Windows boxes cause air traffic control radio outage in LA?

A major breakdown in Southern California's air traffic control system last week was partly due to a "design anomaly" in the way Microsoft Windows servers were integrated into the system, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times.


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. To avoid this automatic shutdown, technicians are required to restart the system manually every 30 days. An improperly trained employee failed to reset the system, leading it to shut down without warning, the official said. Backup systems failed because of a software failure, according to a report in The New York Times.

Wonderful. These are dell servers running windows 2000 Server, and they need to be rebooted every 6 weeks or so. Manually rebooted. Some genius somewhere (presumably at Harris Corp) decided that:

• Having a windows box in a mission-critical, lives-depend-on-it system was a good idea, and that
  
• Needing to reboot the boxes wasn't a big deal, and that
  
• they couldn't be bothered to automate the reboot cycle.
  

Here's the press release from Harris Corp, which was very proud of its upgrade being accepted by the FAA.

I should add that this isn't meant to be a Microsoft bash. It's a shame that MSFT don't do better software, but the reliability problems in their software are pretty well known industry-wide, and deciding to use an OS that requires a 6-week reboot cycle is boneheaded in the extreme when you're talking about life-critical systems. The blame here should be on Harris Corp and the FAA.

I hope someone gets fired over this. And I hope this system isn't running for airspace over the midwest...

Doom3 completed

Yow.

I finally finished doom3 tonight, after getting Laurel into bed. Took me forever - having a new kid doesn't allow much time for gaming.

Doom3 is like watching an animated horror movie, except you're in it. The graphics are that good, given a high-powered 3D card. The engine generates cinematic framerates with quality approaching something like Shrek or Toy Story 2. Except that it isn't about toys or fast-talking donkeys. No, it's about demons and zombies and big, big guns, and being occasionally scared enough to jump out of the chair. The lighting and fogging, in particular, are amazing. There are some scenes with overhead lights that are swaying back and forth, and the shadows do what you'd expect them to do in the real world, and in the last couple levels, there are marsquakes that shake clouds of dust down from the ceiling, and these look spectacular.

My only complaints are that the story is a little thin, and the gameplay is predictable more often than it's surprising.

It's basically a re-interpretation of the original DOOM story; check out doom3portal or planet DOOM for more on the storyline. By comparison, the Marathon series on the mac, or Halo (and hopefully, Halo2) offer a bit more fun in terms of storytelling. Those games are almost like reading a good sci-fi novel, with frequent gunfire. Doom3 is all about the gunfire. Also, unlike Halo, there's no vehicles, and very few outdoors scenes. Of course, being on mars, there isn't much call for being out-of-doors, but still - the outdoors scenes on Halo are some of the most beautiful in the game.

And for the gameplay, it seemed to degenerate into "I'm walking into a new room, I wonder what's going to jump out at me this time" for most of the mazes. The points at which the game actually scared me were pretty few and far-between.

However, at the end of the day, the storyline isn't that big of a deal. My hopes for doom3 were to run around in beautifully rendered mazes and to shoot stuff, and doom3 delivers in spades for that. Big fun, and highly recommended. Oh - and you're definately going to want to buy and install an NVidia 6800-series graphics card before playing.

Getting used to being four...

Our oldest has been a real trouper as a big sister - being a new big sister isn't always fun. Nevertheless, she's been handling it well, and has been very sweet with Bea. Bea is mostly a quiet girl, but she does cry (like all babies do), and last night she was up from, oh, 11:30 PM till after 3:00 AM. Laurel woke up around 1:30, came upstairs, and told Bea "Don't worry, I'm here", and wanted to hold her and help to keep her calm. She was a little upset about the noise and the crying, but mostly it seemed that she wanted to help comfort her little sister. It's moments like that that make parenting worthwhile, and counterbalance the moments when I want to toss her into a snowbank.

She's arrived!

Presenting to the world:

Beatrice McBeath Clark

Click on the image for a larger version, although be warned - the larger version is unedited, and contains a potentially shocking depiction of man nipple.

Arrived at 1:56 PM on September 5th.
Weight: 8 lbs 15 oz
Length: 21.5 inches
Head 13.75 inches

Labor was around 12 hours, with maybe 15 minutes of pushing. The delivery was not drug assisted; Molly rode the lightning again. She was born with one laaaarge push. Molly is doing well, and healing nicely. Molly had some things to say during the labor, but nothing that rose to the level of her Dean Scream on the slide.

She's a peaceful baby, most of the time. We're happy she's here.

*This* revolution won't be blogified

Molly's in early labor at the moment; we're expecting a new addition to the family either today or early tomorrow. More later, but not till the middle of the week or so at the earliest.