11 Infamous Software Bugs

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
75,399
You may have missed it altogether because of the importance of 9/11, but 9/9 was Debugging Day. The importance of perfect coding can’t be stressed enough when millions of dollars, careers and even lives can rest on only one key stroke.

Don't expect this collection to contain tales of the Ping of Death or other faults exploited by hackers and malware -- such as the Spanair crash of 2008 or the possibly apocryphal tale of the CIA sabotaging the Soviet gas pipeline. Nor will it include deliberate decisions by programmers that came back to haunt them later, as with Y2K.Instead, this story is about outright programming errors that caused key failures in their own right.
Click to expand...
 
Sept 23, 1983 could have literally been the end of the world. Good article, and I remember the Korea Air debacle and how we were all on edge, especially in Vienna, a stone's throw away from hordes of the WP.
 
TheWeazmeister said:
Sept 23, 1983 could have literally been the end of the world. Good article, and I remember the Korea Air debacle and how we were all on edge, especially in Vienna, a stone's throw away from hordes of the WP.
Click to expand...

My blood went completely cold when I read that part of the article. My God.
 
The patriot missiles problems intercepting scuds doesn't belong in the same class as any of the other issues. ABM intercept modes were a feature planned for the 1993 upgrade cycle, when the war broke out Raytheon was directed to rush install a pre-alpha version of the ABM code that wasn't tested to any significant degree prior to release.

The reason for the rush deployment was due to middle eastern politics. As long as the conflict remained fundamentally arab vs arab in nature, the other arab states were able to stand and watch one of their own be crushed by an outside force. The moment Israel entered the war however it was widely expected that popular unrest would force the moderate states to leave the coalition because the mob was unwilling to be on the same side as the Israelis. Saddam not being completely stupid was threatening to attack Israel if we didn't back down and leave him to digest his conquest in peace.

Similarly the Israeli government was expected to fall if they didn't immediately respond in force to an attack from an arab state. Hammering the message "we will keep you safe" to the Knesset became one of the USes top foreign policy objectives. Crash deploying an untested ABM upgrade was part of it, as were the large number of aircraft sorties wasted in futile hunts for mobile scud launchers in the western desert. IIRC a large increase in the military aide budget for the year was added as a sweetener.
 
TheWeazmeister said:
Sept 23, 1983 could have literally been the end of the world. Good article, and I remember the Korea Air debacle and how we were all on edge, especially in Vienna, a stone's throw away from hordes of the WP.
Click to expand...

Azhar said:
My blood went completely cold when I read that part of the article. My God.
Click to expand...

In Soviet Russia, early-warning system program you!

Couldn't help but think of the Kursk...
 
Azhar said:
My blood went completely cold when I read that part of the article. My God.
Click to expand...

I remembered that story from a Maxim a few years ago. It had a section for "Unsung Heroes" or something like that. It ranged from Jesse Owens having to resort to horse racing because he couldn't race white people after the Olympics to the "Man that Saved the World", our Russian friend. He got discharged and is now fairly broke last I checked. We are VERY lucky he was in charge that day and not some hardliner KGB thug. Either way, the man deserves far more than "world citizenship" for being the only person who literally saved the whole planet.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top