Count to ten when a plane goes down • Hacker News Board

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#211

Post by schnable » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 2:01 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #189

vacri wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That button needs a safeguard even if it's not an international incident. Even if only one person would lose a few hours' work from an all-nighter, work for something that's not so important, it's still someone's work. And given that it's right next to a 'single terminal reset' key, it should be immediately obvious to anyone who's ever used a keyboard - mistakes can and do happen, even when you're fluent.

And yet, to this day, Firefox has both Ctrl-Q (close all Firefox windows without prompting) and its neighbor Ctrl-W (close current tab) and refuses to change that or provide remappable keyboard shortcuts. One of the biggest UI failures I'm aware of in 2014. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=52821

This is in all apps in OS X, that's the standard keymapping.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#212

Post by mason240 » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 2:03 PM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #151

nness wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or the US navy crew who received medals after shooting down the Iranian airline. You make it seem like they received the medal for having shot down the plane. In reality, those who were awarded medals, were awarded Tour of Duty medals for their time spend in a combat zone. I believe the distinction is important, particularly since that class of medals are routinely awarded to individuals during their time in the mi…

If a police officer shot and killed innocent bystanders, should they get achievement awards for doing their job otherwise? My answer would be no, you failed at your job regardless. Same thing with military.

They didn't fail. They were ordered to shoot down a plane, and they shot it down.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#213

Post by ak39 » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 2:05 PM UTC

jere wrote: post #199

>And let’s hope that there is no stupid 23-year-old with his finger on an important keyboard in this information chain. No. This is something you would read in Design of Everyday Things where Don Norman would totally shame the the engineers who made that system. Software shouldn't be designed with the assumption that no one makes errors.

What I find incredible to believe is that this problem could have happened without the F7 erroneous keystroke by a human. A simple power outage could have resulted in this exact same catastrophe.

Why didn't the backups work? System wasn't "robust" enough. (Did I just use the word "robust"?)

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#214

Post by Gravityloss » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 2:06 PM UTC

smacktoward wrote: post #37

feld wrote: post #2

Reset all computers in the embassy with F7? No warning prompt? Fire the idiot who wrote that function.

In fairness, it was a different world back then. There were so few people administering computer networks that you could generally assume someone who was doing so had been thoroughly trained; and the thing about highly trained people is that they tend to view things like failsafes and safeties as pointless time-wasters. "I know what I'm doing when I hit F7, but the damn system makes me sit there for 30 seconds before…

If you visit countryside museums with old agricultural or workshop equipment, you can verify they are basically all maiming devices. Things used even in the 1950s. In one machine you push a piece of wood downwards and there's a blade that hacks slices off the bottom. Real tough men pushed right till the end so there was no waste. They often had some missing fingertips. Some really small changes made those accidents avoidable, like using some other pieces to hold the worked piece.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#215

Post by kstenerud » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 2:10 PM UTC

marbletiles wrote: post #18

mikegreco wrote: post #4

The author states they felt it was appropriate when they were fired. In what world would it be appropriate to get fired for a single, simple, incredibly easy to make mistake? Doubly insane when there were exactly zero safeguards in place to prevent the mistake from being made.

The world where you know you that a) you have an incredibly powerful key with no safeguards at your fingertips and b) you might be in a breaking news situation and nonetheless you go for the key right next to the dangerous one carelessly enough that you miss? Think about it: Unix is equally as "insane". If you're the guy on the console who meant to clean out some crap dir and accidentally typoed "rm -rf /" and then c…

The worst unix disaster I ever saw happened to one of my co-workers. He was working on a client machine, logged in as root because he needed to compile and install some complicated software. As he was working, he did an ls -l /bin and copy-pasted it to a text editor so he could make sure everything was installed correctly. Unfortunately, after returning to his console, he accidentally hit paste. Most of /bin was actually symlinked somewhere else. As you know, ls shows symlinks like this:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 Apr 27 17:02 cc -> /etc/alternatives/cc

Guess what happens when you paste a whole list of those into a console as root?

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#216

Post by acdha » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 2:11 PM UTC

noisy_boy wrote: post #207

Firstly, firing the intern doesn't make sense - it was a mistake waiting to happen and he just happened to do it at the wrong time. Secondly, the punishment meted out should be: 1. Proportional to the degree of carelessness (in this case not that much since he accidentally hit a wrong key adjacent to the right one, didn't mow down anybody while driving drunk) 2. Inversely proportional to the likelihood of the error (…

He's used a longer version of that story to view this as a management lesson – it's definitely not just “blame the intern”:

http://globis.jp/774-2

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#217

Post by openjck » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 2:20 PM UTC

hliyan wrote: post #152

openjck wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are saying that a warning would have helped. Remember that warning functions are easy to ignore. Never use a warning when you mean undo. http://alistapart.com/article/neveruseawarning

That won't help here. You cannot "undo" a workstation reset, or any other action that results in a state propagation.

Sure you can.

Pressing the button would start a timer. While the timer is running, the user would have the opportunity to review their selection (maybe even with a simulation of what effect the selection has) and could undo the request if necessary. Only after the timer expires would the action actually be taken.

This is how the "undo send" feature of Gmail works.

http://mashable.com/2010/08/22/how-to-undo-send-in-gmail/

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#218

Post by maaku » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 2:27 PM UTC

tobltobs wrote: post #176

maaku wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very narrow minded position. Gosh I hope you never screw up even once, cause you'll never live it down.

I assume you are american. Would you be also so generous if the majority off killed people would be americans?

Wtf does being American have to do with anything? And no, it doesn't make a lick of difference. The given situation was a fighter pilot who shot down a commercial airliner under orders later at some point in his career being given a medal for some completely, 100% unrelated reason. Maybe he deserved to be tried for war crimes. Maybe he also deserved that medal. Can you see that this is not cognitive dissonance?

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#219

Post by logfromblammo » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 2:27 PM UTC

mikegreco wrote: post #4

The author states they felt it was appropriate when they were fired. In what world would it be appropriate to get fired for a single, simple, incredibly easy to make mistake? Doubly insane when there were exactly zero safeguards in place to prevent the mistake from being made.

I sure am glad that I never accidentally pushed an unlabeled and unprotected "get fired immediately" button. If it is important to not have all the workstations on site shut down at once, go to the control terminal and disconnect the keyboard before the system startup employee comes in without any clue as to what is going on and starts his ordinary daily routine. Maybe write a note and wedge it into his keys?

Based solely on the shortened account, it was not appropriate at all to fire him. Convincing him that it was is just doubly inappropriate. There may be more to the story, but as it is, it looks like angry scapegoating against a hapless, lowest-level employee.

Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down

#220

Post by maaku » Tue, Jul 22, 2014, 2:28 PM UTC

ZoFreX wrote: post #182

maaku wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very narrow minded position. Gosh I hope you never screw up even once, cause you'll never live it down.

He didn't screw up once, he was criticised for being over aggressive and initiating fights on multiple occasions.

Who are are talking about?