“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,” Matthew Broersma reports for Techworld.
“The failure was ultimately down to a combination of human error and a design glitch in the Windows servers brought in over the past three years to replace the radio system’s original Unix servers, according to the FAA,” Broersma reports. “The radio system shutdown, which lasted more than three hours, left 800 planes in the air without contact to air traffic control, and led to at least five cases where planes came too close to one another, according to comments by the Federal Aviation Administration reported in the LA Times and The New York Times.”
“As originally designed, the VSCS system used computers that ran on an operating system known as Unix, said Ray Baggett, vice president for the union’s western region. The VSCS system was built for the FAA by Harris Corp. of Melbourne, Fla., at a cost of more than $1.5 billion. When the system was upgraded about a year ago, the original computers were replaced by Dell computers using Microsoft software,” The Los Angeles Times reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Stupid? You decide. We wouldn’t trust Dell computers using the Microsoft Windows operating system to surf the internet safely, much less depend on the combo for safely communicating with 800 planes in flight.
If everything just worked with no problems there would be less jobs for us all. Start littering in the streets (cleaners need jobs too), and use windows (plenty of techs that need jobs)!
JB –
The vulgarity “STFU” is NOT acceptable in this forum. Be civil or be gone.
Control is a form of fear. Support Free Speech.
I wondered where “49.7 days” came from. I searched on Google for it. It is just amazing what MS can get away with. In 32-bit OS, MS’ solution to timer counter wraping was halt the system (which occures 49.7 days). MS may have corrected the problem in Windows 2000/XP, but sounds like there are [device?] drivers still being used, which can halt the system (as it did in Calfornia).
Everyone blames Microsoft, but the fact is, the blame is to be put on microsoft product users who support Microsoft.
Stop buying, use, talk about Microsoft and MAYBE the world will be a little more civilised.
I blame Steve Jobs personally
Okay, anyone who decides to use Windows for such a critical task is idiotic.
However, the title of this article is a bit dramatic. “Nearly causes 800 plane disaster”? C’mon, like all the planes were going to simultaneously crash into each other. There were 5 cases where the planes flew too close to each other. I’m not trying to downplay the seriousness of the situation, but to call it anything close to an 800 plane disaster is dumb.
Stating the obvious is also classified as dumb iggyb