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#therac 25 software error
leafmutual · 2 years
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New fear unlocked
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actual-corpse · 9 months
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Therac-25: *exists. Injures many*
Engineers of the past: aw damn. Better not put to much faith in software. It might override its safeguards and kill people! Thanks for the lesson Therac-25!!
Self aggrandizing software bitches: Self driving cars! Remove human error! No mechanical input!
Therac-25: wait. Have you learned NOTHING FROM ME?!
Self driving car enthusiast: We give the robot moral tests to make it choose between killing a baby and a grandma!
Any person with a lick of sense: Just.... Just drive off the road if you can... Bro!
Car bitch: THE CAR STAYS ON THE ROAD! THINK OF THE TROLLEY PROBLEM
Engineers: WE SOLVED THAT!
Another insulting name that I'm using in place of people like Elon Musk: YAY TECHNOLOGY! HUMANS ARE WEAK AND OBSOLETE I AM GOD!
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esspurrr · 2 years
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ughhh normally reading about radiation doesnt really scare me in a traditional sense but i just watched a video on the therac 25 software error and it jolted me back awake
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today i learned about malfunction 54, the name of an error message in conjunction with a series of radiotherapy accidents; it occurred when a radiotherapy machine, Therac-25, underwent multiple concurrent software errors and delivered lethal doses of radiation to cancer patients by accident
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srishticampus · 2 years
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Software bugs
Software bugs are the terms we often hear being used by IT professionals. As curious as it sounds, bugs are ideally the informal defects a software contains in the process of building and existence.
In other words, Bug is the name of defects that pop up when the application or software doesn’t work properly. It usually happens when the developer mistakenly brings an error in the process of software or application development. Software bugs are usually caught during the testing phase of the software development life cycle. However, some of the bugs may go undetected during the testing phase. Software tester, who is responsible for checking on bugs, holds one of the critical  positions in any organisation that creates and develops software or applications. To become a software tester, join Srishti campus, the best software training institute in Trivandrum.
How Does A Software Bug Occur?
If the software bugs don’t go through timely identification and checks, there are huge chances of the software getting crashed or locked up. For example, if one of the programs were to add sums together, the bugs would make them subtract, leading to a wrong solution.  
In the health industry, if the software reads errored commands with bugs, the radiation could lead to serious health consequences for the patient.  
Bugs That Made History!
During the 1980s, bugs in the code controlling the radiation therapy machine Therac-25 led to patient deaths.
An on-board guidance computer bug caused a $1.0 billion rocket called Ariane 5 to explode seconds after launch in 1996.
Mariner I’s flight software was corrupted in 1962, causing the rocket to change path from the expected path.
Many computers crashed when a bug was found in AT&T’s software control #4ESS long distance switches in the 1990s.
How Are Software Identified?
One of the most important phases of the software development life cycle is testing. Ideally, testing should occur after design, and it can occur both during the overall development process and after the design process has been completed. In order to ensure that the software or app operates as intended and that it remains stable during use, robust testing is needed. Bugs are identified and fixed during this testing period.
Identifying software bugs is made easier with a wide range of solutions available to software developers. Defensive programming solutions, for instance, help to identify typographical bugs and the unit testing methods facilitate the developer to test and function every part of the software.
Learning software testing opens up a strong career choice, helping one to ascend in the IT industry. To experience the best software testing training in Trivandrum, Srishti Campus opens up opportunities for the best career.
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stoweboyd · 6 years
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The Problem with Code
James Somers lays out the problem with the growing complexity of software systems: they are unknowably interconnected to an incestuaous degree, and it is literally impossible to test across all imaginable uses.
The Coming Software Apocalypse | James Somers
“When we had electromechanical systems, we used to be able to test them exhaustively,” says Nancy Leveson, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has been studying software safety for 35 years. She became known for her report on the Therac-25, a radiation-therapy machine that killed six patients because of a software error. “We used to be able to think through all the things it could do, all the states it could get into.” The electromechanical interlockings that controlled train movements at railroad crossings, for instance, only had so many configurations; a few sheets of paper could describe the whole system, and you could run physical trains against each configuration to see how it would behave. Once you’d built and tested it, you knew exactly what you were dealing with.
Software is different. Just by editing the text in a file somewhere, the same hunk of silicon can become an autopilot or an inventory-control system. This flexibility is software’s miracle, and its curse. Because it can be changed cheaply, software is constantly changed; and because it’s unmoored from anything physical—a program that is a thousand times more complex than another takes up the same actual space—it tends to grow without bound. “The problem,” Leveson wrote in a book, “is that we are attempting to build systems that are beyond our ability to intellectually manage.”
Our standard framework for thinking about engineering failures—reflected, for instance, in regulations for medical devices—was developed shortly after World War II, before the advent of software, for electromechanical systems. The idea was that you make something reliable by making its parts reliable (say, you build your engine to withstand 40,000 takeoff-and-landing cycles) and by planning for the breakdown of those parts (you have two engines). But software doesn’t break. Intrado’s faulty threshold is not like the faulty rivet that leads to the crash of an airliner. The software did exactly what it was told to do. In fact it did it perfectly. The reason it failed is that it was told to do the wrong thing. Software failures are failures of understanding, and of imagination. Intrado actually had a backup router, which, had it been switched to automatically, would have restored 911 service almost immediately. But, as described in a report to the FCC, “the situation occurred at a point in the application logic that was not designed to perform any automated corrective actions.”
This is the trouble with making things out of code, as opposed to something physical. “The complexity,” as Leveson puts it, “is invisible to the eye.”
[…]
Software has enabled us to make the most intricate machines that have ever existed. And yet we have hardly noticed, because all of that complexity is packed into tiny silicon chips as millions and millions of lines of code. But just because we can’t see the complexity doesn’t mean that it has gone away.
The programmer, the renowned Dutch computer scientist Edsger Dijkstra wrote in 1988, “has to be able to think in terms of conceptual hierarchies that are much deeper than a single mind ever needed to face before.” Dijkstra meant this as a warning. As programmers eagerly poured software into critical systems, they became, more and more, the linchpins of the built world—and Dijkstra thought they had perhaps overestimated themselves.
[…]
The problem is that programmers are having a hard time keeping up with their own creations. Since the 1980s, the way programmers work and the tools they use have changed remarkably little. There is a small but growing chorus that worries the status quo is unsustainable. “Even very good programmers are struggling to make sense of the systems that they are working with,” says Chris Granger, a software developer who worked as a lead at Microsoft on Visual Studio, an IDE that costs $1,199 a year and is used by nearly a third of all professional programmers. He told me that while he was at Microsoft, he arranged an end-to-end study of Visual Studio, the only one that had ever been done. For a month and a half, he watched behind a one-way mirror as people wrote code. “How do they use tools? How do they think?” he said. “How do they sit at the computer, do they touch the mouse, do they not touch the mouse? All these things that we have dogma around that we haven’t actually tested empirically.”
The findings surprised him. "Visual Studio is one of the single largest pieces of software in the world,” he said. “It’s over 55 million lines of code. And one of the things that I found out in this study is more than 98 percent of it is completely irrelevant. All this work had been put into this thing, but it missed the fundamental problems that people faced. And the biggest one that I took away from it was that basically people are playing computer inside their head.” Programmers were like chess players trying to play with a blindfold on—so much of their mental energy is spent just trying to picture where the pieces are that there’s hardly any left over to think about the game itself.
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viva64 · 7 years
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PVS-Studio: the Additional Insurance of the Medical Software
Software bugs can lead not only to material losses, but also can damage human's health. For example, actors on the stage of a theatre can get injured if suddenly one of the scenery begins to go down on the stage at the wrong time. However, the connection between the errors in code and the health damage of medical software is more obvious. Let's talk about this topic.
This article focuses on the teams of developers who create the programs for a medical equipment. I hope they will not stay indifferent and will check their code. Let's recall two famous cases where errors in programs, related to medicine, became the reason for bad news.
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Firstly, it is a series of tragic events caused by the errors in the Therac-25 device of radiation therapy. This device has caused at least six overdoses of radiation within the period from June 1985 to January 1987, some patients received doses of tens of thousands of rad. At least two people died directly from the radiation overdoses. Software bugs of the device were the reason of the tragedies and the main problem was the incorrect security strategy.
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Secondly, the software bugs can also cause harm indirectly. For example, the bugs in the software for MRI-scanners raise the questions about the 40 000 researches. For several decades, neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists has used statistical programs AFNI, SPM and FSL to analyze fMRI data. As it turned out, because of the incorrect algorithms, these programs might return up to 70% of false positive results instead of the projected 5%.
As you can see, the code errors can lead not only to troubles, such as a crash or a loss of data, but also to much more serious consequences, which influence the life and the health of many people throughout many years.
Moreover, the developer is responsible not only for his own code, but for the code of the used libraries. This situation is completely real, when the artifacts appear when creating an image/video due to an error from a third-party library and this will lead to confusion when diagnosing.
This is not an abstract theoretical problem. I myself faced a situation, in which when porting programs to 64-bit system an error causing incorrect handling of MRI data began to reveal itself. Fortunately, the error showed itself very clearly: a large fragment of the image was absent. However, the error might not be that noticeable and consist in the incorrect displaying of some details and it'll be much harder to detect it.
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More information about this error is available in the article "PVS-Studio project - 10 years of failures and successes". It is this and some other 64-bit errors that inspired the creation of the Viva64 tool, which then turned into a PVS-Studio static code analyzer.
It is impossible to predict where the errors can be and what errors can lead to trouble. The error can be complex and not necessarily spoil life, lurking in the algorithm of data processing and displaying. I can imagine a situation where because of an error in the comparison function, data of the wrong patient will be selected for processing, or the program, describing the condition of the patient, will not notice some differences in the data structure.
I invite all readers to start using the PVS-Studio static code analyzer. Yes, the analyzer, like any other tool, does not guarantee the absence of errors in your programs. However, it becomes an additional line of defense on the field of the battle against the bugs. It can help detect a lot of errors at the early stages of development and may help to save someone's health.
Read more - PVS-Studio: the Additional Insurance of the Medical Software
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jaredvswatzell · 4 years
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What Is Software Testing?
Software testing is a technique to examine whether the actual software matches expected needs and guarantee that software is Flaw cost-free, according to Kate Osad. It entails the execution of software/system elements using handbook or automated devices to examine one or more passion homes. The objective of software screening is to identify errors, spaces, or missing needs in contrast to actual conditions.
In straightforward terms, Software Screening implies the Confirmation of Application Under Test (AUT). This tutorial presents a screening software program to the target market and also validates its importance. In this tutorial, you will find out: if there are any type of bugs or errors in the software, it can be identified early and can be resolved before the shipment of the software application product.
Issues with program testing
Evaluating is crucial since software pests could be expensive and even harmful. Software program pests can potentially cause financial and human loss, and history has lots of such examples. In April 2015, Bloomberg incurable in London crashed due to a software problem that affected greater than 300,000 traders on financial markets. It required the federal government to delay a 3bn pound financial obligation sale.
Developer Testing Software
There have been reported two mishaps as a result of this software application failing. Starbucks was compelled to shut around 60 percent of stores in the U.S. and Canada due to software program failure in its POS system. At one point, the shop served coffee free of charge as they could not process the deal.They were entrusted hefty losses.
Vulnerability in Windows 10
This pest allows individuals to get away from protection sandboxes via a flaw in the win32k system. In 2015 fighter aircraft F-35 came down with a software program pest, making it incapable of finding targets correctly. China Airlines Plane A300 collapsed due to a software application insect on April 26, 1994, eliminating 264 innocents live.
In 1985, Canada’s Therac-25 radiation therapy machine malfunctioned as a result of a software application bug and delivered dangerous radiation doses to clients, leaving three people dead and critically hurting three others.
In May of 1996, a software application pest created the checking account of 823 customers of a significant UNITED STATE financial institution credited with 920 million U.S. bucks. Click below if the video is not obtainable. Here are the benefits of utilizing software application screening: It is among the crucial benefits of software program screening.
If the insects are caught in the earlier phase of software program testing, it sets you back much less to fix. It is the most prone and delicate benefit of software program testing. Individuals are seeking trusted items. It aids in getting rid of dangers as well as issues earlier. It is a crucial need for any type of software program item.
What is the main goal?
The primary goal of any item is to provide satisfaction to their clients. UI/UX Screening makes sure the most effective individual experience. Based on ANSI/IEEE 1059, it is a procedure of examining a software program product to discover whether the existing software item fulfills the required conditions or not. The screening procedure entails exploring the attributes of the software for demands regarding any kind of missing requirements, bugs or mistakes, safety, reliability, and efficiency.
Practical Testing
Non-Functional Evaluating or Efficiency Screening Maintenance (Regression as well as Maintenance)
Useful Checking
Smoke UAT (Customer Acceptance Screening)
Localization
Globalization
Interoperability
Non-Functional Testing Performance
Stamina Lots Quantity Scalability
Use So on Maintenance Regression
Maintenance
This is not the total listing as there are greater than 150 kinds of testing types and still including.Below are essential techniques in software application engineering: This software application screening technique is adhered to by the programmer to test the program’s system. It helps developers to understand whether the individual unit of the code is functioning correctly or not. It concentrates on the construction and also the layout of the software program.
Learning Basic OfTesting
In this approach, your software is put together in its entirety and, after that, evaluated in its entirety. This testing technique checks the functionality, protection, mobility, among others. In software testing is a method of performing an actual software application program to screen program habits and find mistakes. The software application is completed with test instance data to analyze the program habits or feedback to the examination data.
Software program testing
Software program testing is specified as an activity to check whether the actual outcomes match the expected results and ensure that the software program system is Problem complimentary. Testing is vital because software pests could be costly or perhaps hazardous. The critical factors for utilizing software testing are cost-efficient, protection, item top quality, and consumer satisfaction.
The post What Is Software Testing? appeared first on Geo Vancouver 2016.
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the-grendel-khan · 7 years
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Letter to an interested student.
I had the good luck to chat with a high-school student who was interested in doing the most good she could do with hacker skills. So I wrote the letter I wish someone had written me when I was an excitable, larval pre-engineer. Here it is, slightly abridged.
Hi! You said you were interested in learning IT skills and using them for the greater good. I've got some links for learning to code, and opportunities for how to use those skills. There's a lot to read in here--I hope you find it useful!
First, on learning to code. You mentioned having a Linux environment set up, which means that you have a Python runtime readily available. Excellent! There are a lot of resources available, a lot of languages to choose from. I recommend Python--it's easy to learn, it doesn't have a lot of sharp edges, and it's powerful enough to use professionally (my current projects at work are in Python). And in any case, mathematically at least, all programming languages are equally powerful; they just make some things easier or more difficult.
I learned a lot of Python by doing Project Euler; be warned that the problems do get very challenging, but I had fun with them. (I'd suggest attempting them in order.) I've heard good things about Zed Shaw's Learn Python the Hard Way, as well, though I haven't used that method to teach myself anything. It can be very, very useful to have a mentor or community to work with; I suggest finding a teacher who's happy to help you with your code, or at the very least sign up for stackoverflow, a developer community and a very good place to ask questions. (See also /r/learnprogramming's FAQ.) The really important thing here is that you have something you want to do with the skills you want to learn. (As it is written, "The first virtue is curiosity. A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth.") Looking at my miscellaneous-projects directory on my laptop, the last thing I wrote was a Python script to download airport diagrams from the FAA's website (via some awful screenscraping logic), convert them from PDFs to SVGs, and upload them to Wikimedia Commons. It was something I was doing by hand, and then I automated it. I've also used R (don't use R if you can help it; it's weird and clunky) to make choropleth maps for internet arguments, and more Python to shuffle data to make Wikipedia graphs. It's useful to think of programming as powered armor for your brain.
You asked about ethical hacking. Given that the best minds of my generation are optimizing ad clicks for revenue, this is a really virtuous thing to want to do! So here's what I know about using IT skills for social good.
I mentioned the disastrous initial launch of healthcare.gov; TIME had a narrative of what happened there; see also Mikey Dickerson (former SRE manager at Google)'s speech to SXSW about recruiting for the United States Digital Service. The main public-service organizations in the federal government are 18F (a sort of contracting organization in San Francisco) and the United States Digital Service, which works on larger projects and tries to set up standards. The work may sound unexciting, but it's extraordinarily vital--veterans getting their disability, immigrants not getting stuck in limbo, or a child welfare system that works. It's easy to imagine that providing services starts and ends with passing laws, but if our programs don't actually function, people don't get the benefits or services we fought to allocate to them. (See also this TED talk.)
The idea is that most IT professionals spend a couple of years in public service at one of these organizations before going into the industry proper. (I'm not sure what the future of 18F/USDS is under the current administration, but this sort of thing is less about what policy is and more about basic competence in executing it.)
For a broader look, you may appreciate Bret Victor's "What Can a Technologist Do About Climate Change?", or consider Vi Hart and Nicky Case's "Parable of the Polygons", a cute web-based 'explorable' which lets you play with Thomas Schelling's model of housing segregation (i.e., you don't need actively bitter racism in order to get pretty severe segregation, which is surprising).
For an idea of what's at stake with certain safety-critical systems, read about the Therac-25 disaster and the Toyota unintended-acceleration bug. (We're more diligent about testing the software we use to put funny captions on cat pictures than they were with the software that controls how fast the car goes.) Or consider the unintended consequences of small, ubiquitous devices.
And for an example of what 'white hat' hacking looks like, consider Google's Project Zero, which is a group of security researchers finding and reporting vulnerabilities in widely-used third-party software. Some of their greatest hits include "Cloudbleed" (an error in a proxying service leading to private data being randomly dumped into web pages en masse), "Rowhammer" (edit memory you shouldn't be able to control by exploiting physical properties of RAM chips), and amazing bug reports for products like TrendMicro Antivirus.
To get into that sort of thing, security researchers read reports like those linked above, do exercises like "capture the flag" (trying to break into a test system), and generally cultivate a lateral mode of thinking--similar to what stage magicians do, in a way. (Social engineering is related to, and can multiply the power of, traditional hacking; Kevin Mitnick's "The Art of Deception" is a good read. He gave a public talk a few years ago; I think that includes his story of how he stole proprietary source code from Motorola with nothing but an FTP drop, a call to directory assistance and unbelievable chutzpah.)
The rest of this is more abstract, hacker-culture advice; it's less technical, but it's the sort of thing I read a lot of on my way here.
For more about ethical hacking, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Aaron Swartz; he was instrumental in establishing Creative Commons licensing, the RSS protocol, the Markdown text-formatting language, Reddit and much else. As part of his activism, he mass-harvested academic journal articles from JSTOR using a guest account at MIT. The feds arrested him and threatened him with thirty-five years in prison, and he took his own life before going to trial. It's one of the saddest stories of the internet age, I think, and it struck me particularly because it seemed like the kind of thing I'd have done, if I'd been smarter, more civic-minded, and more generally virtuous. There's a documentary, The Internet's Own Boy, about him.
Mark Pilgrim is a web-standards guy who previously blogged a great deal, but disappeared from public (internet) life around 2011. He wrote about the freedom to tinker, early internet history, long-term preservation (see also), and old-school copy protection, among other things.
I'll leave you with two more items. First, a very short talk, "wat", by Gary Bernhardt, on wacky edge cases in programming language. And second, a book recommendation. If you haven't read it before, Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderfully fun and challenging read; it took me most of my senior year of high school to get through it, but I'd never quite read anything like it. It's not directly about programming, but it's a marvelous example of the hacker mindset. MIT OpenCourseWare has a supplemental summer course (The author's style isn't for everyone; if you do like it, his follow-up Le Ton beau de Marot (about language and translation) is also very, very good.)
I hope you enjoy; please feel free to send this around to your classmates--let me know if you have any more specific questions, or any feedback. Thanks!
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alanlaidlaw · 7 years
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“When we had electromechanical systems, we used to be able to test them exhaustively,” says Nancy Leveson, a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has been studying software safety for 35 years. She became known for her report on the Therac-25, a radiation-therapy machine that killed six patients because of a software error. “We used to be able to think through all the things it could do, all the states it could get into.” The electromechanical interlockings that controlled train movements at railroad crossings, for instance, only had so many configurations; a few sheets of paper could describe the whole system, and you could run physical trains against each configuration to see how it would behave. Once you’d built and tested it, you knew exactly what you were dealing with.
Saving the World From the Code Apocalypse
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srishticampus · 2 years
Text
WHAT ARE BUGS? KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT BEING A SOFTWARE TESTER!
Software bugs are the terms we often hear being used by IT professionals. As curious as it sounds, bugs are ideally the informal defects a software contains in the process of building and existence.
In other words, Bug is the name of defects that pop up when the application or software doesn’t work properly. It usually happens when the developer mistakenly brings an error in the process of software or application development. Software bugs are usually caught during the testing phase of the software development life cycle. However, some of the bugs may go undetected during the testing phase. Software tester, who is responsible for checking on bugs, holds one of the critical  positions in any organisation that creates and develops software or applications. To become a software tester, join Srishti campus, the best software training institute in Trivandrum.
How Does A Software Bug Occur?
If the software bugs don’t go through timely identification and checks, there are huge chances of the software getting crashed or locked up. For example, if one of the programs were to add sums together, the bugs would make them subtract, leading to a wrong solution.  
In the health industry, if the software reads errored commands with bugs, the radiation could lead to serious health consequences for the patient.  
Bugs That Made History!
During the 1980s, bugs in the code controlling the radiation therapy machine Therac-25 led to patient deaths.
An on-board guidance computer bug caused a $1.0 billion rocket called Ariane 5 to explode seconds after launch in 1996.
Mariner I’s flight software was corrupted in 1962, causing the rocket to change path from the expected path.
Many computers crashed when a bug was found in AT&T’s software control #4ESS long distance switches in the 1990s.
How Are Software Identified?
One of the most important phases of the software development life cycle is testing. Ideally, testing should occur after design, and it can occur both during the overall development process and after the design process has been completed. In order to ensure that the software or app operates as intended and that it remains stable during use, robust testing is needed. Bugs are identified and fixed during this testing period.
Identifying software bugs is made easier with a wide range of solutions available to software developers. Defensive programming solutions, for instance, help to identify typographical bugs and the unit testing methods facilitate the developer to test and function every part of the software.
Learning software testing opens up a strong career choice, helping one to ascend in the IT industry. To experience the best software testing training in Trivandrum, Srishti Campus opens up opportunities for the best career.
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hwcampus · 8 years
Text
New Post has been published on Online Professional Homework Help
New Post has been published on http://hwcampus.com/shop/cs-2206-questions-answers/
CS 2206 All Questions Answers
CS 2206 All Questions Answers
Question 1 of 20
5.0 Points
Which of these statements about the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) is true?
  A. The NCIC databases contain about 40 million records.
B. Improper use of the NCIC has led to about 1 million false arrests.
C. Local law enforcement agencies enter most of the information that is in the NCIC databases.
D. The Department of Homeland Security is in charge of the NCIC.
Question 2 of 20
5.0 Points
The Patriot missile system:
  A. was designed to shoot down airplanes.
B. failed to shoot down a Scud missile that killed 28 U.S. soldiers in the Gulf War.
C. failed because it had been left running too long.
D. All of the above
Question 3 of 20
5.0 Points
The Ariane 5 satellite launch vehicle failed because:
  A. a faulty on-board computer caused the other computers in the network to crash repeatedly.
B. a bad sensor fed faulty information into the flight control computer, causing it to fail.
C. the rocket’s on-board computer sent back faulty information to ground control, causing the human controllers to destroy the rocket.
D. code that worked correctly on the Ariane 4 failed on the Ariane 5.
Question 4 of 20
5.0 Points
The AT&T long-distance network did not collapse entirely on January 15, 1990, because:
  A. the U.S. Secret Service arrested the culprits before they could do any further damage.
B. AT&T technicians rapidly fixed the software bug in the routing switches.
C. MCI loaned some equipment to AT&T.
D. not all the routing switches had been converted to the latest software.
Question 5 of 20
5.0 Points
Some computer experts have spoken out against the conversion to touch-screen voting machines because:
  A. there is no evidence that there have been any problems with punched card systems.
B. they are made in China, which does not even hold elections.
C. a power failure could make it impossible for people to vote.
D. they do not have a paper audit trail.
Question 6 of 20
5.0 Points
By making the PDP 11 minicomputer an integral part of the Therac-25, AECL was able to:
  A. shrink the size of the machine considerably.
B. increase the stock price of its subsidiary Digital Equipment Corporation.
C. reduce costs by replacing hardware safety features with software safety features.
D. eliminate the need for lead shielding.
Question 7 of 20
5.0 Points
Which mistake was NOT made by AECL, the manufacturer of the Therac-25?
  A. It did not include software or hardware devices to detect and report overdoses.
B. It did not tell other hospitals about possible overdose incidents.
C. It reused code without proper testing.
D. It continued to sell the Therac-25 after the FDA declared it to be defective.
Question 8 of 20
5.0 Points
Computer simulations can:
  A. accurately predict the weather a month in advance.
B. save automobile manufacturers time and money as they develop new cars.
C. prove our planet is overpopulated.
D. All of the above
Question 9 of 20
5.0 Points
The process of determining if a model is an accurate representation of the real system is called:
  A. the null hypothesis.
B. software engineering.
C. synthesis.
D. validation.
Question 10 of 20
5.0 Points
The discipline focused on the production of software, as well as the development of tools, methodologies, and theories supporting software production, is most accurately called:
  A. artificial intelligence.
B. computer engineering.
C. computer science.
D. software engineering.
Question 11 of 20
5.0 Points
__________ is the process of determining if a computer program correctly implements the simulation model.
  A. Identification
B. Verification
C. Conditioning
D. Specification
Question 12 of 20
5.0 Points
The Ariane 5 was a satellite launch vehicle designed by the __________ space agency.
  A. British
B. U.S.
C. German
D. French
Question 13 of 20
5.0 Points
Which of the following is NOT a reason to use a computer simulation?
  A. To model past events
B. To produce a detailed financial model
C. To reduce costs
D. To save time
Question 14 of 20
5.0 Points
In 1999 computer errors led to the loss of two NASA probes to:
  A. The Moon.
B. Mars.
C. Venus.
D. Saturn.
Question 15 of 20
5.0 Points
The inability of BAE Automated Systems to create an automated baggage handling system led to a significant delay in the opening of the new airport outside the city of:
  A. Boston.
B. Chicago.
C. Philadelphia.
D. Denver.
Question 16 of 20
5.0 Points
In November 2002 a programming error caused a touch-screen voting machine to fail to record 436 ballots cast in Wake County:
  A. North Carolina.
B. Indiana.
C. Florida.
D. California.
Question 17 of 20
5.0 Points
In a(n) __________, two or more concurrent tasks share a variable, and the order in which they read or write the value of the variable can affect the behavior of the program.
  A. causal condition
B. integrated system
C. race condition
D. direct system
Question 18 of 20
5.0 Points
Software engineers use a four-step process to develop a software product. Which of the following is NOT one of the steps?
  A. Validation
B. Simulation
C. Evolution
D. Specification
Question 19 of 20
5.0 Points
Which of the following is NOT an issue with DRE voting machines used in Brazil and India?
  A. Lack of a paper audit trail
B. Vulnerability to tampering
C. Voter identity may be revealed
D. Source code is a trade secret
Question 20 of 20
5.0 Points
In 1975 Congress passed the __________. One goal of the act was to prevent manufacturers from putting unfair warranties on products costing more than $25.
  A. Retail Protection Act
B. Uniform Commercial Code
C. Limitation of Remedies and Liability Act
D. Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act
0 notes