>> That seems most common - for implementations that involve life and death,
>> the systems tend to be custom-built for a specific purpose, not based on
>> a general purpose operating system.
> 
> It's not just the software, all the hardware will also need to be 
> certified for applications where human life is at risk.  You think your 
> PC is reliable?  You trust it enough, that if it ever failed you'd die?  
> Didn't think so :-)

The work I do affects human life in the most indirect way imaginable.

(Specifically: It is hypothetically plausible that some obscure computer 
system to malfunction in such a way as to generate erroneous data that 
somehow manages both to "look" geniune, and also appear to show that a 
drug is safe when in fact it is not.)

Even though what my company does is extremely indirectly linked with 
human health, the level of checking and certification involved is quite 
phenominal. And we don't even MAKE anything that goes anywhere near a 
human being! We just produce numbers.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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