[SystemSafety] Safety-Critical Systems eJournal

[Peter Bernard Ladkin]

On 2022-02-02 20:00 , Derek M Jones wrote:
> 
>> Whereas there are a number of people on this list who do engage regularly, and successfully, with 
>> that process and I suspect that they would agree with me that, for all its faults, it is a process 
>> which largely reflects scientific consensus and not any spurious authority.
> 
> Heaven forbid, the customer cannot criticize the product.
> Only those with an establish record of kowtowing to
> consensus are allowed to do that.
The collection of algorithms known as Paxos algorithms, for ensuring the consistency of distributed 
transactions through ensuring a notional serialisation of those transactions, has revolutionised 
distributed computing/cloud services/WWW service provision/you name it.

Such algorithms were invented (discovered?) by Leslie Lamport in 1989. They solved a problem with 
distributed databases already known, and also known to be without solution at that point. He 
submitted the original for publication in 1990, but it wasn't until 1998 that it was published, in 
TOCS. Read all about it in http://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html#lamport-paxos

First point: the amount of effort it can take a top computer scientist to publish in a top journal. 
In this case, 9 years. Note also that this achievement is explicitly cited in his Turing Award 
encomium https://amturing.acm.org/award_winners/lamport_1205376.cfm

Second point: You can say what you like about elites, echo chambers, the reputation of journals and 
so on. What you can't do is deny the importance of Paxos, deny the importance of its publication in 
a top journal, deny the amount of effort a top computer scientist of our generation put in to get it 
published, thus to ensure its visibility and development to the point of essential use in modern 
computing facilities.

In other words, Derek, I think you are being very silly. I suggest you stop it.

PBL

Prof. i.R. Dr. Peter Bernard Ladkin, Bielefeld, Germany
Tel+msg +49 (0)521 880 7319  www.rvs-bi.de




-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: OpenPGP_signature
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 840 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <https://lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/pipermail/systemsafety/attachments/20220202/5c771b3f/attachment.sig>