Comment Re: The book is VERY poorly written. (Score 1) 30
Perhaps. But itâ(TM)s at 4.8 stars with 14 reviews on Amazon, so apparently there are many connoisseurs of poor writing out there. Or... ?
Submission + - My product development (O'Reilly) now a free download! (oreilly.com)
occamboy writes: I'm psyched that O'Reilly's made my book "Prototype to Product" freely available for download, to help teams developing products in response to COVID-19. It's a high-level cross-functional engineering look at how... well, how prototypes are developed into manufacturable products. Covers electronics, software, mechanicals, manufacturing, project management, regulatory, and so forth. Currently at 4.8 stars on Amazon, and only two of the reviews were by friends of mine :).
Hint: Figure 1-1 is all you really need to know, the rest is details.
Hint: Figure 1-1 is all you really need to know, the rest is details.
Comment Re: The eeee-vil free market at work (Score 1) 47
The FDA doesn't actually do testing. The device maker supplies evidence that development followed a process that includes testing, the types and amounts of testing being based on the risks posted by the device.
A company can potentially lie, and claim they did testing that they didn't - but Goddess help you if FDA figures that out: you're in deep, deep trouble. And they can definitely figure it out during a regular inspection, or if people get injured by your product, etc.
Comment Re: This is a surprise how? (Score 3, Informative) 47
Sorry to quibble... but medical devices are normally developed using a process that conforms to ISO 13485, not 9001. Pretty similar, though.
Comment As it happens... (Score 1) 47
I'm working with some other folks to start a company to develop, manufacture, and market open-source medical devices. We all have extensive experience in developing commercial medical devices - defibrillators, radiation therapy for tumors, etc - and we're convinced that getting more eyeballs to review software and hardware will substantially increase safety and reduce costs.
Yes, we know how to work with the FDA and so forth.
Stay tuned...
Comment Most likely bad power management design (Score 1) 31
It turns out that in managing batteries and booting there are a ton of oddball cases that cause things like this to happen. For example, there may be enough power available from the battery to start the boot process with the CPU in a low power, but once some peripherals start turning on the power draw bec omes more than the battery can support, a voltage rail drops to low, and a reboot happens. Shameless plug: there's a chapter in my book on product development that covers some of these issues and solutions, http://www.goodreads.com/book/...
Submission + - How to work on source code without having the source code?
occamboy writes: Perhaps the ultimate conundrum!
I've taken over a software project in an extremely specialized area that needs remediation in months, so it'll be tough to build an internal team quickly enough. The good news is that there are outside software engineering groups that have exactly the right experience and good reputations. The bad news is that my management is worried about letting source code out of the building. Seems to me that unless I convince the suits otherwise, my options are to:
1) have all contractors work on our premises — a pain for everyone, and they might not want to do it at all
2) have them remote in to virtual desktops running on our premises — much of our software is sub-millisecond-response real-time systems on headless hardware, so they'll need to at least run executables locally, and giving access to executables but not sources seems like it will have challenges. And if the desktop environment goes down, more than a dozen people are frozen waiting for a fix. Also, I'd imagine that if a remote person really wanted the sources, they could video the sources as they scrolls by.
I'll bet there are n better ways to do this, and I'm hoping that there are some smart Slashdotters who'll let me know what they are; please help!
I've taken over a software project in an extremely specialized area that needs remediation in months, so it'll be tough to build an internal team quickly enough. The good news is that there are outside software engineering groups that have exactly the right experience and good reputations. The bad news is that my management is worried about letting source code out of the building. Seems to me that unless I convince the suits otherwise, my options are to:
1) have all contractors work on our premises — a pain for everyone, and they might not want to do it at all
2) have them remote in to virtual desktops running on our premises — much of our software is sub-millisecond-response real-time systems on headless hardware, so they'll need to at least run executables locally, and giving access to executables but not sources seems like it will have challenges. And if the desktop environment goes down, more than a dozen people are frozen waiting for a fix. Also, I'd imagine that if a remote person really wanted the sources, they could video the sources as they scrolls by.
I'll bet there are n better ways to do this, and I'm hoping that there are some smart Slashdotters who'll let me know what they are; please help!
Submission + - Version Control for the Non-Developers?
occamboy writes: My spouse works at a company that deals with lots of documents (Word, spreadsheets, scans, and so forth), and they have a classic version control problem that sucks up hours of her time each week. Documents are stored on a shared server in some sort of hierarchy, but there are all kinds of problems, e.g. multiple copies get saved with slightly-different names because people are afraid of overwriting the old version "just in case" and nobody can figure out which is the latest version, or which got sent out to a client, etc.
Version control should help, and my first thought was to use SVN with TortoiseSVN, but I'm wondering if there's something even simpler that they could use? Do the Slashdotteratti have any experiences or thoughts that they could share? The ideal solution would also make it easy to text search the document tree.
Version control should help, and my first thought was to use SVN with TortoiseSVN, but I'm wondering if there's something even simpler that they could use? Do the Slashdotteratti have any experiences or thoughts that they could share? The ideal solution would also make it easy to text search the document tree.
The 1-Second Linux Boot 156
An anonymous reader writes "Less than one second Linux boot! This video shows an OMAP3530 capturing video data from a camera and rendering it to an LCD display — the video appears on the LCD display in less than a second from reset."
Comment This is why I switched back to Windows (Score 1, Insightful) 815
I had Ubuntu running on our main home computer for more than a year. There were definitely some annoyances, but things were tolerable. Until I upgraded Ubuntu (I forget which version) and sound was broken hard - I spent hours fixing it, but got calls from home every few days asking me to "help fix the sound. it's broken again". Finally, I gave up and switched back to Windows.
Comment Why Ignore VistA (Score 2, Informative) 294
It works and docs find it helpful. I'm amazed that it's ignored in TFA.
Docs won't use EMRs until they need to do so to get paid. That's the long and the short of it.
Comment Reagan Republicans That Call Themselves Democrats, (Score 1, Insightful) 766
and today Sanjay "I just make crap up about Michael Moore" Gupta, and the RIAA golden boy.
Obama is surrounding himself with some pretty interesting characters. Not good.
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