For most people it's fairly hard to fathom what's going on in our computer sometimes. The processes seem to come down to a form of magic or personality on the part of the computer, and when things unexpectedly go wrong, or fix themselves, it only reinforces the idea of some supernatural force behind it all. Here are some very real consequences of massive software failures.
The Cold War was a strange time, to say the least. With two powers with the weaponry to destroy the world facing off against each other it was easy for things to go a little crazy. One of the secret conflicts taking place was in software development and theft. The Soviet Union thought it had got a pretty good deal when it bought one of the latest American industrial system programmes from a Canadian source in 1982, but it turned out the CIA had got into that software first, and planted a Trojan virus. When the system was installed on a gas pipeline the result was an enormous fireball, visible from space. Ironically, this created panic in the US NORAD room, where they believed a Russian missile had just been fired.
Today, programming students everywhere study the fault of the Therac-25, a component in radiation therapy machines that created a huge scandal in the eighties. The reasons are complex, but largely due to an inexperienced programmer's efforts a high powered beam of electrons that was meant to hit a metal plate inside the machine, and disperse into X-rays, did not hit its target, and would instead fire into the patient. As a result several people died, and several more were injured.
The most costly software error we know of is the Ariane 5 malfunction. This was a rocket launched in 1996 as part of a series of satellite delivery missions. It used the same software as a previous, successful flight, but what wasn't taken into account was the differing speeds of the earlier rocket to the Ariane 5. This caused the computer to be 'confused,' meaning that first of all the backup computer failed, then the primary, then the rocket flew for another forty seconds on so unguided and at full power before disintegrating.
So in a way we can be thankful for the minor nature of our own software gripes, but it's scary to think of how much can depend on these things going correctly sometimes.
The Cold War was a strange time, to say the least. With two powers with the weaponry to destroy the world facing off against each other it was easy for things to go a little crazy. One of the secret conflicts taking place was in software development and theft. The Soviet Union thought it had got a pretty good deal when it bought one of the latest American industrial system programmes from a Canadian source in 1982, but it turned out the CIA had got into that software first, and planted a Trojan virus. When the system was installed on a gas pipeline the result was an enormous fireball, visible from space. Ironically, this created panic in the US NORAD room, where they believed a Russian missile had just been fired.
Today, programming students everywhere study the fault of the Therac-25, a component in radiation therapy machines that created a huge scandal in the eighties. The reasons are complex, but largely due to an inexperienced programmer's efforts a high powered beam of electrons that was meant to hit a metal plate inside the machine, and disperse into X-rays, did not hit its target, and would instead fire into the patient. As a result several people died, and several more were injured.
The most costly software error we know of is the Ariane 5 malfunction. This was a rocket launched in 1996 as part of a series of satellite delivery missions. It used the same software as a previous, successful flight, but what wasn't taken into account was the differing speeds of the earlier rocket to the Ariane 5. This caused the computer to be 'confused,' meaning that first of all the backup computer failed, then the primary, then the rocket flew for another forty seconds on so unguided and at full power before disintegrating.
So in a way we can be thankful for the minor nature of our own software gripes, but it's scary to think of how much can depend on these things going correctly sometimes.
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