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by ibgames

EARTHDATE: November 17, 2013

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WINDING DOWN

An idiosyncratic look at, and comment on, the week’s net, technology and science news

by Alan Lenton

A little shorter this weekend as I try to catch up on all the things I should have done last weekend. What we have includes cars and software, why you have to have a fire door within two and half minutes of you at work, a video about engineering the London Underground, a tool chest for geeks, a successor to the legendary SR-71 spy plane (cunningly named the SR-72, which is bound to fool spies), and the Shovelhead Mutant Lifeform Exhibition. URLs are also available for using electronic gadgets on planes, an exploding iPad, logging mail in the US Postal Service, Bletchley Park archives to go online, the story behind the upcoming film ‘Spacesuit’, and well known copyright troll Prenda goes down in flames.

Next week, I will still be here, and I hope to have another analysis piece for you. So... Don’t miss it!

Analysis: The Top Executives Reality Gap

Last month there was an important decision in Oklahoma. The court ruled against Toyota in a case over a death caused by unintended acceleration. Unintended acceleration? The case revolved around the programming of the car’s Engine Control Module’s programming. Modern cars are heavily dependent on software. Not just a few lines of code here and there, but thousands, if not tens of thousands of lines of code.

There are standards for this sort of code, but they appear not to have been rigorously applied by Toyota. The result – acceleration even though the throttle wasn’t being pressed and a failure to detect that the driver was trying to apply the brakes. Ultimately the sloppy coding caused death.

One could go on at length about the dangers of bricks and mortar behemoths not taking coding seriously, but actually it’s really only a symptom of a much more general problem, that has been growing worse over the last twenty years. It’s quite a simple problem, but like all problems relating to corporate culture, difficult to fix. The fact is that software driven machinery and systems are now so pervasive that the companies involved are now, to all intents and purposes, software companies.

The best example of this is the banks and big financial companies. They are no longer banks with a software division. They are big software houses with a banking license. The programs they produce and use are fundamental, pervasive and essential to what they do. The problem is that their top management is clueless over this issue and believe that they are just bankers. Some of them are still talking about outsourcing their programming to cut costs!

In the case of the car industry we see a fascinating, and lethal, disconnect over this issue. Would Toyota have developed the hardware part of their cars in same sloppy way they developed the controlling software? Of course not, they are a car maker with rigorous standards and a reputation to support. The reason for the deadly problem is that the powers that be at Toyota – and probably other big car firms – have not come to grips with the fact that they are now software houses, writing safety critical software.

And as for self-driving cars, controlled by ultra-sophisticated software...
http://www.edn.com/design/automotive/4423428/Toyota-s-killer-firmware--Bad-design-and-its-consequences
http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-honda-odyssey-recall-20131104,0,3097543.story#axzz2kPPQpZaU
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9243518/Self_driving_cars_could_save_more_than_21_700_lives_450B_a_year (Ha! A.L.)

Homework:

Did you ever wonder how the fire regulations that says that every employee must be able to reach a fire exit within two-and-a-half minutes were worked out? I can only quote a piece in the UK’s Telegraph on this one.

“The reason is that two-and-a-half minutes is, I’m told, the mean length of God Save the Queen. The British national anthem, when played in full, by a concert orchestra.”

The stipulation can be traced back to a fire at Edinburgh’s Empire Palace Theatre in 1911 which broke out during a performance by a French illusionist named The Great Lafayette, he explained.

During the last illusion of the night, dubbed “The Lion’s Bride”, a lamp at the back of the set caught fire and set the stage alight. “The lamp catches on fire, the set catches fire, the fire curtain comes down, and the audience just sits watching because he is an illusionist,” Prof Bisby said.

“The quick-witted conductor of the orchestra realises that the audience is in a trance watching the illusion, and instructs the orchestra to play God Save the Queen which will rouse them to their feet.”

So there  you are – you need to be able to reach a fire exit in the time it takes a concert orchestra to play “God Save the Queen”. Should you ever be caught in a fire in a public place in the UK, just remember – stiff upper lip, and don’t forget to stand for the national anthem!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10393435/Professor-of-Fire-safety-laws-absurd.html

It’s the 150th anniversary of the London Underground subway system this year, and there are all sorts of bits and pieces about the history of the system coming out. One thing I’d like to point you towards is a nice video about the engineering history of the underground, produced by the UK Institution of Civil Engineers. Take a look – I think you’ll like it.
http://londonist.com/2013/11/video-engineering-the-underground.php

For Geeks:

I think The Register has found the ultimate tool chest for your geek hidey-hole. It looks like an ordinary tool chest, but hidden behind its innocent seeming exterior are a 22” LCD TV screen, a cooler for your beer, and a DVD player. She’ll never know!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/15/weve_found_it_the_ultimate_mancave_furniture/

And for programming geeks, here’s an amusing little slide show about false economies in software development. How many can you spot at your place of work?
http://www.infoworld.com/slideshow/128647/8-developer-shortcuts-will-cost-you-big-230924

Oooh! Lockheed Martin are designing a successor to the legendary SR-71 Blackbird spy plane. The SR-71 was a beautiful looking piece of kit, and the new SR-72 (no imagination there) bodes well to be an equally classy job. It’ll probably be years after it gets into production before we get to see it though.
http://www.gizmag.com/lockeheed-martin-sr-72-blackbird/29634/

And for the more, how shall I put it, retro amongst my readers, some steampunk art for geeks. Take a look at these Gizmag pictures of the Shovelhead Mutant Lifeform Exhibition. There’s 67 pictures, which should be enough to satiate even the most ardent steampunk!
http://www.gizmag.com/shovelhead-exhibition-irex/29723/

Scanner: Other stories

FAA green-lights gadget use during entire flight
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57610193-93/faa-green-lights-gadget-use-during-entire-flight/

KRAKOOM! iPad Air explodes in a fireball, terrified fanbois flee the Apple store
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/08/ipad_air_explodes_into_fireball_as_terrified_fanbois_flee/

U.S. Postal Service logging all mail for law enforcement
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html

Bletchley Park vows to upload secret World War II code-cracking archives
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/08/bletchley_park_snoop_station_to_put_secret_wwii_archives_online/

Bras in space: The incredible true story behind upcoming film ‘Spacesuit’
http://www.thecredits.org/2013/09/bras-in-space-the-incredible-true-story-behind-upcoming-film-spacesuit/

Prenda Law’s “hacking” suit that named ISPs ends in total loss
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/prenda-laws-hacking-suit-against-isps-ends-in-total-loss/

Acknowledgements

Thanks to readers Barb and Fi for drawing my attention to material for Winding Down.

Please send suggestions for stories to alan@ibgames.com and include the words Winding Down in the subject line, unless you want your deathless prose gobbled up by my voracious Thunderbird spam filter...

Alan Lenton
alan@ibgames.com
17 November 2013

Alan Lenton is an on-line games designer, programmer and sociologist, the order of which depends on what he is currently working on! His web site is at http://www.ibgames.net/alan.

Past issues of Winding Down can be found at http://www.ibgames.net/alan/winding/index.html.

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