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posted by
martyb
on Saturday April 11 2015, @09:42AM
from the US-Military--and/or--the-Military-Industrial-Complex? dept.
from the US-Military--and/or--the-Military-Industrial-Complex? dept.
I guess we have all seen all those wonderful toys coming from China. Technologies unimaginable a few years ago, like quadricopters and microminiature concealed cameras. It looks like the US Military is taking notice.
Other countries (such as China) build our stuff, understand how it works, and have found out how to make it very inexpensively. A remote-controlled drone was once the exclusive domain of law enforcement... now just about anyone who wants one can buy one.
Yup, it looks like the-powers-that-be are realizing their cats are getting out of the bag...
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US Military Concerned About Losing Their High Tech Edge
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday April 11 2015, @04:15PM
Military chips specifically.
At one time the military would not accept a chip in a design unless it was both Made In These United States, as well as second sourced.
I don't think anyone even second sources anymore.
Back in the day, before I was one over to RISC, my boss Scott Lydiard said to me "The military is very interested in RISC".
"Why?"
"Because you can prove that they work."
The real defense contract I ever did, the prime contractor selected a part, then hired me to write the firmware for the part. That's not what you should do - they should have hired me to select the part, because then I would have been able to tell them that the desired part didn't work.
They had prototype boards in the hands of "The Client" by the time I'd spent six solid weeks trying to work around a design flaw in "The Part". I was finally forced to call the primary contract then shout "YOU SELECTED THE WRONG PART!"
I myself have been puzzling over a consulting service, in which I would select parts based on their errata.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 11 2015, @06:00PM
How would you base selection with the errata as the starting point?
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday April 11 2015, @06:17PM
... with few if any errata.
That particular chip had oodles of errata, as well as revisions. I expect the client never even checked.
Really the ethical thing for me to have done would be to have suggested that maybe they should consider another part, right at the outset. The reason I agreed to take their work was that I needed the money. I expect that kind of problem is common.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday April 11 2015, @06:27PM
One way around this is sometimes to get a later chip revision. The quite six-eight-000 family of processors had quirks in early revisions (80386 too..).
Most important.. did you promise anything about the firmware quality or delivery time? ;-)