Can Software Kill?

mykepredko writes "Eweek has an interesting, if somewhat long article titled Can Software Kill? The article focuses on a programming error that resulted in 28 Panamanian cancer patients receiving many times an expected lethal dose of radiation. The article briefly mentions, but doesn't go into detail, the 1991 Patriot Missile Failure that resulted in the deaths of 28 American service men and women."

Comments

Yes. It can.

[Mr. Slippery]

Sadly, this is nothing new.

Every software developer needs to read Peter Neuman's book Computer-Related Risks , and keep up with the Risks digest (comp.risks).

Learning from other's mistakes is much less painful.

Re:Sure it can kill.

[robslimo]

Ha, ha.

It's a serious topic, even more so since the over-radiation shit in Panama happened so recently.

The infamous Therac-25 incidents happened between 1985 and 1987 and should be required reading... too bad the three Panamanian medical physicists cited in the article hadn't paid attention to it.

Re:You clueless cretin.

[canajin56]

The Davis-Besse nuclear reactor in Ohio was running its safty monitoring systems on an NT server. And it got infected by Slammer and crashed. Fortunatly, the system had an analog backup, and the reactor had already been offline all year, after inspectors discovered a 6" hole through the cement in the reactor head, which left the core exposed.