The top 10 IT disasters of all time

[snopes]

From faulty satellites nearly causing World War III to the Millennium Bug, poorly executed IT has had a lot to answer for over the years:

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/misc/print/0,...001115c,00.htm

[Troberg]

What, no mention of Vista or Internet Explorer?!?!?!

El oh el!

In seriousness, though, I am curious as to why they have "purposely omitted incidents that resulted in loss of life". It would seem to me that the most significant 'IT disasters' would be those that through negligent or malfunctioning IT caused death or injury. The opposite tack--inexplicably continuing to treat computers as some kind of abstraction separate from "real life" whose failures ought to be regarded as more comical than literal--is something I would expect from print media, but not really from Ziff Davis.

And these are not particularly comical anyway.

-Baikal

[Brad from Georgia]

I'm impressed that 17,000 planes were grounded at LAX because of a computer glitch. That's more aircraft than in the U.S. bomber fleet in WWII.

[rangerdog]

Originally Posted by Brad from Georgia

I'm impressed that 17,000 planes were grounded at LAX because of a computer glitch. That's more aircraft than in the U.S. bomber fleet in WWII.

I am calling BS on the 17,000 planes. I submit that there is not enough room for 17,000 planes to park at LAX.

[Bryan With a 'Y']

Originally Posted by rangerdog

I am calling BS on the 17,000 planes. I submit that there is not enough room for 17,000 planes to park at LAX.

Wait - was that the glitch?

[snopes]

Originally Posted by Baikal

In seriousness, though, I am curious as to why they have "purposely omitted incidents that resulted in loss of life".

Probably because they didn't want to be in the position of saying that Disaster A, which cost XYZ Company $132 million, was worse than Disaster B, which only killed two people.

- snopes

[ButterscotchCat]

I think I was at LAX when that happened, if it was in June. I believe it should be 17,000 people not planes.

[Andrew of Ware]

Originally Posted by ButterscotchCat

I think I was at LAX when that happened, if it was in June. I believe it should be 17,000 people not planes.

My top ten would be...

Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98...

[diddy]

Originally Posted by Troberg

What, no mention of Vista or Internet Explorer?!?!?!

You still aren't going far enough with windows versions there Troberg... Right idea though.

[dfresh]

I might be biased, but I would put my mom getting a computer up there. Sure, she has had a relatively local impact, but with the volume of glurge, crap forwards, and viruses she has sent out, she has got to be ranked somewhere up there.

[Insensible Crier]

The worst disaster I was involved in was when the hard drive of the university email server failed. We thought no big deal, it's backed up every night. But when we loaded the backup, it had a timestamp of about 18 months prior. It turns out that one of the managers had commented out the line in the automated job that ran the nightly backup when doing a security update 18 months prior and never uncommented it... and nobody noticed. So everyone in the entire university (students, professors, trustees, the president) essentially lost all of their email and a certain IT person lost their job.

My personal best was when I caused a computer (a desktop, not a laptop) to set itself on fire just by plugging in a joystick incorrectly. I'm quite proud of that one actually.

http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/Travel/story?id=3476863

I couldn't find an article specifically about the LAX problem, but I did find several about a separate airport issue that mention the LAX problem.

On the other side of the country, another travel nightmare stranded more than 17,000 international travelers this weekend because of a computer outage at Los Angeles airport..

Somewhat short of 17,000 airplanes.

Originally Posted by diddy

You still aren't going far enough with windows versions there Troberg... Right idea though.

Not having used Vista I'd put WinME up for the taking.. My father in law had that installed on his computer.. 2 weeks later computer refuses to boot, I formatted it and put 98SE back on for him.

Looking at the millennium I wonder, did anyone else hear the rumours that since the bug was a myth hackers were going to launch massive attacks?

Originally Posted by Alkatr0z

Not having used Vista I'd put WinME up for the taking.. My father in law had that installed on his computer.. 2 weeks later computer refuses to boot, I formatted it and put 98SE back on for him.

Looking at the millennium I wonder, did anyone else hear the rumours that since the bug was a myth hackers were going to launch massive attacks?

I do. Some half-baked columnist who didn't understand how computers worked thought that when dates got turned back, that all those updates your antivirus, firewall, and windows itself download so often would magically vanish because they hadn't come out yet. For some reason, a lot of respectable tech publications picked the story up and ran with it - by the end of 1998, it had grown to the point where it was a global attack involving tens of thousands of hackers planning to launch coordinated midnight attacks to destroy the whole internet.

I also went to two security conventions in 1999 - the real hackers were laughing at these claims.

[Skeptic]

The worst I heard was here in Ireland when someone on a phone-in to a radio station discussing computers and technology, suggested that you change the voltage setting on the back of the computer. We have 220 volts here, they said to change it to the 110 and it would double the speed. This went out over national radio (OK we're a small nation) before someone else rang in to discredit it. I think several computers had their transformers trashed before it was corrected.
I also recall when our internet went down in a call center several years ago. When I rang our tech guys in London head office, they said someone at the ISP main carrier had pulled the wrong plug and the entire country was disconnected from the USA for a few hours.

[Bug Muldoon]

Originally Posted by Troberg

What, no mention of Vista or Internet Explorer?!?!?!

Vista works, it's just overrated. IE works, it's just outdated. Ariane V blew up.

Perspective, Troberg, perspective

[Troberg]

Vista works, it's just overrated. IE works, it's just outdated. Ariane V blew up.

Perspective, Troberg, perspective

Ariane V was one rocket, Vista and IE are installed on millions of computers, many of them running critical systems, and have serious security and stability flaws. Which has the best potential for large scale destruction?

[Insensible Crier]

Originally Posted by Troberg

Ariane V was one rocket, Vista and IE are installed on millions of computers, many of them running critical systems, and have serious security and stability flaws. Which has the best potential for large scale destruction?

You're being a bit alarmist here. If Vista has an error similar to Ariane 5, at worst a program crashes and you just restart the thing. No big deal. Even if the whole computer dies a horrible death, that's what backup and DR sites are for. Despite what you see in movies like Live Free or Die Hard, most computer systems are not fragile little networks where one logical error causes a huge catastrophe.

Plus critical systems are usually on dedicated servers running server software, not Vista and are not being used to browse web pages with IE. Plus there's a hell of a lot more to system security than what operating system and software is installed.

There is nothing to support that Vista and IE and going to cause some massive outage and disaster so there's no reason to be Chicken Little screaming that something akin to Y2K is about to happen because of Microsoft.

[Troberg]

You're being a bit alarmist here. If Vista has an error similar to Ariane 5, at worst a program crashes and you just restart the thing. No big deal. Even if the whole computer dies a horrible death, that's what backup and DR sites are for. Despite what you see in movies like Live Free or Die Hard, most computer systems are not fragile little networks where one logical error causes a huge catastrophe.

All it takes is one good exploit, and a large chunk of the Windows machines may be down, possibly with wiped disks and wiped BIOS. Just look at what the relatively benign viruses that struck IIS five years or so ago caused. My server (not running IIS) logged over half a million attacks from those viruses in two months. That probably meant that just about every IIS that wasn't properly patched was infected.

Plus critical systems are usually on dedicated servers running server software, not Vista and are not being used to browse web pages with IE. Plus there's a hell of a lot more to system security than what operating system and software is installed.

True, but sometimes a lot of damage can be done by just wiping the end user machines, even if the database survives. Sure, the world will not end, but how much will it cost if, say, 50% of the Windows machines needs to be reinstalled?

Security is a lot more than OS and software, but they are two of the key components.

There is nothing to support that Vista and IE and going to cause some massive outage and disaster so there's no reason to be Chicken Little screaming that something akin to Y2K is about to happen because of Microsoft.

Well, since Y2k never became a problem, it's not a good example.

The basic problem is that MS can not make a safe product. I've written a long post on this a while ago, and I have no time to write it again. If you like to babelfish it, I have it in Swedish here: http://rpglab.net/troberg/pmwiki.php/Main/Microsoft