24-Feb-86 17:39:36-PST,7610;000000000000 Mail-From: NEUMANN created at 24-Feb-86 17:37:51 Date: Mon 24 Feb 86 17:37:50-PST From: RISKS FORUM (Peter G. Neumann, Coordinator) Subject: RISKS-2.14 Sender: NEUMANN@SRI-CSL.ARPA To: RISKS-LIST@SRI-CSL.ARPA RISKS-LIST: RISKS-FORUM Digest, Monday, 24 Feb 1986 Volume 2 : Issue 14 FORUM ON RISKS TO THE PUBLIC IN COMPUTER SYSTEMS ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator Contents: Automotive Problems Intensify (Peter G. Neumann) A hard rain is gonna fall (around March 23) (Martin J. Moore) Misdirected modems (Alan Silverstein) Witch hunts, or Where does the buck stop? (M.L. Brown) Spells and Spirits (Steve Berlin) Corrigenda: RISKS-2.13, Martin Moore, Cruise missile failure: Cited article appeared in 20 Feb 86 Playground Daily News. Newpaper masthead was wrong! The RISKS Forum is moderated. Contributions should be relevant, sound, in good taste, objective, coherent, concise, nonrepetitious. Diversity is welcome. (Contributions to RISKS@SRI-CSL.ARPA, Requests to RISKS-Request@SRI-CSL.ARPA.) (Back issues Vol i Issue j stored in SRI-CSL:RISKS-i.j. Vol 1: MAXj=45) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon 24 Feb 86 11:20:54-PST From: Peter G. Neumann Subject: Automotive Problems Intensify To: RISKS@SRI-CSL.ARPA The National Highway Trafic Safety Administration has expanded its investigation into the sudden acceleration of automobiles to include vehicles made by six manufacturers. The expanded inquiry involves 1.4 milion mid-size and full-size cars made by Ford Motor Co (1984-85 model years), 100,000 Audit model 5000 cars (1984-85), 350,000 280Z and 380Z Nissan cars (1980-85), 400,000 Alliance and Encore cars made for American Motors-Renault (1983-85), and 140,000 Toyota Cressida luxury cars (1981-84). [See today's NY Times, SF Chron, etc.] We have reported here previously on effects of radio-frequency interference on automobile microprocessors (e.g., RISK-1.23 and 24). This sounds like lots more of the same. Is the same chip-set involved, or is this a new kind of common-mode fault across different chip manufacturers? Peter ------------------------------ Received: from eglin-vax.ARPA ... Mon 24 Feb 86 10:32:25-PST Date: 0 0 00:00:00 CDT From: "MARTIN J. MOORE" Subject: A hard rain is gonna fall (around March 23) To: "risks" According to "Das Bild", a West German newspaper, a Soviet spy satellite has lost its steering capability and will impact between March 21 and March 25. Cosmos 1714, launched December 28, is presumably powered by an atomic power plant. The Soviets have not (as far as I know) commented on this yet. ------------------------------ From: Date: Mon, 24 Feb 86 11:12:54 pst To: sri-csl!risks@nosc.ARPA Subject: misdirected modems Twice recently, computers at our company (Hewlett-Packard) have been the embarrassing causes of telephonic annoyance. Phone numbers entered incorrectly in uucp L.sys files, due to typos or misunderstandings, have led to systems repeatedly calling private telephones in Fort Collins. The recipients of such calls, understandably annoyed, have had to backtrack through Mountain Bell to discover the cause. I bet this happens a lot more than anyone realizes or admits. Alan Silverstein, Hewlett-Packard Fort Collins Systems Division, Colorado {ihnp4 | hplabs}!hpfcla!ajs, 303-226-3800 x3053, N 40 31'31" W 105 00'43" ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 21 Feb 86 08:38:21 est From: mlbrown@nswc-wo.ARPA To: neumann@sri-csl.arpa ReSent-To: RISKS@SRI-CSL.ARPA Subject: Witch hunts, or Where does the buck stop? I note with interest that we have yet to hear from anyone who performed system safety analyses on the solid rocket booster system. Where are the system safety engineers who analyzed this design? ------------------------------ Date: Fri 21 Feb 86 11:31:55-EST From: Steve Berlin Subject: Spells and Spirits To: risks@SRI-CSL.ARPA The comment about spells and spirits in the RISKS 2.13 reminded me of a set of papers from Princeton that readers of this forum might be interested in. First, the references: "The Persistent Paradox of Psychic Phenomena: An Engineering Perspective" Robert G. Jahn, Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol 70, No. 2, Feb. 1982 "Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research" R.G. Jahn, B.J. Dunne, and R.D. Nelson, technical note PEAR 84002 "An REG Experiment with Large Data Base Capability, III: Operator Related Anamolies" R.D. Nelson, B.J. Dunne, R.G. Jahn, technical note PEAR 84003 All three papers describe experiments in which humans attempt to influence the distribution of random events using 'psychic' means. According to the authors, the results indicate that there ARE deviations that range in likelihood from 10^-4 to 10^-7. I will not attempt to summarize any further, interested readers should contact the authors directly at: Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research School of Engineering/ Applied Science Princeton University Princeton, NJ 08544 I would like to type in the abstracts, however, the latter two papers explicitly "withhold the right to reprint or quotation". The abstract for the IEEE paper follows: Although a variety of so-called psychic phenomena have attracted man's attention throughout recorded history, organized scholarly effort to comprehed such effects is just one century old, and systematic academic research roughly half that age. Over recent years, a sizeable spectrum of evidence has been brought forth from reputable laboratories in several disciplines to suggest that at times himan consciousness can acquire information inaccessible by any known physical mechanism (ESP), and can influence the behavior of physical systems or processes (PK), but even the most rigorous and sophisticated of these studies display a characteristic dilemma: The experimental results are rarely replicable in the strict scientific sense, but the anomalous yields are well beyond chance expectations and a number of common features thread through the broad range of reported effects. Various attempts at theoretical modeling have so far shown little functional value in explicating experimental results, but have served to stimulate fundamental re-examination of the role of consciousness in the determination of physical reality. Further careful study of this formidable field seems justified, but only within the context of very well conceived and technically impeccable experiments of large data-base capability, with disciplined attention to the pertinent aesthetic factors, and with more constructive involvement of the critical community. Disclaimer: I don't currently hold an opinion on the validity of the experiments described in these papers. I do, however, agree that there are phenomena which 'modern science' has no satisfactory explanation. -- Steve [I don't expect that RISKS will go lurching off in this direction. But, nevertheless, there is certainly a wide collection of issues related to risks to the public in the use of computer systems. An intriguing bit of science fiction along that line is the old novel by Ingo Swann, Star Fires. PGN] ------------------------------ End of RISKS-FORUM Digest ************************ -------