Agency sends 16,000 tax forms SOFTWARE ENGINEERING to one man / 1 • Today - motivation: Source:http://www.csc.calpoly.edu/~jdalbey/205/Resources/irs_bug.html - Software Engineering: Why? SACRAMENTO (Scripps-McClatchy)--Somewhere in the San Diego area, there's a dentist who's probably still grinding his - Software Engineering: What? teeth over his latest brush with California’s tax collectors. During one week in September his office received an avalanche of tax forms in the mail -- 16,000 sets of forms in 16,000 individual envelopes. • We will start by examining some example cases. "We did it," admitted Suzanne Schroeder of the state Employment Development Department. "It was a computer problem." The glitch occurred in a mailing of 1.4 million pieces that is sent out each quarter to employers, Schroeder explained. 27.9.2004 Software Engineering 2004 1 27.9.2004 Software Engineering 2004 2 Jyrki Nummenmaa Jyrki Nummenmaa Agency sends 16,000 tax forms Inappropriate Bank Letter Form to one man / 2 Reference: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/14.89.html#subj3.1 The department was using new computer software for <Kenneth.Wood@prg.ox.ac.uk>Fri, 27 Aug 93 16:55:35 BST producing address labels which was provided by the U.S. Postal service, Schroeder said. The Postal Service software The Feedback section of the latest New Scientist relates the was designed to read the word "suite" abbreviated as "ste," following Computer Weekly story about an unfortunate she continued. But the addresses in the department's programmer at an unnamed bank. Apparently, the bank database abbreviate "suite" as "su". When the software wanted to target its wealthiest customers with a mailshot couldn't read "su", it was supposed to jump to the previous promoting various new services and the programmer in line and read it again, Schroeder said. question wrote a program to select the 2000 wealthiest customers from the bank's records and to generate an appropriate letter for each. But for this particular address, there was a foreign spelling on the previous line and the software couldn't read that In the process of testing the program, he made use of a either. That set off a series of other jumps, she added, until fictitious customer named Rich Bastard. Unfortunately, as the computer began spitting out the same address over and you may already have guessed, something went amiss and over again. "We alerted the postal authorities and they every single one of the bank's 2000 prize customers received corrected the problem with what they call a 'software patch,'" a letter which began "Dear Rich Bastard, ..." she said. 27.9.2004 Software Engineering 2004 3 27.9.2004 Software Engineering 2004 4 Jyrki Nummenmaa Jyrki Nummenmaa Mars Orbiter Failure / 1 Mars Orbiter Failure / 2 Reference: http://www4.cnn.com/TECH/space/9911/10/orbiter.03/ The report cited other contributing causes to the September 23 failure, including: WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Failure to convert English measures to • Undetected mistakes in modeling of spacecraft velocity metric values was the root cause of the loss of the Mars Climate changes. Orbiter, a spacecraft that smashed into the planet instead of • Insufficient familiarity with the spacecraft on the part of the reaching a safe orbit, a NASA investigation concluded Wednesday. navigation team. • Inadequate training. In a scathing report released Wednesday, an investigation board concluded that NASA engineers failed to convert English measures • Inadequate communications between project teams. of rocket thrusts to newton, a metric system measuring rocket • The report also said the mission navigation team was force. overworked and not closely supervised by independent experts. One English pound of force equals 4.45 newtons. A small difference • The panel made 10 different recommendations to ensure that between the two values caused the spacecraft to approach Mars at a similar mishap is avoided with the Mars Polar Lander, too low an altitude and the craft is thought to have smashed into currently en route for a December 10 touchdown on the red the planet's atmosphere and was destroyed. planet. 27.9.2004 Software Engineering 2004 5 27.9.2004 Software Engineering 2004 6 Jyrki Nummenmaa Jyrki Nummenmaa 1
Recommend
More recommend
