Comment Re:what do you expect from 70's technology ?? (Score 0) 133
Given that the FAA is responsible for the lives of thousands of people who travel by air every day, not to mention cargo planes which represent billions of dollars in economic activity, I'd be extremely alarmed if they were constantly switching to the latest and greatest technology without testing each and every line of code in the entire software stack, up to and including the bare metal. Change is slow in organizations like that because it has to be. Improper testing can easily lead to lost lives, or at the very least huge delays like these ones that can cost millions in lost productivity.
Yes, change should be slower in larger organizations, and especially slow in systems this critical. I would (and often do) even argue that a fully transparent and rigorous change control process should be in place in all but the youngest and fastest organizations who still have a fully dedicated and constantly available band of heroes with ownership stake.
BUT, that does not mean that it is remotely excusable to leave technology in place for 40 years without noticing that you have SINGLE POINTS OF FAILURE IN MISSION-CRITICAL SYSTEMS (apparently, in this case, actually a circuit board in a router) without building in automatic failover and redundancy throughout the system. Failing to do so presents far too much risk. It may be close to rocket science, but it isn't.
And to those who seem to think that this isn't a big deal, it disrupted to flow of aircraft information to the military such that AWACS had to be scrambled to compensate for the government's loss of visibility into air traffic. Leaving single points of failure like this in place in systems this critical is not only unacceptable IT risk management, but is also clearly an unacceptable national security risk.
