, Michiel van der Vlist wrote to Roy Witt:

 MvdV> Hello Roy!

 MvdV> On Wednesday January 31 2007 11:00, you wrote to me:

 MvdV>>> In 1992 I worked in the R&D department of a company that had
 MvdV>>> "industrial automation" in its letterhead. I had designed a
 MvdV>>> special measuring device that was microprocessor controlled. I
 MvdV>>> designed the hardware and wrote the firmware.

 RW>> Ahhh, your first mistake.

 MvdV> If that was anyone's mistake it was my boss'es. No, my mistake was
 MvdV> not walking away from that job when I still could...

Many people do the same thing. They're hoping against hope that the
company will survive and don't see the trees for the forrest.

 MvdV>>> One day, when it was near completion and I was doing some final
 MvdV>>> test, the boss came leaning over my shouder and asked what I
 MvdV>>> was doing. I said: I am testing if it will still work correctly
 MvdV>>> after jan 2000. I was ordered to stop wasting my time! That's
 MvdV>>> eight years from now, who lives then will worry then, I was
 MvdV>>> told. I should add that this was not one of those consumer
 MvdV>>> gadgets with an expected turn around time of two years, this
 MvdV>>> was a sophisticated piece of special equipment that should last
 MvdV>>> a bit longer than that.

 RW>> But all are subject to planned obsoletion. Been there and have seen
 RW>> that.

 MvdV> I am familiar with the concept. This one was designed to last well
 MvdV> past Y2K.

 MvdV>>> So.. I dropped the test. What could I do?

 RW>> As the stubborn person you've proven to be, continue with your tests
 RW>> on your own time?

 MvdV> At that point it was already clear to me that I was in all likehood
 MvdV> going to outlive that company and that investing my own time in it
 MvdV> was not going to pay off. So I didn't.

You're right. You should have left the very minute your boss told you to
stop testing.

 MvdV>>> Was it Y2K proof? I have confidence that it was, but we wil
 MvdV>>> never know for sure. I left the company in 1996 and it went
 MvdV>>> belly up in 1998 due to mismanagement.

 RW>> After taking a one year hiatus from 11 years in my own machine shop,
 RW>> I started working for a company who made automated assembly
 RW>> machines, some were for assembling medical devices, some for
 RW>> assembling HP ink jet cartridges, lawn sprinkler devices, etc.. This
 RW>> was 1999 and there was no worry about will it work after Y2k...and
 RW>> the hardware was designed by mechanical engineers, while the
 RW>> soft/firmware was written by software engineers.

 MvdV> Sure. My electronic door lock designed in 1995 still works fine.
 MvdV> Give it the right code and it opens the door. It is blissfully
 MvdV> unaware that we entered a new millennium.

I worked for a compnay that made fare collection systems for rapid transit
systems, world wide. Their systems can be seen in such places as Hong
Kong, Sydney, San Franciso, Atlanta, Chicago, etc.. I was among 3 others
who built proto-types for the entire system and I know it inside out.

One engineer came to me with a design for a locking system for the money
vault. I looked at his design and told him that it wouldn't be secure
enough. He told me to build it anyway and so I did, according to his
specifications. When it was finished, I showed it to him and he was
satisfied with how it worked.

Then I told him to step outside of the office door and take the keys to
it with him, then wait 1 minute and come back in. When he came back in, to
his astonishment, I had the vault open. We then sat down and together we
designed one that couldn't be opened without the proper key.

Those vaults are still in use today.

               R\%/itt




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