Computer Glitch Halts Seattle New Year's Fireworks

supersat writes "At the stroke of midnight New Year's Eve, Seattle's fireworks show ground to a halt. The source of the problem is reported to be a corrupted file that wasn't checked until the last minute. After two reboots, the fireworks had to be detonated manually. And yes ... one blog commenter, claiming to have worked on prior shows, said that the shows run on Windows."

Runs on Windows?

[Oligonicella]

Well, unless it was an operating system problem and not bad data or bad programming, what's the point in mentioning that other than childish bashing?

Re:Runs on Windows?

[Daltin]

Obviously, you go for what suits you best, and now you two choices:

1. You can either be a childish homophobe

2. You can say nothing.

Sounds Vaguely Familiar

[sk999]

From the article: "The source of the problem is reported to be a corrupted file ..."

Gee, who can guess which version of Windows they were running?

Microsoft's Windows Home Server corrupts files [computerworld.com]?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Runs on Windows?

[dasOp]

To be honest, I'd much rather read stories in the line of

"The magnificent fireworks display in <insert city here> was actually controlled and detonated from a laptop running <insert favorite distro here> with a soon-to-be foss-application written in <insert programming language of choice here>. <online mag of choice> had a talk with the man responsible, <insert name here>."

Anders

Re:Runs on Windows?

[Harold Halloway]

...because Seattle is the home of Microsoft. There's a certain irony in this story.

You need more data before you jump to conclusions

[director_mr]

Unless you know what the file was stored on, what interactions with the computer caused the halting of the program and on what basis they decided to continue manually, you are jumping to conclusions. One guy even claimed there was BSOD mentioned in the article (nowhere was it mentioned I can see). After years of supporting computers and servers, I can confidently tell you there is no way of knowing what caused the glitches from the article. A corrupted file on which several pieces of hardware are going to coordinate something as complicated as a fireworks display is probably not caused by the operating system, as the operating system has no reason to modify the file at all, and will only be reading it. More likely is a malfunctioning hard drive, possibly bad media that was used to transfer the file from one location to another, Or possibly a bad connection between the file storing device and the computer running the program. If you look up corrupted file you will see that every operating system known to man has to deal with that. There is no operating system that can magically correct the corrupted file and cause a fireworks display to run correctly. That is just silly talk.

Re:Runs on Windows?

[Marcos Eliziario]

What is homophic in saying that a straight guy won't get excited seeing a vid of two guys masturbating? Come on! don't be so defensive, the world is not on a hunt for you, man!
I am not for discriminating against homos, pans, assexuals or whatever, but I can't either agree with extreme PC, it's a bit too much on the paranoid side for me.
Peace!

Re:You need more data before you jump to conclusio

[Obsidian Butterfly]

Everything you just said would've cost more money. I'm pretty sure that wasn't a priority.

Lessons in reliability?

[jhines]

A single, or more than one, file gets corrupted and the show doesn't go on.

Yes the underlying reasons for this happening are of interest to us, since many of us are charged with implementing or running systems, while not as showy, have to run to pay the bills.

Yes, the operating system in use is an issue, since it has part of the job of keeping files from being corrupted. It has the job of catching errors.

It was a flashy semi-failure in our collective business, we would be the stupid ones not to learn all we can about it.

Re:You need more data before you jump to conclusio

[ScrewMaster]

I'm pretty sure that wasn't a priority.

I'm pretty sure it is now.

Re:Real Story

[RobertLTux]

in support of your campaign i have put *.myminicity.com\* into my adblock filterset

Why Windows?

[kilodelta]

I've seen so many instances of BSOD's on things like gas pumps, ATM's, etc. Windows sucks. Am I using it, yes I am. I'm well familiar with its eccentricities. Would I use it for mission critical projects, hell no.

Re:relevant enough to plagiarize

[mrv20]

I see nothing hypocritical or crazy about wishing to hold your own government to basic ethical standards. If anything it shows a love of your country to care that the constitutional right to a fair trial is upheld.

The hypocrisy lies in building prisons and interrogation centres in foreign countries to avoid those pesky American laws that would otherwise prevent the activities that go on in them. You seem to be under the mistaken apprehension that allowing the indefinite detainment and torture of suspects for information (suspects, not even convicted of any crime) makes the country a safer place. Maybe right now you don't fit the right profiles to be whisked off to Guantanamo but that can change much more easily than you'd like to believe. It makes no difference whether the country falls to its enemies or voluntarily gives up its rights; the end result is still the same - tyranny and lack of freedom.

Doubtless there are many brave and honorable people working in the armed forces and intelligence agencies to safeguard our existence and they deserve our gratitude but it is an impossible task to keep the country 100% safe from threats without depriving people of their liberty (and even then it is unlikely to be fully effective). To remain free we must accept a certain amount of risk - I would gladly choose a small increase in the probability of dying in a terrorist attack in return for knowing that my own government cannot hold people without trial or torture them. It strikes me that to do otherwise is the cowardly option.

Pointing out that there are worse violators of human rights in the world is irrelevent - it does not make American abuses any less egregious in the same way that the existence of serial killers does not justify committing murder.

Re:At least they didn't use the Window's "time" st

[Silver Gryphon]

That's been fixed in Vista. Now it just starts out with an hour and counts down as it finds success. Like Scotty on the Enterprise - tell 'em it'll take an hour, so when it finishes sooner they're impressed.

Culture

[Crag]

Your point is valid: the failure was probably not directly attributable to the operating system. It may be that the automation was developed in Java/Eclipse and would have broken identically on any platform.

However, the point of many Microsoft 'haters' on /. has been that Microsoft tools are explicitly designed to interfere with the freedom of its users and especially developers. This is not an especially contentions point in the debate because the Microsoft side of the argument is that this is their value-add. Deployments of Microsoft products are argued to be more consistent because the tools prohibit 'hacking'. Microsoft proponents also claim that there is less need for freedom in Microsoft tools because they tools integrate with each other seamlessly and 'just work'.

The reason some folks make these childish comments may be little more than "I told you so"-ism with a little confirmation bias, but the longer-winded version of these comments don't get any attention any more. The longer versions are basically re-hashes of essays by the likes of RMS, ESR, Bruce Perens, Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall and other FOSS folks.

So, in short, tools which are designed to prevent their users from modifying them attract and breed users who have no interest or experience in knowing how their tools work, how they don't work, and how to integrate them with tools which were not developed by the same company. "It only runs on Windows" is an indication to some that a tool is fragile, so whenever something breaks those people will naturally assume that thing runs on Windows even if Windows was not the cause of the breakage.

To answer your question, the point of mentioning that it runs on Windows is to re-iterate the above.