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Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Wednesday, May 14, 2003
11:41 - Hostages of Software
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=573&ncid=757&e=1&u=/nm/20030512/od_n

(top) link
Via CapLion; ever wonder what would ultimately happen once the automotive industry-- traditionally a mechanical and hardware-driven sector, in which failures were sparse and the basis for recalls-- merged with the software industry, with all its unpredictability and blasé hand-waving smirking acceptance of instability?

This is what. People's lives get put in danger.

Much is made in the software QA industry of the example of NASA, where everything is triple-redundant and the software systems are miniscule compared to even a modest desktop computer on Earth-- because the kind of rigorous design and testing you need in order to provide a fail-safe guarantee of the stability of software necessitates simple and bounded systems. Adding one widget to the system can add a year to the R&D process. But NASA holds itself to those standards. It's not practical for companies like Microsoft to do so, not when there are the market pressures of an exploding industry to answer. Contractors who write software for jetliners or the Air Force get to work under banners that say "When our software crashes, so does the plane"; you won't find those kinds of banners in Redmond. (One hopes there's a banner somewhere on the campus that says "Remember the Yorktown", but I'm not holding my breath.)

And the automobile industry is hardly in NASA's league, either; but because until now they've been working with proven technology, making only evolutionary changes, they've been a lot closer to such stability than the software industry ever has. And never the twain shall meet.

Or not:

Suchart Jaovisidha and his driver were trapped inside the BMW for more than 10 minutes before guards broke a window. All doors and windows had locked automatically when the computer crashed, and the air-conditioning stopped, officials said.

"We could hardly breathe for over 10 minutes," Suchart told reporters. "It took my guard a long time to realize that we really wanted the window smashed so that we could crawl out. It was a harrowing experience."

It's only going to get worse from here. I could smirk at the fact that this was a WinCE-based system that crashed (in fact, it can probably be shown that Microsoft is in fact more prone to this kind of weakness than many other software makers, and more guilty of shoddy design and perfunctory testing-- and BMW, like so many other companies, picked Microsoft because they were Microsoft, not because their products were any good); but the problem that this uncovers is bigger than any one company. It's the whole argument about the excessive overcomputerization of huge chunks of metal that hurtle down roads piloted by civilian consumers.

I have no doubt that cars in the future will be necessarily as chock-full of technology as any sci-fi scenario would suggest. You can't have flying cars without computers, for instance. But you won't be able to sell flying cars if the computers randomly crash, locking up the engines, sealing the air circulation system, or otherwise endangering passengers' lives. Computer systems in personal transportation will have to be developed as rigorously as Air Force or NASA software before companies like BMW can be applauded for integrating them into their cars.


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© Brian Tiemann