Sample Response to Weekly Paragraph Assignment

The question with computer software and hardware failures is 'Who is responsible and to what extent are they liable?'

Your task is to visit the RISKS Digest
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/
and find an example of computer risk due to poor planning, bad programming, inadequate testing, or any other cause. Include the date, and describe the issue. After reading the post, who do you think is responsible for the problem that you chose? Why?

If the problem caused physical or commercial loss, who should pay for the damages?

Also, have you ever read about Risks Digest before this assignment, Yes or No? Does another website do a better job? If so, please share the link.

An issue I found was on Dec. 8, 2005 -- "Unmanned shuttle system suspended after collision."

In this issue, an automatic, unmanned shuttle system in the Netherlands caused two shuttles carrying passengers two collide, causing severe damage. They did not report whether there were any injuries. This system was in a trial period for 2 years, but this accident occurred within a week of it being formally opened. It was unknown what the cause of this collision was, but it is likely that it was software error in tracking and planning of the system.

I think the responsibility for this problem goes to the company or group charged with rigorously testing the system under all possible situations. Clearly, a normal situation for the system ended up in a collision. If everything had been exhaustively tested in those two years, then it wouldn't have happened. There should be no rare special cases in the code that won't pop up in normal testing. The responsibility goes to them because, despite it being difficult to truly exhaustively test code for correctness, they are the ones who were charged with the safety of the system. Even if the true culprit was sheer chance, the closest human counterparts are those in charge of eliminating chance's chances.

The damage should be paid for the most part by the company where fault lies, although partially there should be an acceptance of the government of the possibility of such a crash and so they may have to accept some liability knowing that a complex unmanned shuttle system might not work perfectly.

I have never read about the Risks Digest before, and much of it seems rather silly (people complaining about all sorts of inconsequential "errors" in systems); I don't know of a place that does the job better, although bug reporting systems for a particular piece of software are usually useful.