Please try the URL privacy information feature enabled by clicking the flashlight icon above. This will reveal two icons after each link the body of the digest. The shield takes you to a breakdown of Terms of Service for the site - however only a small number of sites are covered at the moment. The flashlight take you to an analysis of the various trackers etc. that the linked site delivers. Please let the website maintainer know if you find this useful or not. As a RISKS reader, you will probably not be surprised by what is revealed…
Last night's local news reported that "hundreds, perhaps thousands" of draft notices have been posted around the Minneapolis campus of the University of Minnesota. The official looking notices are replete with convincing official jargon, announcing that men in a certain age group are to report for immediate duty. Readers are directed to report to a room in the Hennepin County Courthouse (the room is vacant) or to call one of two telephone numbers. The numbers are those of the Minneapolis Star & Tribune news desk, and of a blameless lady in St. Paul who seemed from the interview to have kept her sense of humor despite the barrage of calls. Interviews with young men on campus indicated that many had not thought to doubt the authenticity of the notices. What caught my ear was a statement that University officials would be "checking their computer facilities" to see if the notices had been composed and printed there. The risk is one that has been pointed out before: laser printers enable several types of fraud — forged checks, phony invoices, letterheads for nonexistent businesses — that once would have been ruled out by the need to have a professional print shop as an accomplice. But this is a new twist. Jonathan C. Rice, Cray Research, Inc., 655F Lone Oak Drive Eagan, MN 55121 UUCP: uunet!cray!rice 612-683-5370
An article on the accuracy of medical tests in the latest "Parade" (a
syndicated Sunday Supplement) had the following "interesting" statement. Some
context: A women died of cervical cancer not detected due to screwups in
handling her pap smear. The lab tech who mishandled the test in question was
working at home. The woman's attorney is quoted:
"Working at home might be fine for computer programmers, but
it's reckless when your job involves making selective judgements
that can affect someone's life."
We can all rest easier knowing that computer programmer's can have no negative
effect on people's lives.
Mike Albaugh
It is hard to define what evidence we need, in order that we can have confidence that a system meets its designed level of reliability. (I am using reliability, loosely, to mean that the system does what you wanted it to do, when you wanted it, for the period that you wanted it). It seems clear that the following argument is unsound: System X has been shown to meet its requirements. System Y is no more difficult than System X. Therefore System Y meets its requirements. Therefore, even if an SDI system had been shown to work before, it would not be evidence that a new SDI would work. A fortiori, any degree of success of the Patriot system provides no evidence that SDI would work. I think the confusion arises because two different arguments get conflated: Argument 1: A system as complex as SDI could never be designed so that it worked correctly. (I do not support this argument - any [computable] system *could* be designed so that it worked correctly [ even by chance]. I am more interested in how we accumulate the evidence which allows us to form the opinion that a *particular* system has achieved its design objectives. This is argument 2, below). Argument 2: A system as complex as SDI can never be evaluated in a way which would give reasonable grounds for claiming that it would work correctly when deployed. (I believe that this is true. SDI would be too complex for formal proof of correctness - and the specification may be wrong. SDI would be impossible to test under operational conditions. In general you need to test for more than 10 times the period of fault-free operation you are looking for, with no faults found, to achieve 99% confidence that you will meet the requirement. SDI would probably only need to work correctly for a few days, so a few weeks fault-free operation [under operational conditions - ie under attack!] would demonstrate achievement. The time isn't the problem, but creating the test conditions is surely impossible). When we move the argument to some other safety-critical systems, the time factor becomes dominant. A constant-control system, such as the A320 fly-by-wire, needs 10^-8 probability of failures per hour. This implies 10^9 hours of fault-free operation to justify a claim (to 99% confidence) that the requirement has been met. This is clearly absurd, so how do we judge whether or not the requirement has been met? On-demand critical systems, such as spacecraft course-correction or reactor shutdown systems, may only need to operate correctly for a few minutes or hours during their whole design lifetime. This is clearly testable (if we can be sure that the operational conditions can be reproduced accurately enough - which becomes the problem). I would welcome further discussion of these basic questions: how should we form an opinion about the probable future reliability of a system; what justification is needed for that opinion, if it is to stand up to critical appraisal by other engineers; what is the practical limit (in terms of failures/hour) which we can realistically expect to be able to justify, and how is this limit affected by the complexity of the system? Martyn Thomas, Praxis plc, 20 Manvers Street, Bath BA1 1PX UK. Tel: +44-225-444700. Email: mct@praxis.co.uk
Regarding the use of Patriots: I work for Martin Marietta, and know several people who helped design and build the Patriot. I also work at the National Test Bed, so I'm quite familiar with SDI's role in the Patriot's development. The Patriots fired at the aircraft in Turkey missed precisely because they were loaded with terminal defense missile software--a much simpler interception problem than hitting an aircraft that's actively avoiding you. If they had been loaded with their anti-aircraft software, it would probably have been a different story (although isn't there a ground destruct override on those things?).
On the subject of the Patriot missile system: while the SCUDs they are firing against are archiac, the basic problems do not change. The only short to medium range ballastic missile that change the problem significantly was the Pershing II. This system had a terminal guidance phase, allowing course changes during or after a counter missile launch. Improvements in ballastic missile technology since the SCUD are in the areas of speed (not significant), accuaracy, range and payload. Against aircraft the problem changes significantly, while aircraft are capable of evasive action they are also much slower moving targets typically Mach 0.6 (for an A6 or A10 on an attack run) to Mach 2+ (fast moving ie Mirage F1, 2000 etc) vs Mach 3 - 7 for a ballastic missile. So ignoring ECM, chaff and similiar capabalities aircraft should not significantly more difficult than ballastic missiles. Of course we have not seen and hopefully will never need to see examples of the Patriot system shooting down an aircraft in a real combat situation. As should be obvious here I am only trying to demonstrate that Patriot missile is probably capable of doing the job that its designers claim it can do. I am ignoring all issues of ECM and radars because of my scant knowledge in this area. I am also ignoring whether you actually want to shoot down missiles that might be chemical/biological armed. Mark Levison levisonm@qucis.queensu.ca
I too have encountered some poorly thought out additions to old technology. Get this: Went down to the library to copy a paper. Didn't have enough change, but saw a bill changer on the machine. (What will they think of next?) Put in a $5 bill. Put the paper in place, hit <COPY>. Machine grumbles, proceeds to hang, saying "Check Paper". I begins to smell a rat. I track down the student assistants at the front desk - thay cannot fix the machine. They are the only attendants on duty (Murphy applies here). I press "Change return" and it says "Must make at least one copy". The add-on bill changer was programmed to avoid use as a source of change by requiring at least one copy. If the machine jams on the first copy, your bill stays in until you can find a way to get it unjammed. If that cannot be accomplished, then your imaginary copy costs you the bill! I figured that if I wasn't going to get the bill back by arranging to have the machine fixed, then I was at liberty to try other means. Found the power cord, unplugged said machine. Plugged back in. Bill changer complained about "out of order". Unplugged again. Plugged back in. Changer starts thumping, spews out my $5 bill. I guess it was trying to clear itself. Too many more "consumer improvements" and I'll scream! Scott Wilson
Most post office vending machines I've used tell you to press the button
before putting your money in, and it will tell you whether it's sold out
or not. These are the USPS machines with the "light bar" for messages
across the top and about four tiers of stamps.
So perhaps your surmise about this being an old retrofitted machine is correct.
--Dave
[Dave and I share a vending machine in the Menlo Park CA Post Office
that tells you to press the button before putting money. But
first-time apparently get burned quite frequently. Here is another
example of ordinary mortals having to gain sophistication in the
vagaries of automated systems in order to maintain their cool.
(My use of "their" was intentionally ambiguous.) PGN]
A lesser problem that reduces the quality of the working environment is likely to be plain old EMI. Already it's impossible to tune AM radio stations in modern office buildings, and low-power FM ones (like the local PBS station) are kind of marginal. I'd hate to think of what a wireless LAN would do to my Classical or Jazz fix, let alone All Things Considered.
<>If I ran a corporate network, I wouldn't touch this with a 10-foot pole. How much of your data on the average network is really a security issue? I work here at Boeing and, at least in my area, sensitive data is not kept on the network (and it is over 150' to the nearest area off campus anyway, not to mention a couple of concrete/steel walls) Even in a small company I bet most data could be sent with little to no encryption without any danger of sensitive material being lost. In summary this WOULD be a good system for many (most?) networks where cost/difficulty of cableing would be a major deterent, but (due to limited channels and security risks) it would not be for everyone. The existence of security risks does not negate the possible benefits of technology per say, but rather is a side effect that must be acknowleged and responsibly handled. Scott Hinckley, Boeing AIC, 110 Pine Ridge Road #608 Huntsville Al35801 (205)461-2073 UUCP:..!uunet!uw-beaver!bcsaic!huntsai!scott
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