The great blackout of 2003. At about 4:00 Eastern time on August 14, 2003, the lights went out from Michigan to as far east as Massachusetts, as well as the Canadian province of Ontario. Major cities without power included Cleveland, Columbus, Detroit, Toronto, and Ottawa, as well as much of the New York City area. Approximately 50 million people were affected by the outage, making it the largest blackout in American history. Power in some areas was not restored until two days later.  »

• Group A: The Therac-25 Accidents Peruse the St. Olaf Computing Cases Website on the Therac-25 case, reading the introduction, some of the accident accounts (near the bottom of the page), and the section on software design.

  Consider the following seven software-safety myths identified by Nancy Leveson in her book Safeware: System Safety and Computers (p. 26):

  1. The cost of computers is lower than that of analog or electromechanical devices.
  2. Software is easy to change.
  3. Computers provide greater reliability than the devices they replace.
  4. Increasing software reliability will increase safety.
  5. Testing software and formal verification of software can remove all the errors.
  6. Reusing software increases safety.
  7. Computers reduce risk over mechanical systems.

  Evaluate the truth of one or more of these statements as they pertain to the case. You needn't address all of the statements; choose whichever interest you. As always, please write a prose essay instead of answering the questions one by one. »
  
  

• Group B: The Case of the Killer Robot

  This discussion is to consider the fictional "Case of the Killer Robot." Read the description of the case, and then assess what responsibility the following persons bear for the death of Bart Matthews.

  • Randy Samuels, programmer. He wrote the program code that caused the Robbie CX30 robot to oscillate wildly, killing the robot operator, Bart Matthews.
  • Cindy Yardley, Silicon Techtronics employee and software tester. She admitted to faking software tests in order to save the jobs of her co-workers.
  • Sam Reynolds, CX30 Project Manager. Ray Johnson was his immediate boss. His background was in data processing, but he was put in charge of the Robbie CX30 project, much to Ray Johnson's chagrin. He was committed to the waterfall model of software development.
  • Ray Johnson, Robotics Division Chief at Silicon Techtronics. The Robotics Division needed a successful robot. Johnson pressured his subordinates to complete the project on time.
  • Michael Waterson, President and CEO of Silicon Techtronics. Placed Sam Reynolds in charge of Robbie CX30 project as a cost-saving measure, rather than hiring an expert from outside.
  
  Since the description is lengthy, you may want to do text searches for mentions of the principals in order to reach a conclusion more quickly. For this purpose, it may be helpful to refer to the low-tech text file containing all the articles. »