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Cringley speculates like hell:
Delta Airlines last night suffered a major power outage at its data center in Atlanta that led to a systemwide shutdown of its computer network, stranding airliners and canceling flights all over the world. You already know that. What you may not know, however, is the likely role in the crisis of IT outsourcing and offshoring.
Do any Soylentils have inside/better information?
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What Happened When Delta Went Down Yesterday?
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sillema sillema nika su
(Score: 3, Insightful) by sjames on Tuesday August 09 2016, @05:30PM
Beyond that, Delta, like many businesses out there has no resiliency in their system at all. The whole damned operation worldwide runs through a single point of failure. Further, if that single point fails, even with ticket, passenger, and plane all in the same place at the same time they somehow cannot put the passenger on the plane. Why should any of that require more than a local server? Sure, I can see how there would be problems with scheduling future flights, but anyone with a ticket to fly should be able to fly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Tuesday August 09 2016, @06:12PM
Local server?
Passengers have the tickets in hand. One or two gate agents is all you need to check tear ticket stubs and board the plane.
A few gorillas to load the baggage.
A pilot to file a flight plan, and a call for a pushback tug.
Done.
Sure its not sustainable beyond a couple days. But it shouldn't turn to shit the instant power fails 2000 miles away.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 09 2016, @07:32PM
You never saw Airport 77, did you? Old lady made her own boarding passes with a felt-tip pen. Without central server to verify lady was authorized to fly, she got lots of free flights.
TSA rules require central passenger verification anyway.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday August 09 2016, @08:31PM
No security. You could get 100 terrorists on the planes simply by creating fake tickets and then taking out the power in a single building someplace. Which brings up another point, how does the TSA check the paper tickets for authenticity? More than just the airline company is accessing airline systems, and the emphasis these days is not so much logistics but security.
All of that could be accomplished with a local caching/authentication server. If we really wanted to create a system capable of these things we could. The problem is management and budgeting, not availability of solutions and technology.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday August 09 2016, @08:59PM
That's why I said local server. When the ticket is created, the server at the departing airport gets a record of the ticket. The ticket itself gets a barcode containing the record and a signature to make it VERY hard to forge. The signature must verify and it must match the already downloaded record.
In addition, the local server can then inform the central control that the passenger was actually boarded once things return to normal.
As for management, call it a private cloud app and they'll be pissing themselves with excitement to get it done.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday August 09 2016, @08:51PM
Sorry, but the zoo was not willing to give the gorillas to the airport.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.