Ready.


a reading list


on strategic software
or, the failure of it

"Software aspects of strategic defense systems"
by David Lorge Parnas
in Communications of the ACM, Vol.28, No.12, December 1985, pp.1326-1335.
Reprinted from: American Scientist, Vol.73, No.5, pp.432-440.

I think the concerns about time, and target-characteristics (pp.1328-1329), were not too critical (if a tighter/tougher rule is there, as I have commented).

Other issues may be chronic, though. e.g: His case against artificial-intelligence in strategic-systems. In fact, in science/technology, how (chronically) wide-spread is the problems listed in the case, that

"On occasion I have had to examine closely the claims of a worker in AI-2. I have always been disappointed. On close examination the heuristics turned out to handle a small number of obvious cases that the program handled correctly. He marked the other cases as extensions for future researchers. In fact, the techniques being used often do not generalize and the improved program never appears." (p.1332)

Two case studies I have published, point out examples. The copycat82 is probably the worst offender (a Ph.D. dissertation, in 1982, which also found a place in IEEE Trans. on Software Engineering, in 1983). Errorful, plagiarist, no complete example, etc, etc. A second non-exemplar case was in IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis, & Machine Intelligence, in 1994. Were they supposed to be "strategic investment?!?" That copycat82/83 was "supported by the U.S. Army Research Office under Contract DAA-C29-80-K-0092" The other (1994) paper was "supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant ECS-8802627"


software & fault-tolerance

"Software safety in computer-controlled systems"
by Nancy G. Leveson
inIEEE Computer, February 1984, pp.48-55.

To quote the text above the title: "Hidden errors in process control software may result in major damage or loss of life. Fault-tolerant or error-free software is needed to circumvent this disaster." (Leveson, 1984, p.48)

"Safety analysis using Petri nets"
by Nancy G. Leveson
in IEEE Trans. on Soft. Eng., vol.SE-13, 1987, pp.386-397.

She has found that reasonable to research in the direction of Petri net. Contrast that to a horror case, in which, you would have read the 1984 paper, but instead of finding the 1987 paper, if you were to take copycat82, to do that Petri net integration, yourself! That would be a catastrophical gamble.




Forum: . . (Fair Menu . . . . . Fault Report? . . . . . Remedy for your case . . . . . Noticed Plagiarism?)

Referring#: 0.1.0.0
Last-Revised (text) on Apr. 2, 2006 . . . that was http://www.geocities.com/ferzenr/reading.htm
revised links, on Apr. 6, 2006 & June 15, 2009
mirror to mid80.net, on June 15, 2009
Written by: Ahmed Ferzan/Ferzen R Midyat-Zila (or, Earth)
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