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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."
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
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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.
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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
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...
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.
That's definitely photoshopped. The other responder states that you can see planes queuing at Heathrow (London's main airport) which is true, but these are queued behnd each other, usually at least 2-3 minutes apart.
I've worked at Heathrow (Concorde taking off about fifty yards away is impressive, but it's very weird as it's completely silent - the soundproofing in those buildings is astoundingly good) and although the skies are getting a little cramped, a picture like the one that adorns this story would give most air traffic controllers a heart attack.
I'm a little disappointed in the BBC. Photoshopping composites to illustrate a news story is quite common, but this particular picture could easily be perceived by naive readers as genuine - I think this is straying dangerously near to FUD.
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.
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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
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'