Author Topic: Software Hardware and bugs - its life today isn't it ??  (Read 128 times)

Offline Sparks

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Software Hardware and bugs - its life today isn't it ??
« on: August 20, 2002, 06:50:22 PM »
I understand peoples frustration with the CTD, freeze and warping/lag porblems that we are seeing in varying amounts (I've had mostly lockups) but I just sat and thought for a moment here at work what HTC are having to deal with.

I'm sitting looking at $40mil worth of business jet where everything is software controlled - flight controls, navigation, cabin entertainment - everything.  All this is strictly controlled - hardware levels and revisions, Mods and software revisions are all tied down completely - and guess what .... we find bugs.  This is in an enviroment of the utmost stringent control and backed by millions of dollars of research and personnel.  I have personally experienced the software of one of Boeing's finest try to throw its passengers into a 3g turn because of a bug in one particular holding pattern entry in the navigation system.

So what do the handful of staff at HTC have to look at - a user base of uncontrolled machines where any of perhaps 4 different operating systems at unknown revision and service pack levels are installed on an untold number of combinations of hardware which in turn have varying levels of BIOS and drivers installed. Overlay that with an unknown amount of installed software along with an unknown amount of corruption due to remnants of removed software and then overlay that with an unknown amount of background devices working at unknown levels (virus checkers, firewalls, ad stoppers)............  Then you have to consider this is being run over a worldwide network which is out of their control which has unknown hardware and software.

I am simply amazed that developers can actually get anything to run at all.

We pay $15 a month for this product which if they have say 3000 registered subscribers ( I don't know a wild guess) nets them $45000 a month - that is not a whole hell of a lot to run a business on - I do know that I've tried.  

The upshot of all of this is I think HTC do a helluva good job for what they get - lets give them the credit for what they've done and the room to sort this out.

The alternative if you want total reliabilty is expect to pay big bucks - some of the replacement boxes on this jet I'm looking at are $50K+.

Aah well back to work.......  :(

Sparks