Blog of Leonid Mamchenkov

The software is checked very carefully in a bottom-up fashion. First, each new line of code is checked, then sections of code or modules with special functions are verified. The scope is increased step by step until the new changes are incorporated into a complete system and checked. This complete output is considered the final product, newly released. But completely independently there is an independent verification group, that takes an adversary attitude to the software development group, and tests and verifies the software as if it were a customer of the delivered product. There is additional verification in using the new programs in simulators, etc. A discovery of an error during verification testing is considered very serious, and its origin studied very carefully to avoid such mistakes in the future. Such unexpected errors have been found only about six times in all the programming and program changing (for new or altered payloads) that has been done. The principle that is followed is that all the verification is not an aspect of program safety, it is merely a test of that safety, in a non-catastrophic verification. Flight safety is to be judged solely on how well the programs do in the verification tests. A failure here generates considerable concern.

The above was written by R. P. Feynman, in Feynman’s Appendix to the Rogers Commission Report on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident, 1986. More than 20 years ago. Much recommended reading.

Found via Richard Feynman, the Challenger Disaster, and Software Engineering.

Famagusta Gazette reports that a partial Lunar eclipse will be visible from Cyprus tonight.  For the photography fans among you, it’s probably a good time to review moon photography tips.  The thing to remember is that even though shooting at night, the moon is lit by the sun, which means you’ll need to use pretty much the same settings as for the bright daylight - tele-zoom lens, tripod, f/16, 1/80 - 1/100.  Good luck, and don’t forget to share your pictures after!

I went to see “AVPR: Aliens vs Predator - Requiem“.

I wasn’t ever a big fan of “Alien” movies.  Space horror is not something that turns me on.  However I remember enjoying the “Predator” flicks.  Especially the first one with Arni.  When they mixed the two, it was sort of interesting to see how it will all come out.  And the trailer was excellent.  But the film was somewhat boring, even though it had its momentss.

The Requiem part sucked though.   The good parts aren’t visible because of the constant mix of night, darkness, shadows, absence of lights, smoke, fog, underground catacombs, water, and a bunch of huge objects obstructing the view.  And just to be on the safe side, scenes are cut at every half a second.  That’s about the good parts.

The bad parts are shiny obvious.  The biggest of them is acting.  I know, I know, I’m not supposed to expect any great acting out of a sci-fi space thriller sequel.  But what this movie had doesn’t even qualify for acting.  I have a suspicion that even Keanu Reeves could do better than that (and we saw speculations of that it is possible to replace Keanu Reeves with wooden plank).  I mean, where do they even find actors like this?

Then, there is the Achilles’ heel of all horror movies - common sense.  This film had the smallest fraction of common sense you can see in the horror movie.  People, evacuating from the town in a hurry, are waiting in the traffic jam on the freeway, while the second line is empty.  A soldier popping out his head of the armored military vehicle to see what’s going on with this shooting outside in the middle of ambush. One predator calling another one for help after an accident, and that other predator going into almost full scale war with aliens, without ever calling for any more help.  Alien inserting eggs into women at the hospital for them to give birth to more aliens only a couple of minutes later (previous parts of the movie seemed to have a rather longer period with eggs growing and stuff like that).  The list goes on.  And of course it is possible to find explanations for each one of them, but that will hardly help the feeling of things happening in the way that they aren’t supposed to happen.

As I said, I’m not the big fan of either the genre or these particular movies.  But I think I can realize a good piece of entertainment, when one is offered. And in this particular case, I don’t think it qualifies.  Rating: a weak 4 out of 10.  Feel free to express you disagreement in the comments.

Olga was watching one of those cheap sci-fi space movies on TV. It took me only about twenty seconds of looking at before I started joking about it - immitating voices, using quotes from other movies, and doing all sorts of other fooling around.

When I satisfied myself with all the mind crap that I could produce, I took a two minute break by thinking seriously about space stuff. The choice of topic this time was - other races.

In just under two minutes I managed to come up with a three gender choice - Triorids. Sounds cool, doesn’t it? Well, in this race, they would have your regular Male and Female, and they would also have a Catalyzer.

The thing is that a Triorid Male cannot have sex with Triorid Female. Their genitals just doesn’t match. So they need a Catalyzer. It’s like a converter. It connects to both Male and Female and helps them to have proper sex.

There are good and bad things about Catalyzers. The good thing is that they are more normalized. If you think of Males as plus, and Females as minuses (you can safely reverse, if that’ll change your attitude), than you Catalyzes would be about zero - somewhere in between. They also help a mating couple to stay together by finding compromises in conflicts and complimenting both other sides all the time.

The bad thing is that Catalyzers have the character, soul, and spirit of their own. They live their own lives. In turms of sex, that means that if Male Triorid wants to have sex, he has to convince not only a Female, but a Catalyzer too. Even if both Male and Female want to have sex, they still have to make Catalyzer agree.

I’m writing this idea down, because it occupied the whole two minutes of my two minute break, but I liked it enough to want to think it over next time.

Now I am back to my usual crap of impersonating cheap movie characters and using qutoes from other films…

There are some things that I would like to do and nothing in particular stops me from doing them, but I still don’t do them for some metaphoric reasons, which aren’t even good enough to blog about. One example of the thing that I wanted to do was to listen to the original “The War of the Worlds” radio show. I could have downloaded the mp3 at any moment and listen to it, but something was stopping me.

Today I finally did it though. “The War of the Worlds” mp3 was tossed into a bunch of other stuff that I was getting for my growing podcast hunger, and so it ended up on my phone and as a next item in the playlist.

By the way, if you don’t have a slightest idea of what I am talking about, you should probably read “The War of the Worlds (radio)” Wikipedia entry. If you want to listen to the show yourself, then you can get it from The Mercury Theatre on the Air website. If you have a feeling that the title sounds familiar, but somehow doesn’t fit the content, then you are probably thinking about the “The War of the Worlds” movie, which I’ve also seen some time ago and reviewed in this post.

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