In nearly all airline crashes to date, there was a qualified pilot on board the aircraft.

Coincidence? I don't think so.

Precisely. I taught on this exact case study for three semesters while attached as a Teaching Assistant to my university's Engineering Ethics course, which had the guy who literally wrote the book on the subject teaching there.

One interesting tidbit left out in the summary is the fact that this wasn't necessarily so much an oversight on the architect or engineer's part, so much as it was an oversight in the regulations of the time. Back then, quartering winds were not required to be taken into account in the same way that they are now, since it was more or less assumed that winds hitting square the face would always be the greater danger. Unfortunately, the unique architecture of this particular building ensured that it was actually the quartering winds that proved a greater risk.

Anyway, I never got a chance to meet with LeMessurier, as I did with some of the other notable people in those cases that you cited (e.g. the late Roger Boisjoly, who was the Morton Thiokol engineer that strongly warned of the O-ring failure and tried to postpone Challenger's launch), but from everything I've heard, LeMessurier was a bit of a show off and smart aleck. Even so, he's managed to turn something that could have ended his career into something that's now a case study on how to do stuff right (and he DID handle it right), so kudos to him for sucking up his pride and doing what was best.

Even so, it does serve as a reminder that laws don't always go far enough in the interest of protecting the general public, and we have a responsibility to step up when they fall short.

So they were merely confirming how bad bad could get by proving that technology that relies on OpenSSL is vulnerable. Okay, thanks. I suppose there are a lot of people who might try denying that - I've already heard people muttering that the firms which are vulnerable to this exploit should have a workaround in place. This demonstration could well serve as an example of just how difficult that could be, as well as how wide-reaching the problem is.

Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

What jurisdiction do you live in that actually licenses software engineers?

...researchers independently retrieved the private keys from the intentionally-vulnerable NGINX server...

Intentionally vulnerable - so this wasn't a bug in the NGINX server, it was a feature, right?

1. Step 1: become a NK frogman spy
2. Step 2: ???
3. Step 3: Profit!

(Hint: Step 2 is "defect to SK.")

Unlike the situation with Ukraine, the West might see that as an improvement. China, on the other hand, might disagree...

None of those require the other two. None of those should be exclusive of the other two. Unfortunately, none of those are required to post on Slashdot - just a keyboard and an internet connection. I still want this sign:

"--- You must be this intelligent to ride the internet. Shorter riders must be accompanied by a parent or guardian."

Nobody reevaluated the design of the entire pair of buildings. In this instance, even the review of the changes was flawed. If it hadn't been - if the change itself hadn't been fatally flawed - I wonder if they wouldn't have compromised the design of the entire (now unified) structure by moving stresses from their original positions?

They treated the walkways as a 'black box' condition. It didn't matter to the buildings being connected if it was done using one support rod or two, from the standpoint of the two buildings there was no difference. Thus, only the walkways themselves were affected by the change, and that's the only element they reviewed at length. Obviously, even that review failed terribly, overlooking something which seems in retrospect to be obvious.

I'm sure you (and most other /. readers) already appreciate the flaw in this sort of logic. I'm not saying that every change needs to put the review process back at square one, but rather that changes need to be reviewed in more than the narrow context of the single element being changed. It wouldn't have helped here (and I'm neither an architect nor a construction engineer), but it just might have. "Hey - all of your stresses from those two walkways are coming in on this one rod - is my building going to take it?" followed by "Damn, you're right. Our walkways will both be loading up that one rod. Lemme think about that..."

Those who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.....

...in summer school.

I think that's what they call it when there is no evidence of a mechanical failure and cannot prove that there was an error on the part of the flight crew. The assumption is generally pilot error of some kind. (assumption)

Or the internet? Oh, wait - Al Gore invented that.

I've heard news reporting before on this subject. The way it goes is this: the architect submits his designs, which are subject to review. Once the green light's given, construction begins. Now, engineers on the project notice a way that they can cut costs or construction time, or somebody requests a modification to the original design (perhaps to add a restroom or breakroom, perhaps to add or remove a wall or subdivide a floor differently). The new design is not subject to the same kind of rigorous evaluation the original had to go through - and why should it? The changes are evaluated in some detail, but a less detailed examination is given to effects these changes may have on the overall design. Often, the change is something which has been done before on other similar projects, or is done to take advantage of a new technique or material which wasn't widely available during the initial design review. Sometimes these changes are a direct result to the contractor's real-world experience with similar projects. Add to this the possibility that contractors on the job - who have some amount of expertise in this area - may decide on the use of 'equivalent' materials and techniques; using a new adhesive or other material which has superior properties or costs less but is not identical to the original item.

I wish I could find an appropriate citation - the example I recall was a bridge which needed to be torn apart and repaired because of the use of a different type of bolt securing the framework. The replacement had similar tensile and shearing strength, but several years later the bolts started failing at a much higher than expected rate, requiring the bridge to be retrofitted with the original fastener. It turned out that the new bolt (while actually stronger in some respects than originally required) was subject to vibration stresses. The review permitting the substitution focused on the strength of the bolt required for the application, but the data showing that the bolt was subject to metal fatigue if subjected to extended vibration wasn't available or considered at that time.

Changes such as these are actually not too rare; I suspect that in most cases, the substitutions work exactly as expected, but when we're discussing infrastructure elements of this scope a single failure is not merely troublesome but often catastrophic.

No matter how you twist it, something like 80% of techies are solidly liberal/progressive, judging by their political donations.

Last I checked, Texas was neither liberal nor progressive in practically any sense of the word.