Rich Freeman via plug on 12 May 2022 19:00:57 -0700 |
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Re: [PLUG] Medical Open Source Problem, Nvidia open source |
On Thu, May 12, 2022 at 9:38 PM Eric Lucas via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org> wrote: > > "The problem with risk is that it is so tempting to just accept it. > The risk of a catastrophic problem is low enough that companies can go > on for years without suffering one." > > Absolutely true. Also known as the "Black Swan". > > The poster child for this thinking is.... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster > "Black Swan" is a term that gets a lot of abuse, as it is often used to excuse things that MANY people saw coming. Maybe the risk was disputed, but many who toss around that term use it as if nobody at all saw it coming, or at least not anybody credible. In that sense the Challenger disaster is a good example, because all the systemic issues were there which lead to the disaster. Everybody was overlooking them, and the process wasn't very transparent to the public so it was easy to ignore. Certainly I'd describe ransomware attacks this way, as they're pretty ubiquitous. Computer viruses were novel at some point decades ago, but they're very much a known threat today. Not intending to pick on you with that. I just think there is a lot to this kind of thinking that tries to just hope that taking a risk pays off because not taking the risk is a lot of work. So, on a tangent if you want my example of something like the Challenger disaster culture that hasn't yet killed a lot of people, I'd refer to the US Air Traffic Control common practice of clearing aircraft to land early and issuing conflicting landing clearances to more than one aircraft at a time. This is a surrender of positive control. This sort of practice lead to a near-miss incident with Air Canada 781 which landed despite being told to go around. Many rushed to blame the pilots (who claimed they did not receive a go around order), but ignored the fact that ATC cleared them to land on a runway that wasn't known to be vacant at the time, and routinely does this to speed things up. While it would require a little more spacing, if they withheld landing clearance until the runway was vacant, aircraft would automatically go around if they failed to receive a clearance (positive control, or fail safe). Instead ATC issued conflicting clearances, and then when the conflict didn't go away in time they attempted to order the aircraft to go around, and it didn't receive the message because radios are fallible (they also used a light gun, but relying on an aircraft noticing that at a large airport right before touchdown is pretty crazy). Sorry for the tangent, and maybe some would consider that controversial, but I find it amazing that landing clearances are routinely not handled in a fail-safe manner. An instruction like this is very common "xyz you are cleared to land, number two to land following the A320." That instruction literally says that two aircraft are both authorized to use the runway, and the second one is supposed to notice if the first didn't get out of the way in time (which kind of defeats the point of having a controller). -- Rich ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug