<story><title>Thousands of Delta passengers delayed by computer outage</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37009311</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mrweasel</author><text>The most annoying part of bugs like this, is that we rarely get a good post-mortem. To frequently the media just reports it as &amp;quot;a computer glitch&amp;quot;. You would think that with computers being so important to modern day life, we should get better answers.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not suggestion that the bug should be explained in details in the evening news, but at least give some indication of the nature of the problem. They could just refer to a website, if people want the technical details.&lt;p&gt;When a car has a problem, it&amp;#x27;s not reported as a &amp;quot;glitch&amp;quot;. Imagine the stupidity of a media report claiming &amp;quot;A glitch in the latests Ford models cause several drivers to crash&amp;quot;. You don&amp;#x27;t do that, you explain that it&amp;#x27;s a fault in the steering, breaks, electric systems, or where ever the issue lies. I think we should reasonably expect the same when errors in computer systems hit the news.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tedmiston</author><text>Marginally better: The official post cites a power outage in Atlanta.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; A power outage in Atlanta, which began at approximately 2:30 a.m. ET, has impacted Delta computer systems and operations worldwide, resulting in flight delays. Large-scale cancellations are expected today. All flights en route are operating normally. We are aware that flight status systems, including airport screens, are incorrectly showing flights on time. We apologize to customers who are affected by this issue, and our teams are working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. Updates will be available on news.delta.com.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.delta.com&amp;#x2F;more-flights-resume-delays-cancels-continue-after-power-outage&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;news.delta.com&amp;#x2F;more-flights-resume-delays-cancels-con...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Thousands of Delta passengers delayed by computer outage</title><url>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37009311</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mrweasel</author><text>The most annoying part of bugs like this, is that we rarely get a good post-mortem. To frequently the media just reports it as &amp;quot;a computer glitch&amp;quot;. You would think that with computers being so important to modern day life, we should get better answers.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not suggestion that the bug should be explained in details in the evening news, but at least give some indication of the nature of the problem. They could just refer to a website, if people want the technical details.&lt;p&gt;When a car has a problem, it&amp;#x27;s not reported as a &amp;quot;glitch&amp;quot;. Imagine the stupidity of a media report claiming &amp;quot;A glitch in the latests Ford models cause several drivers to crash&amp;quot;. You don&amp;#x27;t do that, you explain that it&amp;#x27;s a fault in the steering, breaks, electric systems, or where ever the issue lies. I think we should reasonably expect the same when errors in computer systems hit the news.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>planetjones</author><text>One of the main reasons that you don&amp;#x27;t get a good post mortem is that it&amp;#x27;s often directly related to human error or a severe defect brought about by a decision to cut costs.  There have been several huge outages in UK banking over the past few years and management have a convenient excuse in blaming &amp;quot;legacy systems&amp;quot;.  While I respect private enterprise, for systems of systemic importance I would like to see some legislation to implement a mandatory and detailed post mortem like you propose.</text></comment>