Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:security (Score 1) 9

If it really is isolated (what the heck are you making that doesn't talk to anything else?) then the VM you talked about is a starting point. Next comes the challenge of tracking it: You have to keep enough copies that you don't lose it, but you also have to keep track of which copy is authoritative so that the bug fix in year 12 starts from the bug fix in year 7, not the bug fix in year 3.

Anyway, you need to keep a living memory of the project. If it goes into dead storage there probably won't be enough findable documentation to resurrect it. This means that at all times there must be someone employed by the company which has touched it before.

So, set aside a staff day every single year, paid up-front by the customer, to literally boot the VM, run a re-compile and send a report to the customer certifying that it was done. Any further apart and you'll lose the living memory of the project.

Hardware is your other foe. I don't know how you move the software compiled software image to the embedded hardware, but if it's a small-run product it won't be around in 5 years, let alone 25. RS232 serial has been remarkably resilient but few of the other popular communications hardware interfaces have survived 25 years. Scsi? Gone. IDE? Gone. Ethernet? The form that existed 25 years ago is gone, hard even to find on the second-hand market.

Comment Re:Not surprising (Score 1) 306

A Masters of Business Administration is -the- generic degree for folks who want to be middle-managers. You generally add it to a technical bachelors degree in whatever field you'd prefer to be a manager and the add things like PMP certificates depending on the kind of management you want to work.

Unfortunately, if you really wanted to be in the technical side of the work, an MBA is a bit of a hobble since it also screams of a dilettante's interest in the technology.

Comment Re:Classic style (Score 1) 9

Howdy,

If you want useful advice, you have to tell us more about what the embedded system you're targeting is intended to do, how (if) it interacts with other computers, how the software is installed on it once built, and so forth. Replicating the the original build system may or may not be a successful strategy depending on such details.

Put another way: my advice is that you haven't yet asked the right questions.

Comment security (Score 1) 9

Unless the software is for a purely standalone system you have several more problems to figure out:

1. Every dependent library you use has one or more security flaws which will be uncovered in the next 25 years. The fixes won't be backported to your current environment.

2. IPv6 will have replaced IPv4 within the next decade, but it probably won't work the same as IPv6 available now does. 25 years ago IPv4 was "classful" and DHCP did not exist. You will need to be able to link against the network stacks available 5, 10 and 15 years from now.

Like the other guy said... pick a language that hasn't deprecated anything of consequence for at least a decade yet is still strong and widely used. C is a good choice. Python code weathering 25 years? Don't make me laugh.

Comment Re:Welcome to Fascist America! (Score 1) 413

Finland has never had a "homogeneous" culture; it only appears that they do from the outside. Read the history of the Swedish speaking minority or of their civil war sometime when you're bored. The concept of Finland as a nation-state didn't even exist until the late 1800s and probably would never have evolved if the Russians had been a little bit more tactful. That's without even getting into the outside pressures and obstacles that they had to overcome.

What they have is trust in their institutions, a willingness to admit mistakes and try something new, and a political system that operates on consensus rather than a 50%+1 majority trying to ram its agenda down the throats of the opposition.

Comment Re:Welcome to Fascist America! (Score 3, Insightful) 413

That may be a valid point, but it's worth mentioning that the welfare state doesn't have to be run at the national level. Much of Kela is run and funded by municipalities, not the national Government. Finland leads the world in education yet has no standardized tests or national curriculum mandates. Intuitive at the local level is encouraged, not stifled.

Of course it still won't happen here, even if we got over our love affair with top-down control. Our mistrust of institutions doesn't begin or end with the Federal Government. I do find these conversations interesting though; people on the American left talk a big game about how awesome the Nordic countries are but very few of them actually know anything about them. Finland has no concept of tuition -- even foreigners can go study there for free (with only one barrier to entry, it's called "Finnish") -- but they also have universal conscription.

Think there are many people on the American left that would support universal conscription? Not bloody likely. Which is too bad, because it would actually make interventionism less likely, not more. Anyhow, I digress.....

Comment Re:Welcome to Fascist America! (Score 5, Interesting) 413

he nordic countries and canada have more government than us and far less corruption. the people are happier, more socially mobile, and pay far less for healthcare and education

The important difference there is that the people of the Nordic countries (at least Sweden and Finland, where I visited and lived) still have faith in their institutions. Americans haven't had faith in our institutions since Watergate. It's not just the Government either; in increasing numbers Americans don't trust business, academia, religion, or any other reasonably sized institution.

The reasons for this are varied -- you could write an entire thesis on the subject -- but at the end of the day it's the reality of the situation, and a Nordic style welfare state is a non-starter in the United States.

Comment expectations (Score 1) 1

Were I the sysadmin, I'd have told you to either provide your own complete python environment as a part of your request (python is good about this) or rebuild you software to match the available system python environment. Asking for changes to the system python environment is begging for trouble when the next user with a python program comes along.

Your expectations were out of line, and God alone knows what damage sysadmin #2 did trying to accommodate them.

Directly answering your question: I don't think you know nearly enough to assess whether sysadmin #1 was incompetent.

Slashdot Top Deals

Scientists will study your brain to learn more about your distant cousin, Man.

Working...