Wow. I got goosebumps when I read that article. I'm old enough to actually remember when KAL 007 was shot down, and while I wasn't old enough to hear about the conspiracy theories, I do remember the thing about people being safe and landing in Russia. To think that this was just a small mistake on the part of someone, which caused international ripple effect, and who later blogged about it is really something incredible.
Count to ten when a plane goes down
81–90 of 284 posts
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
For security reasons I think that it might have been justified, considering the events that had just taken place. Still a crappy way to go out though.
What security reasons? Firing the author didn't change what had already happened.
People were bat shit crazy in the middle of that Cold War. If someone randomly decided to turn off machines without notice, even if they said "whoops accident, my bad", their actions would have instantly thought of as sabotage.
I'm not agreeing with the outcome.
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#83Reset 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…
No, this isn't true at all.
The power switch on the IBM PCs were way at the back so that people couldn't unintentionally reset the computer. The same thinking went into Ctrl-Alt-Del, which was a combination that people wouldn't accidentally hit.
So having a system where F7 would reboot the entire system was pretty dumb, even in the early 80s.
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#84The 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 do agree with you.
An equally sufficient solution would have been to install a safety switch on any button with that much importance. Something like this but probably smaller, or just a plastic cover that fit over the F7 key: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/15a5/
A fireable offense would be lying about the action or trying to cover it up.
Should the lady who asked for the reset be fired for playing a game and asking him to reset the computer?
Should the technician that didn't install some sort of safety be fired for not foreseeing this issue?
He would be much less likely to make the same mistake in the future than the person who would replace him.
If there are terminals that could erase a presidential report and there is no backup available, you send a non-critical staff member to guard every one of those terminals, or at least put a sticky-note in the middle of the monitor.
I'd say several other people deserved to be fired for this, but the intern was not one of them.
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
But typing "rm -rf /" is significantly harder to do accidentally than typing F7 instead of F6.
Not really, on my keyboard at least / is directly next to . and you could feasibly be clearing out a directory or something with rm -rf .
It's my habit to never use the -f flag until I get those annoying confirmation messages. I -c to cancel that command, then scroll up and add the flag to run again. I think this is a good habit? Anyway, the worst thing I've done along these lines was resetting a dev DB that had seen considerable un-backed-up configuration work. I couldn't blame rm for that.
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you could generally assume someone who was doing so had been thoroughly trained No amount of training can prevent something like this. It's like today's browsers where the tab can be closed with ctrl+w and the whole window with ctrl+q. It doesn't matter how many times you've done it and how used are you to the position of the 'w'. One day you will close the whole window by accident.
...the whole window with ctrl+q. OMG I've never done that but now that I know about it I'm very afraid. If I do it tomorrow I'm blaming you.
This helps: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/customizable-...
Also, I made a mistake, it doesn't close the window. It closes all windows at once. Be afraid!
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You're invoking an annoying and ridiculously overused false dichotomy that is as false today as it was 30 years ago. An interface that has fail-safes does not have to be annoying and clunky. In fact, interfaces that are annoying and clunky are a great contributor to human mistakes, because they require a lot of rote action, which encourages people not to pay attention and work on auto pilot. If something has changed…
You're not taking into account the fact than what is considered bad and clunky interface today may have been the best in class 30 years ago.
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
You're invoking an annoying and ridiculously overused false dichotomy that is as false today as it was 30 years ago. An interface that has fail-safes does not have to be annoying and clunky. In fact, interfaces that are annoying and clunky are a great contributor to human mistakes, because they require a lot of rote action, which encourages people not to pay attention and work on auto pilot. If something has changed…
You know, I think that was the point of the comment. I might just be reading it wrong, but it seemed to me that he was decrying such interfaces, using obviously hyperbolic language like "pointless time-wasters" (in the context of something other people believed) and "the damn system makes me sit there for 30 seconds". It sounded to me like he was even slightly making fun of that worldview.
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#89Reset all computers in the embassy with F7? No warning prompt? Fire the idiot who wrote that function.
It's easy to have this attitude now. But if you ask people who were in IT 30 years ago, they'll tell you that systems in those days had _many_ sharp edges. You were expected to know your way around, and the consequences of mistakes were pretty severe.
I was in IT 30 years ago, and this was never the attitude. What's different today:
1. we know a heluva lot more about human factors design
2. we have a heluva lot more excess computer power that can be devoted to human factors
Re: Count to ten when a plane goes down
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
...the whole window with ctrl+q. OMG I've never done that but now that I know about it I'm very afraid. If I do it tomorrow I'm blaming you.
This helps: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/customizable-... Also, I made a mistake, it doesn't close the window. It closes all windows at once. Be afraid!
ctrl + q very appropriately quits the application. If this came as a ticket to me, I'd close it as working as expected.