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Computer Glitch Halts Seattle New Year's Fireworks
supersat writes "At the stroke of midnight New Year's Eve, Seattle's fireworks show ground to a halt. The source of the problem is reported to be a corrupted file that wasn't checked until the last minute. After two reboots, the fireworks had to be detonated manually. And yes ... one blog commenter, claiming to have worked on prior shows, said that the shows run on Windows."
Was actually running Linux, as detailed in this piece including screenshots[pyroblog.com]
http://www.blognotiziedigitali.blogspot.com/
It says "BSOD" in several places in the article. Unless you are writing bad drivers, (which I'd admit may have been an issue, seeing as they are interacting with hardware, the fireworks squibbs) software or data problems should not be able to cause an OS crash unless your OS sucks. (though the squibb board was likely USB controlled)
Speculating wildly, it appears to be a case of where windows just randomly corrupts something on the HD and this time it just happened to nail something the OS needed, and was only discovered when they ran it live.
Really though, anything automated like this that cannot be repeated should be designed to be testable as completely as possible, and should be tested several times in advance. Fireworks shows should have a fully functional computer system that runs completely to the end live, tested. The squibb board should have LEDs, one for each squibb, that light up as the computer fires them, so you can dry run it as many times as you like, watching the LED board to make sure everything goes off as planned. A security key on the board provides power to the squibbs themselves, so you can do a complete live run through the entire computer controlled show as many times as needed before the showmaster inserts and turns the key to heat up the squibbs and they just press the "do it again" button on the computer. There is no excuse for this.
But can't say for sure that even THAT would have helped matters in this case. Windows is known to spontaneously corrupt its OS files, and this could have very easily happened during their final test at 11:40 pm. But for something as big as this I would expect no less than redundant computers. It's software for christ sakes. Put it on two machines. The squibb board was likely serial or usb anyway so you could even drag your laptop from home as a backup because the computer has no special hardware installed. Again there is no excuse for this failure, unless your squibb board catches on fire or something like that which you can't double up on.
Anyone quoting me for a big show that tried to tell me they were providing a single (windows or otherwise) computer the whole thing hinged on and there was no hot spare, would be promptly shown the DOOR.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
talk about a 'glitch' in yOUR history, being buswhacked etc... our apologies to the nytimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31/opinion/31mon1.html?em&ex=1199336400&en=c4b5414371631707&ei=5087%0A
Looking at America
It was not the first time in recent years we've felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.
The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked -- how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.
Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America's position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America's global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world's anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.
In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.
We have read accounts of how the government's top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions -- and both American and international law -- to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review.
Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn't go just a bit too far and actually kill them.
The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat -- and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.
Hundreds of men, swept up on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq, were thrown into a prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, so that the White House could claim they were beyond the reach of American laws. Prisoners are held there with no hope of real justice, only the chance to face a kangaroo court where evidence and the names of their accusers are kept secret, and where they are not permitted to talk about the abuse they have suffered at the hands of American jailers.
In other foreign lands, the C.I.A. set up secret jails where "high-value detainees" were subjected to ever more barbaric acts, including simulated drowning. These crimes were videotaped, so that "experts" could watch them, and then the videotapes were destroyed, after consultation with the White House, in the hope that Americans would never know.
The C.I.A. contracted out its inhumanity to nations with no respect for life or law, sending prisoners -- some of them innocents kidnapped on street corners and in airports -- to be tortured into making false confessions, or until it was clear they had nothin