Posted on 03/16/2019 11:59:19 AM PDT by Allen In Texas Hill Country
As I tell friends, I worked on computers before the public knew computers existed. Can you say SOAPII? Anyway, I can't begin to imagine what the programmers that coded the MCAS boxes are going thru. I know, Boeing needed to more thoroughly train pilots on using or interacting with the MCAS box. But none the less, "in a manner of speaking", the programming of those boxes has indirectly killed over 300 people. But nobody will ever say that.
Programmer: “Was that integer or floating point? Oh well, what difference will it make.”
https://www.wikijournalclub.org/wiki/SOAP_II
SOAP II
Clinical Question
Among patients with shock, how does dopamine compare to norepinephrine in decreasing mortality?
Bottom Line
In the treatment of shock, norepinephrine and dopamine compare similarly with respect to 28-day mortality, but dopamine is associated with an increased risk of arrhythmias.
You are projecting your western values on Asians with different value systems. I doubt the programmers are experience any moral or emotional concerns.
As for the American executives - they’ve already cashed their bonus checks for 2018.
Good pilots have and have had time to override the Horizontal Stab’s over comp.
https://www.aaaai.org/conditions-and-treatments/related-conditions/mcas
Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS)
The real issue is why the pilots couldn’t over ride the computer. That should be a hard disconnect and not dependent on code.
S - Symbolic
O - Optimized
A - Assembler
P - Program
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The IBM 650 used a rotating drum for memory. Because of that each instruction had 3 addresses, the last of which was the address of the next instruction. That way the assembler, knowing how long each instruction would take depending upon the op, would calculate how much the drum would rotate and where the next memory location would be relative to the reading heads. Long sentence:<(( And put that address on the 3rd field.
The real issue is why the pilots couldn’t over ride the computer. That should be a hard disconnect and not dependent on code.
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And that is absolutely true! And the lack of training is why. So, because the pilot didn’t/couldn’t disconnect the MCAS box the programming in the box put/kept the plane in a severely nose down attitude.
Southwest Airlines have some 80 737 aircraft with the MAX MCAS. Yet not one of them has crashed; and nor, as far as I am aware, have their pilots reported difficulties with managing the system. Perhaps Southwest takes crew training and aircraft safety more seriously than others.
MCAS makes the plane safer when there are competent pilots on board.
Agree, agree.
>> The real issue is why the pilots couldn’t over ride the computer
Because the aircraft industry is so hot to sell aircraft to, ah, er - “underdeveloped nations” and their aviators that they have relied on computers and machines rather than to train the aviators.
If trained, the system was easily overrideable with the two switches labeled “Stab Trim Cutout”. They are located on the aircraft’s center pedestal, just to the right and slightly below of the throttles.
It seems as if the pilots didn’t even know this automatic system existed prior to the crashes. Good videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfQW0upkVus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3LrsvaCUoo
(In the second video, the presenter mis-speaks a bit, but it’s still great info.)
What aircraft DOESN’T have automatic stab trim....AND a cutout switch?
...the software continued to do exactly what it was "trained" to do without any judgment or emotion whatsoever.
Are you suggesting the software should have had the capability to discern any number of irregular circumstances and exercise "if-then" responses.
Or, are you simply saying the software should have included the capability to discern it was acting contrary to more intelligent control inputs and just deactivated itself?
>> What aircraft DOESN’T have automatic stab trim....AND a cutout switch?
Little airplanes don’t have automatic stab trim. As for cutout switches, any aircraft that has electric stab trim will have a cutout switch.
And norepinephrine is a much better pressor in general unless you want to drive heart rate for some reason. The dopamine is your pressor or choice. It is also stable enough to store on the code cart so there’s that...
Do the switches actually disconnect the circuit to the trim tabs or turn off an input into the controller?
That is a totally ignorant supposition.
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