from the go-ask-Mrs.-O'Leary-about-the-fire dept.
Air traffic nationwide has been snarled since a fire erupted in the basement telecommunications room of an air traffic control center outside Chicago early Friday. Things won’t get better anytime soon, and you can blame an air traffic control system that hasn’t changed in any meaningful way since the 1950s.
The problem started with a fire that authorities said was part of a suicide plot by an FAA contractor ( http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-cancellations-continue-at-ohare-after-last-weeks-fire-20140929-story.html#page=1 ). Beyond canceling thousands of flights over the weekend and raising troubling questions about the security of these facilities, the incident calls into question the efficacy of an air traffic system that manages 87,000 flights daily and won’t fully recover for another two weeks.
http://www.wired.com/2014/09/faa-chicago-fire-air-traffic-control/
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday October 02 2014, @11:59PM
That's what you get for piss-poor planning.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 03 2014, @12:27AM
They should have left it to the hand of free-market fairy: you know how competition drive price down and increase quality, right?
(grin... large grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 03 2014, @02:39AM
No, they should have had competent governance. But we Americans are too stupid to vote for competent governance, so this is what we get.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday October 03 2014, @05:17AM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 03 2014, @06:57PM
And which side is that? I never advocated any "side". What is this, a sports game?
(Score: 2) by Tork on Friday October 03 2014, @07:06PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 2) by nitehawk214 on Friday October 03 2014, @03:25PM
Yeah, you should have added "...pick one."
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Friday October 03 2014, @04:53AM
Yup, they should have planned a cloud-based control system from day 1, probably with redundant 400GE links between the various servers, and at least a couple Pflops per site just in case airlines went from a few hundred to 600 million or more flights a day (commute in my flying car).
Yup, that would have been proper planning.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2014, @07:55AM
You said cloud
*snicker*
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 03 2014, @06:59PM
They didn't need to plan everything from day 1, the problem is the smart people in the 50s or so set things up great given the technology and conditions at the time, and then it never really got upgraded or replaced as technology improved because our government has become incompetent and corrupt. Model Ts were great cars when they were new, but it'd be utterly stupid to keep making and using them now.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday October 03 2014, @07:53PM
They have a plan to replace the current system, but it's very expensive for all parties involved and an easy target for budget cuts (the air traffic controls only get attention when Congress wants to go on recess).
Also, the big problem is that you can step down from your model T and get a new car. Air traffic control has to work flawlessly 24/7, making upgrades (and the glitches which always come with new stuff) a major liability, better left to the next guy.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday October 03 2014, @09:32PM
They have a plan to replace the current system, but it's very expensive for all parties involved and an easy target for budget cuts (the air traffic controls only get attention when Congress wants to go on recess).
Hence my accusations of utterly incompetent and corrupt government. A competent government wouldn't cut the budget for needed upgrades and would get it done on time.
Also, the big problem is that you can step down from your model T and get a new car. Air traffic control has to work flawlessly 24/7, making upgrades (and the glitches which always come with new stuff) a major liability, better left to the next guy.
Again, incompetent government. Would you run a successful business that way, leaving hard and risky stuff "to the next guy"?
We managed to build rockets and send men to the moon 40+ years ago, but now we're too incompetent to just upgrade our ATC system. I'll bet Europe doesn't have this problem with their ATC. Besides, it's not like planes are going to fall out of the air if there's an ATC glitch; it's a management system, not an active control system.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Friday October 03 2014, @12:06AM
On the other hand, storms do the same thing every single year, so its not like this is an unpracticed example.
Also, the basic tenant, that nothing has changed since the 50s is patently untrue. In the 50, planes usually had radar coverage only as they entered the TCA, and between cities, even major airliners were flying "airways" [wikipedia.org] following a radio beam.
Today's system is highly computerized, which is why a simple fire in the switch rack can cause so much problems. The article, and hence the summary seems to want it both ways. We are still running like the 1950s, but we got in trouble because our computers went down. Huh??
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 03 2014, @12:34AM
They aren't mutually exclusive: it is not just what you use but also how you use it.
(just image some highly computerized and "smart" stones that one is still using as stone-axes in your everyday life pretty much as the Flintstones)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2014, @01:06AM
*ahem* tenet *cough*
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday October 03 2014, @01:27AM
You know it makes sense! (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by cafebabe on Friday October 03 2014, @01:07PM
I often see paper systems replicated faithfully in a computer system. Typically, unstructured documents are held on a departmental file server. My attitude to this type of usage is "Yeah, great, guys! You got yourselves a digital filing cabinet!" People who should know better are not immune to this pitfall. For example, you'd assume that a database company's intranet would be a Shangri-La of fifth normal form [wikipedia.org]? Naw, it was a wiki with some hacked-up extensions [xkcd.com]. So, "what you want" and "what you get" can diverge massively.
Returning to air traffic control, it is ultimately based on verbal commands but it is augmented a large number of systems, designed in response to use cases, but knowing that none have complete coverage. For example, a mid-air collision, in which one pilot followed directions and the other didn't, led to the development of an autonomous system which I believe is based on the principles of a three-way handshake and rock-paper-scissors. Understandably, this only works if it is installed in both aircraft. Thankfully, the big ones tend to have it.
1702845791×2
(Score: 1) by invictusvoyd on Friday October 03 2014, @01:38AM
Ideally speaking ,when an employee or contractor is terminated , all his access credentials should be blocked before he leaves the premises .
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Friday October 03 2014, @03:46AM
There is no evidence he was terminated. He tried to terminate himself.
He was still on the job, and it wasn't unusual for him to be where he was.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Friday October 03 2014, @02:38AM
You know all that software is backed up on each plane that is flying. Just drop an Ethernet cable out of the bottom of the aircraft and plug it in a laptop in a sports car driving really fast under it.
That is final plot twist of the pilot. They need smarter writers.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Friday October 03 2014, @01:20PM
And don't forget to find a runway which allows the airplane to fly above stalling speed for three minutes! (This was not a highpoint for scriptwriting [io9.com].)
1702845791×2
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday October 03 2014, @07:56PM
And line up low concrete blocks at the end, because if a plane overshoots a landing, it doesn't deserve to do it with its landing gear.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday October 03 2014, @06:37AM
Now I don't know for sure that the following story is really true, but based on spending the Summer of 1993 at CERN when I wrote my undergraduate thesis for UC Santa Cruz, it strikes me as completely plausible:
I was told a while back that two of CERN's central control room operators were a married couple, but they had a spat. I don't know whether they divorced but I think they were.
Even so they both stayed on their jobs in the control room.
So one day, during the winter shutdown when they do all the repair work, install new gadgets into placed that would otherwise be radioactive and so on, he tore all the custom-designed, hand-soldered circuit boards out of their control systems then hid them all over the French countryside!
Right around that same time I heard that when the startup came in the Spring of one year, they weren't able to get any beam. After much diagnostics they figured it was a problem with a certain section of beam pipe, and so cut it open. What that meant was that they had to bring the entire circumference of that pipe back up to atmospheric pressure, then pump it back down to vacuum after hopefully fixing whatever was wrong.
Within the pipe, they found two beer bottles spaced five meters apart! :-D
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday October 03 2014, @10:54PM
LOL.
I was hired to refactor a bunch of code that two developers had written. They, too, were also having a spat.
Hidden in the comments of the code were their jabs at each other.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AnonTechie on Friday October 03 2014, @07:43AM
[Additional Coverage]
Contact Lost With Planes One by One as FAA Fire Spread:
The first radio links with pilots were lost just as the pre-dawn crush of flights into Chicago began.
Air-traffic controllers in a nondescript Federal Aviation Administration building about 40 miles from the city switched to backup channels. Then those failed. They tried emergency connections, which also went dead.
Within minutes, radar feeds, flight plans and other data controllers rely on to direct more than 6,000 aircraft a day above five U.S. states had vanished as a fire was being set in a communications room one floor below. The attack was thorough and carried out by someone who knew the system intimately -- down to removing steel sheathing on data cables to destroy them, according to three people with knowledge of the incident.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-02/contact-lost-with-planes-one-by-one-as-faa-center-fire-spread.html [bloomberg.com]
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2014, @03:26PM
And people worry about "terrists". A disgruntled employee is much worse.
Maybe we need a war on disgruntled employees now? (yes, the last bit was sarcasm)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2014, @03:43PM
Is the 'War on Mental Health Care Funding Indifference'!
Do your part and fight for better mental health!
Otherwise don't blame the barely functioning drunk/stoned guy for self medicating and failing at his job. Or as in this case, the guy who snapped and went destructively suicidal.