Personal computing discussed
Moderators: renee, SecretSquirrel, notfred
Glorious wrote:whm1974 you misread it.
It's a configuration of HIS COMPANY'S software that is no longer widely used, but is presumably still used by a few paying customers and therefore supported.
just brew it! wrote:Glorious wrote:whm1974 you misread it.
It's a configuration of HIS COMPANY'S software that is no longer widely used, but is presumably still used by a few paying customers and therefore supported.
Bingo. And moving those legacy customers to a newer system configuration is hairy enough (involving conversion of petabytes of data) that it is a non-starter from a logistics and cost standpoint.
But those same customers also need to be on a currently supported release of our software, in order to get bug fixes and new features. This in turn means rolling out a newer kernel to them, because that's what the later versions of our software require. So we need current versions of our software, in a legacy configuration, to work on newer Linux kernels without the performance degradation.
Long-term support of large applications in an enterprise environment is a non-trivial thing. You can't just tell people "oh well, I'm afraid you're just going to have to export all of your data, reformat, reinstall everything from scratch, and re-import all of your data" like you can in the consumer world.
Edit: And if you have to prefix your comment with "Not to be an ass, but...", maybe you need to think for another 10 seconds before hitting Submit?
whm1974 wrote:OK I'm an ASS so be it. Personally I think companies should have plans to keep their systems current and and not be still using way out of date hardware and software that belongs in a some museum somewhere. Such as CRT displays and punch cards for example. This is 2017 after all.
notfred wrote:It's not just the Enterprise space. In the embedded space we are fixing bugs in software that shipped 10 years ago, customers have support contracts for it so we have to fix it.
just brew it! wrote:notfred wrote:It's not just the Enterprise space. In the embedded space we are fixing bugs in software that shipped 10 years ago, customers have support contracts for it so we have to fix it.
Yup, been there too. Heck, with military stuff, the hardware is probably gonna be several generations obsolete before you get done with all the revisions, qualification testing, and red tape of Pentagon procurement. Then you've gotta support it for 10-20 years; once a piece of equipment gets fielded, they expect to use it for a long time. Parts going EOL by the time you hit volume production was even a worry (and this burned us a couple of times) when I worked in that industry.
whm1974 wrote:just brew it! wrote:notfred wrote:It's not just the Enterprise space. In the embedded space we are fixing bugs in software that shipped 10 years ago, customers have support contracts for it so we have to fix it.
Yup, been there too. Heck, with military stuff, the hardware is probably gonna be several generations obsolete before you get done with all the revisions, qualification testing, and red tape of Pentagon procurement. Then you've gotta support it for 10-20 years; once a piece of equipment gets fielded, they expect to use it for a long time. Parts going EOL by the time you hit volume production was even a worry (and this burned us a couple of times) when I worked in that industry.
OUCH!!!
just brew it! wrote:Welcome to the real world!
Captain Ned wrote:just brew it! wrote:Welcome to the real world!
The Apollo Guidance Computer survived long enough to be used in 1st-gen Fly By Wire tests and in the Navy's 2 DSRVs. It's child, the AP101, powered every Shuttle flight and may still live on in the B-52 and B-1B.
whm1974 wrote:When did we went wrong?
whm1974 wrote:I blame Microsoft, at least in part.
Glorious wrote:Wed Sep 8716 01:00:35 CEST 1993
SuperSpy wrote:I remember being dumbfounded when work took delivery of a new Cessna in 2007 and asking the tech why it took so long to load mapping data on it (it had a new-fangled feature that allowed a laptop to load map/chart data on it over Ethernet) to which he replied the bus all it's computer equipment ran on which was significantly older that me.
just brew it! wrote:SuperSpy wrote:I remember being dumbfounded when work took delivery of a new Cessna in 2007 and asking the tech why it took so long to load mapping data on it (it had a new-fangled feature that allowed a laptop to load map/chart data on it over Ethernet) to which he replied the bus all it's computer equipment ran on which was significantly older that me.
Once you get a piece of equipment through the FAA's certification process, you don't change it. Ever. Because that would require re-certification. And that can easily cost more than the original development cost.
SuperSpy wrote:Yeah, I always joked with the pilot over how a modern cell phone could easily handle all the duties of every electronic system in that aircraft if it had the I/O to connect to everything.
Waco wrote:SuperSpy wrote:Yeah, I always joked with the pilot over how a modern cell phone could easily handle all the duties of every electronic system in that aircraft if it had the I/O to connect to everything.
Sure, minus the inevitable update or crash that causes all of the aircraft systems to die mid-flight.
just brew it! wrote:Waco wrote:SuperSpy wrote:Yeah, I always joked with the pilot over how a modern cell phone could easily handle all the duties of every electronic system in that aircraft if it had the I/O to connect to everything.
Sure, minus the inevitable update or crash that causes all of the aircraft systems to die mid-flight.
The only way a consumer device like that would fly (literally) as part of the aircraft electronics would be if it had no connection to anything that could potentially affect flight safety. FAA is very strict about that.
Waco wrote:Oh absolutely, I'm aware of the restrictions. You don't mess with control systems on something that can kill you if it fails. Last I heard, all commercial avionics software/hardware essentially required a *real* RTOS to avoid even the smallest of hiccups.