Re: [PLUG] Medical Open Source Problem, Nvidia open source

[Rich Freeman via plug <plug@lists.phillylinux.org>]

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
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