"Jeff Findley" wrote in message
...

In article ,
says...

And this:

http://www.skygod.com/quotes/ballsto...realworld.html

tl;dr - Mary Shafer: "Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't
have the balls to live in the real world."

One of the best Mary Shafer quotes.


She has a few good ones!


I suspect Bob has never been in the position where his decisions could
result in the direct result of a loss of life. I'm not talking about
"getting into a car" but decisions such as "calling off a search for
missing
canoeists" or "putting 1 or more people on a rope over the edge of a
cliff"
type decisions.

Loss of life of a customer due to a malfunctioning copier or laminator
would certainly be a career ending event for the repairman who screwed
the pooch. But this is sci.space.shuttle, so Bob's professional
experience doesn't directly apply.


No, but my point is broader than that. By day I do IT. But my
extracurricular activities do put me in positions where lives are on the
line.
I highly suspect that Bob has never been in that position, regardless of his
day time job.


Others here I'm sure have at some point in their engineer careers have
had
to tell someone "these are the risks, here's my recommendation" knowing
that
their information and their decision could result in the loss of life.
This
is never done lightly. By as Mary points out, if you play "what if" you
start to go down a road where nothing happens. Or if you insist on
"perfect
safety" you never fly.

Since my career has involved writing engineering software, I've never
faced this sort of situation either. But quality of the software is
still very important. After all, we wouldn't want a customer who's
using our software to make a mistake due to a software bug.

Agreed. And I'm reminded of Feynman's comments on the software team at NASA
prior to Challenger.


My heart goes out to the families of the astronauts who have died. But,
they did know the risks. It's not quite the same as a family of four
hopping aboard the 4:15 shuttle and being deluded by its safety.

Agreed, just as other dangerous careers have their well known risks,
astronaut is no exception.


Ayup.


Jeff

--
Greg D. Moore http://greenmountainsoftware.wordpress.com/
CEO QuiCR: Quick, Crowdsourced Responses. http://www.quicr.net