My grandfather was an air-crash investigator, and once investigated a european crash (May have been Switzerland in around 1970, apologies, I don't have any details) in which an airliner had apparently tried to land on the side of a mountain.
It was proved that the accident happened due to the local electricity generating grid using high frequency modulation to carry messages over power lines. The chosen frequency was a close enough match to the Instrument Landing System on the aircraft to cause it to engage.
I hope modern airliners have better ILS.....
I could as easily argue that diversification of software and a multiplicity of non-binary-compatible platforms will lead to better security.
Monopoly suppliers can produce good code, but this places an excess of trust in the end user - a group who historically have not been eager and diligent in software patching.
Security loopholes become an issue when the software becomes omnipresent, as in Windows today.
The comment from the Chinese spokesman that the technoogy was not compatible with the rest of China's railways must surely have been a major consideration even before research into the project was started.
Having said that this was always going to be a vaguely improbably blue elephant. Communist countries may love their hero-projects but this kind of trend-setting is expensive and usually causes egg-on-face incidents.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm relaying a story I was told by a close member of my family. I can't vouch for any of the details.. but I did say that in my post.
My grandfather was an air-crash investigator, and once investigated a european crash (May have been Switzerland in around 1970, apologies, I don't have any details) in which an airliner had apparently tried to land on the side of a mountain. It was proved that the accident happened due to the local electricity generating grid using high frequency modulation to carry messages over power lines. The chosen frequency was a close enough match to the Instrument Landing System on the aircraft to cause it to engage. I hope modern airliners have better ILS.....
I could as easily argue that diversification of software and a multiplicity of non-binary-compatible platforms will lead to better security.
Monopoly suppliers can produce good code, but this places an excess of trust in the end user - a group who historically have not been eager and diligent in software patching.
Security loopholes become an issue when the software becomes omnipresent, as in Windows today.
The comment from the Chinese spokesman that the technoogy was not compatible with the rest of China's railways must surely have been a major consideration even before research into the project was started.
Having said that this was always going to be a vaguely improbably blue elephant. Communist countries may love their hero-projects but this kind of trend-setting is expensive and usually causes egg-on-face incidents.