The cost of a bug [modified]

thisraja

I develop traffic surveillance software and it is in use in UK to monitor speed, illegal lane changes and so on. I found out that there is a bug in the software that incorrectly reports violation and has resulted in an incorrect fine of £30. Have you ever tried to quantify how much a bug in your software costs? The most expensive bug was obviously the $3 billion bug in the mars lander(rover?) software. [Edit] In case people have not observed, the first part is a joke [/Edit]

modified on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:10 AM

Joan M · modified on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:10 AM

Appart of the bug issue (in which I guess that the most expensive one is the one that takes one or more lives)... I think you've just made a lot of friends in the UK... I would remove your data and any information that could lead them to your house tonight... and think on DD it is not friday so you are not lucky as he won't be drunk... :rolleyes:

[www.tamelectromecanica.com] Robots, CNC and PLC machines for grinding and polishing.

Rage · modified on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:10 AM

I hate this phrase, but in this very case, (ask your boss), it is not a bug, it is a feature... So what does DD's car look like ?

DaveAuld · modified on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:10 AM

So when are we going to get to hear the specifics of the issue from the company, and the mass fall out of all the suspect claims for illegal prosecution? What is time frame for the suspected bug? Where was the software/devices being used? We need to know!

Dave Find Me On: Web|Facebook|Twitter|LinkedIn

Folding Stats: Team CodeProject

wizardzz · modified on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:10 AM

$40 million? I think you are close to the record at CP. I work in the financial industry, so a single bug could possibly wipe out the company. Now this is not a bug that I produced, and it happened before I was hired here, but I thought it was funny. So our trades are measured in lots of a million when we do currency trading, and thousands when we do metals (gold, silver). Well the lead engineer didn't code for this, nor catch it in the testing phase, hell the trades looked good to him. So, they went production with it for 1 customer at first. First order was a big trade, but multiplied by 1m instead of 1k, so it was a reaaally big trade. Apparently the trader bought the market from all our vendors. Then the phone to rang. The entire gold market moved from this single error. (It's a huge market). It was "our" error so our company would have to bite the loss or gain. "We" slowly sold the order back off and I think made about 40k in profit from it.

"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. " — Hunter S. Thompson

DoStuffZ · modified on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:10 AM

How much does the ME or Vista bug come to?

Lost User · modified on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:10 AM

I was living in Kansas City when they legalized gambling there. Several casinos opened in a matter of months. When competition warmed up they'd send out promotions along the lines of "Present this card to receive $50 in gambling chips". Well, some programmer messed up and instead of that promotion going to the members of the elite club it went to everyone. That one cost many thousands and probably a job or two.

Henry Minute

Take a look at this[^], then sit down and have a ponder.

Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.

Henry Minute

Although, I suspect, in the long run that they would have made money out of it.

Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.

DaveAuld · modified on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:10 AM

keyresearcher wrote:

The most expensive bug was obviously the $3 billion bug in the mars lander(rover?) software.

What about the Ariane 5 rocket, $7 Billion in development cost + $500 Million in rocket and payload, and *poof* gone in an instant; http://www.ima.umn.edu/~arnold/disasters/ariane.html[^] That would make it a costly bug?

Dave Find Me On: Web|Facebook|Twitter|LinkedIn

Folding Stats: Team CodeProject

Lost User

Rage wrote:

So what does DD's car look like

I've deduced it doesn't look like a Bus.

Lost User

I bet it was aa engineered 'mistake'.

hairy_hats

Rage wrote:

So what does DD's car look like ?

I think this[^] is it.

Sascha Atrops

That was the first bug I thought of. Fortunately until now no nuclear power plant was destroyed by a software bug. I could imagine that this would seriously beat the record.

BrainiacV · modified on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:10 AM

There were two instances when I was doing computer controlled conveyor systems...costs unknown. One system had a bug that was extremely situation sensitive. The end result would be a carton counted twice and a carton disappearing from the accounting. The client had insisted that the tracking information be written to the floppy disk as well as the hard drive. They feared hard drive failure was given as the rationale for that specification. The computer controlled the tracking (my code) and would raise a flag to the PLC (Programmable Logic Controller) that controlled the carton release. The PLC code was to raise a confirming flag when it did so, my program would drop the flag to reset and the PLC was to drop it's flag in response and to show that it was ready. Turned out the PLC programmer took the cheap way out, in that he didn't have any real logic controlling the raising and dropping of his flag. He simply passed the status of the first photoeye as the carton went past. Furthermore, he just used my flag to energize the carton release. As long as my flag was up, cartons would be released. Conveyor systems we had worked on over two years had used this logic, neither of us realizing we were talking at cross purposes. Operationally, it seemed to function as specified, the PC reacting in microseconds compared to the PLC reacting in milliseconds, my flag went up, his went up, mine went down, his went down. Quick aside here, when I was teaching programming, I'd use this as an example of how something as simple as two binary flags could be misinterpreted. Meanwhile back at the plot, it turned out that if a carton was being released AND a carton was verified as sorted or not was being written to the HDD and the floppy drive, the MS-DOS that we were running on top of would seize control and not release until the floppy data was written. During this time the PC would not see the PLC signal drop, kept the release flag high, releasing another box. Carton tracking did not start until the PLC flag dropped. (or in this case, was seen to drop). So the first carton would not be tracked. The label information from the first carton would be read from the barcode scanner buffer and assigned to second carton, and then to prevent any FIFO errors, the scanner buffer would be flushed, losing the label from the second carton. So the second carton would go to where the first one was supposed to go, the first carton, not actively tracked would come around for a second pass, be read again and tracked to its intend

DaveAuld

Highly unlikely a software bug could cause a nuclear power plant failure. The design of the systems with both high availability and multiple redundancy and layers of independent protection, backed up by mechanical fail safe mechanisms, means it is highly unlikely it ever could occur.

Dave Find Me On: Web|Facebook|Twitter|LinkedIn

Folding Stats: Team CodeProject

Matt McGuire · modified on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:10 AM

The software I develop is industrial control and automation for cold storage of food, it controls the pressures, temperatures, atmospheric gases of around 140 facilities mostly in the north west of the US, each facility has around 20 to 30 rooms, each room containing 1/2 to 2 million $ in food product, plus must record all control data points in an encrypted format. A lot of these rooms fall under 40 day export; in which the temperature must not reach 32.0f or above (this will throw them out of the program, and have to start over) but the temperature can not get below 30.0f do to freezing conditions. to make the food sleep so they last longer the oxygen in the room averages from 0.5% to 1.5% any lower will kill the fruit, too high the food spoils (19.5% normal atmo), and the CO2 must purged to stay well below 2.0% to prevent scalding. Machine rooms must maintain steady suction and discharge pressure by controlling condenser and compressor equipment. I’m not even getting into the safety controls and backup systems. :omg: So no stress here. Bugs in the interface are forgivable, but not on the control side. BTW I am the only developer here, but we are looking to expand; any takers? long term employment: 11+ years for me.

FrankLaPiana

One of the Mars landers had a fairly famous bug - one portion of the code in metric, the other portion in English units. Costs? Must have been in tens of millions. Another case of medical diagnostic machine that had buggy software (CAT scanner? or something similar?) The bug killed three people. "Cost" was in millions.

FrankLaPiana · modified on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:10 AM

Accounting / Order software - didn't have the logic for tax calculations in CA. Stubbed the code with a "todo comment". Forgot about it... time for QA. California too busy to send us test data. Six months later, the company realized that it had "forgotten" to collect $450,000 in sales tax. Financial trading software. One simple routine to convert an alphanumeric string to an integer. Tested by programmers, QA and customers for over 6 months. ONE customer sends the strings with fractions, "10.0". All other customers send the strings as integers, "10". The new version goes live, and that one customer has immediate problems (10.0 was being converted to 100). After 3 hours of waffling and hand-ringing, management decides to shut down the entire system rather than just the one customer. System was restarted, but all customers automatically switched to other firm's trading systems. By the time customers started using our software again... dunno, must have been millions of dollars in lost revenue. Shit happens, and then you get on with life.

Lost User · modified on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 9:10 AM

Worked on an application that was used to control a concrete-factory. An inverted boolean caused the app to dump about four cubic metres of concrete on the floor (as opposed to dumping it in a mixer) No idea what it costed. It had to be cleaned up before we could continue with anything else.

Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: