The Heathrow titsup reminded me about a book I have on my shelf. I went to search for it and finally found it covered in dust. It is a hard cover published in '95, called Fatal defect, chasing killer computer bugs, by Ivars Peterson. It made me wonder what lessons, if any, IT practitioners have learnt in the intervening 13 years. IT has no concept of safety officers and no body like the FAA to report and independently verify IT major incidents, even fatal ones.
The book references these events:
- Ray Cox overdosed by Therac-25 radiation therapy machine: Original Accident Investigation Paper (by Nancy Leveson)
- Darlington emergency shut down system software: Finding fault: the formidable task of eradicating software bugs.
- Voyager 2
- Tandem CLX failure in 1992: Don Stokes. More time related faults.
- William M. Kahan: How important is numerical accuracy?
- Phobos 1
- A320 Airbus crash in 1992.
- STS-1
- Patriot missile failure
- The AT&T Network crash of 1990.
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