Ramblings of an Eccentric Soul...

"Microsoft ought to build a new, modern, stripped-down OS and support the legacy stuff in a virtual machine. Call the new environment WIN instead of WINDOWS, suggesting a new stripped-down nimbleness. Make it clear that the old world will be supported for a long time but not forever. Dazzle people with what they can do in a new world."

"Add all your points up. If you have more than 10 points, you can use a dev shop. If you don’t, you should go hire a team of hackers and build it the right way."

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It was made painfully clear at the hearings that a number of lawmakers do not understand the process. An exchange between Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and Toyota President Akio Toyoda illustrated the problem.

Toyoda said that when his company gets a complaint about a mechanical problem, engineers set to work trying to duplicate the problem in their labs to find out what went wrong.

Norton said: “Your answer — we’ll wait to see if this is duplicated — is very troublesome.” Norton asked Toyoda why his company waited until a problem recurred to try to diagnose it, which is exactly what he was not saying.

Members of Congress are generally lawyers and politicians, not engineers. But they are launching investigations and creating policies that have a direct impact on the designers and builders of incredibly complex vehicles — there are 20,000 parts in a modern car — so there are some basics they should understand. Chief among them: The only way to credibly figure out why something fails is to attempt to duplicate the failure under observable conditions. This is the engineering method.

“It’s just so difficult for people to understand the complexity of the thing,” said David E. Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Michigan and an engineer. “They don’t have the background. They don’t have the time to do an investigation. They want to oversimplify a thing that can’t be oversimplified.”

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