{"id":8,"date":"2014-11-30T17:46:33","date_gmt":"2014-11-30T17:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dawilson.co.uk\/blog\/?p=8"},"modified":"2014-11-30T17:51:44","modified_gmt":"2014-11-30T17:51:44","slug":"the-roundup-week-48","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dawilson.co.uk\/blog\/the-roundup-week-48\/","title":{"rendered":"The roundup – week 48"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0summary of three online articles that I have found interesting in the past week.<\/em><\/p>\n

Outsourcing woes<\/h1>\n

Jack Ganssle\u00a0recalls the story\u00a0of an off-site consultant who died unexpectedly, taking crucial business knowledge in the form of source code to the grave with him.<\/p>\n

The article goes on to offer several pearls of wisdom\u00a0that could, if\u00a0taken on board, help to prevent\u00a0a similar mistake being made in the future;\u00a0the summary of which\u00a0would be\u00a0“trust but verify”.<\/p>\n

My own experience indicates that this problem is not strictly limited\u00a0to\u00a0external consultants. The advice given\u00a0applies equally well to\u00a0individuals within an\u00a0organisation who are solely responsible for\u00a0certain aspects of a project assigned to them.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/embedded.com\/electronics-blogs\/break-points\/4437691\/Burned-by-a-consultant<\/a><\/p>\n

“Patch and pray”\u00a0warning for\u00a0embedded systems developers<\/h1>\n

In this article, Dr Mike Bartley discusses one of the key challenges to be overcome by pioneering developers of the Internet of Things (IoT): security, and the need to update compromised devices in the field.<\/p>\n

With the limited bandwidth available to devices connected to the IoT,\u00a0an argument is made that the “patch and pray” approach adopted by desktop software developers will simply be inadequate.<\/p>\n

A new British Standard – PAS 754:2014 – is then introduced, which\u00a0offers guidance on how to develop IoT devices, and other embedded systems, that are “trustworthy”. That is: less likely to fail, and more resilient to attacks.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.eetimes.com\/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1324680<\/a><\/p>\n

Requirements are required<\/h1>\n

This conference presentation given by Chris Hills at Phaedrus Systems earlier this year offers a robust demonstration of why requirements are critical to the success of a project.<\/p>\n

Amongst the wealth of interesting and highly relevant information contained is the discussion of an airport lighting system (page 5), which resonates nicely with the concerns regarding in-the-field updates voiced by Dr Bartley in the article above.<\/p>\n

The lights were installed either encased in concrete or buried in the grass around the runway, which will make\u00a0updating their firmware extremely difficult as it can only be carried out at night, when the runway is not in use.<\/p>\n

The lack of an “ease of update” requirement will now incur a cost running into hundreds of thousands of pounds.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/phaedsys.com\/library\/presentations.html\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

DW.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0summary of three online articles that I have found interesting in the past week. Outsourcing woes Jack Ganssle\u00a0recalls the story\u00a0of an off-site consultant who died unexpectedly, taking crucial business knowledge in the form of source code to the grave with him. The article goes on to offer several pearls of wisdom\u00a0that could, if\u00a0taken on board, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “The roundup – week 48”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4,6],"class_list":["post-8","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roundups","tag-embedded-systems","tag-roundup","tag-software-engineering"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/dawilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14,"href":"https:\/\/dawilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions\/14"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dawilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dawilson.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}