On the System Safety Mailing list we have been discussing software reliability for just over a week. The occasion is that I and others are considering a replacement for the 18-year-old, incomplete, largely unhelpful and arguably misleading guide to the statistical evaluation of software in IEC 61508-7:2010 Annex D. Annex D is only four and…
There has been some press in advance of last week’s Black Hat conference speaking of vulnerabilities in commercial-aircraft flight management systems and possible implications for the safety of flight, for example in a Reuters article by Jim Finkle from August 4. The article is technically fairly accurate on the claims made and the manufacturer’s response,…
The International Telecommunications Union has been conducting its four-yearly meeting. Its president has apparently promised everyone to make possible the real-time transmission of flight data from commercial transport aircraft in flight. This has been supported by the Malaysian delegate. All according to this news report: MH370: ITU Commits to Integrate Flight Data Recorders with Big…
John Downer pointed me to an article in the Sunday Express, which appears to be one of their most-read: World’s first cyber hijack: was missing Malaysia Airlines plane hacked with mobile phone? by James Fielding and Stuart Winter. The answer is no. To see why, read on. The authors interviewed a Dr. Sally Leivesley, who…
Pete Seeger died early today. It popped up on my iPad as I was reading the morning news. There is lots to say about Pete, most of it not by me. The New York Times’s obituary by Jon Pareles does justice to the man. His music speaks for itself. Because, as he would probably say,…
In August 2011, we held the 11th Bieleschweig Workshop on Systems Engineering. The theme was the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. We have just published a book on it. An Analytical Table of Contents may be found at the end of this note. I had convened a mailing list in the days…
The Guardian yesterday wrote an encomium to the UK government’s Chief Scientific Advisor Prof. Sir John Beddington (I hope they don’t mind that I quote in full): Politics may not be the enemy of scientific method, but they are hardly intimate friends. Science inches along by experiment, evidence and testing (and retesting); politics is often…