Friday, October 03, 2003
 
Wait Till I Bring The Heat Gun Into The Office

A link via Instapundit leads me to this story. Although it's about the fallilbility of voting machines, the author thinks the voting machines should be subject to the same sort of scrutiny as electronic slot machines:
    One such outside auditor is Gaming Laboratories International (GLI). To certify a new device, or even a software upgrade, vendors send GLI all of the source code, all of the tools needed to build the code, maybe a development computer, and even an in-circuit emulator if that's how you debugged your code. Expensive? You bet. Accurate? It sure seems to be.

    GLI tears the design apart, digs into the guts, finds back doors impossible to isolate via testing and ensures the customer will lose by exactly the amount specified. Tests check both functionality and threat resistance. Technicians zap every square inch of the gaming machine with a 27 KV prod - because cheaters often try to rip off the devices using ESD to confuse the electronics. GLI jimmies the coin box, and generally simulates all of the attacks observed by those hidden cameras in the casino's roof. That's regression testing of a whole new order.
That's the right way to conduct your quality assurance testing. I wonder if GLI is hiring? I figure the logical progression for my career is to cause actual physical damage. Maybe UL needs a thug.

Regardless, while my resume travels in the mail, I am inspired to bring in a heat gun to work tomorrow to see how the application works when I am flipping bits.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:57 PM
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