--- Pierre Abbat <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Thursday 13 March 2008 21:52, Ziser, Jesse wrote:
> > Eww! Don't you HATE that? I'm so embarrassed for my country.
> >
> > Today I got a spec for a piece of hardware-interface software I'm supposed
> > to write. It said that several of the digitized and transmitted quantities
> > are stored in what it called "centi-Amps" and "centi-PSI". I groaned a bit
> > and got on with it. I'm not sure who directly wrote the spec, but if I
> > find out, I'd like to have a brief chat with them about units and notation.
> > I probably can't do anything to get them to switch from PSI to a saner
> > unit, though. Fortunately, this is the first PSI I've seen at work. Most
> > people here who do things with pressure seem to be using pascals like
> > reasonable human beings.
>
> Weird units are fairly common in embedded systems.
That much I know. The units in use depend upon the limitations of the hardware
and the bit-width
of the available data slot. I would not have batted an eye had they been
specified simply in
"centiamps" and "centipascals", or even in "47ths of a pascal" or something. I
was upset because
of the bizarre spelling "centi-Amps" and the use of the non-metric "PSI".
Incidentally, I've since found more serious problems in the aforementioned
spec, and now I'm not
even sure it's correct. And the best thing is, I just found out that we will
never get to see the
hardware. The code will be shipped and used at great expense and THEN we will
find out whether it
worked. Recipe for disaster, much?
So the bad units are just a symptom of a larger overall SNAFU.
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