https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra One of the most influential figures of computing science's founding generation, Dijkstra
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x5a6.htm
I enjoyed myself thanks to the presence of C.Bron, S.D.Swierstra (who
moderated the panel discussion) and B.Waumans,
people I know for years but whom I encounter only rarely. The highlight, however,
was being introduced to Mr. Ivor Catt, whom I had never met in person,
though I knew very well who he was.
By virtue of his involvement, Catt knows all the ins and outs of one of
the major scientific scandals of the last 15 years, viz. the systematic
suppression in the world of electronics of all publications about the
phenomenon of the so-called glitch and its ramifications. Part of Catt has
turned to the study of what one might call the sociology of science or the
scientific establishment's mechanisms for the rejection of novel results. The
story how once --on false accusations made at a secret meeting-- he had got
immediate notice because it was thought mandatory that no one in the
company, nor any of the company's --mostly military-- customers,
should know of the glitch was typical.
(In EWD837 I mentioned Melliar-Smith's
lecture on the fault-tolerant operating system designed for "flight
control". One of the things it has been designed to capture is a
malfunctioning caused by a glitch. In order to estimate the MTBF of the whole
system, its designers needed to know the likelihood of a glitch, a figure the
hardware designers have to provide. Today I heard that the electronic engineers
of Bendix --the company manufacturing the hardware for the flight control
system-- had been so well-conditioned that the glitch problem could not even be
explained to them. I am not amazed.)
|
Plataanstraat 5 |
6 October
1982 |
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http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/DJKinniment-He-Who-Hesitates-is-Lost.pdf
Clearly
it was the same problem as Catt’s and they were annoyed that Catt had succeeded
in publishing in a recognised journal first – even before they had produced
their own internal document. Their work ‘beware the synchronizer’ did not in
fact appear until 1973, because Chaney and Littlefield had had considerable
difficulty persuading the reviewers to accept their paper, referees would say
things like “if this was a problem, I would have heard about it. I haven’t so I
don’t think it exists”. It was only after a special Workshop on Synchronizer
failures was held by Charles Molnar, Director of the Computer Systems
Laboratory of Washington University, St Louis to publicise the work that there
was any acceptance of the existence of the problem in the US.
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http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/tony3.htm
4. Now about the 'glitch' for which you seem to imply there has been
a conspiracy to block publications about it and this is an example of the
problems you claim to address. It happens that I can say some things
about that from first hand experience and I
believe that completely disproves your assertions. I dimly remember
reading your brief letter about the 'glitch' in an IEEE Computer journal in
1966?) - and I am sure that I did not understand it then. However, in
1987 when I went to British Aerospace Army Weapons Division, investigation of
the 'glitch' (e.g. metastability in flip flops) was about the first thing that
I was asked to look into, and after some work on that I also realised that the
same problem applied to multiprocessor arbiters. I can say that among the
skilled electronic engineers at BAe involved in designing control systems for
real missiles, many did not believe metastablity was
a problem in real systems and others believed (wrongly) that there were
design-tricks they could use to get rid of it. One example was belief
that by having hysteresis built into the front end of analog-to
digital data capture systems the glitch could not happen. I was able to
easily disprove that. The view developed that by careful design the
probability of error from the glitch could be made so small that it was
negligible compared to other unlikely causes of failure which could not be
eliminated, therefore no need to worry about the glitch. Since it would
always be unrepeatable in testing, it would never be possible to do more than
speculate that a failure had been caused by 'glitch' and so no need to do more
than ensure it was very low probability. Much more probable
explanations are usually available for aerospace disasters.
So there was no active suppression of information either in the
company nor in the world of publications. After I left BAe, things related
to metastabilty were a significant part of
research in which I was involved (at King's College London and later at
Kingston University: this was well supported financially by the research
councils and with some ongoing support from BAe, and provided funding for
hiring researchers and travelling to conferences etc. etc. and was how I came
into contact with the Newcastle people.
This shows that for this subject there was never any discouragement to
publishing or working on the subject, and in the general area of non-linear
dynamics in electronics, it was a continuing and popular topic for papers
submitted and published, etc. So no
'conspiracy' to prevent this, quite the opposite.
I had read some parts of the 'book' by David Kinniment -
so I was glad that you supplied the link to it which meant that I could
download and read it all. Although very general, it gives a very good
overall long-term view of this subject, but stops short of going on into the
implications for the design of real-time multiprocessor control systems
etc. However, I see no sign of your claims that the 'scientific
establishment' is trying to block publication in this area. There may be
plagiarism, there may be burying of simple concepts in obscure mathematics, and
so on, but that is not the same as your accusations.
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http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x59596.htm
The McCutchen and MacRoberts articles about censorship had not been
written. The McCutchen article; “An evolved conspiracy” [12], was
published in 1976, and the MacRoberts article,
[13] "The
Scientific Referee System" , was published in 1980.
Aged only 31, I
should not have yet known there were barriers to communication in high
technology, but I did give my article a misleading title so that my Peer
Reviewers would not realise how serious the problem, which they probably would
not understand, was claimed to be. It would become worse as computer speeds
increased. All I wanted was publication, so that I could avoid having to talk
about it repeatedly. I knew that the world’s view of the time was that
computers never went wrong, but the people who programmed them did. All
problems were in the software. The hardware was perfect. “The Glitch” undermined
that fervently held belief, and so was heresy. Probably that was the reason for
my misleading title, that I realised I was trying to preach heresy.
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http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x1bn.pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivor_Catt
“.... Ivor Catt (born 1935) is a British electronics engineer known
principally for his alternative theories of electromagnetism.[1] He received a
B.A. degree from Cambridge University, and has won the Electronic Design magazine's
"best product of the year" award on 26 October 1989, after £16
million funding.” Always rejected for publication by the IEE and IEEE.
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/3ewk.htm
always rejected for publication by the IEE and IEEE. It seems similar to the
computer the Met is currently buying for £1 billion.
https://jehovajah1.wordpress.com/2013/08/27/on-a-theory-of-electromagnetism/
Parasites
do not understand the true purpose of the organism they invade, and in the end
destroy. Since they lack understanding, it is not clear whether parasites are
charlatans. Of course, it is clear that Pepper is a charlatan. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0l1diFGxIg
; http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x67d.htm
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x8cktony.htm “adopt them, though, perhaps, in a somewhat sneaking manner,
not unmixed with bluster, and make
believe he knew all about it when he was a little boy.
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/3e99/5b63c7e879cb598f12c9f8558fb99f0be341.pdf
1999; http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/tonyglitch1.pdf
REFERENCES
[1] L.R. Marino “General Theory of Metastable operation”, IEEE Trans., C-30, pp. 107-115, 1981
[2] A. C. Davies “Analysis of Metastable Dynamics of Bistable Flip-flops”, Proc. 6th Int. Symp. on Networks, Systems and Signal Processing , Zagreb, Yugoslavia, pp. 379-382, June 1989
[3] I. Catt “Time loss through gating of asynchronous logic signal
pulses” IEEE Trans., EC-15, pp. 108- 111, 1966 [4] T.J. Chaney
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http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/howie.htm
http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/yak.htm
“Physics Education” is a journal of the
Institute of Physics.
Recently this journal attacked and
misrepresented me, and the editor refused to publish a reply by me. http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x311a.htm . He was later overruled by the head of
the IoP. I was too busy trying (and
failing http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x121.htm ) to get Tony Davies to help me to
publish in the IEEE, to pursue the IoP matter
immediately. Now the editor of “Physics Education” blocks my emails. It is
fascinating to see that the Howie email to me (see below) says the opposite of
what he thinks he says. It feeds directly into Mccutchen; http://www.ivorcatt.co.uk/x311a.htm
The referees repay the establishment by suppressing new discoveries. It
is not necessary that either side understand the arrangement. - Dr
Charles McCutchen [1]
Are professors, editors, referees and text book writers behaving
unethically?
They (Howie and Davis) (think they)
cover their tracks by criticising the system for blocking scientific advance
which they themselves operate.