Re: How to fuck with airports - a 1 step guide for (Redmond) terrorists.

2004-09-29 Thread R. A. Hettinga 
At 8:28 AM +0200 9/29/04, Eugen Leitl wrote:
>The mind boggles. Even more interesting: how many heads have rolled due to
>this?

None, of course. Microsoft is the new IBM. As in, "Nobody ever got fired
for buying Microsoft..."

Cheers,
RAH

-- 
-
R. A. Hettinga 
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation 
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

Re: How to fuck with airports - a 1 step guide for (Redmond) terrorists.

2004-09-28 Thread Eugen Leitl 
On Tue, Sep 28, 2004 at 03:06:54PM -0700, Bill Stewart wrote:

> Either way, if they knew the system was going to crash every 49.7 days,
> and they had a process to have a technician reboot it every 30 days,

If I knew somebody delivered me a mission critical system like that, 
I'd sue.

The system required a human in the loop to periodically do action XY, or it
would reliably fail? And the system before didn't? And it wasn't there as a fallback?

The mind boggles. Even more interesting: how many heads have rolled due to
this?

-- 
Eugen* Leitl http://leitl.org";>leitl
__
ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144http://www.leitl.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net


pgprQ7KTQDXHy.pgp
Description: PGP signature

Re: How to fuck with airports - a 1 step guide for (Redmond) terrorists.

2004-09-28 Thread Bill Stewart 
At 11:37 AM 9/28/2004, Roy M. Silvernail wrote:
Got to love the spin...
"The servers are timed to shut down after 49.7 days of use in order to 
prevent a data overload, a union official told the LA Times."
That would be 49.71026961805556 days, or (curiously 
enough) 4294967295 (0x) milliseconds.  Known problem with Win95 
('cept they call Win95 a "server").
I've heard some people say that there was a different problem
that was causing them to need to reboot about that often,
having to do with the applications rather than the core OS,
but I don't know enough of the details to be sure.
Either way, if they knew the system was going to crash every 49.7 days,
and they had a process to have a technician reboot it every 30 days,
and the technician shuts it down during quiet nighttime hours,
that guarantees that the 49.7 day crash will be at a _bad_ time of day.
They could at _least_ have done a workaround that tells the system
to shut itself down at 2am on Day 45, after giving the operators a
warning about "Hey, I need to shut myself down for an hour for maintenance
some time in the next 4 days, is now a good 
time?  Yes/No/Wait-5-min/Wait-1-hour"

Disclaimer: I worked on the FAA's AAS debacle in the 80s
(fortunately not on the unlucky "winning" contractor's team),
and a number of my coworkers worked on VSCS projects -
not sure if they won that round, or who their partners were.

Re: How to fuck with airports - a 1 step guide for (Redmond) terrorists.

2004-09-28 Thread Steve Furlong 
On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 14:37, Roy M. Silvernail wrote:
> "The servers are timed to shut down after 49.7 days of use in order to 
> prevent a data overload, a union official told the LA Times."
> That would be 49.71026961805556 days, or (curiously 
> enough) 4294967295 (0x) milliseconds.  Known problem with Win95 
> ('cept they call Win95 a "server").

How the heck do they keep a Win95 machine up for 49 days? I think 1 day
is a more realistic MTBF.

Re: How to fuck with airports - a 1 step guide for (Redmond) terrorists.

2004-09-28 Thread Roy M. Silvernail 
Sunder wrote:
Q: How do you cause an 800-plane pile-up at a major airport?
A: Replace working Unix systems with Microsoft Windows 2000!
Details: http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?NewsID=2275
 

Got to love the spin...
"The servers are timed to shut down after 49.7 days of use in order to 
prevent a data overload, a union official told the LA Times."
That would be 49.71026961805556 days, or (curiously 
enough) 4294967295 (0x) milliseconds.  Known problem with Win95 
('cept they call Win95 a "server").

--
Roy M. Silvernail is [EMAIL PROTECTED], and you're not
"It's just this little chromium switch, here." - TFS
SpamAssassin->procmail->/dev/null->bliss
http://www.rant-central.com

How to fuck with airports - a 1 step guide for (Redmond) terrorists.

2004-09-28 Thread Sunder 
Q: How do you cause an 800-plane pile-up at a major airport?
A: Replace working Unix systems with Microsoft Windows 2000!

Details: http://www.techworld.com/opsys/news/index.cfm?NewsID=2275


--Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos---
 + ^ + :"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we.  /|\
  \|/  :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\
<--*-->:and our people, and neither do we." -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/
  /|\  : \|/
 + v + :War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President.
-