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Software Glitches Cause Airport Delays in Britain
bnoise writes "There has been air traffic delays of up to 6 hours today above UK (and this includes north atlantic flights). A BBC News article points out the reasons: a software upgrade. Another article gives more general information about the delays. Companies pin-pointed are IBM (initial development) and Lockheed Martin. If only they were using Open Source Software in the aviation industry... By the way, is there any Open Source project in the aviation sector? A search on Freshmeat gives back 5 projects."
Better to have airport delays than airplane crashes :/
I seriously doubt that open source is the solution to this problem. Honestly, there are glitches in OS projects, too, that get by review. I don't like this spin put on this story... OS is *not* the holy grail of software development!
;)
Oh well, time to burn some karma for a neede rant
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
You'd think software that provides such critical service would be thoroughly tested.
Help pay for my wedding! Go to my kickass website
If only they were using Open Source Software in the aviation industry
:-)
Post all your "WTF is that supposed to mean" comments here!
-Rob Ewaschuk
Yeah, of course, there is never _any_ problems at all that can occurs when using free software.
My score for this "news": -1, troll.
A message from the system administrator: 'I've upped my priority. Now up yours.'
If only they were using Open Source Software in the aviation industry.
Then they'd have to waste their time arguing the merits of gairport versus kairport...
Remember kids- "Open Source" apps have glitches, too...
Open Source isn't a magic bullet for this kind of thing. Software Engineering is the solution to this kind of thing, and no one has a monopoly on that. The amount of crap code in the Open Source world and proprietary world is, in my experience, roughly equal. (Actually, I think there is a bit more crap code in Open Source, but it doesn't get used much). The difference is that with Open Source/Free Software you know what you are getting and with closed/proprietary you don't.
> If only they were using Open Source Software
> in the aviation industry...
Then what? They'd never have to upgrade? Yeah, never upgrading is something OSS users are well known for.
- A flight planning tool for pilots
- Perl module for processing aviation weather reports.
- Parses FAA weather briefs into individual NOTAMs/METARs/PIREPs/TAFs/etc.
- Local weather data accumulation for Web sites
- A Linux port of the X-Plane flight simulator.
and an ATC system for trans-atlantic airspace.I think we're being trolled!
This is one news story that's worth looking at.
I really like the little photo captioned "Skies in UK Becoming Increasingly Crowded" that shows about five jets at the same time!
I can't believe that's a real picture. If its, they're begging for some collisions RSN.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Considering that it has become an example of 'How not to implement a large and complicated computer project'
Years off schedule, millions over budget. Hang on, sounds like a government project!
And on the evening of the first day the lord said... LX 1, STANDBY; LX 1, GO!; and there was light.
Air Traffic Controller 1.0 for XP!
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts."
There are flight control/traffic control projects in open source..
Anybody who has caught transport to LA and flew out did so on open source traffic control all the way from the train transport to flying out..
the software runs on Linux currently....
There awas even an article in several linux magazines..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
I'm just checking the BAA (British Airport Authority as was). My my flight home from work is due to take off in 2 hours, but looks like it will be delayed by at least 2 more hours. Ah well, the joys of being a roving consultant.
:-(
At least I have photos of my wife to remind me what she looks like.
And no, trains are no good either!
Oh, come on, just because we live and breathe open source software, doesnt mean that it wouldnt be bug free. Advocation is one thing, zealotry is nother. GEEZ!
It's situation normal for the UK. I can't remember a public-sector IT project that hasn't run hugely over budget, over schedule, and most of them are eventually abandoned. Tony Collins (writer for Compuer Weekly) has written books on the subject. And yet still we carry on repeating the same stupid PHB-driven mistakes as last year. Afterward there's an enquiry by the National Audit Office, various private sector companies are scapegoated, and yet are welcomed back with open arms when they tender for the next mega-project. NATS (national air-traffic control system) is already a disaster of this type - wildly over budget and > 5 years late (IIRC). Yes folks, FIVE YEARS LATE. Actually the chief villains are EDS, Anders - uh - Indenture, Cap Gemini et al. Having worked at Logica for a while (a similar "IT Services" house) I have to say I would never go back to such an organistation... nowhere is mediocrity, political manouvering, lack of technical knowledge, and being told what to do by one's suppliers so exalted as in public sector IT projects. Of course Blair are just starting to fawn over Microsoft (having been granted an audience by Bill Gates: the notion of there being some sort of backlash or alternative to Microsoft doesn't seem to have crossed their minds.
Sigh. And tax just went up 1%, allegedly to fund the health service, but if they just stopped pissing away hundreds of millions per project on stupid obvious mistakes they'd have MORE than enough to fund education, health, law & order etc.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
That's the last time they use VBScript for their systems then.
for the air traffic control system for the airport you're about to land at.... and you notice a bug.... or a long jump... :-)
Perhaps there are some things it's better not to know!
Hexayurt - open source refugee shelter,
I don't understand the OSS statement. People don't (usually) die if linux crashes, but people can die if airport or plane software goes down. I personally feel much better knowing that air traffic control software and plane software was written by a company that got paid to do it, and that can be held accountable if something goes wrong. The thought of risking my life on software that was developed in someone's spare time makes me shudder. The problem in this article is the exception, not the rule, for aviation related software which is usually very well tested and debugged.
...how, precisely, would this solve the problem?
I'm sure, if it progressed anything at all like Mozilla, we'd get a production-quality air traffic control system in, oh, 50 years. Meanwhile, I would have to walk to Australia.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
They're talking about a couple of things. Southern UK mainland general air traffic (excluding TMAs of airports etc.) was handled a centre at West Drayton. This was exceptionally long in the tooth, generating lots of fun stories about forty year-old computers etc.
They decided a while back to replace West Drayton, and built "the world's most advanced" air traffic control centre, at Swanwick. Many years after it was due, Swanwick opened for business recently.
Of course the didn't just switch over and shut down West Drayton. To the press, West Drayton was a "backup". In fact it was (is) handling a bunch of movements. And a couple of months back, they had a large system crash. This was, as usual, sold as "problems with old computers" playing up. From inside NATS (National Air Traffic Service) one hears a different story: something about sysadmin (if you will) error knocking the thing over.
But Swanick is late and expensive. At heart, it's an IT project, after all...
Open Source people are generally experienced, skilled, and passionate about what they're doing. Visual Basic programmers are much more likely to be inexperienced and doing it as a paid chore. Would you be more comfortable trusting your flight safety to Tech-school grads earning $16.00 an hour and trying to show off, or to a bunch of guys less interested in hurrying to get it done and more interested in getting it right?
Sorry to make this sound "Katz"-ish, but try and follow.
You make an air-traffic control program open source. An airport decides to use it. A quality hacker, yet terrorist, jumps into the project (honestly, how difficult is it to get into an Open Source project? I haven't heard of one needing a background check). His code is quality for a long time and gets put into the program. He becomes a trusted member. He pulls a "DirectTV" hack (pieces of code, in several different packages that work once the package is complete) that causes many deaths.
Yes, this could happen in the software company that creates the software now, but it would be a lot easier for a terrorist to get into an open source project...
Just another example/reason that Open Source isn't the answer for everything (don't get me wrong, I'm an open source advocate myself, I just know some of its limits).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I know this is slashdot and very heavily biased in the direction of open source, but come on.... Why the constant barage of completely non-sensical comments about how open source would/could save the day where another closed source solution failed. This seems like a perfect example of where open source has little if no place. I completely agree when the problem domain contains something that open source developers have at home. But when was the last time you went to a friends house and checked out his new air traffic control tower?
And furthermore somebody point me out an open source project as complex as an air traffic control program that has had no bugs? While you do get the advantage of peer review of code if it's open source, there are always bugs. And honestly... if somebody posted on freshmeat or slashdot about their new beta air traffic control program, how many of you would do a full code audit? It's not exactly a sexy project or something you could use at home...
From the article:
"But software is advancing at a tremendous pace, so it becomes obsolete every 18 months."
Um, no, it's hardware that doubles in speed every 18 months. The approval rate for new aircraft technologies (at least in the states) is unbearably slow. This is clearly a weak excuse for the correctly identified problem:
"The basic stumbling block was not to get off-the-shelf components and software"
Maturity couldn't be a more critical issue to this kind of software. Where half a day's downtime can cause inconvenience to 10% of the population of your island, and ignoring a problem can get people killed, you need a proven winner. Software for managing the traffic over the UK should not even have been considered unless it had been proven for years of service controlling airspace over something noticably less crowded than one of the hubs of global trade.
Last time I was at Heathrow (not Swanick) there was an NT Blue Screen of Death on one of the arrival/departure monitors. There's reliable computing for you.
OpenSource Voluntary labor projects are all fine and dandy when the projects are small or at least incremental and there are enough interested parties that can work on it for free. But why would a bunch of geeks want to implement an air traffic control system just for fun? It's not like we all have our own back yard air traffic control problems we are trying to solve.
My gut instinct is that this would be a large system, that would need a Software Requirements Document, and some amount of an acual software engineering process in order to be successful.
And if OpenSource means the "Operating System", how do you know they aren't using Linux already?
After the upgrade from Win2k to XP, someone forgot to turn off the 'Auto Update' feature. The systems last night decided to download and install the IE rollup patch and now their IE can't run the AirPorter.v1.jar.
The bright side of the story is that the air traffic controllers will no longer be able to have their AOL instant messenger open due to compatability issues, which makes sure their focus will be on the planes flying about.
---
Don't piss me off or I'll write a shell script to do your job..
... they would have been down 12 hours and then realised they just should have stuck with their previous software.
"Lunix is for hippies and people who want to spend all day installing software that doesn't work." -JeffK
bnois writes, "The California Highway Patrol has been reporting that during rush hour today several large bridges in San Francisco, including the Golden Gate Bridge, have had sections collapse, sending cars and trucks hurtling to their demise below." If only some qualified engineers had drawn up the plans in their free time and let the general public view them first for errors. Does anyone know of some plans like that on Fresharch?
Linux is a great example of the open-source mindset at work. And there are other great examples of open source projects that work. But the idea that Open Source is the cure-all for all projects big and small is ludicrous. Whoever wrote "If only they were using Open Source Software in the aviation industry" has obviously never been involved in a 100-person project that spanned years and was responsible for critical operations.
Declaring Open Source to be a cure for all ills is like treating every disease with the same pill. It just doesn't work that way. Open Source software is great when people can unite for a common cause (usually against a common competitor, which Microsoft convienently happens to be) and produce a good product. But thre's no evidence that an Open Source project would have worked where this upgrade failed.
Closed source might not be your model of choice, but it solves the same problem. Software engineers writing code which is never released to the public don't do their jobs any worse because of it. You might think that the purity of the code is flawed by company management bent on releasing buggy products for profit, but the open source alternative is a Mozillian, buggy product that is years behind schedule and never quite ready. Don't assume that just because a model you don't like has a failure the model that you do like would have worked.
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
If only they were using Open Source Software in the aviation industry...
Since they used commercial (aka. evil) software, they were able to pass the blame to an entity other than themselves. Maybe they are trying to publicly state that they did nothing wrong (other than choose IBM). The airport was 100% overbudget so it would make sense to pass on the blame whenever possible.
If they had chosen oss, it doesn't mean that this so called technical glitch wouldn't have happened. No software is bug free.
Now they can bitch at Lockheed and perhaps get it fixed fast. If it was oss software, I doubt you would be guaranteed to get a team dedicated to fix a problem.
"Fix wha? I got an exam next week, sorry dudes gotta study."
- or -
"I have a big project at my real job. I'll fix it when I get around to it."
omg..oss can be just as buggy as css, the difference is that it opens security holes to the public if you use oss.
belgian aviation control center
The economic value of the open source development model is that directed validation is unnecessary.
The code is released, and the horde of developers does trial-by-fire validation for you. They run it in real-world usage and report bugs itinerantly for others to fix or sign-off on.
That's not feasible for programs where using the code means implementing it in an embedded system responsible for safety. The downloaders won't have the hardware to test it on, and putting it in use to test it misses the point of validating it.
But it's not as though the validation systems in use today are much better. Simulators and debugger-controlled code exercisers create sort of a chicken-and-egg problem. Recursive review decreases the probability of certain kinds of errors, but not to nil.
--Blair
Those Software Conmpanys and Contractors lock you into a solution and software they can fix. What are you going to do when they go out of business or go bankrupt. Even if they got the source code there is a clause saying that only that Company or Contractor can fix it or provide upgrades. Can you see now the logic and the reason that all software should be GPL/LGPL and the code should be free and open. People who code GNU GPL/LGPL software do it because they want great software that company or contractor who sells you an exclusive contract just is in it for the money. What are you going to do when you sold your data to an exclusive contract and they start to extort more money out of you, go out of business, get bought out, or go bankrupt. What happens when they change the data formats on you and you can not retrieve your data because they are no longer supported or closed. Are you going to trust your business secrets, models and data to Bill Gates and Microsoft and .NET. Does your company have a hotmail account because Bill Gates and Microsoft is selling your data without your consent and reading all your company email, data and secrets. Do you understand now that the only way to have security and good software is to have it Open and Free. http://www.gnu.org and http://www.stallman.org to educate yourself.
I agree with you on the "Open source would not solve this problem" bit... Sometimes I wonder if the editors put up that kind of stuff just to laugh at it.
The mozilla jab is low, though. Yeah, it's been a while, but it's a damn fine result. Besides, it was basically written from scratch, and the original netscape took just as long to get to where *it* was when they announced the founding of the mozilla project...
The Free desktop that Just Works
This is why I never use software for mission-critical applications. Software is buggy. It's the truth. It's a law or something. Buggy. Doesn't work.
Hardware, OTOH, rings true. Hardware will never let you down. It is built for the long haul, and will always be loyal by your side. I'd go to the end of the world with hardware.
I won't let software walk the dog.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
I read a few where they say OSS would be a good resolution, but I agree that it is best kept a secret. The Air Traffic System does now run under linux and I know this for I am the one who troubleshoots it. From experience I will have to say that it runs better on Linux then what is was written for. There is a lot of data that flows threw this place and trying to track every little plane is not an easy task. But have no fear as we do have some of the best programmers around making this thing work better. For a system that was written in pascal back in 85, its still holding fairly strong. You try to write something that can track about 8000 fast moving objects in a 3D space.
And of course OSS upgrades always go smoothly, never having any problems or dependency issues.
"If only they were using Open Source Software in the aviation industry..."
Spare us the Open Source crap. I don't want a bunch or unorganized spagetti code running the airports.
Some of you are using the terms "free software" and "open source software" as if they're the same thing! RMS is sneezing uncontrollably even as we post!
Having lived in Australia for more than two years, I'd say your walk would be worth it! :-)
I hate to say it, but that's a bunch of crap. Do you mean to tell me that in the history of open source software there has NEVER been a release that contained a bug? If that's the case, then why do we have things like Red Carpet? It's software. Bugs happen. That's life. Whether you're talking about closed source or open source, there will always be problems. Unfortunately, the open source community seems to think that they have the answer to all of technology's problems.
The UK based trade paper, Computer weekly has been tracking this project for quite some time now..
Check out the recent article here
Those Software Conmpanys and Contractors lock you into a solution and software they can fix. What are you going to do when they go out of business or go bankrupt. Even if they got the source code there is a clause saying that only that Company or Contractor can fix it or provide upgrades.
bullshit. The stipulations that come with source code in many of these kinds of cases involve the level of liability for the original company to fix/upgrade the software IF someone else modifies the code. In other words, you can mess with the code all you want, but you can't ask the original developer to fix it when you screw it up. There's no reason any company should be responsible for the mess you made.
How is the OS they run on the departures board systems anything to do with the air traffic control? That's sillier than criticising the code behind Slashdot because I'm posting this from a Windows machine.
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
How do you suggest the average coder puts his copy of OpenATC to the test? Start controlling planes from his bedroom? Maybe have all the kids in the neighborhood clear their bicycles and bigwheels for takeoff? I wonder if the testing phase for ATC software is a bigger effort than the actual development.
The new system was five years late, and now we're the only country in the world to have privately owned air traffic control.
Look at our rail network and then tell me that's a good idea.
The OS talk on this site is sad. You guys have the innate ability to turn anything into an OS discussion. "Oh, last night I ate that Olive Garden, it wasn't that great." "You should've had the OS breadsticks, man!".."Dude, what the fuck are you talking about?" "Um, uh, fuck Microsoft?!"
Finally, math books without any of that base 6 crap in them.
If airports started using open source software, it would make it that much easier for terrorists to recalibrate the Dulles International ILS beam to 200 feet below sea level.
Yes, and if only your aunt had balls, then she would be your uncle.
Seriously, how can you equate any OSS project, even the Linux kernel, so something like an ATC system? OSS is not a magic pill folks.
The tabloid UK press will find fodder where ever they can. Sheesh.
I worked at Lockheed during the Martin Marietta and the Loral mergers. News flash: LM is a holding company - the aeronautics folks wouldn't mess with Loral's business or any other. They're seperate companies under the same corporation.
Have these journalists ever heard of scope creep? If they were unsatisfied with the delays their own government asked for by requesting enhancements - why didn't they bail rather than throw good money after bad? Toss it now! I'm sure it's a nightmare for the LM programmers too!
Oh yeah - and the results would have been nothing short of spectacular is RMS and Linus were involved - I'd love to see that project plan with slip time attributed to 'ego stroking'
Simple to use:
xairport [-v] [-a] [-e] [-x] [-j] airportname
Lets you control any airport you want!
I work for a company that does some of the largest ATC systems in the world (not lockead but a direct competitor). The idea of having an open source solution to ATC is stupid. Every job/country has slightly different needs (up to 50%!). On top of that the requirements phase can take up to 2 years to hammer out. Then the design phase is atleast 4-6 month. while coding really only takes 2-3 month. The testing phase is another year. Its not a job for the fant of heart nor something you can just jump into. It requires a team of 30-40 people (only half coders) to put together systems like this. You really think it would be good to have an open source ATC system? Further more the hardware only is stagering ... 2K X 2K monitors are expensive. Not to mention having to stuff a fully loaded string (70+ machines and displays).
so please ... think before you speak OSS is nice but there is still a real need for people that do this work. Give us some credit ... don't say its a cake walk and be done by a group of volunteers until you've actually dont it :)
...I'd be deathly afraid of using 3rh33t hAx0r's open-source software "Find Yo Damn Plane, Foobar! v69.666" if I were ever coding something that would keep track of commercial airplanes.
OK, it's offtopic, but I noticed one of the quoted officials is blessed with the name "Butterworth-Hayes".
One assumes that Miss Hayes insisted on compounding their names so that she would not become MRS. BUTTERWORTH, full of buttery maple-flavored goodness.
Aiiight, I'll go soak my head now.
Welcome to GNU/Air, this is your Captain, Richard Stallman speaking. Our departure from redmond will begin shortly. Please sit back and enjoy the complementary gift basket containing Debain CD's, Marijuana and Freedom Fighting Tux Action Figure. Once again, thank you for flying GNU/Air.
IBM? Lockheed!!? Looks like the UK has been bought-out by the corporate machine, and the eGovernment-Hyper-Online-Network-Gateway-Marketing -Bullshit thing has been sourced out to Microsoft. There are plenty of great programmers and companies in the country.
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I will neve trust a company looking to make a fast buck on a government contract or anyother. Project manangement is crap they usually are behind schedule and use the least programming resources at hand because they are in it for the money to make a fast buck and could give a rats ass if your system crashes by then they will have their cut and be gone. You will call the fucking contractor and get a message no longer in service. Now tell me what are you going to then when you a piece of software full of bugs that is worth shit because you do not have the source code and even if they left the source code good luck trusting because they most likely left out large chunks of the code. Microsoft Shared Source they take the loaf and leave you a crumb or two. Programmers working for these closed shops are overworked, underpaid and usually asked to to have a project ready by a date that no way in hell they can get it all done. So they cut corners make coding errors just to get the project in on time to shut their boss up so they can still have a job and get paid their commission. Programmers working in these sweat shops cannot stand it makes them sick but they are often have a choice of making the mortgage payment feeding the kids or telling their boss to go to hell and risk losing their job. So tell us all again how you trust closed software for your misson critical systems. If its not open source then you can make a sure bet that their are serious coding flaws and defects. The only reason you advocate closed software is because it makes you feel better not to know but its still their so go stick your head in the sand if you wish if that makes you feel better it does not address or fix the problem. Your boss likes closed software because he is a weasel who does not want to take responsability for his job shit its better to make a scapegoat out of a company or contractor when you go before your board of directors and investors for all your problems. See now you know why CEOS and Government CIOS love Microsoft even if their software sucks, crashes and is shit.
Actually, if you hold you mouse over it for a second, the alt text of "Photomontage" comes up. Still, they should have made it more obvious.
0 / 993586.stm
Story with pic, BTW, is here http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_199300
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Yeah, because when a plane goes down due to a glitch, you can go sue RMS.
Only on slashdot can a posting be rated "Score -1, Insightful".
I'd just like to respond to the myriad posts that seem to assume that open source development is only done by part-time programmers in their basement who post version 0.0.2 of their foobarnator to Freshmeat. We're talking about about a billion-dollar project to develop software for one country's air traffic control center. Is it so hard to imagine that countries could collaborate on the development of this kind of software? At some point, a plane from the UK will be handed off to French ATC. I'd feel safer knowing that the billion dollars spent on development had gone to world-class programmers, rather than to regional pork barrel.
The "who do you sue" argument is rubbish. Until software engineering lives up to its name, open source development can be considered no worse than the rest of the industry. EULAs on shrink-wrap software and contracts for custom software inevitably disclaim any warranties. If you're an important customer, you can expect a bug fix, but you can't sue for damages.
Apologies for hiding behind an anonymous post but I do work on the UK's FDP systems. The NERC system was based on the FAA's (since abandoned) AAS system. It is predominantly written in Ada with some C. I don't know who this (other anonymous) chap is, and I thank him for his assertion that we have some good engineers, but I'm pretty sure he's not among us. For example, if one needed to track 8000 objects (over the entire country) one might be inclined to use multiple radar heads and processors. I've never seen any operational code written in Pascal.
Speaking from exeperience working in the industry open source is in NO WAY RIGHT. First of all the facilties to test these thing are hella expensive. You need a complete mock up and simulators. Secondly you need a FAA clearence and speciall FAA training meetings. These also cost money. Third you need to be close to the expensive lab so you can test. 4th you need a ton of configuration managment people. 5th you need to have very tight code reviews, and security consideration.
I mod down any one who says "I'm sure I will get modded down for this"
If only they were using Open Source Software in the aviation industry...
Because of course, upgrading Open Source software never causes problems. In fact, if they were using Linux, it would be so efficient the passengers would be arriving before they left.
Whilst "If only they were using Open Source Software in the aviation industry..." is stupidity beyond belief, ... there are actually a few open source air traffic control programs available....
OpenATC
Flightgear is an open-source flight sim that kicks ass. Check out some screen shots - especially this one or download it.
I don't think the open-source activists were trying to say that the ATC software would be bug free if it was open source, i think they were trying to say, that an ATC system should be something the government is incharge of - since it involves stopping large bits of metal hitting civillians its definatly not a project that you should source out to any old company, and especially not a company who will write closed proprietory software, or hires a bunch of lay-abouts who take 6 months off, and write the whole thing in a week. (Ive done projects that way - they are bad). IBM are not exactly faultless (my replacement Deskstar just arrived). The software should be open source since it is probably funded by tax-payers and generally, the population wants to be able to see the code that is keeping them safe everyday, even if they have little input. For all we know with the capitalists outthere, IBM could have been sold to Al'Qaeda.
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Companys do not last forever and the programmers are hired usually just for a project or two and they move on to other projects and companys. You use of closed source software has now left you, your company and your customers up the creek with no paddle. GE is the winner in being able to retool and remake there business model along with IBM but how long have they been in business not forever. They say the Queen has a lock on being in business in England but there is talk by the people they would rather she be elected and taxed just like everyone else that way the House of Windsor could be held accountable without the people fearing being persecuted by the Royal Family for speaking their minds. God forbid if you disagree with the Queen. I feel sorry for Blair because he is a puppet and a servant of the Queen. The British People are great and have a way of telling Blair and the Queen to fuck off just watch Prime Ministers Question Time. There is much written about this ask Fergie or read about how Diana Princess of Wales was treated by the Royal Family. Bill Gates is the Queen Microsoft is the Royal Family and Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman are Fergie and Diana. Can you understand it all if not go down to the pub and have a beer :)
I do NOT want it controlled by open-source software. Using open-source software for such a mission critical application, where lives are on the line, and there's no accountability makes no sense at all. And your going to pretend like there arent bugs in open source software? Please...
I know the level of security that Lockheed Martin employs, and I'd rather have a delay once every 10 years than for the airplane to get hacked (if the open-source developers working on it are the same as Linux).
This NEEDS to be a big-business controlled industry, simply because of accountability.
Why dont people understand that open-source software does not belong everywhere?
If only they were using Open Source Software in the aviation industry...
Yeah, I'd like to see how quickly the Open Source community could fix the problem during the opening weekend of Episode II.
'Same speed C but faster'
You wont see any of the code in pascal for it was all poorly translated to C a few years ago.
You are a fucking twit.
Interested in open source in aviation? Check this out: http://www.sandroid.org/birdsproject/
...at least a start?
Oh Yes. Open Source software. open source software wakes me out of bed every morning, Not only that it has my breakfast ready for me, my car already running and warmed up. It will guarentee me that i'll get to work without any traffic delays. and that I wont have any single problems and a trouble free day.
Could you imagine if they had been running open source software or some miserable underdeveloped piece of software(which incidentally they are).
Imagine the procedure.
rpm -i newairtrafficsoftware.rpm
error software package xxx requires package yyy
rpm -i packageyyy
error packageyyy.1.1.1 conflicts with packageyyy1.0.0.
Apt would require you to upgrade the entire system although then you would have some measure of success. It might actually work.
Yep open source is the way to go. If you read the entire article it seems that the software they were using undewent several different ownerships and development cycles. Could yo imagine an open source software doing the job? Hundreds of different individuals working to different goals and no coordination. It defies logic that someone can even make a statement like that.
Cheers
but these are queued behnd each other, usually at least 2-3 minutes apart
No, dear, not at Heathrow, it's 90 seconds max usually. Just sit there with a watch and count them. Or listen in on the radio.
If there's a 3 minute gap it's because they've lost one.
Open Source ATC.
www.openatc.org
how bout OpenATC ? openatc.org
Open Source Air Traffic Control.
Yes this is offtopic, moderators please don't nail me into the ground...
but wouldn't air traffic control be a great job for a computer, instead of a bunch of humans trying to acheive insane levels of concentration?
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Basically, there is one system that holds all the data about which flight is assigned to which transponder ID number, and what air routes etc. This is a big mainframe, currently running on 3 IBM S390s (I saw them when they were putting them in last time I was in there). The actual code, however, is the same as they were using on the original S320, and has survived 2 replacement systems, by the cunning use of emulators. Incidentally the code is so old, it doesn't store dates (and hence survived the millenium bug) - it just rolls over at midnight - all the numbers get reset / reassigned.
This code crashes fairly regularly, but until now wasn't a serious problem - because they could just restart it. Unfortunately, the new centre in Swanwick produced some new issues. The new centre takes a data feed from the mainframe at the old site. The designers of the 2 systems didn't consider the fact that the two might become out of sync, and hence when the mainframe gets reset, they go to manual in the interim, and the 2 systems are out of sync when they come back up. At one point they had to wait until midnight, reset both systems (because everything rolls over at midnight) and go from there. They appear to be able to bring the systems back in sync, and back to normal speed, within a few hours now.
I suspect the software upgrade was to fix this problem, but didn't go according to plan.
Of course the new centre itself is another story. As pointed out there were some bad design decisions (The American's - who were going to make it cheaper by doing all the devopment - they stopped, lets carry on!!) Plus the fact that Lockheed Martin were going to walk out on the contract, because the penalty clause was going to be less than the cost of finishing the project....
Glad to see even Slashdot can recognize that OSS for ATC software isn't a good idea.
*claps*
In most sucessful OSS projects they are attempting to solve a computer science project. Most of the developers on these projects are computer scientists (either professionally or as a hobby) so they are definitely qualified for this.
For air traffic control however we are not talking about a computer science project. Computer science is just a means to an end in this case. Computer scientists are not qualified to solve this problem since they are not trained in the science envolved in tracking and managing air traffic. They are valuable only for one aspect of solving the problem.
For a problem like this you need a mixture of "pure" scientists, computer scientists, and some people in between. A proprietary model will work better here because there is a strict management structure that (in theory) can assemble the appropriate people from the variety of fields needed to solve the problem.
I see OSS as the best way to solve basic computer science problems (Operating Systems, networking, user interfaces, etc.). With open tools that solve these computer science problems that leaves people free to use these tools to attack "real world" problems with the assistance of computers.
Sean Roberts
Lest you wonder what software the U.S. went to instead, there's been no change. The enroute ATC system in the U.S. runs the same software (with a few patches--none significant since conflict alert was added in about the late '70's) that was first brought online circa 1972 on the IBM 9020 (special-purpose machine--basically 2 IBM 360's stuffed into the same room). It's now running in its third box, and it is about as obsolete as you would imagine.
Just thought you might like to know.
http://www-student.cse.buffalo.edu/~jdwaller/image s/UK_windows.jpg
Need I say more?
- john
So what you want is a loose knit team of internet hackers to work on a airtraffic system? Yeees, want to send me one of those systems to run the program on, also I won't mind if you include a few jumbo jets for actual tests.
uuhhhmmmmmmmmm ...
no?
no! of course not, how the hell should there be an opensource project dealing with aviation? not until OSDN donates a Helicopter with a Tux-Logo to RMS.
but if i think about it, nah. RMS would prefer a tank to a helicopter.
Sort of. Open Source, as it is practiced on many projects today, is based on the idea of contributors mailing in contributions. But it's also based on the idea of users mailing in bug reports.
Instead of Open Source, think Open Review. Think of aerospace geeks looking for simple coding errors, such as a conversion from 64-bit floating point to 16-bit integer with no overflow check. That's the software error that brought down Ariane 5 Ariane 5 Report.
Besides the human beings who might want to review code, researchers also write automated programs to look for program bugs. For instance, someone at Stanford enhanced gcc to look for code patterns in the Linux kernel that accessed memory in insecure ways, or that allocated memory without freeing it.
The end result of these processes is not a source code patch, but a bug report.
Also note that if the cost of failure is millions of dollars or hundreds of lives, then the organizations who operate these systems have a good reason to pay bounties for discovered bugs. On a personal scale, Donald Knuth pays bounties for bugs discovered in TeX, which is one practice that has led to the legendary high quality of TeX.
Read these links regarding Autocoding and the problem with private efforts
..track about 8000 fast moving objects in a 3D space.
Isn't this what a lot of commercial games do? Esepecially things like space combat games.
/usr/games/fortune > ~/.signature
From the article:
"But software is advancing at a tremendous pace, so it becomes obsolete every 18 months."
Um- software is not obsolete if it continues to do the job it was designed to do, in fact it is trusted more if it has been reliable for so long.
I would feel safer trusting my life to an 8 year old DOS program than to a 6 month old Linux or Windows one.
The only way I can see an old bespoke package being worse than it used to be is if it had to handle a lot more requests than it used to, since it will probably scale poorly.
graspee
Open Source is not a silver bullet cure all magic marvel - don't hype it up as such.
If only they were using Open Source Software in the aviation industry...
WTF? I am a big supporter of the open source movement, but what does this have to do with the fact that the software is not Open Source? It was software glitches! It happens also in open source program if you have not noticed (Look at Linux; we have been forced to update the Kernel for fix problems more then once). I am just saying, we just can go running around and yelling blaming all software problems on the fact that the software was not open source.
I am Pakistani And No! I do not own a 7/11! And my NAME is not Apu! --Zuhaib
Reuters reported that for 45 minutes two days ago people buying domestic tickets in the USA on United Airlines were charged $5.oo. United Airlines promised to honour the tickets. Cool.
Well... I have thought about a free airport operations database (AODB) for some time, but then I'm allready in the buissiness and don't know if it will violate my employer IP...
(See http://www.fmt.se/airport/atlantis/index.htm for more details abut the compan/product in question I'm working for now.)
For now, I have the beginning of a pretty strightforward and simple design, but since I'm pretty much alone in the project (at work and at private) I don't have much time to implement much of it.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Someone needs to be educated on how to deploy new software to mission-critical systems.
No matter how bad the bug you're trying to fix, you should never, ever, ever deploy to 50% of your systems on the first day if the system can't handle the load on the remaining 50%!
Much better to upgrade a few systems at a time - sure your upgrade cycle might take a month, but you're in a much better position to spot any show-stoppers before it affects a significant proportion of your system.
This is the way we do things where I work - 1 machine a week till the whole set (of 4) is done. And we're only in financial services - if we screw up, there's not a huge chance of a lack-of-fuel situation & people having to be identified by their next-of-kin...
--
Anon
Ok, I just have to say this (before I get sober enough to get to bed... ;):
Airport planning and air traffic control isn't something you can just fetch some program and hope it will do whatever you want it to.
This is an area that involves thousands of human lives! If there is an accident with one aircraft and it is the softwares fault, you can bet that there will be a lot of people suing you!
A project like an ATC/AODB (Air Traffic Control/Airport Operations DataBase) takes many man-years to make from the ground up. Trust me, I have worked five years in that specific niche.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
- Our nations' taxes paid for it.
- Our nations' safety depend on it.
- Our travellers' time is valuable.
- The developers need to know that the world is watching their keystrokes,
That is why it is correct to open the code to public view.so that they are encouraged to press the correct buttons.
This is the reason you get dialtone reliably when you pick up the 'phone.
It would work for Air Traffic Control too.
Lots of shitty code written by the Old Farts Club with their Windoze Boxen. They fear the truth to get out that their crap code is a hazard to your health and safety but they put it out there anyway shit what the hell the payoff was good. There will be more of these snafus as this shit code barfs and at some point in time the Government and People will demand an inquiry. Seems like a racket they have a lock on the market and how dare those Linux and GNU coders invade our racket ahhh yeah marketplace. God forbid if we open source the code shit they will find out that oh I am just a dumb ass Windoze Programmer who uses a lot of Visual Basic and VB Script. How can you sleep at night knowing that you crap code is endangering the health and welfare of others well you do not care because you are to busy golfing or going to your stock holders meeting bitching and moaning that your company stock sucks and they paid you all those stock options. Yeah you will never tell the truth Coder Suck So Much because you have a vested interest in your company to prop up the FUD bullshit so that you stock will go ever higher. Just because you sold out for the almighty dollar like a whore does not mean everyones a sell out. People who code Linux and GNU software do it because they want great software and they are the greatest and brightest programmers in the world!
Must be some real shit code you put out their because well your warning Please Do Not Go There You May Find Out How Much Shit Code There Is. LinuxGNU coders like to go where no coder has gone before Star Trek Music Please........ You have just made a strong case why we should Open Source your shit code and fix it before a major fuckup happens because of your shitty code. Dare you to submit you code for the ultimate code review put it up on Sourceforge.net and let the Linux GNU coders audit it they will tell you very frankly if your code rocks or if it sucks Bill Gates. Coder my ass your just a gopher whos scared shitless that the truth may get out that you and your company are one big scam and racket.
When I was at the uni (in Spain) many of my classmates would try to get a job in the regional goverment as IT "civil servants". To get the job you had to pass a pretty difficult selection process (not an interview, but you will have to do lots of different exams) that you have to prepare for months or years before hand...with the reward of having a job for life. Basically once you are in, they can't get rid of you..... Anyway, I saw (don't remember the link) in the regional paper last month an article about how crap the IT deparment of the regional goverment was and how the software that they produced sucked so much that they could not even use it. One of the "features" of the software was to count the number all civil servants in the regional goverment so they could get paid at the end of the month. That "feature" did not work and they had to do lots of manual intervention for such task The bottom line is that in the case it was not the goverment outsourcing the production of software, but the in-house dept making it. As the main motivations in the spanish civil servant service is to do "as little as you can because you get paid anyway", their motivation says it all...
Wow .... I'm not sure you comment really needs a reply but oh well.
.. they don't engineer it.
... you'll see that you seem to be the one moron clutching the open source staff ...
For the record I'm not a gopher I do the communication tasks (TCP/IP,X25). I'm a developer. I have CS degree from one of the top schools tech schools in the east and do open source coding in my spare time (qmail patches and my own database UI). As for GNU/hackers, they write code
You need people to engineer it. Would yuou want to drive on bridges put up by people in there spare time?
Go read the rest of the post
Oh well I like what I do and there is no way the open source community could pull off anything like this in the forseeable future.