Criminal incompetence at the FAA

[No Such User]

Whoever made this purchase should be in jail:

http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39124122,00.htm

It's shameful that they would trust people's lives to a computer
system that had to be "reset every thirty days" just to keep from
crashing.

Microsoft delenda est.

[Ross Oliver]

No Such User > wrote:
>Whoever made this purchase should be in jail:
>
>http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39124122,00.htm
>
>It's shameful that they would trust people's lives to a computer
>system that had to be "reset every thirty days" just to keep from
>crashing.


Everyone seems fixated on the Microsoft portion of this problem,
but so far no one has mentioned the words that have appeared in
every article I've read about the incident: "The backup system
also failed." What is the backup system, and WHY did it fail?


"The SUV rolled over due to failure of the tires. The airbag
also failed."

[zatatime]

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 17:51:53 GMT, (No Such User)
wrote:

>Whoever made this purchase should be in jail:
>
>http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39124122,00.htm
>
>It's shameful that they would trust people's lives to a computer
>system that had to be "reset every thirty days" just to keep from
>crashing.
>
>Microsoft delenda est.

Now I'm scared! Microsoft shouldn't be making systems for critical
applications. I agree whoever made the purchase should be in jail,
but only after a public flogging by every rated pilot and controller.

I doubt it will happen, but I hpe they go back to using a real OS like
UNIX for this stuff, else progress will become an oxymoron.

z

[Robert M. Gary]

Shows the damage that can be done when people who don't understand the
system try to read about it in the paper. I write software to manage
telecommunications infrastructure and I've never seen software that
can run forever without maintenance. We talk in term of the number of
"9's". 2 "9"s is 99% up time, 3 "9s" is 99.9%, etc. Usually 4 "9s" is
the best you can do. When my software fails, new telephone services
(new DSL, call waiting ,etc) do not get activated, wireless companies
cannot detect a tower outage, etc. Even in that environment 4 "9s" is
consider exceptional. The solution is to have backup systems. The
FAA's system in question was the backup system.

-Robert


(No Such User) wrote in message >...
> Whoever made this purchase should be in jail:
>
> http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39124122,00.htm
>
> It's shameful that they would trust people's lives to a computer
> system that had to be "reset every thirty days" just to keep from
> crashing.
>
> Microsoft delenda est.

[Richard Hertz]

Um, I have run MS Oses successfully for months without failure - actually, I
never got to test it fully as power outages crashed it. It is not the OS
many times, rather the poor software developers who write for the OS. If
they write drivers or other kernel stuff the OS is compromised.

I suspect it is not a microsoft problem at all, rather the vendor who wrote
stuff for the OS is at fault.

If you have more specific information about this i would love to hear about
it.


"zatatime" > wrote in message
...
> On Wed, 22 Sep 2004 17:51:53 GMT, (No Such User)
> wrote:
>
> >Whoever made this purchase should be in jail:
> >
> >http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39124122,00.htm
> >
> >It's shameful that they would trust people's lives to a computer
> >system that had to be "reset every thirty days" just to keep from
> >crashing.
> >
> >Microsoft delenda est.
>
> Now I'm scared! Microsoft shouldn't be making systems for critical
> applications. I agree whoever made the purchase should be in jail,
> but only after a public flogging by every rated pilot and controller.
>
> I doubt it will happen, but I hpe they go back to using a real OS like
> UNIX for this stuff, else progress will become an oxymoron.
>
> z

[Peter Duniho]

"Richard Hertz" > wrote in message
t...
> [...]
> I suspect it is not a microsoft problem at all, rather the vendor who
> wrote
> stuff for the OS is at fault.

Indeed, even the blatantly anti-Microsoft website reporting the "news"
points out that it's the FAA who will fix the problem. Last I checked, they
had nothing to do with writing any of Microsoft's software. Since they are
going to fix things, obviously it's not anything Microsoft actually
published that was at fault here.

Still, sure is fun to see all the anti-Microsoft religious fanatics fall all
over themselves trying to turn this into a "it's Microsoft's fault" thing.

Pete

[zatatime]

Funnily enough, I've also worked on telecom infrastructure, mostly for
keeping international traffic flowing around the world. UNIX is what
is used for those machines. We also strive for 99.99% up time and
know Microsoft can't give it to us through stress testing. Now I'm
talking about tracking 100 million plus phone calls a day so I'll
admit the scale is something out of the ordinary. Its my opinion that
real time systems should be cautiously reviewed.

As far as my "facts" on Microsoft; the only thing I can offer is
directly from a friend who was one of the leads on building the NT 4.0
kernel. He very candidly told me that everyone within Microsoft's NT
architecture group knew the proclaimed 127 year up time would never be
achieved, and the it was a purely theoretical number. You have
experienced some of the reasons it can't be proven i.e electrical
failure. What the designers worked toward was having a machine that
could run for 30 days without a re-boot. We have also spoken about
real time applications from a medicinal use point of view, and his
take was that it would be a few generations down the road before the
Microsoft OS was ready for such a thing. I'm sure you can easily
discount this if you chose, but I'm speaking from a personal source
who spent at least a half day a week with Mr. Bill himself working
through all that was required to build the NT platform. For me that's
alot better than was I read in any computing rag (especially knowing
how thorough he is).

Now I don't know how ATC applications compare with real time medicinal
computing, but I have to think they are just as critical as each other
and should be treated with an overly adequate computing platform in
both the OS and the program design. I don't see the OS or programming
tools available (with the exception of C) ready to do that for apps
requiring significant up time for real time data analysis. Please
don't misunderstand me, I am not against Microsoft. They have
afforded me to make a good living for many years, but I don't think
their place is in real time computing......yet.

z
On 22 Sep 2004 18:13:30 -0700, (Robert M. Gary)
wrote:

>Shows the damage that can be done when people who don't understand the
>system try to read about it in the paper. I write software to manage
>telecommunications infrastructure and I've never seen software that
>can run forever without maintenance. We talk in term of the number of
>"9's". 2 "9"s is 99% up time, 3 "9s" is 99.9%, etc. Usually 4 "9s" is
>the best you can do. When my software fails, new telephone services
>(new DSL, call waiting ,etc) do not get activated, wireless companies
>cannot detect a tower outage, etc. Even in that environment 4 "9s" is
>consider exceptional. The solution is to have backup systems. The
>FAA's system in question was the backup system.
>
>-Robert
>
>
(No Such User) wrote in message >...
>> Whoever made this purchase should be in jail:
>>
>> http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39124122,00.htm
>>
>> It's shameful that they would trust people's lives to a computer
>> system that had to be "reset every thirty days" just to keep from
>> crashing.
>>
>> Microsoft delenda est.

[G.R. Patterson III]

zatatime wrote:
>
> Funnily enough, I've also worked on telecom infrastructure, mostly for
> keeping international traffic flowing around the world. UNIX is what
> is used for those machines. We also strive for 99.99% up time and
> know Microsoft can't give it to us through stress testing.

And I wrote system requirements for telecom software that had the same (or worse)
uptime requirements. We found the MS servers to be quite capable of delivering what
we needed.

George Patterson
If a man gets into a fight 3,000 miles away from home, he *had* to have
been looking for it.

[Ron Natalie]

"zatatime" > wrote in message ...
].
>
> I doubt it will happen, but I hpe they go back to using a real OS like
> UNIX for this stuff, else progress will become an oxymoron.
>
Oh, like UNIX never crashes...

[Robert M. Gary]

zatatime > wrote in message >...
> Funnily enough, I've also worked on telecom infrastructure, mostly for
> keeping international traffic flowing around the world. UNIX is what
> is used for those machines.

All of our customers run their servers on Solaris or HPUX. However,
clients are almost always run on PCs (usually Win 2K). Our customers
are most of the cell phone companies and all the long distance
companies. Sometimes we manage faults, sometimes activation, etc so we
don't necessarily do the same thing for each co. However, if you call
your phone company an order DSL service anywhere in the U.S. I can
almost guarantee you that its my code that's actually connecting to
the switch to turn on the service.

-Robert

[JohnMcGrew]

In article >, "Richard Hertz"
> writes:

>Um, I have run MS Oses successfully for months without failure - actually, I
>never got to test it fully as power outages crashed it. It is not the OS
>many times, rather the poor software developers who write for the OS. If
>they write drivers or other kernel stuff the OS is compromised.

Well, I've run non-MS Oses for YEARS without failure. The only threat these
systems usually face is power starvation.

I recently laughed at an arrangement made between Fiat and Microsoft, for an
operating system to run their automobiles; an auto world renown for poor
quality and reliability run by an operating system known for the same; truly a
marriage made in hell. Considering the expensive overkill in reliability that
the FAA demands in so many of the components that we use in aviation, why
they'd tolerate a Windows based system is beyond me.

I vividly recall the debate that took place in the mid-80s about the future of
computing when the world had finally been convinced that microcomputers really
were capable of more than tinkering and games. What the world needed was an OS
that offered the stability, security, and multi-tasking ability of mainframes,
but without the resource & performance consuming bloat that existed within the
older and larger systems. Microsoft was in a position to offer the world an OS
that was tightly optimized for the future of personal computers.

What did we end up with? A PC operating system that is literally the worst of
both worlds; hideously bloated, and far more insecure and stable than the
systems it was designed to replace!

It's truly an irony that so many power users today look at Linux, a Unix
derivative, as the future. In the '80s, we rejected Unix as representative of
the bloated mainframe past we wished to escape. Today, geeks run Linux servers
with 99.9%+ reliability on hardware that Windows will barely boot on.

John

[Bob Fry]

"Richard Hertz" > writes:

> Um, I have run MS Oses successfully for months without failure - actually, I
> never got to test it fully as power outages crashed it. It is not the OS
> many times, rather the poor software developers who write for the OS. If
> they write drivers or other kernel stuff the OS is compromised.

Um, one of the jobs of an Operating System for the last 20-30 years
has been to protect the OS, and thus other processes, from poor or
even malicious software. Other OSs accomplish this quite well...but
not Windows.

[Bob Fry]

(JohnMcGrew) writes:

> Considering the expensive overkill in reliability that
> the FAA demands in so many of the components that we use in aviation, why
> they'd tolerate a Windows based system is beyond me.

It's not just the FAA that makes this mistake. Anybody remember this?


GOVERNMENT NEWS
GCN July 13, 1998


Software glitches leave Navy Smart Ship dead in the water
By Gregory Slabodkin
GCN Staff

The Navy's Smart Ship technology may not be as smart as the service
contends.

Although PCs have reduced workloads for sailors aboard the Aegis
missile cruiser USS Yorktown, software glitches resulted in system
failures and crippled ship operations, according to Navy officials.

Navy brass have called the Yorktown Smart Ship pilot a success in
reducing manpower, maintenance and costs. The Navy began running
shipboard applications under Microsoft Windows NT so that fewer
sailors would be needed to control key ship functions.

But the Navy last fall learned a difficult lesson about automation:
The very information technology on which the ships depend also makes
them vulnerable. The Yorktown last September suffered a systems
failure when bad data was fed into its computers during maneuvers off
the coast of Cape Charles, Va.

The ship had to be towed into the Naval base at Norfolk, Va., because
a database overflow caused its propulsion system to fail, according to
Anthony DiGiorgio, a civilian engineer with the Atlantic Fleet
Technical Support Center in Norfolk.

"We are putting equipment in the engine room that we cannot maintain
and, when it fails, results in a critical failure," DiGiorgio said. It
took two days of pierside maintenance to fix the problem.

The Yorktown has been towed into port after other systems failures, he
said.

[Javier Henderson]

Bob Fry > writes:

> "Richard Hertz" > writes:
>
> > Um, I have run MS Oses successfully for months without failure - actually, I
> > never got to test it fully as power outages crashed it. It is not the OS
> > many times, rather the poor software developers who write for the OS. If
> > they write drivers or other kernel stuff the OS is compromised.
>
> Um, one of the jobs of an Operating System for the last 20-30 years
> has been to protect the OS, and thus other processes, from poor or
> even malicious software. Other OSs accomplish this quite well...but
> not Windows.

Well, stuff running in kernel mode will trump whatever mechanisms
the OS has to protect itself.

But that's OK, Windows is easily crashed with user mode stuff.

-jav

[Robert M. Gary]

"Ron Natalie" > wrote in message >...
> "zatatime" > wrote in message ...
> ].
> >
> > I doubt it will happen, but I hpe they go back to using a real OS like
> > UNIX for this stuff, else progress will become an oxymoron.
> >
> Oh, like UNIX never crashes...

I guess it can. However, I can say that for the 10 years I've sat in
front of a Solaris workstation I have never once had it lock up do to
an OS issue. I have had it die and say a disk was bad or a memory SIMM
was bad, but it has never locked up or even hung for no reason. The
$4K Win XP Pro lap to they issued me is another story... :) Having
said that, I've long since given up being a UNIX bigot and spend most
of my time working in front of the Windows box. If Sun could ever
figure out a way to make an Ok Java engine for Solaris I might switch
back. :)

-Robert

[Larry Dighera]

On 23 Sep 2004 18:18:34 -0700, Bob Fry
> wrote in
>::

>Anybody remember this?
>
>
>GOVERNMENT NEWS
>GCN July 13, 1998
>
>
>Software glitches leave Navy Smart Ship dead in the water

I remember. I found the absence of the web content hosted on the
Yorktown to be significant loss.

However, the Yorktown wasn't running WinXP, which seems orders of
magnitude more stable than previous MS releases.

Regardless of the OS controlling the ZLA center communications, the
person who approved the intentional shutdown of all aviation
communications without any warning is truly guilty of the subject
offence, IMNSHO.

[Robert Briggs]

G.R. Patterson III wrote:
> zatatime wrote:
> > Robert M. Gary wrote:
> >
> > I write software to manage telecommunications infrastructure ...

> > Funnily enough, I've also worked on telecom infrastructure ...

> And I wrote system requirements for telecom software ...

And there's a fair bit of my code out there, primarily in the UK's
PSTN.