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No. Customers have to understand what they are getting for the
money. See John Cowan's occasional quote from Shirky. The
market is tiered. Champagne tastes on a beer budget don't
cut it, but we won't serve them near beer or fruit juice.
When the systems are public safety systems, you really don't
want us to. Better fewer electronics and more paper if the
result is the exposed components have high quality. Saturn
wasn't done on the cheap. It was a triple-redundant system
designed and managed by a team that completely understood,
acknowledged and confronted the risks. Accept no less.
No Saturn ever blew up on the pad. No Apollo returned
astronauts dead in their capsules. Shuttles have exploded
when schedules were heeded but safety concerns weren't,
and when the designs made budget but shed styrofoam at
high velocity onto underspec'd wing surfaces and a culture
of 'we've been getting away it' prevailed.
Cheap and fast is what one does in a race in which one
doesn't care what is wasted as long as one makes the
biggest splash ahead of competitors. Slow and deliberate
is what one does when the results of failure are catastrophic
and potentially loss of life. While no effort is perfect,
cost must be commesurate with risk. To do otherwise is
to abandon all pretense to ethics and integrity.
len
From: roger.day@globalgraphics.com [mailto:roger.day@globalgraphics.com]
Umm. Cheap has to cut it. We have to reduce the costs (is that the same
thing?) while at the same time producing quality in order for our jobs to
survive. Commerce demands it - NASA demands it when a astronauts' arse is
dependant upon the cheapest components possible.
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