Downfall v1.1 for MacintoshGame serial key or number

NOTE: Many recent RISKS cases are not yet included. Maintaining this file has become increasingly labor intensive. However, the Election Problems section and the Illustrative Risks section are now up-to-date as of 6 March 2014. For other recent items, try the search engine at http://www.risks.org. Also, the ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes (SEN) have for many years contained highlights of items from online RISKS, along with one-liners of additional items of note. All of the SEN issues are now online: http://www.sigsoft.org/SEN/

Copyright 2015, Peter G. Neumann, SRI International EL243, Menlo Park CA 94025-3493 (e-mail Neumann@csl.sri.com; http://www.CSL.sri.com/neumann; telephone 1-650-859-2375; fax 1-650-859-2844): Editor, ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, 1976-93, Assoc.Ed., 1994-; Chairman, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy (CCPP); Moderator of the Risks Forum (comp.risks); cofounder with Lauren Weinstein of People For Internet Responsibility (http://www.pfir.org).

This list summarizes items that have appeared in the Internet Risks Forum Digest (RISKS) - which I moderate (comp.risks newsgroup) - and/or published ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes (SEN). In this collection of mostly one-liner summaries, (R i j) denotes RISKS volume i issue j; (S vol no:page) denotes an issue of SEN, where there has been one volume per year, with vol 33 being the year 2008; page numbers are given fairly regularly from 1993 on; (SAC vol no) indicates an item in the quarterly SIGSAC Security and Control Review, where vol 16 is 1998, which was the final volume. The RISKS-relevant SEN material prior to 1995 is summarized in my Computer-Related Risks book (see below). SEN material is now being brought on-line by Will Tracz: http://www.acm.org/sigsoft

Some incidents are well documented, while others need further study. A few are of questionable authenticity, and are noted as such ("bogus???"). Please send me corrections and new cases, along with suitable references. This document is updated at least quarterly and is browsable on-line ( courtesy of Otfried Cheong's Hyperlatex). [Hyperlatex is wonderful Free Software:
http://www.cs.uul.nl/~otfried/Hyperlatex).] This document is also printable in a two-column 8-point format (illustrative.pdf and illustrative.ps).

Read the Risks Forum as comp.risks if you can, or send e-mail to risks-request@csl.sri.com for a subscription, single text line "subscribe" (append desired address only if not your From: address), or "info" for info. Send contributions to risks@CSL.sri.com. Archives are available at http://www.risks.org, which redirects to Lindsay Marshall's Web site at Newcastle http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/, including a nice search facility. Specific issues can be read directly as [where I=volume#, J=issue#]. SRI's archive is at or by "ftp ftp.sri.com", "login anonymous", "cd risks" (which gets the "dir" for the current volume, and "cd i" then gets you into the subdirectory for noncurrent volume i). An Australian mirror is at http://the.wiretapped.net/security/textfiles/risks-digest/. "Inside Risks" distills some of the discussion into a monthly inside-back-cover column in the Communications of the ACM. The list of columns to date is given at the end of this document.

My book (Peter G. Neumann, Computer-Related Risks, Addison-Wesley (ISBN 0-201-55805-X) and ACM Press (ACM Order 704943), 1995) summarizes many of these cases and provides additional analysis. (A few errata for the first three printings are on my Web page, noted above.) Most of the (S vol no) items listed below for no < 20 are discussed in the book; more recent items generally include the relevant on-line (R i j) references. If you cannot find the book in a bookstore, it is on amazon.com, or call A-W within the U.S. at 1-800-822-6339 - or if you are outside of the U.S., 1-617-944-3770 and ask for International Orders. The book is now also available in Japanese (ISBN 4-89471-141-9). Instead of trying to produce a second edition in the face of a massive influx of new RISKS cases, the fourth and fifth printings of the book gives the URL for the Addison-Wesley Web site (http:www.awl.com/cseng/titles/ISBN-0-201-55805-X/), which includes the first chapter of the book and an extended preface. That Web site and my own contain further material that would otherwise have gone into the second edition.

Henry Petroski (among others) has noted that we rarely learn from our successes, and must learn more from our failures. The collection of cases cited here provides rich opportunities for reflection that could help us to avoid similar problems in the future. Unfortunately, it also demonstrates that the same types of mistakes tend to recur, over and over...

SEN and RISKS also consider approaches for developing better computer systems, e.g., safer, more reliable, more secure, fewer cost and schedule overruns, etc. There are many approaches to developing sound systems; none is guaranteed. Whereas the emphasis in the following list is on problems rather than on would-be solutions, the pervasive nature of the problems suggests that techniques for the effective development and operation of computer-related systems are frequently ignored. Worse yet, even ideal systems can result in serious risks, through unanticipated technological problems or human foibles. We include here primarily cases that have been publically reported, although we know of various additional cases whose existence for one reason or another has not seen the light of day. A few successes are also included, although the failures seem to predominate. We are always interested in hearing more about successes. Although I receive occasional complaints about the preponderance of failures in RISKS, there appear to be very few real successes. Perhaps not enough folks are heeding some of the advice that you can gather from RISKS and that are distilled in Computer-Related Risks.

! = Loss of life/lives; * = Potentially life-critical or safety problem

V = Overall system or subsystem surViVability problems (with respect to diVerse adVersities, including attacks and malfunctions). Startlingly many cases fit this category; many V-unflagged cases also represent failures to continue performing properly, or delays, or other cases of misuse that could have led to much more serious survivability problems.

$ = Loss of resources, primarily financial

S = Security/integrity/misuse problem; P = Privacy/rights abuse or concern

H = Intentional Human misuse (e.g., user-administrator-operator-penetrator)

h = Accidental Human misuse or other inadvertence

a = Event attributed to animal(s)

I = Insider; O = Outsider; A = Inadequate Authentication, Access control, or Accountability

d = System Development problems

e = Improper Evolution/maintenance/upgrade. (H,h,i,f,d,e involve human foibles.)

r = Problems with Requirements for system or operation (including the overall system concept)

f = Flaws (or Features in design, or hardware/software implementation)

i = MisInterpretation/confusion/human errors at a man-system Interface; documentation problems

m = Hardware Malfunction attributable to system deficiencies, the physical environment, acts of God, etc.

M = Malfunction or misuse specifically due to electronic or other interference

+ = Beneficial; - = problematic with none of the above categories

@ = This item is also listed in another category

1.1 Recent yet-to-be-merged items

*SM UK trials of GPS controlled car speeds (R 21 22-23)

V(m/f?) Canadian grocery chain Sobeys' software crash lasts 5 days (R 21 22)

Vf University of Washington server crash leaves thousands of students unable to register for classes (R 22 38)

i Risks of not-quite-identical keyboard layouts (R 21 26)

$h United Airlines Web site for one hour accidentally offered SFO-Paris round trips for cost of taxes and fees only (roughly $30 instead of $300) (R 21 24-25)

f Japanese modem misdialing seemingly at random in pulse-dial mode (R 21 25)

eh EoExchange shuts down free ad-supported services without warning; customer data lost (R 21 32)

i PC virtual-parrot squawks confuse firemen (S 26 6:10, R 21 46)

f Cable theft results in network congestion when Seti@Home screen savers are unable to access Seti servers (R 21 48,53)

fe Carefully planned seamless British Telecom BT SurfTime upgrade seemed very seamy, with premature cancellation of old service (R 21 44)

hie Risks in MacOS 10.2.4 update and httpd.conf replacement (R 22 56)

$fe UK magistrates courts staff upgrade failure requires two sets of systems instead of one, and a huge windfall for the deficient contractor (R 21 59)

fe Adobe Acrobat 5.0 pdf upgrade not backward compatible (R 21 59)

e NASA data from 1970s lost due to "forgotten" file format (R 21 56)

f California DMV sorting machine sends licenses to wrong people; 8-year-old sorting machine blamed (R 21 39)

* IBM auto dashboard system can shoot water at drivers not answering questions properly (R 21 53)

he Half of Norway's banks offline for a week: erroneous keystroke in EDB Fellesdata AS upgrade wiped out entire data warehouse instead of merely initializing 280 new disks (R 21 58)

+ OnStar GPS computer reports accident, pinpoints hit-and-run driver (R 21 46)

f* Polarized sunglasses mask LCD displays (R 21 53,54,56)

f False fatal-error report on completed atomic transaction (R 21 53,54,57)

mh Fiber cut takes out network connectivity within U. Pennsylvania (R 21 55)

i Another autoresponder loop (R 21 51,56)

$fhe Euro computer cutover risks (R 21 40)

f$ Payday delayed by one day in Belgium; once-in-five-year glitch (R 21 45)

h JDS Uniphase bad quarterly results report allegedly hacked, halting trading - but it turned out the report was Web-posted prematurely! (R 21 56)

eHS Beware of free URL-forwarding services (R 21 47)

di Custom system risk: dead men produce no documentation (R 21 47)

$h 40,000 federal tax returns and $800M payments missing at Mellon Bank processing center (R 21 63)

$m CD-eating geotrichum fungus amongus (R 21 51)

? Singapore bans divorce by SMS (short-text messaging between cell phones), overruling Muslim authorities, after 16 divorces Apr to Jun 2001 (R 21 58)

$ Chinese divorce: fight over online Mir 2 game account characters and virtual items worth over 40,000 Yuan (R 23 93)

- Chinese Internet blind date turns out to be married couple; big spat when they finally rendezvoused! (R 21 55)

$fh New British solar parking meters give free parking in bad weather, when installed under trees, etc. (R 21 65)

$H Judge tosses out red-light camera tickets because contractor had incentives to increase the number of citations (R 21 65)

fi Poor car-wash control interface design (R 21 77)

!hi Military intelligence at its best? "As a pilot, I can do everything perfectly with a perfect weapon system, and still cannot account for every weapon going exactly where it's supposed to go." U.S. Rear Admiral John Stufflebeem was responding to the deaths of three U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan after yet another bomb went astray. (S 27 2:5, R 21 82)

he Stupid defaults in database conversion cause propane runout (S 27 2:5, R 21 89)

e Mistranslated fields and changed defaults create problems in database conversion for propane company changeover (R 21 89)

*hi(VSP also) Sometimes high-tech isn't better: discussion of doctors' dependence on computers (Laura S. Tinnel, S 27 2:5, R 21 84)

$f Japanese Yohkoh satellite loses control due to annular eclipse during invisible-orbit out-of-sight period, draining batteries; recovery possible but not clear (R 21 85)

Vm Durham NC water line break closes 911 center and police department (R 21 89)

Vf(SH?) Dutch royal chat session failed on apparent overload (R 21 89)

fi Excel cut-and-paste glitch (R 21 88) +/-? Largest prime number: Mersenne prime, 4,053,946 digits: 2^13,466,917-1; found with 130,000 volunteer participants (R 21 82-83)

??? 100:1 lossless compression hype sounds like oil (R 21 87)

h Euro cutover risks: lots of screw-ups, wrong currencies, etc. (R 21 84,86,87); Luton schoolboy profits from ATM giving 1.6£to the Euro, rather than the reverse (R 21 86)

$f UK NatWest bank turns debits into virtual credits in Quicken and MS Money .OFX format (R 21 81)

$hf Grocery self-checkout risks: duplicate charges (R 21 81)

$f Automated bus pass kiosk denies authorization but debits: previous customer's authorization screen image displayed (R 21 81)

hV Outsourcing of upgrade to automated system knocks out Australian Bureau of Statistics (R 21 90)

f Johns Hopkins researchers announced the "color of the universe" based on a weighted average of the electromagnetic frequency of emissions from all galaxies in the observable universe: it's turquoise; after discovering a software glitch, no, it's really beige (R 21 98); no, because of an algorithm error, it's really salmon (R 22 02); could there be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for the culler of colors?

$fe More on PayPal problems: IPO prospectus, flaws, upgrade difficulties, fraud reported, fraud holds, merchant views (R 21 92,94,98) Paypal meets the Patriot Act: eBay accused of facilitating Internet gambling, eBay rebuts (R 22 67,69; S 28 4:9-10)

$SH $1M eBay fraud scams 1000 victims for $1000 each for nonexistent laptops (R 22 77)

Vm Disk crash destroys on-line law-enforcement mug shots in Macomb County, Michigan; no backup other than some hardcopy photos! (R 22 08)

Vhie 50,000 Idaho court records erased during upgrade; no viable backup (R 22 60)

$(m/f?)V Crash of critical legacy system costs Comair $20 million (R 23 87)

V(f/m?) Year 2000 crash destroys WashDC maintenance database of 5000 trees destined for removal, causing serious subsequent problems (R 22 08)

+? Dutch city implanting chips to monitor tree health (R 22 10)

Si Risks of deceptive characters in URLs: Rob Graham (R 21 89), and note on Gabrilovich/Gontmakher's Inside Risks column on The Homograph Attack, with look-alike characters in different languages Comm.ACM 45, 2, Feb 2002 (R 21 89); confusion among lowercase L, uppercase I, number 1 (R 21 91-93); lloyds vs llyods and domain protections (R 22 11, correction R 22 12)

Shi Risks of ordinary GUI "pop-up" windows: hidden spoofing (R 23 46,49; S 30 1:13)

Risks of Unicode and WSIWYG interpreting addresses: lookalike Japanese and English modes (S 27 3:8-9:, R 21 96)

fi Undesired text alterations: Microsoft Outlook appropriates the word "begin" to denote uuencoded text; recommended solution is not to start messages with the word "begin" (R 21 90); .Net violates English rules (R 21 91); search engines give wrong site, altering punctuation (R 21 91); OCR scanning alterations as well (R 21 92); UK Waitrose strips apostrophes from message content (R 21 92) and perhaps is using SQL? (R 21 93); BAD! in Perl, apostrophes are string delimiters (R 21 93); some Web forms reject addresses containing a plus sign (R 21 93)

SV Dutch royal chat session failed; intended for 100 selected citizens, and using a site designed for tens of thousands of users, the site reportedly received 3 billion hits (which seems implausible)! (R 21 89)

e Time runs out for BBC's Domesday time-capsule discs: media unreadable (R 21 93); FOLLOW-UP (R 25 44)

$i Australian man racked up A$22,000 in fines on Melbourne toll road, not having updated his address, and not having acquired a transponder (R 21 93)

$(f?h?) Seattle City light billing disputes (R 22 05)

(f?) Two unsolved telephone mysteries: unattended mobile phone calls home, and replicated phone bills; software faults? (R 22 08-10)

$h E-commerce Web site mistakenly listed low price for Kodak cameras; automatic response constituted acceptance of sale (R 21 90);

$hi PC mail-order price typo cost Marubeni over $2 million; company honored the error (R 23 02)

$ Buy.com mispriced a monitor; automated price search promises lowest price; (R 20 21)

h (but blamed on computer) Argos retail offered Sony Nicam TV for 3£ instead of 300£ (R 20 57)

$(hi?) Oops! US Air round trip for $1.86 (R 23 85)

$h Huge $25 airfare bargains from United Airline's Web site (R 22 10)

$h Compaq issues refunds for one-cent PCs after canceling the erroneous promotion (R 22 08)

$hi Self-service gas station loses money due inadvertent low pricing: $.19/gallon instead of $1.83/gallon (R 23 72)

$hi Candy machine non-atomic transaction punishes the quick-thinking (R 22 08-10); a related story (R 22 10)

* China bans toxic American junk: computers, TVs, copy machines, etc. (R 22 14)

$ No more JPEGs: ISO to withdraw image standard in infringement case (R 22 18)

$ef Boston Big Dig overruns $1 billion (R 22 55; correction 22 56)

*m Sentinel Fire Mapping tool for Australian fire location overloaded by heavy demand by nonemergency users (R 22 58)

mef IBM's DB2 blamed for Danish banking crisis (R 22 68; S 28 4:6)

i Risks of misquoting Google hit counts (R 22 72)

ai$ Turtle tangled in discarded beacon triggers Coast Guard massive search and rescue effort (R 22 70)

f?h? Kellogg's American Airlines online sweepstakes: thousands of nonwinners erroneously notified of winning (R 22 71)

- The Googlewashing of our language: Risks of trusting Google? (R 22 67)

m?f?h? Database crash loses names of Canadians in nationwide firearms registry (R 22 77, S 28 6:9)

f Verizon's error sends customers to Massachusetts adult phone line (R 22 84)

fmV GenCon conference registration woes blamed on computer network (R 22 84)

f Guardian crossword puzzle unable to handle numbers! (R 22 82)

i(-$) Cingular sends final bill for -$3.36 after refund check, threatening late fee (R 22 88)

m Eurofighter Typhoon brake fault (R 23 02; S 29 2:9)

f FAA warns of FlightLogic EFIS system fault (R 23 12; S 29 2:9)

defm Houston 911 system prone to crashes (R 22 92; S 29 2:10)

$drfh UK MoD scraps £130-million inventory management system (R 23 05; S 29 2:10)

Sdfi Computer virus freezes 21 VMS York car park displays tracking empty spaces; one system showed 349 spaces instead of none; mass chaos (R 22 92; S 29 2:10)

$df Messed-up test run gives erroneous deposits on outsourced payroll system (R 22 96; S 29 2:11)

+ Rigorous semantics of SPARK Ada applauded (see John Barnes' High Integrity Software); also more discussions of avoiding GOTOs (R 23 02)

*m Faulty wiring in window heater led to windshield cracks in 3 Boeing 777s (R 22 94)

*m Seattle Air Traffic Control [and elsewhere] affected by fires in Southern California (R 22 98)

hi$ Continental Airlines backs off erroneous 500K free-mile winners (R 22 92)

m Risk of leaving devices turned OFF: electrolytic capacitors degrade chemically: new kind of bit rot (R 22 98)

*m Nokia blames mobile-phone battery explosions for nonNokia batteries (R 22 97)

e$ WBIG radio unable to pay employees after computer upgrade (R 23 01)

*fi Honda CRV 4WD electronic doors trap man in Australian flood, nearly drown him (R 23 06); try the rear window, which is not electric! (R 23 12)

*hi(f?) Driver relies on car navigation system, winds up inside a supermarket (R 22 96)

i Acura MDX and BMW 7 series (in)human interfaces (R 23 01); BMW: "When you add complexity you add risks" (R 23 02); Karcher's Law: "Don't check for error conditions you are not prepared to handle." (R 23 03)

*$f BMW series 5 flaw disables Dynamic Stability Control and ABS (R 23 60; S 30 2:18)

hi Input data error on auto registration transfer causes driver's arrest (R 23 11)

fi French weather program mistakenly interprets frost (on a spider web on a sensor) as snow (R 23 03)

$hi Trifecta race-track bet on 2003 Melbourne Cup wins AU$2.6 million despite betting operator's ten-fold error: bettor had not requested confirmation (R 23 03; S 29 2:14)

hi Goofs: Animated billboard congratulates the Chicago Cubs on winning the baseball's National League pennant - but they lost! someone hit send instead of delete (R 22 96); New York Post prepared opposite editorials, released the wrong one: N.Y. Yankees lose 2003 American League pennant - but they won! (R 22 97); Israel's YNET.co.il announced Columbia had landed safely (with Israel's first astronaut aboard, and details of what he was supposed to be doing after landing) - but the Columbia was lost on reentry (R 22 98)

hi `Technical error' blamed for dirty picture shown to Mexico's first lady (R 22 92)

f Difficulties with U.S. Census Bureau income data: Gini averages based on truncated individual data for the wealthiest, max recorded is $999,999, to protect identities? No! (R 22 93,95,97)

$f Computer problem affects Mississippi liquor stores and restaurants (R 22 98)

fe South Carolina DMV software glitch costs Sumter County $164,000; car tax records vanish (R 22 98)

$hi E-ZPass returned via UPS truck keeps getting charged for Jersey Turnpike trips! (R 23 01)

$ Official self-service litigation system available in England/Wales (R 23 06)

$himf Peter Deutsch's Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing (R 23 06)

hi NOAA training session test message warns of hotter weather as Earth nears the Sun (R 23 07)

i Southern drawls thwart voice recognition for Shreveport police (R 23 04)

hi Proper understanding of "The Human Factor" (essay by Don Norman, R 23 07, commentary on two earlier RISKS items in R 23 04 and 06); two follow-ups from Doug Jones and Peter Ladkin (R 23 08); more on Murphy's Law (R 23 09) and developers (R 23 09); similar arguments about medical records (R 23 10)

i 'Master' and 'slave' computer labels unacceptable, LA officials say (R 23 05)

m Sony recalling 550,000 CD Walkman battery packs (R 23 04)

hi Erroneous Australian banana import recommendation due to error in risk assesment input to Microsoft Project file with @Risk add-on (R 23 28)

(m/f/h?) Dispatch computer glitch grounds Delta flights for 2 hours in Atlanta (R 23 35)

f Netgear/UWisc NTP router to keep time accurate: bug causes incessant retransmissions; fascinating item (R 23 41)

d Risks of believing in testing; also a GAO report (R 23 38-43)

f Jim Horning: Risks of inadequate exhaustive testing of 10M cases (R 24 42, S 31 6:23)

$f Poor fallbacks on automated systems: Paytrust SmartBalance (R 23 39)

fi Reason Magazine subscriber-customized covers messed up (R 23 39)

hi The Daily Farce online satire (Rumsfeld banning digicams in Iraq) reported as truth (R 23 39)

fi USB "square" plugs plug in backwards! (R 23 32)

fi Florida sues AT&T for billing a million noncustomers (R 23 35)

ef Canada's largest bank has "processing disruption" (R 23 43)

$f TurboTax electronic filing option fails to send AMT Form 6251 (R 23 35)

de Risks of broadband upgrades: Cox outage affects the recommended Toshiba 1100 cable modems: bad upgrade (R 23 30)

$fm MiniDV Firewire connector fragility (R 23 33)

e On-line accounting software upgrade problem: increased ID number length breaks system, which converted to scientific notation and rounding! (R 23 51)

m Zinc whiskers from under datacenter floors can lead to high equipment failure rates (R 23 45)

m DSL problem: mice, snakes, and wiring (R 23 57)

$f Lack of sanity checking in Web shopping cart software: beware of specifying fractional items (R 23 51)

$m Gloria Estefan performance in Dallas canceled due to computer crash (R 23 49)

i Emoticon-interpreters create risks in instant messaging services: :) becomes a yellow smiley-face icon (OK), but 401(k) in e-mail to female boss becomes 401 followed by "a big pair of smoochy lips"(R 23 48)

fhi Leslie Lamport: A Comedy of Errors; TLA+ quoted character anomaly (R 23 66; S 30 2:19-20) and discussion (R 23 67)

fhi Jim Horning: Risks of lenient parsing: a tale of tracking down an HTML problem (R 23 66; S 30 2:20) and discussion (R 23 67)

fi Software is no substitute for thought: yet another instance: need for human checks for reasonableness (R 23 60; S 30 2:20)

f Bruce Tognazzini list of 130+ most common bugs (R 23 67):
http://asktog.com/Bughouse/index.html

$fh Belgium's Banksys cashpoints failed due to small technical errors and overload, affecting 220K bank card transactions and 60K credit card transactions (R 23 63)

$(f/h/i/m?) Strange Standard and Poor stock numbers: index fell 870 points, 73% of its value, for one day (R 23 62,63)

fi Unintended effects of RFID devices; RFIDing babies (R 23 62,63,65)

hi E-mail notification from Southwest Air to wrong person, with no reply possibility (R 23 61)

$hi Problems with Chicago-area toll road transponders (R 23 67)

$hi Ticket not in computer system: your insurance rates may increase, because you cannot pay the fine! (R 23 66)

fm (etc.) 130 most common bugs - and counting (R 23 67; S 30 3:29)

hi- Vatican Web page on Pope John Paul II's death on 2 Apr 2005 was prepared on 1 Apr 2005, before his death, announcing "Vacancy of the Apostolic See" (R 23 84)

*(f/m/?) Judge accepted hypothesis that Ontario Safari Park tiger triggered power window opening and entered the automobile, awarded $2M in damages (R 23 69)

m A risk of high-speed CD/DVD-rom drives in current-day PCs, and slowing them down (R 23 71,72); Macrovision DVD copy-protection (R 23 72)

!*+/-? Hospitals have dramatically reduced unnecessary deaths? (R 24 32,33)

$f $8 million for self-parking charge: 8.1E+6 (R 24 30-31)

e NZ IRD tax numbers about to run out (R 24 33)

m Wily crows disconnect wired Tokyo (R 24 33)

f Irish ATM pays double; ethical dilemma (R 24 30)

fi Construction blocked by e-mail filtering `erection' (R 24 30)

Vhi Risks of relying on the Web in wartime: Australian Consulate required registration online, with no electric power (R 24 35)

hi DVD player human interface, not designed for usability?
(R 24 44)

*hi Silliness in Action: California poised for car cell phone ban (R 24 40)

British ambulance crew goes 200 miles off course based on name confusion in satellite navigation (R 24 48,49)

END of yet-to-be-merged items .....

1.2 11 Sep 2001 and Homeland Security

..... Combatting Terrorism

!!!*VSHf$$ 11 September 2001: terrorist highjacking of four planes used as cruise missiles to destroy the World Trade Center twin towers and part of the Pentagon, with thousands of lives lost and extensive disruption of lower Manhattan infrastructures; relevant GAO reports cited (S 27 1:7, R 21 66-67)

!h Stray bomb caused by typo in coordinate digit (R 21 70,71,73);

Sf Discussion of the risks of remotely controlling airliners to prevent hostile takeovers (R 21 68-69); tamperproof autopilot (R 24 60)

SP Joke e-mail seemingly from bin Laden reportedly landed its recipient in jail, but the details were in dispute (R 21 68-70)

+ Role of amateur (ham) radio communications after land-line and cellular comms failed (R 21 68-71)

!ih Friendly fire in December 2002 caused by Special Forces GPS battery changeover resetting Taliban target confirmation to its own location!!! (S 27 3:5, R 21 98)

Sm RISKS discussion of earlier World Trade Center problems (R 21 67) and lessons of 7 WTC (R 21 80)

S The Web Never Forgets, foiling attempts to remove info later thought to be sensitive (R 21 80)

SHA Airport security: can you trust a "trusted traveler"? (S 27 3:, R 22 03)

SPfh No-fly terrorist blacklist snares peace activists, a nun, etc. (R 22 29); More on the No-Fly List (R 22 74); people named David Nelson turned away by CAPPS II pattern matching: at least 6 in LA area, 18 in Oregon, 4 in Alaska (R 22 80); in Austin, David Nelson planned to fly as D. Austin Nelson (R 22 81)

SPhi Travelers continue to struggle with wrongful Watch List matches (R 24 05)

SHfh "Homeland Insecurity": technology not foolproof; subsequent discussion on Probabilistic Risk Assessment, firearms in the cockpit, and Computer Assisted Passenger Screening (R 22 20-21,23-24,27); Real risks of cyberterrorism, related to disaster planning; large-scale events; SCADA systems, even if not Internetted; nonpublication of Gartner/ NavalWarCollege study; beware of fear-mongering (R 22 22-23,27)

SH SCADA systems hacked (R 24 44, S 31 6:28)

Sf Unexpected consequences of airport random screening: 20selected instead of 2% (R 24 36, S 31 6:28)

Sfhi Vancouver Int'l Airport locked down due to training software phantom bag (R 24 44, S 31 6:27-28)

SH Richard Clarke on Homeland Security, airport ID checks, etc. (R 23 78-79; S 30 3:30); "High-tech passports are not working" (R 23 73; S 30 3:31)

$SH Thieves sabotage Dutch telecom infrastructure (R 24 43, S 31 6:28)

S Digital retouching of photos to make a propaganda point (R 24 36, S 31 6:28)

..... Cybersecurity

SHfi User security, system security, DMCA, etc.: Edupage neatly juxtaposes two items: Richard Clarke (at Black Hat in Las Vegas) urges hackers to find and report bugs; HP uses DMCA against bug finders (R 22 20); FTC uses Dewie the Turtle to promote computer security through hard-to-guess passwords, antivirus software and computer firewalls, just like President's Critical Infrastructure Protection Board - which puts the onus on users, not on the need for secure systems (R 22 27); reminiscent of Bert the Turtle from Duck and Cover (R 22 28); relying solely on users to tighten security is misguided (R 22 33); attempts to rescind parts of DMCA by Rick Boucher and by Zoe Lofgren (R 22 28)

Shi Education and the National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace: a critical review of the second version of the national cyberstrategy (Rob Slade, R 22 63)

S?H?f? Ptech raided for suspected al Qaeda link? No, financial crime investigation, says U.S. attorney; their software is used by Government agencies, but possibilities of Trojan horses reportedly unfounded (R 22 42)

$ Liability risks from cyberterrorism (S 27 6:12, R 22 18)

SP American style cyberwarfare: what are the risks? (S 27 6:13, R 22 18,22)

S Federal agencies get failing grades on cybersecurity; half D or worse (R 23 73; S 30 3:30-31)

*S Security? Nuclear plants don't need no stinkin' security! (R 23 78; S 30 3:31)

*SHfff Nation's Critical Infrastructure Vulnerable to Cyber Attack (U.S. House Science Committee, R 24 04; S 30 6:20-21)

*(SV) One radio frequency for emergency services? (R 24 04) No, (R 24 05,07)

[See also the sections on security and privacy.]

..... Natural disasters

hi Risks ignored: Hurricane Katrina - predictions before and response after (R 24 04; S 30 6:20)

!*m Katrina's telecom damage tops $400 Million; repairs may take months. [Of course, that is just the tip of an enormous iceberg.] (R 24 03)

*hi Katrina victims required to use Microsoft Internet Explorer (R 24 05,06)

SHP Health records of Hurricane Katrina evacuees go online; privacy implications (R 24 04; S 30 6:23-24)

1.3 Space

..... Manned/Womanned [Peopled?] Space Exploration:

!!$$Vrfh Shuttle Challenger explosion, 7 killed. [Removed booster sensors might have permitted early computer detection of leak?] [28Jan1986] (S 11 2) [Probably not? See Paul Ceruzzi, Beyond the Limits - Computers Enter the Space Age, MIT Press, 1989, Appendix.] Whistle-blower Roger Boisjoly fired by Morton Thiokol after reporting O-ring problem that led to loss of the Challenger (R 5 78, R 5 80, and R 12 40)

!mhi NASA cultural failures on STS-107 leading to loss of the Columbia shuttle (reminiscent of the Challenger loss); final data unrecoverable; more discussion (R 22 54); Over-reliance on PowerPoint leads to simplistic thinking, linked to Columbia shuttle accident analysis and disaster (23 07)

* Mercury astronauts forced into manual reentry? (S 8 3)

$f STS-1 1st Space Shuttle Columbia backup launch-computer synch problem. See Jack Garman, "The bug heard 'round the world" (S 6 5:3-10) Oct. 1981. I summarize this in my Computer-Related Risks book, page 20-21, along with several of the following cases.

*f STS-2 shuttle simulation: bug found in jettisoning an SRB (S 8 3)

*f STS-2 shuttle operational simulation: tight loop upon cancellation of an attempted abort; required manual override (S 7 1)

*Vf STS-6 shuttle bugs in live Dual Mission software precluded aborts (S 11 1)

*m STS-9 Columbia return delayed by multiple computer malfunctions (S 9 1)

*f STS-16 Discovery landing gear - correlated faults (S 10 3:10)

*if STS-18 Shuttle Discovery positioned upside down; mirror to reflect laser beam from Mauna Kea site aimed upward (+10,023 miles), not downward (+10,023 feet) (S 10 3:10)

*$ STS-20 Two-day delay of Discovery launch: backup computer outage (NY Times 26 Aug 1985); Syncom 4 satellite failure as well (S 10 5)

$f SRS-36 Atlantis launch delayed [25Feb1990]; "bad software" in backup tracking computer system, but no details given. (S 15 2)

h Shuttle Discovery shutdown procedure for two computers reversed (S 16 1)

*hife STS-24 Columbia near-disaster, liquid oxygen drained mistakenly just before launch, computer output misread (S 11 5)

*f Columbia orbiter suddenly rotates, due to telemetry noise (S 15 3)

$m Columbia delayed by computer, interface, sensors; then navigation (S 16 3)

$f Shuttle Endeavour computer miscomputes rendezvous with Intelsat satellite; nearly identical values interpreted as identical; those SW problems force spec changes (AviatWkSpT 29May/8Jun1992, S 17 3 duplic S 17 4)

* Shuttle computer problems, 1981-1985; 700 computer/avionics anomalies logged; landing gear problems in STS-6 and -13; multiple computer crashes in STS-9, cutting in backup system would have been fatal; thermocouple failure in STS-19 near disaster (S 14 2)

m Atlantis spacecraft computer problem fixed in space (S 14 5)

$f Untested for change, SW delays shuttle launch; 3-min on-line fix (S 15 3)

$(m/f?)V Shuttle Atlantis launch scrubbed: "faulty engine computer" (S 16 4)

$*V Columbia launch scrubbed at T-3sec 22Mar93, leaky valve (S 18 3:A14)

$*V STS-56 Discovery launch scrubbed at T-11sec 5Apr93, main propulsion system high-point bleed valve open-indicator went to off, closed-indicator did not switch to on. Indicator problem? program error? (S 18 3:A14)

h Discovery SRB recovered with missing pair of pliers (S 18 3:A14)

*h Discovery shuttle tail speed-brake gears were installed backwards in 1984, not discovered until 2004, 30 flights later! (R 23 29; S 29 5:13)

fm Channel blocked, Discovery exhausts storage for ozone data (S 18 3:A14)

H Experimental Space Shuttle e-mail address divulged, bombarded (S 16 4)

m Woodpeckers delay shuttle launch (S 20 5:8)

*m Docking problem aboard Soviet space station Mir (S 15 5)

m Mir Space Station computer problems add to difficulties; main computer failed during docking attempt, 19 Aug 1997 (R 19 31,32), with detailed analysis by Dennis Newkirk (R 19 33)

m Mir computer failure affects steering; replacement computer fails to load (end of May 1998, just before Discovery launch) (R 19 78)

*$d GAO reports on NASA Space Station: increased safety risks, costs (S 17 4)

* Risks of junk in space much greater than previously thought (S 17 4)

*f$ Potential software nightmare for International Space Station, with considerable discussion (R 19 49-51)

*$f International Space Station software problems in 2001 predicted in 1997 (S 26 4:4, R 21 37): see (R 19 49-51)

deh$ Space Shuttle launch-pad test of redesigned fuel tak omitted; problem of test-induced failure (R 24 28)

..... Space Exploration, Satellites, Probes, Others:

$f Hubble Space Telescope problems, soaring costs, missed deadlines, reduced goals, etc. (S 15 2); sensors misdirected because of wrong sign on precession in star data; antenna # 2 limited by misplaced cable, #1 limited because software had only one limit stop, same for both (S 15 3) No system test. 1mm error in monitor program of mirror polisher (S 15 5) See M.M. Waldrop, Science 249, 17Aug1990, pp.735-736.

Vf/m Hubble Space Telescope antenna swing causes shutdown (S 17 1)

fh More Hubble SW: misloaded ephemeris table, bad macro (S 18 1:24)

$fhV $150M Intelsat 6 comm satellite failed; booster wiring error, payload in wrong bay; miscommun. between electricians and programmers (S 15 3)

$mV Canadian TeleSat Aniks die: solar coronal hole electron flux (S 19 2:3) Anik E-2 control restored, but with shorter life ($203M asset) (S 20 2:11)

$(f/m?)V Taurus rocket plunges into Indian Ocean, destroying Orbital Imaging satellie, NASA QuikTOMS, and cremated remains of 50 people (S 27 1:8, R 21 68)

hif NASA's DART spacecraft smashes into satellite; faulty nav data (R 24 29, S 31 5:16)

$fhe Backward gravity switches: Genesis slammed to Earth after parachutes failed (R 24 33, S 31 5:16)

fmV SOHO Mission Interruption Preliminary Status and Background Report documents apparently unconnected multiple failures that caused the satellite to lose control (R 19 87)

fhV Final report on the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft failure: software flaw and improper command (R 19 90); mis-identification of a faulty gyroscope, staffing problems, inadequate training, ambitious schedule, unreviewed procedure changes, etc. (R 19 90, 94); contact finally reestablished. (S 24 1:31)

hm 5 printers off-line or jammed, Voyager 1 data lost over weekend (S 15 5)

f Voyager 2 software faults at launch, 20 Aug 1977 (S 14 6)

V$ Titan 34D, Nike Orion, Delta-178 failures follow Challenger (S 11 3)

V$* Titan 4 rocket test-stand SRB explosion; simulation missed failure mode (R 12 09, S 16 4)

V(m/f?) Final Titan 4A launch explodes with Vortex satellite; total cost over $1B, Aug 1998 (R 19 91, S 24 1:32)

mV Titan 4B leaves missile warning satellite in useless orbit (R 20 36)

Vm/f? Titan 4B with Milstar communications satellite separates four hours early, resulting in a useless low orbit, 30 Apr 1999 (S 24 4:26, R 19 36)

Vhm$ 6 successive Theater High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) failures, including three typos; then a "success" (R 20 43,45); Titan 4B failure (R 20 39) blamed on shifted decimal point in upper-stage software (R 20 45)

Vf,f Delta III launch ends after 71 seconds due to software flaw; two weeks later, Delta III leaves Loral Orion comm satellite in useless low orbit 4 May 1999 (R 20 38)

Vmfh Centaur/Milstar upper-stage failure due to attitude-control system software (R 20 49); roll-rate filter constant .1 factor (-0.1992476, not -1.992476) (R 20 57,59)

Vm$ Private imaging satellite Ikonos 1 disappears 8 minutes after launch (S 24 4:26, R 20 36); loss blamed on an electrical problem that prevented the aerodynamic payload cover from coming off. Subsequent Ikonos launched successfully (R 20 60):

f Terra spacecraft navigation software problems (S 25 3:18, R 20 78)

V$(m?f?) Two satellite failures (R 21 19, S 26 2:5)

Vm/f? Russian rocket blows 12 Globalstar satellites (S 24 1:32, R 19 95)

V$(f?m?) Computer blamed for Russian rocket crash (R 21 18, S 26 2:5)

$fmmm Fascinating historical case recently reported of Russian KORD N-1 rocket-engine shutdown system failures, 1969, 1971, 1973; lots of lessons to be learned (R 21 53)

h Boeing space station tanks accidentally taken to Huntsville dump (R 20 83)

Vh Space Station endangered by NASA flight controllers' blunder in maneuvering around space junk; predicted distance also way off (R 20 46-47)

SH Space Station Problem Reporting Database hacked (R 20 47-48)

$Vmf Space Station risks (R 21 14, S 26 2:5)

f "Truncation error" found in GPS code on Int'l Space Station (S 27 6:6, R 22 11)

$de NASA space station undergoing software repairs for 500 of 1000 known flaws (R 23 46; S 30 1:10)

V$ehf Canaveral Rocket lost; wrong key hit in loading guidance SW (S 16 4)

df NASA finds problems in EOSDIS Earth Observing System (EOS) spacecraft flight operations software development, expected to delay launch (R 19 67)

m+ Apollo 11 lunar module, pen used to replace circuit breaker (S 18 3:A14)

Vr* Lightning hits Apollo 12. "Major system upsets, minor damage". See article by Uman and Krider, Science 27 Oct 1989, pp. 457-464. (S 15 1)

V$m Lightning changed Atlas-Centaur program (51 sec). $160M lost (S 12 3, 15 1)

@V*$m Lightning hits launch pad, launches 3 missiles at Wallops Island (S 12 3)

V$f Mariner 1 Venus probe: HW fault plus programmer missed superscript bar in `R dot bar sub n'. See Paul Ceruzzi, Beyond the Limits - Flight Enters the Computer Age, Smithsonian, 1989, Appendix (S 14 5). (Earlier reports had suggested DO I=1.10 bug (see next item) or a garbled minus sign (or hyphen.) (S 8 5, 11 5, S 13 1)

$f Project Mercury had a FORTRAN syntax error such as DO I=1.10 (not 1,10). The comma/period interchange was detected in software used in earlier suborbital missions, and would have been more serious in subsequent orbital and moon flights. Noted by Fred Webb. (S 15 1)

*f Gemini V 100mi landing err, prog ignored orbital motion around sun (S 9 1)

V$f Atlas-Agena software missing hyphen; $18.5M rocket destroyed (S 10 5)

@VSH Lauffenberger convicted of logic bombing GD's Atlas rocket DB (S 17 1)

Vm Navy Atlas rocket places satellite in worthless orbit (S 18 3:A14)

V$f Aries with $1.5M payload lost: wrong resistor in guidance system; (S 11 5)

V*f TDRS relay satellite locked on wrong target (S 10 3:10-11)

Vm AT&T Telstar 401 satellite failure (S 22 4:26, R 18 76)

de Satellite system outage hits Associated Press (R 21 04; S 26 1:18)

Vm Ariane 5 test problems: motor failures, nitrogen leak (S 20 5:9, R 18 27,28)

V$f New Ariane 5 failure (S 21 5:15); More on Ariane 5: conversion from 64-bit floating to 16-bit signed caused Operand Error (R 18 27-29,45,47); Note: Matra made software for Ariane5 and Taipei subway system (S 21 5:15); Incidentally, Robert L. Baber, Univ. Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, suggests you browse http://www.cs.wits.ac.za/ bob/ariane5.htm - showing how a simple correctness proof could have avoided this problem. (R 18 89-91)

*Mm Cosmic rays hit TDRS, Challenger comm halved for 14hrs [8Oct1984](S 10 1)

$Mr Sunspot activity: 1979 Skylab satellite dragged out of orbit (S 13 4)

hM 1989 pulsar discovery now attributed to TV camera interference (S 16 3)

V$hfe Soviet Phobos I Mars probe lost (Sep 1988): faulty SW update (S 13 4); cost to USSR 300M rubles (Aviation Week, 13 Feb 89); disorientation broke radio link, discharged solar batteries before reacquisition. [Science, 16Sep1988] More on Phobos 1 and 2 computer failures (S 14 6)

V$? Soviets lose contact with Phobos II Mars probe. Automatic reorientation of antenna back toward earth failed. (S 14 2)

V$f 1971 Soviet Mars orbiter failed after "unforgivable" SW bug; new info (S 16 3)

f Assessment of predictions on the Russian Mars Probe crash site (S 22 2:22)

V$fm 1993 Mars Observer lost entering Mars orbit (S 18 4:11; R 14 87,89; 15 01); loss blamed on fuel line leak (Washington Post, 10 Jan 1994)

f What really happened on Mars Rover Pathfinder? David Wilner on VxWorks system resets and preemptive priority scheduling, and Glenn Reeves - first-hand commentary must be read (R 19 49,50,53,54) and further discussion of priority inversion (R 19 50,53,54,56)

fe Spirit Rover failure on Mars: software upload to delete files failed, file space exceeded, caused reboot with insufficient file space, causing reboot loop (R 23 14,15, see final summary in R 23 24); DOS file system continual growth design oversight (R 23 51) ["Spirit was willing, but its flash was weak." Jim Griffith, R 23 17]

dfe More on NASA Spirit and MS-DOS/VxWorks FAT system (R 23 51,52; S 30 1:10)

V$fm Mars Climate Orbiter lost, dipped too close to Mars due to English/Metric confusion; Mars Polar Lander reprogrammed to report back directly on 3 Dec 1999 (R 20 59-62); Mars Lander then lost entirely on landing attempt, search abandoned after a month. Crash finally blamed on software shutting engines off prematurely (R 20 84,86)

+ Mars Odyssey probe maneuver braked successfully in orbit, 22 Oct 2001 (S 27 1:8, R 21 71)

m$ Japan's Mars probe Nozomi goes off course (R 23 07; S 29 2:9)

m+/- Pioneer 10 still alive, sort of, 30 years later (R 22 44)

f+ Cassini-Huygens mission to land on Saturn's moon, Titan succeeded; software flaw detected and fixed (R 23 65,67; S 30 2:17)

$h Loss of data from the Huygens Probe: one comm channel not turned on (R 23 67; S 30 3:22)

$f/h? NASA HESSI shake test 10 times too strong, damaging spacecraft (S 25 3:15, R 20 86)

$f Sea Launch rocket drops satellite into Pacific Ocean (S 25 3:15, R 20 84,86); single line of code allowed launch with second-stage valve open, causing helium leak (R 20 97)

Vfm$ Electronics startup transient opened telescope cover prematurely, destroying Wide Field Infrared Explorer (WIRE) spacecraft (R 20 47-48)

V$m $1.4B Galileo antenna jammed, en route to Jupiter (S 18 4:11)

V$m Landsat 6 vanishes; space junk tracked by mistake (S 19 1:10)

V$f Magellan space software problems: serious design flaw fixed (S 14 5) Nonatomic setting of scheduled and active flags interrupted. See H.S.F. Cooper, Jr., The Evening Star: Venus Observed, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1993. Discussion in J.M. Rushby, SRI-CSL-95-01.

$m Magellan spacecraft manual guidance overcomes faulty computer chip (S 15 2)

V*h Soyuz Spacecraft reentry failed, based on wrong descent program, (orbiting module had been jettisoned, precluding redocking) (S 13 4)

*fh Software bug in autopilot on return sends Soyuz off course (R 22 72,74,78; S 28 4:6, S 28 6:7)

V$fe Viking had a misaligned antenna due to a faulty code patch (S 9 5)

*f Ozone hole over South Pole observed, rejected by SW for 8 years (S 11 5)

? Global-warming data confusion (R 19 91-92)

@Vfm Channel blocked, Discovery runs out of storage for ozone data (S 18 3:A14)

* Continuing trend toward expert systems in NASA (S 14 2)

f SW bug on TOPEX/Poseidon spacecraft "roll momentum wheel saturated" alarm aborted maneuver. It was recoverable, however. (S 18 1:24)

1.4 Defense

V!hhh U.S. F-15s take out U.S. Black Hawks over Iraq in Friendly Fire; 26 killed, attributed to coincidence of many human errors. (Other cases of friendly fire included 24% of those killed in the Gulf War.) (S 19 3:4) According to a seemingly reliable private correspondent who has read through at least 62 volumes of investigation reports, the public was seriously misled on this situation and there was a considerable cover-up. For now, contact me if you want further background.

!!$rhi Iran Air 655 Airbus shot down by USS Vincennes' missiles (290 dead); Human error plus confusing and incomplete Aegis interface (S 13 4); Commentary on Tom Wicker article on Vincennes and SDI (S 13 4); Aegis user interface changes recommended; altitude, IFF problems (S 14 1); Analysis implicates Aegis displays and crew (Aerospace America, Apr 1989); Discussion of further intrinsic limitations (Matt Jaffe, S 14 5, R 8 74); USS Sides Cmdr David Carlson questions attack on Iranian jet (S 14 6)

!!$rfe Iraqi Scud hit Dhahran barracks (28 dead, 98 wounded); not detected by Patriot defenses; clock drifted .36 sec. in 4-day continuous siege, due to SW flaw, preventing real-time tracking. Spec called for aircraft speeds, not mach 6, only 14-hour continuous performance, not 100. Patched SW arrived via air 1 day later (S 16 3; AWST 10Jun91 p.25-26); Shutdown and reboot might have averted Scud disaster (S 16 4) Patriot missiles misled by `accidental' decoys; T.A. Postol report (S 17 2); summary of clock drift, etc. GAO/IMTEC-92-26, February 1992 (S 17 2); reprisals against Postol for his whistleblowing (R 13 32, S 17 2); Army downgrades success to about 10% rather than 80% [4 out of 47 hits] (R 13 37, S 17 2, 17 3); A retrospective analysis (in Italian) by Diego Latella (R 24 41, S 31 6:26)

GAO report documents clock problem in detail (S 17 3) 24-bit and 48-bit representations of .1 used interchangeably (S 18 1:25)

$(m/f?) Two of three Patriot missiles failed (R 21 92)

!m/f/h Friendly Fire: Patriot software again a concern: shoots down British Tornado GR4 near Iraq/Kuwait border (R 22 65-67); more discussion (R 22 67-70); confusions with numbers (R 22 69-70); Aegis (R 22 71)

!!$hV Russian airliner shot down by Ukrainian missile in errant test; earlier Ukrainian missile test killed four people in an apartment block (S 27 1:8, R 21 69)

*f Patriot system fails again (S 25 3:18, R 20 85)

!mhi Report on Patriot missile friendly fire over Iraq on 2 Apr 2003; plane mistaken for hostile missile (R 23 72; S 30 3:23)

*f Software snafu slowed critical data during Iraq raid (S 24 3:25, R 20 23)

!!V$h? Sheffield sunk during Falklands war, 20 killed. Call to London hindered antimissile defenses on same frequency? [AP 16May1986](R 2 53, S 11 3) An "official" version disputes this conclusion - see "The Royal Navy and the Falkland Islands" by David Brown, written at the request of the Royal Navy. Page 159 of that report discusses another problem with the Sea Wolf system, occurring several days later.

@SVf$ Royal Navy battle software unsafe; whistle-blower fired (R 23 56)

!V$ British Falklands helicopter downed by British missile. 4 dead (S 12 1)

!fi Software problem in Advanced Field Artillery Tactical Data System kills soldiers in training incident; unspecified altitude defaults to zero (S 27 6:10, R 22 13)

!!V$f USS Liberty: 3 independent warning messages to withdraw were all lost; 34 killed, more wounded. Intelligence implications as well. (S 11 5)

!Vhfi? Stark unpreparedness against Iraqi Exocets blamed on officers, not technology, but technology was too dangerous to use automatically (S 12 3); Captain blamed deficient radar equipment; official report says radar detected missiles, misidentified them. (S 13 1)

Vrf$ USS Yorktown Aegis missile cruiser dead in water for 2.75 hours after unchecked divide by zero in application on Windows NT Smart Ship technology (S 24 1:31, R 19 88-94); letter to Scientific American: it was an explicit decision to "stimulate" [sic] machinery casualties? (S 24 4:26, R 20 37)

$hfe Navy software problems in upgrading software on battle cruisers USS Hue City and USS Vicksburg (S 23 5:25, R 19 86-87)

$SVrfe Navy to use Windows 2000 on aircraft carriers (R 20 95)

fid Not-so-smart weapons in Kosovo (R 21 01; S 26 1:18)

*Vf 5th Bell V22 Osprey crash: assembly error reversed polarity in gyro (S 16 4); Bell V-22 Osprey - correct sensor outvoted (S 17 1)

!V$fmh Another Osprey crash April 2000 kills 19 (R 21 14, S 26 2:5); falsified maintenance records; yet another crash 11 Dec 2000 killing 4 Marines, blamed on hydraulics failure, software failure, and incompletely tested backup (Ladkin in R 21 21, 21 24, see also R 21 25,33-36, with more detailed analysis in R 21 38 and 41; summarized in S 26 4:3)

!fmH More on the Osprey (S 26 6:8): software problem identified, but downplayed in Blue Ribbon report (R 21 41); 8 Marine officers charged with falsifying maintenance records (R 21 60)

!V$fmh? Two U.S. F-15 jets disappeared over Scotland, 26 Mar 2001; U.S. Army RC-12 reconnaissance plane crashed near Nuremberg, killing two pilots - same day; German military helicopter crashed in Peppen, Germany, on 27 Mar 2001, killing four (R 21 31; S 26 4:4)

*hi Sea King helicopter crashes onto Canadian HMCS Iroquois: fire control system deployment failure (R 22 76, S 28 6:8)

Vfhi Predator UAV crash, 25 Apr 2006: console locked up switchover erroneous, cut fuel (R 24 29, S 31 5:17)

*h Swiss radar controller jokingly labeling helicopter as al Qaeda almost leads to French fighter intercept of civilian craft (R 22 79, S 28 6:7)

$ Expensive Australian Navy avionics development failure in Super Seasprite helicopters (R 24 29, S 31 5:17)

*H Fraudulent test SW in Phalanx anti-missile system, Standard missile (S 13 4)

Hhf West German flies Helsinki-Moscow through Soviet Air Defense (S 12 3)

Hhf Soviet Air Defense penetrated again by amateur pilot (S 15 5)

$h Russian missile-site power outage due to unpaid utility bill? (S 20 1:17)

**f Returning space junk detected as missiles. Daniel Ford, The Button, p.85

** WWMCCS false alarms triggered scrams 3-6 Jun 1980 (S 5 3, Ford pp 78-84)

** DSP East satellite sensors overloaded by Siberian gas-field fire (Daniel Ford p 62); Ford summarized (S 10 3:6-7)

**f BMEWS at Thule detected rising moon as incoming missiles [5Oct1960] (S 8 3). See E.C. Berkeley, The Computer Revolution, pp. 175-177, 1962.

** SAC/NORAD: 50 false alerts in 1979 (S 5 3), incl. a simulated attack whose outputs accidentally triggered a live scramble [9Nov1979] (S 5 3)

*** Serious false 2200-missile-alert incident 3 Jun 1980 described by Stansfield Turner, mentioning thousands of other false alarms (S 23 1:12, R 19 43)

*fmh Russian early-warning system close to retaliatory strike: Norwegian weather rocket mistaken for American Trident (R 19 85)

m Report from Kommersant Vlast on Serbukov-15 base false detection of ICBMs en route to Moscow on 25 Sep 1983; human intervention stopped retaliation; system allegedly misbehaved due to radiation (R 19 97)

*$VfM Libyan bomb raid accidental damage by "smart bomb" (S 11 3) F-111 downed by defense-jamming electromagnetic interference (S 14 2) More on U.S. radio self-interference in 1986 Libyan attack (S 15 3)

* Iraq using British Stonefish smart mines, with "sensitive" SW (S 15 5)

*fh Discussion of US/UK smart bombs missing targets in Iraq (R 21 26-28)

*SP Britain bugged radio equipment sold to Iraq (S 16 4)

*SP Trojan horse implants in DoD weapons (S 16 4)

*SP Trojan horse inserted in locally netted printer sold to Iraq? (S 17 2)

*Vm Arabian heat causing problems with US weapons computers (S 15 5)

*V$m Lightning hits launch pad, launches 3 missiles at Wallops Island (S 12 3)

* Frigate George Philip fired missile in opposite direction (S 8 5)

*h? Unarmed Soviet missile crashed in Finland. Wrong flight path? (S 10 2)

*Vf 1st Tomahawk cruise missile failure: program erased [8Dec1986] (S 11 2)

*Vm 2nd Tomahawk failure; bit dropped by HW triggered abort (S 11 5, 12 1)

f/m? CALCM cruise missile software bugs revisited (S 22 2:22)

hi Accidental launch of live Canadian Navy missile: color-code mixup (S 22 1:18)

*$rf Program, model flaws implicated in Trident 2 failures; self-destruct 4 seconds into one flight caused by unexpected turbulence before leaving the water (S 14 6, R 9 12)

*VrmM RF interference caused Black Hawk helicopter hydraulic failure (S 13 1); More on Black Hawk EMP problems and claimed backwards pin (R 17 39,42)

*VSM RF interference forces RAF to abandon ILS in poor weather (R 21 17)

f Reliability risks in USB Army 'Land Warrior' soldier-of-the-future (R 21 27)

*f Sgt York (DIVAD) radar/anti-aircraft gun - software problems (S 11 5)

$f Software flaw in submarine-launched ballistic missile system (S 10 5)

V$f AEGIS failures on 6 of 17 targets attributed to software (S 11 5)

Vf WWMCCS computers' comm reboot failed by blocked multiple logins (S 11 5)

$ WWMCCS modernization difficulties (S 15 1)

*$f Gulf War DSN 20-30% call completion persists 3 mos. until SW patch (S 17 4)

$f Armored Combat Earthmover 18,000 hr tests missed serious problems (S 11 5)

$rfi Stinger missile too heavy to carry, noxious to user (S 11 5)

**V$$rS Strategic Defense Initiative - debate over feasibility (S 10 5); Pentagon says SDI complexity comparable to nuclear reactors (Newsweek, S 17 3) See Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War, Frances FitzGerald, Simon & Schuster, 2000 for a fine retrospective analysis.

$d SDI costs, budget issues, risks discussed (S 17 4)

$ StarWars satellite 2nd stage photo missed - unremoved lens cap (S 14 2)

f StarWars FireFly laser-radar accelerometer wired backwards (S 19 2:2)

*f "Faith-based" National Missile Defense system discussed (S 26 6:6, R 21 41,43,45); two of the most recent three tests failed, and the other had radar failing to indicate "success" (R 21 53); all three reportedly had GPS-based homing beacons to aid the interception! (R 21 63)

fff Alistair Cooke on National Missile Defense: among other risks, crude wobblers are harder to detect than sophisticated missiles (R 21 65)

-[VSfmde?] StarWars to be exempt from oversight, reporting, and testing requirements? (R 22 59)

h StarWars missile-defense test failure [11 Dec 2002] linked to single chip malfunction (R 22 68; S 28 4:6)

$f Missile interceptor shut down before it could leave its silo [15 Dec 2004]; too many missed messages (R 23 65-66; S 30 2:17)

$ Another missile interceptor test doesn't leave its silo [14 Feb 2005]; timing problem in ground support? 6th failure in 9 attempts (R 23 72; S 30 3:22-23)

$f Software safeguards prevent Solar Sail from separation? (S 26 6:8, R 21 55)

$* 1.7M resistors recalled. Used in F-15, Patriot, radar, comm aircr. (S 16 3)

$hd DoD criticized for software development problems (S 13 1)

$df Future Combat Systems procurement and development problems: GAO report considers JTRS, WIN-T, SOSCOE (R 23 93; S 30 4:19-20)

* US Navy radar jammers certified despite software errors, failed tests (S 17 3)

$ USAF software contractors score poorly on selections (S 14 1)

$d ADATS tank-based anti-copter missile system development problems, $5B overrun, unreliability, ... (S 16 1)

$d British air defense system ICCS SW causes ten-year delay (S 15 5)

*Sf US Army Maneuver Control System vulnerable to software sabotage (S 15 5)

$d US-supplied Saudi Peace Shield air defense software problems (S 15 5)

$d Serious software problems in UK Trident nuclear warhead control (S 15 5)

*m Russian nuclear warheads armed by computer malfunction (R 19 14)

*h Outdated codes made US missiles useless until annual inspection (S 14 5)

S Classified data in wrong systems at Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant (S 16 4)

SPh Classified disks lost by Naval commanders on London train (R 17 54)

hi? Listing of US Navy safety problems in two-week period (S 15 1)

Vm Rain shuts down Army computers; lightning effects and prevention (S 15 1)

fh Army Automated Time and Attendance Production System (ATAAPS) loss of data for 10 days (R 20 97)

* Role of e-mail, Internet, FAX in defeating 1991 Soviet coup attempt (S 16 4); (S) power surges used to fry faxes and computers in countermeasure (S 16 4)

* Russian auto-response missile system still in place in Oct 1993 (S 19 1:10)

!!*V(f/h?) Russian nuclear submarine explosion (missile test awry) kills crew of over 100 in Barents Sea, 13 Oct 2000. Also, Izvestia reported over 507 sub crew members had died previously. (R 21 01)

*Vh Russian nuclear sub near-disaster due to utility power shutoff? (R 17 42,44)

!mh Kursk submarine sinking: 23 crewmen reached the floating rescue capsule, but it failed to disengage - it had never been tested (R 22 11)

*fV Russian remote-controlled rescue submarines failed to respond in time of urgent need due to software flaw (R 24 01, S 30 6:17); British sub comes to the rescue to unsnarl the Russian sub

!! Analysis of U.S. peacetime submarine accidents http://freeweb.pdq.net/gstitz/Peace.htm

!*hi The crash of the USS San Francisco into an undersea mountain at a depth of 525 feet (8 Jan 2005) has been attributed to use of the wrong chart, although other charts on board showed the seamount. (R 24 01)

Vfm Software disaster leaves new Australian submarine unfit; wide range of pervasive hardware/software failures reported (R 20 48)

1.5 Military Aviation

!!V$f Handley Page Victor tailplane broke, crew lost. 3 independent test methods (wind-tunnel model didn't scale, resonance tests, low-speed flight tests), 3 independent flaws, masking flutter problem (S 11 2-12, correction S 11 3)

!Vf Harrier ejection-seat parachute system accidentally deployed, blew through the canopy, but without ejecting the seat and pilot, who was killed (S 13 3)

f Harrier targets police radar gun; fortunately not armed! (S 21 4:14)

*V(h/m?) Japanese pilot accidentally ejected into the Pacific (S 19 4:12)

*V$h British Harrier accidentally bombs British carrier, Ark Royal (S 17 3) 5 injured. Auto aim-off SW blamed for the Ark Royal bombing (S 18 1:23) Correction noted Mar2001: it was a Royal Air Force Harrier GR3, not a Sea Harrier.

*V$f SAAB JAS 39 Gripen crash caused by flight control software (S 14 2, 14 5)

*V$fmhi 2nd JAS 39 Gripen crash 8Aug1993 blamed on pilot/technology (S 18 4:11); interface difficulties, complicated analysis (S 19 1:12)

*V$rf Software problems in B-1B terrain-following radar, flight-control; electronic countermeasures (stealth) jam plane's own signals (S 12 2); array antennas and effects on mobile phones can defeat stealth cloak of invisibility (R 21 49)

*V$h B-1B swept wing punctures gas tank on the ground; blamed on low lubricant; problem found in 70 of 80 B-1Bs inspected (S 14 2)! No computer sensors?

$fd Stealth development problems including SW miscalculation in wiring (S 15 1)

$f UHB demonstrator flight aborted by software error at 12,000 feet (S 12 3)

*V$fh F-22 prototype crash first blamed on computer SW, then on pilot (S 17 3)

$*Vhif $133M F/A-22 Raptor air-superiority fighter crashed 11 seconds after takeoff, 20 Dec 2004; momentary power loss interpreted as switch to test mode; all three rate-sensor assemblies failed, with no warning; redesign in progress (R 23 90; S 30 4:19)

*V$f F-18 crash due to missing exception cond. Pilot OK (S 6 2, more SEN 11 2)

*Vhi F-18 missile thrust while clamped, plane lost 20,000 feet (S 8 5)

fm F/A-18 jets have a severe brake failure problem due to thin electrical cable (R 24 01,02)

*f F-16 simulation: virtual plane (or perhaps the apparent display horizon?) reportedly flipped over whenever it crossed equator (S 5 2); More on the upside-down F-16 bug: it was reportedly caught in simulation: the bug apparently led to a deadlock over whether to do a left or right roll to return to upright, and the software froze (S 9 5). This case is still one that still needs definitive resolution after all these years. Either (1) this was a flaw in the avionics software that was detected by the simulation, or (2) perhaps it was an error in the simulation program itself rather than the avionics software. Does anyone still alive know for sure? [I mentioned this again in connection with the F-22A Raptors, whose computers could not correctly cross the International Date Line (R 24 58). PGN, Mar 2007]

$Vhi F-16 landing gear raised while plane on runway; bomb problems (S 11 5)

*Vfh Unstallable F-16 stalls; novice pilot found unprotected maneuver (S 14 2)

$d USAF ECM systems: software 2 years late for F-16 and F-111 (S 15 5)

*hif Accidental shootdown of one Japanese F-15 by another (R 17 65, R 18 18); controversy continues (R 18 41,57)

*V$f? F-14 off aircraft carrier into North Sea; due to software? (S 8 3)

*V$f F-14 lost to uncontrollable spin, traced to tactical software (S 9 5)

Vf YF-23 fly-by-wire prototype attempted tail corrections while taxiing. Same problem on first X-29. (AFTI/F-16 had weight-on-wheels switch.) (S 16 3) AFTI/F-16 DFCS redundancy management: ref to J.Rushby SRI-CSL-91-3 (S 16 3)

+- Historical review of X-15 and BOMARC reliability experiences (S 17 3)

$ Systems late, over budget (what's new?); C-17/B-1/STC/NORAD/ASJP (S 15 1)

V*$fd C-17 SW/HW problems documented in GAO report; 19 on-board computers, 80 microprocessors, six programming languages; complexity misassessed GAO: "The C-17 is a good example of how not to approach software development when procuring a major weapons system." (S 17 3) Chairman John F. McDonnell's reply (S 17 4)

f C-130 testbed uncovers 25-yr-old divide-by-zero bug in X-31 SW (S 16 3)

*Vmf X-31 crash, 19 Jan 1995 (R 17 45,46,47,60,62; 60=Pete Mellor)

V(f?) Unplanned 360-degree roll of NASA's X-38 in test (R 21 10)

*VM US missile-warning radar triggers accidental explosions in friendly aircraft; radar must be turned off when planes land! (S 14 2)

* AF PAVE PAWS radar can trigger ejection seats, fire extinguishers (S 15 1)

!$h 1988 RAF Tornados collided, killing 4; flying on same cassette! (S 15 3)

V$ef DarkStar unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) crash from software change, cost $39M (S 22 1:17-18)

$V(f?m?) Helios solar-powered remote-controlled flying wing with $10M fuel-cell system lost in Pacific after severe oscillations; previously had set altitude record of 100,000 feet (R 22 80, S 28 6:9)

mM? Air Force bombs Georgia - stray electromagnetic interference? (S 14 5, R 8 72)

*hme, etc. Navigation, GPS, and risks of flying (R 19 73,75,77); Implications of the U.S. Navy no longer teaching celestial navigation (R 19 75,77-79,81-82)

*$VSf GPS vulnerabilities need attention, with increasingly critical dependence on continuous functionality; see Dept of Transportation report (R 21 67)

- U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) proposes to withdraw all aeronautical data and products from public distribution (R 23 91)

*+/-? US Navy to drop paper charts in favor of global online digital database (R 24 01,02)

1.6 Commercial Aviation

hi Crew reliance on automation cited as "Top Risk" in future aircraft (R 21 35)

..... Commercial flight incidents

!!hi Comair 5191, 27 Aug 2006: Taxiway altered before Kentucky jet crash; only one controller on duty (R 24 41, S 31 6:22)

!!$V(hi?) Korean Airlines KAL 007 shot down killing 269 [1Sept1983]; autopilot on HDG 246 rather than INERTIAL NAV? (NYReview 25 Apr 85; SEN 9 1, 10 3:6, 12 1) or espionage mission? (R.W. Johnson, "Shootdown") Further information from Soviets, residual questions (S 16 3); Zuyev reports Arctic gales had knocked out key Soviet radars; Oberg believed Sakhalin air defense forces were "trigger-happy" following earlier US Navy aircraft overflight incursions [Reuters 2Jan1993]; Analysis of recent articles on KAL 007 (Ladkin, R 18 44)

!!Vfe Korean Airlines KAL 901 accident in Guam, killing 225 of 254; worldwide bug discovered in barometric altimetry in Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) (S 23 1:11, R 19 37-38)

!!Vm Alaska Airlines flight 261, 31 Jan 2000, dove into Pacific Ocean after jackscrew failure in stabilizer assembly; hearing results show loss of paper trail (R 21 15)

!!V(m?h?) TWA Flight 800 missile-test accident hypothesis causing near-empty fuel-tank explosion off Long Island widely circulated in Internet e-mail, causing considerable flap. Missile theory officially discredited. Minireview of James Sander's The Downing of TWA Flight 800 (R 19 12); speculative discussion on the downing of TWA 800 (R 19 13); possibility of EMI raised in article by Elaine Scarry, New York Review of Books, 9 Apr 1998 (R 19 64-66). Harvard Magazine Jul-Aug 1998, pp. 11-12, diagram shows TWA 800 at 13,700 feet between a P3 Orion directly overhead at 20,000 feet, Black Hawk helicopter and HC-130 at 3,000 feet both directly below (with a C-141 and C-10 nearby). But this seems unlikely. (R 19 86) Report by the late Commander William S. Donaldson III, USN Ret., 17 July 1998, claiming a hostile missile attack, with radar tracks, etc. http://www.twa800.com/index.htm.

!!V$rh Air New Zealand crashed into Mt Erebus, killing 257 [28Nov1979]; computer course data error detected but pilots not informed (S 6 3, 6 5)

!!V$f/m? Lauda Air 767-300ER broke up over Thailand. 223 dead. Cockpit voice recorder: thrust reverser deployed in mid-air. Precedents on 747/767 controlled; investigation in progress. (S 16 3, AWST 10Jun91 pp.28-30) Suitcase full of cheap lithium-battery Chinese watches exploded? Earlier lithium battery problems: South African 747 in 1987, killed 159; Cathay Pacific 1990 emergency landing (S 16 3, Sunday Times, London, 23 Jun 91) Many other planes may be flying with the same thrust-reverser defect; FAA, Boeing simulations, suggest 757 less aerostable than though (S 16 4) Ex-Boeing expert had warned of software flaw in 747/767 proximity switch electronics unit; he claims he was ordered to suppress data. (S 17 1)

!!Vhifmr Northwest Air flight 255 computer failed to warn MD80 crew of unset flaps misset, thrust indicator wrong; 156 dead (S 12 4;2); circuit breaker downed the warning system that should have detected those problems. [But who checks the checker?] Simulator, plane behave differently (S 13 1); Report blames pilot error, unattributed circuit outage (S 13 3); Report that the same pilots had intentionally disconnected the alarm on another MD-80 two days before raises suspicions (S 14 5, R 08 65); NW sues CAE over spec error in flight training simulator (S 15 5); A Federal jury ruled on 8 May 91 that the crew was to blame.

!!V$mf/h/i? British Midland 737 crash, 47 killed, 74 seriously injured; right engine erroneously shut off in response to smoke, vibration (Flight International 1 Apr 89); suspected crosswiring detected in many OTHER planes (S 14 2); low-probability, high-consequence accidents (S 14 5); random memory initialization in flight management computers (S 14 5); Kegworth M1 air crash inquest: many improvements suggested (S 15 3); Criticism of "glass cockpits" (S 15 3); UK AAIB fingers 737-400 liquid crystal display layouts (S 16 3, R 11 42); now-retired British vicar Reverend Leslie Robinson claims a witches' coven was operating under the flight path (R 20 12)

!hi B747 freighter crash on takeoff from Nova Scotia; data from previous flight used; all 7 aboard killed (R 24 34, S 31 5:16-17)

!!mhi Cockpit confusion found in Cypriot airliner crash, resulting in cabin depressurization and 121 dead (R 24 03,05,07; S 30 6:13) (The aircraft was a Boeing 737, rather than the incorrectly reported attribution in the SEN summary.)

!m Midair Collision in Brazil at about 37,000 feet, despite TCAS 2000 (R 24 50)

*mfhi(+/-) etc. Analysis of flight control system software anomalies (Ladkin, R 24 03; S 30 6:13-16); autopilot software hijacks Malaysian Airlines 777 (R 24 05; S 30 6:16-17); more (R 24 07)

* Example of two faulty avionics programs outvoting the correct one in a two-out-of-three majority voting experiment: J.E. Brunelle and D.E. Eckhardt, Jr., Fault-Tolerant Software: An Experiment with the SIFT Operating System, Fifth AIAA Computers in Aerospace Conference, 1985, 355-360.

*fm Air disasters: A crisis of confidence? Phuket Air 747 aborts (R 23 83; S 30 3:23-24)

!!Vh Aeromexico flight to LAX crashes with private plane, 82 killed (S 11 5)

!!Vh Metroliner&transponderless small plane collide 15 Jan 87. 10 die (S 12 2)

!!Vh Two planes collide 19 Jan 87. Altitude data not watched by ATC. (S 12 2)

!!Vfih 1994 China Air A300-600 Nagoya accident killing 264: final report blames pilots and autopilot human-computer interface (R 18 33); (see also R 16 05-07, 09, 13-16)

!Vh Air France Airbus A320 crash blamed on pilot error, safety controls off (S 13 4); 3 killed. Airbus computer system development criticized (S 13 4); Subsequent doubts on computers reported: inaccurate altimeter readings; engines unexpectedly throttling up on final approach; sudden power loss prior to landing; steering problems while taxiing (S 14 2); reportage by Jim Beatson (R 08 49, 08 77), barometric pressure backset? (S 14 5) investigators blame pilot error; pilots charge recorder tampering (S 15 3) Pilots convicted for libel in blaming technical malfunctions! (S 16 3)

!!V? Indian Airlines Airbus A320 crashes 1000 ft short of runway; 97 die (S 15 2) A320 flight modes (S 15 3); apparent similarities in crashes (S 15 3) Air India unloading their A320s (S 15 5)

V(m?) Air India Airbus 320 autopilot failure [19Apr1999]? (S 24 4:26, R 20 32)

!!Vhmi French Air Inter A320 crash on approach to Strasbourg airport [20Jan1992]; 87 dead, 9 survivors; 2,000-foot altitude drop reported (R 13 05); crash site at 2496 feet. Report fingers mixture of human and technical error, airport ill equipped, serious failings in altimeter system, pilot unable to stop descent (S 17 2); Air Inter official charged with negligent homicide (S 18 2:9); Commission of Enquiry blamed Pilot Error (S 18 4:12); New case of A320 descent-rate instability identified approaching Orly, related to Air Inter crash (S 18 1:23); Final report blames crew training and interface problems (S 19 2:11)

!Vf 1994 Toulouse A330 accident blamed on experimental SW. 7 died (S 19 4:11)

*mf FADEC computers cause uncommanded shutdowns of aircraft engines in flight; linked to power transistor (R 21 05; S 26 1:22)

*f Airbus A300 AA587 tail "BSD" incident, dropping 3000 feet: screens blanked for 2-3 seconds; unreliable data reset Symbol Generator Unit software changes required (R 21 96)

*h/f? Misleading report on Air Transat A330 emergency landing in Azores, 24 Aug 2001, (R 21 93) addressed by Peter Ladkin; fuel leak not detected early enough, and other problems (R 21 94)

!,*m(h?) Airbus A300/310 rudder problems: Air Transat 961; AA 587 out of JFK; others (R 23 79; S 30 3:23)

* A320 flight-control computer anomalies summarized by Peter Ladkin (R 18 78)

!*(V,etc.) Compendium of commercial fly-by-wire problems (Peter Ladkin) (S 21 2:22)

@!!$hi Iran Air 655 Airbus shot down by USS Vincennes' Aegis system (above)

?h Qantas airliner challenged by US Cowpens, Aegis missile cruiser (S 17 4)

!V(f/h/i?) Varig 737 crash (12 dead) flightpath miskeyed? (S 15 1)

!V 707 over Elkton MD hit by lightning in 1963, everyone killed (S 15 1)

!V$m American Airlines DC-10 stall indicator failed; power was from missing engine (S 11 5)

!V Bird strikes cause crash of Ethiopian Airlines 737, killing 31 (S 14 2)

!V Dominican Republic 757 crash 6 Feb 1996, cause unclear (S 21 4:13, R 17 84)

!V BirgenAir crash at Puerto Plata killed 189 (R 17 87)

!!V$hi Further discussion of American Airlines Cali and Puerto Plata B757 crashes (R 18 10); in Cali crash, killing 159 of 163: same abbreviated code used for different airports (S 22 1:17); in a trial, evidence was given that 95 of 8,000 navigational beacons were not included in the airline database, including Cali's Rozo (R) - see media reports 17 Apr 2000. US Federal jury allocated responsibility 17% to Jeppessen, 8% to Honeywell, 75% to American Airlines (R 20 92; S 26 1:23)

!if American Airlines crash: simulator upset-recovery scenario predisposing pilots? (R 22 33)

!fi EFIS failure main suspect in Crossair crash (S 25 3:17-18, R 20 78)

!Vh 1996 B757 Aeroperu Flight 603: duct tape over left-side static port sensors? (S 22 2:22; R 18 51,57,59) Peru Transport Ministry verified this [Reuter, 18Jan1997]

*m Failure of Embraer Brasilia aircraft electronic displays due to icing (R 22 65; S 28 4:6-7)

*mfi Leisure International Airways A320 overran Ibiza Airport in the Balearic Islands [21 May 1998], partly due to computer failure (R 22 65-66)

*fh Airplane takes off without pilot, flies 20 miles, crashes (R 21 84,87)

Vm Migratory birds jam FAA radar in Midwest (R 17 44)

m Lovesick cod overload Norwegian submarine sonar equipment (R 20 07) [Who needs a cod peace?]

!!V Chinese Northwest Airlines BA-146 Whisperjet crashed on second takeoff attempt, killing 59; cause not available [23Jul1993] (S 18 4:12)

!V Ilyushin Il-114 crash due to digital engine control failure (S 19 1:9)

*V mi Dec 1991 SAS MD-81 crash (ice damaged engine) due to auto thrust restoration mechanism not previously known to exist by SAS (S 19 1:12)

*Vf 11 cases of MD-11s with flap/slat extension problem, including China Eastern Airline plane that lost 5000 feet on 6 Apr 1993 (S 18 4:11)

Vf/m/h? Chinook helicopter engine software implicated (S 23 3:23, R 19 51); more on the Chinook enquiry (R 21 14,18-20,22-23)

$d RAF Chinooks: over 6 year delay; still cannot fly in clouds; "radar systems and software" won't fit in the cockpit! (R 23 31) and correction: software certification, noncompliance, more testing needed, changing operational environment (R 23 32)

$*d UK MoD procurement risks and nonverifiable code; Chinook helicopters, software cannot be validated (R 23 80; S 30 3:23)

*Vrh Lessons of ValueJet 592 crash: William Langewiesche in Atlantic Monthly (R 19 62,63)

*Vf DC-9 chip failure mode detected in simulation (S 13 1)

!!V$f Electra failures due to simulation omission of gyroscopic coupling [not overflow, as originally thought] (S 11 5:9)

!V$f Computer readout for navigation wrong, pilot killed (S 11 2)

*f Apollo NAV/COM air navigation software bearing up to 50 miles and 16 degrees off (R 21 53); Garmin GPS can be interpreted as off by 180 degrees (R 21 56)

*Vhi South Pacific Airlines, 200 aboard, 500 mi off course near USSR [6Oct1984]

*Vhi China Air Flight 006 747SP 2/86 pilot vs autopilot at 41,000 ft with failed engine, other engines stalled, plane lost 32,000 feet [19Feb1985] (S 10 2, 12 1)

m/f B747-400 Electronic flight displays rendered inoperative (R 23 12; S 29 2:9)

*V Simultaneous 3-engine failure reported by Captain of DC-8/73 (S 14 2)

*Vfm Boeing KC-135 autopilot malfunction causes two engines to break off (S 16 2)

$Vfme Design change caused short-circuit causing autopilot reset, premature separation of booster from $150 million Japanese supersonic jet model at Woomera rocket range (R 22 43)

*Vf Avionics failed, design used digitized copier-distorted curves (S 10 5)

*Vf Lufthansa A320 overruns runway in Warsaw; actuator delay blamed (S 19 1:11); Logic flaw in braking system; fix required fooling the logic! (S 19 2:11)

mV A320 engine-starter unit overheats after takeoff, trips breakers, gave false thrust-reverser indications, engine control failure (S 19 2:12)

*mfhie Lufthansa Airbus A320 incident 20 Mar 2001 on takeoff from Frankfurt (R 21 48); detailed analysis of sidestick cross-wired during maintenance (R 21 96); final report April 2003 (R 23 24)

*V$f 727 (UA 616) nose-gear indicator false positive forces landing (S 12 1)

*Vhi USAir 737-400 crash at NY LGA; computer interface, pilot blamed (S 15 1)

!Vi Crash of USAir Flight 427 nearing Pittsburgh, 8 Sep 1994: see Jonathan Harr, (The New Yorker, 5 Aug 1996 (S 22 1:17)

*V Tarom Airbus automatic mode switch escaped pilot's notice (S 20 1:16)

*m Turkish Airbus false sensor indicating nose wheel not descended on landing (R 23 88)

*Vf British Airways 747-400 throttles closed, several times; fixed? (S 15 3)

*Vf JAL 747-400 fuel distribution stressed wings beyond op limits (S 16 3)

*Vf Older Boeing 747 planes suspected of diving due to autopilot design flaw; 747-400 speed reduction of 50 knots ordered; 747-200 sudden increase in thrust, another pitched upwards; etc. (S 17 3); FAA report on possible 747 autopilot faults relating to altitude losses (S 18 3:A15)

Vf 747 tail scrapes runway; center of gravity miscalculated by improper program upgrade (R 19 11)

*Vf Boeing 757/767 Collins autopilot anomalies discussed (S 19 1:10)

m Pilot fixes faulty 757 nosewheel sensor in Menorca airport (R 22 85); confusion in reporting analyzed (R 22 88-89)

**V 767 (UA 310 to Denver) four minutes without engines [August 1983] (S 8 5)

*Vf 767 failure LA to NY forced to alternate SF instead of back to LA (S 9 2)

*Vm Martinair B767 Aircraft suffers EFIS failure; instruments blank (S 21 5:15)

*V(f/m?) B777 autopilot/flight-director problems [Oct1996]? (S 22 4:29, R 18 83)

V$ Boeing 777 landing-gear weakness; strength off by factor of 2 (R 17 04)

*he Australian Ansett B767 fleet grounded due to maintenance breaches (R 21 17)

*Vf 11 instrument software failures in BA aircraft in Jul-Aug 1989 (S 15 5)

*fhi Analysis of potential risks of the Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS), by Jim Wolper (R 19 56); pilots computer literacy? (R 19 57); relationship with GPS accuracy (R 19 57)

* Missile passes American Airlines Flight 1170 over Wallops Island (S 22 1:18)

m Fire alarms on Boeing 777 triggered by tropical fruit and frog cargo (S 22 1:17)

M Cell phone ringing in Adria Airways luggage alarms avionics; plane returns (R 21 20)

*m INCETE power ports in use in at least 1700 aircraft can result in exploding batteries? (R 19 94)

m* High-flying hijinks: canine passenger sinks teeth into plane (R 20 54)

SHf Air Canada "Jazz" airline grounded by computer virus in flight-planning computer, early Feb 2003 (R 22 54)

Sf/h Airline boarding pass algorithm flaw: two people with the same name (one M, one F) assigned the same seat (R 22 70)

Sh Hong Kong passenger winds up in Melbourne, despite correct boarding pass (R 22 79)

fme Continental Airlines check-in computer foul-up (R 22 77, S 28 6:9-10)

S* Risks of "soft walls" in avionics to keep hijacked planes at bay (R 22 79,80)

$f Comair cancels all flights on Christmas Day 2004: configuration changes exceeded 2¹⁵ for the month (R 23 63,64; S 30 2:21)

*hi Takeoff at Logan Airport aborted: errors by pilot and controller (R 24 07)

mV Faulty radar serving Logan leaves thousands stranded (R 24 07)

fmhi? NTSB report on Southwest Airlines crash, Midway, 8 Dec 2005; delayed reverse thrust (R 24 15,16, S 31 3:17-18); thoughtful item from Don Norman: On learning from accidents: human error or not? (R 24 17, plus discussion, R 24 18-19, S 31 3:18-20)

!$Vfhi The 2005 Helios B737 crash causes discussed by Peter Ladkin and Don Norman's (R 24 22); more (R 24 23-25)

*V$m MV-22 Tiltrotor Crash after FADEC controller switch, March 2006 (R 24 26)

fm United Airlines' 5-hour computer out(r)age in early 2006, affected all operations (R 24 14,15)

fV Nashville airport X-ray baggage screeners offline: "software glitch" (R 24 23)

hi TSA: Computer glitch led to Atlanta airport bomb scare, evacuation, when test item could not be located and test message indication was not delivered (R 24 27)

fi Flight Booking System can't recognise 29 Feb for people who enrolled in a leap year (R 24 09)

* Study on cockpit usability (R 24 18)

*m A risk of using computers in airplanes (R 24 18)

m Two personal occasions: airplane computers had to be rebooted (R 24 48)

m Computer failure causing A320 power intermittent: video and lights flashing, audio system and cabin voice system failed, evacuation alarm sounded in midair ... (R 24 46)

..... Private plane incidents

!Vrhi John Denver plane crash linked to unlabelled implementation change over spec: lever up for off, down for right tank, to the right for left tank; not very intuitive! (R 20 43, R 24 45)

*hi Crossing the International dateline becomes a navigational risk for a small-plane pilot: failure to reconfigure navigation computer results in flying east, not west (R 22 78, S 28 6:10)

..... Airport problems

Vm Power failure disrupts Ronald Reagan National Airport 10 Apr 2000 for almost 8 hours; backup generator failed (R 20 87)

Vmhi Lightning causes problems for lightning-detection system in Montreal airport near-disaster (R 24 01)

$def $200M baggage system seriously delays opening of new Denver airport (S 19 3:5); costly stopgap old-fashioned system planned in the "interim" (S 19 4:6); new software problems for incoming baggage (R 17 61); city overruled consultant's negative simulation results (R 18 66); baggage system only the tip of a huge iceberg of mismanagement, political infighting, etc., according to Bill Dow.

$def United abandons Denver Airport baggage system to save millions in operating costs by not using it! (R 23 89, S 30 4:19)

Vdfm$ Kuala Lumpur International Airport: Risks of being a development pioneer (R 19 68); airport opens 30 Jun 1998, but baggage and check-in systems failed for several days (R 19 84); similar events at the opening of the new Hong Kong airport a few days later (R 19 85)

Vm Amsterdam Schiphol airport computer down for 30 minutes, major delays (R 19 85); unchecked out-of-range value (R 19 93)

V$fe American Airlines' SABRE system down 12 hours; new disk-drive SW launched "core-walker" downing 1080 old disk drives, stripped file names ... (S 14 5)

Vm American Airlines' Sabre system software problem down for four hours (30 Jun 1998, evening rush hour) affected hundreds of flights across 50 airlines; second crash in a week (R 19 84)

m American Airline flights delayed due to computer crash, 29 Jan 2003 (R 22 54)

$m Independence Air computer outage for 6 hours seriously impedes operations (R 23 48)

$mh Computer failure grounds flights with day-long delays on American Airlines and US Airways coast to coast: human error? (R 23 47)

f Is Windows up to snuff for running our world? Windows alert box covered up Delta Airlines display information; also related items (R 23 57,59,61,62); similar problem in a bank (R 23 58)

*f/m/e? Computer error grounds Japanese flights 1 March 2003; flight numbers disappeared from radar screens; related to system upgrade to share flight plans with Japanese Defense Agency? (R 22 60-61)

f/m SAS new baggage system miseries at Copenhagen Airport (R 19 97)

m/f? Sydney Airport's new $43M baggage system fails for second time in five days (R 21 02; S 26 1:23)

m Total primary/secondary power outage at Sydney Airport leaves 20 planes circling (R 20 94; S 26 1:22-23)

h SAS reprinted summer airline timetables for the winter, but Internet version was correct (R 20 05)

mh Boston airport electronic display fiasco on flight to Philly (R 19 96)

m Airport security check powers up computer (R 20 55)

@hfm Two human errors silenced Los Angeles area airport communications; routine reboot forgotten, Microsoft 49.7-day flaw strikes, backup system fails (R 23 53; S 30 1:14-15)

..... Masquerading

*VSH 1986: Miami air-traffic controller masquerader altered courses (S 12 1)

*VSH 1994: Roanoke Phantom spoofed ATC, gave bogus information to pilots for 6 wks, caught (S 19 2:5); out-of-work janitor pleads guilty (R 15 39)

VSH 1996: Manchester (UK) air-traffic-controller message spoofer (UK) (R 17 44, S 21 2:21)

..... Other air-traffic control problems

*h 20-foot aircraft separation near-collision over LaGuardia Airport, 3 Apr 1998, due to controller being distracted by spilled coffee (R 19 79,84) together with increased error rates and radar dropouts results in FAA ordering retraining of air-traffic controllers (R 19 79)

mhe Aeroflot plane leaving Helsinki kept disappeared from tower radar, and had near-miss with Finnair charter, Nov 2000; newer French radar system also had other planes disappearing; problem traced to construction work at the airport! (R 21 22-23)

fe Westbury Long Island TRACON upgrade failed test, but backup to old software backfired (R 19 79)

*Vfm Radar blip lost Air Force One (S 23 4:21, R 19 63)

Vm* Air Force One disappeared from the Gibbsboro NJ radar twice on 5 Jun 1998, with President Clinton en route to MIT for the commencement speech; also reported was near-collision with a Swissair 747, missed by radar, Oct 1997 (R 19 79); Air Force Two disappeared from radar, 7 Jun 1998, and the same radar failed with AF2 overhead 17 Jun 1998 (R 19 82)

m?f? San Francisco Airport radar phantom flights (R 21 20, S 26 2:5)

*m Faulty ASR-9 radar system failures (Boston, JFK) led FAA to inspections, discovery of 23 further cases, and remediations (S 26 4:4, R 21 29)

f Air-traffic control woes (R 21 09, S 26 2:5-6)

fh 2002: Rash of british air-traffic control system outages in National Airspace System (S 27 3:5, R 21 98, 22 02-03, 22 09)

f Anecdote on a then-new European ATC center 99.99% reliable (52 minutes per year) that had already had a 20-hour down time shortly after installation: therefore it should not fail again for 25 years! It failed at 23:59 on 28 Feb (S 27 3:6, R 22 08)

Vm Aviation near-crashes in Kathmandu (R 21 09, S 26 2:6)

*V(m?f?) Indianapolis FAA route center running on generators for a week (R 21 11, S 26 2:6)

*h Delta plane 60 miles off course, missed Continental by 30 feet (S 12 4)

Vf SW fault in aircraft nondirectional beacon landing approach system (S 16 3)

V* New San Jose CA ATC system still buggy, plane tags disappear (S 14 2)

*Vf ATC computers cause phantom airplane images (S 16 3)

*fe Jeppesen GPS restricted-airspace navigation database corruption (R 22 64; S 28 4:6)

Vf West Drayton ATC system bug found in 2-yr-old COBOL code (S 16 3, R 11 30)

*Vh Open cockpit mike, defective transponder caused 2 near-collisions (S 12 1)

h Another open mike: couple join Mile-High Club, disrupt British air-traffic control (S 19 1:10)

*Veh ATC equipment test leads to Sydney landing near-collision (R 20 24)

*Vmf More ATC problems, fall 1998: New air-traffic control radar systems fail, losing aircraft at O'Hare (R 20 07); Dallas-FortWorth ARTS 6.05 TRACON gives ghost planes, loses planes (one for 10 miles), one plane on screen at 10,000 feet handed off and showing up at 3,900 feet! 200 controller complaints ignored, system finally backed off to 6.04 (R 20 07); near-collision off Long Island attributed to failure at Nashua NH control center (R 20 11); TCAS system failures for near-collision over Albany NY (R 20 11); two more TCAS-related incidents reported (R 20 12); landing-takeoff near-miss on runway at LaGuardia in NY (R 20 13); discussion on trustworthiness of TCAS by Andres Zellweger, former FAA Advanced Automation head (R 20 13)

*f? Automation-related Reduced Vertical Separation Minima (RVSM) AIRPROX incident over the North Atlantic, despite ACAS and TCAS (R 22 19); European RVSM safety case is flawed (R 22 22)

*def U.S. west-coast ATC woes 19 Oct 2000 (hundreds of flights affected) and 23 Oct 2000 (loss of flight plans for Northern CA and Western NV) (R 21 09; S 26 1:22)

df$ FAA Runway Incursion System: further delays in AMASS due to excessive false alarms (R 21 60,62)

$*fde STARS: Standard Terminal Automation Replacement Systems to replace ARTS - as of Feb 2002, more than 4 years late, $600 million over budget, "71 specific software problems that could prevent the system from operating as designed" and many questions (S 27 6:7-8, R 22 12)

f/m? Collapse of UK air-traffic control computer (R 20 93-94); known bugs reduced from 500 to 200 (R 21 01)

*dV Reports on UK New En Route Centre NERC for UK ATC (R 19 18,23,69); more on the NERC system crashes at Swanwick (S 27 6:9-10, R 22 12); safety and human factors (S 27 6:10, R 22 13); subsequent questions on readability of displays at the London Area Control Centre (R 22 40,44)

$e British Swanwick ATC slowdown Jun 2004; backup recalcitrant on 30-year-old system (R 23 41,42)

$ Discussion of NERC and STARS: COTS versus Bespoke ATC Systems (Ladkin, Leveson, S 27 6:8-9, R 22 12)

*Vfm Review on air-traffic control outages by Peter Ladkin (S 23 3:26, R 19 59)

*fhm, etc. UK air-traffic control problems summarized at www.pprune.org (R 21 11)

*SHA Fake air controllers alert in UK (R 21 04; S 26 1:22)

*h F-117 stealth fighter in near-miss with UAL jet (R 21 04; S 26 1:22)

V(f/m?) Faulty TCAS behavior. Australian report shows two faulty TCAS cases: Jan 1998 near Hawaii, TCAS off by 1500 feet vertically, caused false maneuvers; Jun 1999 over China, TCAS had higher plane descending toward the lower (R 20 60,62);

*Vfm Complete ATC power failure in the U.S. Northwest, 15 Jan 1999, discussion by Seattle controller, Paul Cox (R 20 19)

*Vmh Dulles radar fails for half-hour 23 Nov 1998 (R 20 10); discussion of air-traffic control safety implications (R 20 11), and ensuing comments from a controller (R 20 12)

*Vh Risks of runway crossings with tight takeoff/landing schedules (R 20 10)

f Airline clock wraparound in displays: UA Flight 63 from SFO "Delayed 1 hr 39 min, Arrive Honolulu Intl 12:01am Tues Early 22 hr 35 min" (R 20 15); More United Airlines Website flight curiosities (R 20 44)

h Accidentally enabled sex-aid vibrator in hand luggage causes bomb scare on Monarch Air flight; apparently not unusual (R 20 34)

*Vm Air-traffic control data cable loss caused close calls (S 10 5)

V$SHm Attack on fibre-optic cables causes Lufthansa delays (S 20 2:12)

VmM Display lasers affect aircraft: pilots blinded over Las Vegas (R 17 55)

*VM More on EMI and RF interference from passenger devices in aircraft systems (Ladkin) (R 19 24); still more, including discussion of Elaine Scarry article in 26 Sep 2000 The New York Review of Books( and follow-ups (R 21 04,08,11)

VSfM Case of GPS jamming of Continental flight by failed Air Force computer-based test (R 19 71) more on GPS jamming/spoofing: British Airways flight lost all three GPS systems while French military was testing jammers; Continental DC-10 lost all GPS signals while Rome Lab was experimenting with jammers (R 19 74,85)

Vf/h? GPS kills 8 in air (R 20 44-45) and radar-assisted collisions (R 20 45)

@*VM Cell-phone linked to London to Istanbul crash-landing? (R 19 34,36,37)VM Australia's Melbourne Airport RF interference affected communications, traced to an emanating VCR! (R 17 44)

*VM Osaka Int'l Airport's radar screens jammed by TV aerial booster (S 12 3)

*m Plane diverts after erroneous 4-digit hijack alert (R 23 89-91)

*M Cellular telephone activates airliner fire alarm (S 14 6)

Vfmhi? Aviation Risks using Windows NT avionics systems (S 23 3:27, R 19 46)

*Vfi Flawed ATC radars: planes disappear from screens; other problems (S 12 1)

hi Controller screwup causes NW 52 to Frankfurt to land in Brussels (R 17 38,40)

*Vdef Risks in the new Sydney airport control system (R 17 43)

*m Computer outage in Concorde leads to rocky nonautomatic landing (S 12 4)

*Ve British ATC 2-hr outage, 6-hr delays: faulty HW/SW upgrade (S 12 1) Computer problems down FL ATC, slow airline flights in Southern U.S. (S 19 1:11)

*Vfmd Air-traffic-control snafus in Chicago, Oakland, Miami, Washington DC, Dallas-FortWorth, Cleveland, New York, western states, Pittsburgh! (S 20 5:12); Another Oakland airport radar outage 28 Nov 1995, two hours (R 17 49)

Myth II: Soulblighter is a 1998 real-time tacticsvideo game developed by Bungie for Microsoft Windows and Mac OS. Published by Bungie in North America and by GT Interactive Software in Europe, the game was also ported to Linux by Loki Entertainment. It is the second game in the Myth series, and a sequel to Myth: The Fallen Lords. In 1999, an expansion pack, Myth II: Chimera, was released. Developed by the Badlands mapmaking group, in association with Bungie, Chimera is set ten years after Soulblighter. Originally released as a free download, Chimera was later published by Bungie as part of the Total Codex bundle, incorporating it into the official Mythcanon. In 2001, a third Myth game was released, Myth III: The Wolf Age, set one thousand years prior to The Fallen Lords, and developed by MumboJumbo.

Set sixty years after The Fallen Lords, the game tells the story of the resurgence of Soulblighter, a supporting antagonist in the first game, and one of the titular Fallen Lords. Determined to defeat the forces of Light who vanquished his master, Balor, and conquer the free cities of the world, Soulblighter resurrects the Myrkridia, a race of flesh eating monsters not seen in over a thousand years. Standing against Soulblighter is Alric, the main protagonist in the first game, and now King of The Province, who must rally humanity to fight a war they never expected. Chimera is set ten years after Soulblighter, and tells the story of three veterans of the campaign against Soulblighter, who band together to fight a mysterious sorceress.

Soulblighter was a critical success, with reviewers feeling it improved on virtually every aspect of The Fallen Lords. They cited better, more detailed graphics, enhanced sound effects, more varied gameplay, better AI, more intricate and varied level design, and a more user-friendly interface and control scheme. Critics were also impressed with the improvements made to online multiplayer mode, and praised the variety of options available to players. They also lauded the mapmaking tools included with the game, which allowed users to create their own maps for both multiplayer gaming and single-player campaigns. The game also sold very well, considerably outselling the original, which had been Bungie's best selling game up to that point.

The Myth series as a whole, and Soulblighter in particular, supported an active online community for over a decade after the official servers went offline. The first formally organized group of volunteer-programmers was MythDevelopers, who were given access to the game's source code by Bungie. The most recently active Myth development group is Project Magma, an offshoot of MythDevelopers. These groups have worked to provide ongoing technical support for the games, update them to newer operating systems, fix bugs, release unofficial patches, create mods, and maintain online servers for multiplayer gaming.

Gameplay[edit]

Myth II: Soulblighter is a real-time tactics game, and as such, unlike the gameplay in real-time strategy games, the player does not have to engage in resource micromanagement or economic macromanagement, does not have to construct a base or buildings, and does not have to gradually build up their army by acquiring resources and researching new technologies. Instead, each level begins with the player's army already assembled and ready for combat.^[2] During the game, the player controls forces of various sizes made up of a number of different units, each possessing their own strengths and weaknesses. In single-player mode, only Light units are playable, but in online multiplayer mode, the player can control both Light and Dark units.^[3]

Screenshot of gameplay in Soulblighter, showing the selection of a single unit. The player has selected a bowman named Hadrian (the unit surrounded by a yellow rectangle). The image also shows unselected warriors, who are currently attacking enemy units. At the top of the screen is the Status Bar. The mini-map of the battlefield is just below on the right. At the bottom of the screen is the Control Bar.

Basic gameplay involves the player selecting and commanding units. To select an individual unit, the player clicks on that unit.^[4] Once selected, the unit is surrounded by a yellow rectangle, beside which is a health meter, which diminishes as the unit takes damage.^[5] Units capable of utilising magic also have a mana meter in addition to their health meter. As they use magic, this meter diminishes, and then slowly regenerates over time.^[6] Units do not regenerate health, however, and there is no way to construct new units (although in some single-player missions, reinforcements are automatically received at predetermined points). To select all nearby units of a given type, the player double-clicks on any individual unit of that type. To select multiple units of different types, the player can either "shift click" (hold down the shift key and click on each individual unit) or use "band-selection" (click and hold the mouse button on a piece of ground, then drag the cursor across the screen. This causes a yellow box to appear, which grows and shrinks as it follows the cursor's movement. When the player releases the button, any units within the box are selected). The player can instantly select all units on screen, irrespective of type, by pressing the enter key.^[7] The player can also assign manually selected unit groupings to a specific key on the keyboard, and when that key is pressed, it instantly selects the desired group of units.^[8]

Once one or more units have been selected, the player can click on the ground to make them walk to the selected spot, or click on an enemy to make them attack. Units with projectile weapons, such as archers and dwarves can also be ordered to attack a specific spot on the ground, rather than an enemy.^[9] It is also important that the player have their units facing in the right direction. This is accomplished by pressing the left or the right arrow key or moving the mouse to rotate the direction of the units as they move to the selected location.^[10] Facing the correct direction is especially important when using formations, of which there are nine available. After selecting a group of units, the player must press the corresponding formation button on the keyboard, and then click on the ground where they want the units to form.^[11] The player can also order all selected units to scatter and to retreat.^[10] All formations, as well as commands such as stopping, guarding, scattering, retreating, and reversing direction, are also available via a single click in the Control Bar at the bottom of the screen.^[12]

When a single unit is selected, information about that unit appears in the "Status Bar" at the top of the HUD; the unit's name, a brief biography, how many kills he has, how many battles he has survived, and (if he is capable of carrying items) his inventory. When multiple units are selected, the names, types, and quantity of units will appear, but there will be no biography or information on their kills or previous battles.^[13] The HUD also features a transparent overhead mini-map, which displays information about the current battlefield; the player's field of vision is indicated by a yellow trapezoid, enemy units appear as red dots, friendly non-playable units as blue dots, and the player's army as green dots. The player can click anywhere on the mini-map to instantly jump to that location. However, the mini-map does not initially display the entire battlefield; the player must explore the area for it to become fully mapped.^[14] The player can also order troops to move to any location on the mapped area of the battlefield by right-clicking on that area in the mini-map.^[15]

The player has full control over the camera throughout the game, and can move it backwards and forwards, left and right, orbit left and right (keeps the camera focused on a single spot while making a 360 degree circle around that spot), rotate left and right (the camera remains in the same spot but the player's point of view moves from side to side), and zoom in and out.^[16] All movements can be carried out via the keyboard and mouse. Using the mouse to move backwards, forwards, left and right is accomplished by moving the cursor to the top, bottom, left or right of the screen, respectively. The player can also select preferences to allow them to control rotation and orbiting via the mouse, by moving the cursor to the top and bottom corners of the screen, respectively.^[17] Zooming can be controlled by either the keyboard or mouse wheel.^[18]

Selecting and commanding units only forms the basic gameplay of Soulblighter, however. The battles are more complex than simply commanding units to attack the enemy, with strategy and awareness of the conditions of the battlefield, and even the weather, also playing important roles. For example, due to the game's physics engine, objects react with one another, with units, and with the terrain. This can manifest itself simply in a severed head bouncing off one of the player's units and changing direction. However, it can also have more serious consequences. For example, a dwarf could throw a molotov cocktail at an enemy on a hillside and miss, with the projectile rolling back down the hill towards the player's own units.^[19] Projectiles in general, both those used by the player and the enemy, have no guarantee of hitting anything; they are merely propelled in the direction instructed by the physics engine. Arrows, for example, may miss their intended target due to a small degree of simulated aiming error that becomes more significant at long range, or the target may move out of the way, or behind a tree or building.^[19] If archers are firing at enemies who are engaged in melee combat, they may also hit the player's own units instead of the enemy, causing the same amount of damage. This is also true of dwarfs' molotov cocktails. As such, friendly fire is an important aspect of the game.^[20] The weather is also something the player must always bear in mind. For example, rain or snow can put out explosive-based attacks.^[21] It is also much easier for projectile units to hit enemies below them rather than above them, and as such, positioning of the player's units is an important aspect of the game.^[20]

Single-player[edit]

In the single-player campaign, the player starts each mission with a group of soldiers, and must use that group to accomplish a specific goal or set of goals. These goals can involve killing a certain number of enemies, defending a location, reaching a certain point on the map, or destroying a specific object or enemy.^[22] The focus of the single-player campaign is on a smaller force defeating a much larger enemy force; in every mission, the Light units are outnumbered by enemies, often vastly, and so the player must use the terrain, employ the specific skills of their individual units, and gradually decrease the enemy force, or attempt to avoid it altogether. Units in the single-player campaign acquire experience with each kill. Experience increases attack rate, accuracy, and defence, and any unit that survives a battle will carry over to the next battle with their accumulated experience (assuming the next battle features units of that type).^[5]

Multiplayer[edit]

When it was released, Soulblighter could be used for multiplayer gaming on bungie.net, or via a LAN on PC or AppleTalk on Mac.^[23] In multiplayer, the player starts with an army, and can customize it by trading units with other players, using point values that approximate the value of the units being traded.^[24]

" (each team starts with a herd of animals and a number of flags; the object is to shepherd the herd to the enemy flags, with each successfully herded animal earning the team one point. The winner is the team with the most points at the end of the game), "Steal The Bacon" (somewhere on the battlefield is a ball; the object is to get the ball and keep it away from the opponents, with the winner being the last team to touch the ball), "Territories" (a number of flags are on the battlefield, with the winner being the team to capture and hold the most flags), "Body Count" (team deathmatch), and "King Of The Hill" (a hill on the map is marked with a flag, with the hill captured when one or more of a team's units move within a certain range of the flag and eliminate any enemy units in the same area; the winner is the team who controls the hill for the longest amount of time).^[25]

Plot[edit]

It is sixty years since the Great War, when Connacht, the hero who saved the world from the Myrkridia one thousand years previously, returned in the guise of Balor, and with his lieutenants, the Fallen Lords, attempted to destroy humanity. Alric, the only surviving Avatara, is now king of The Province, ruling from Madrigal.^[26] It is an age of peace and prosperity,^[27] with the Dark existing only in stories, although the fate of Soulblighter, Balor's chief lieutenant, remains unknown.^[28] The game opens with Alric experiencing a nightmare remembering the carnage of the War. He awakens to find a crow with red eyes at his window, watching him.

The game then cuts to a cluster of villages near Forest Heart. As with the first game, the story is told through the journal entries of a soldier in The Legion,^[29] which is now led by Crüniac, who the soldiers think is more interested in politics than military matters, and spends its time on what the men perceive as trivial errands. Their latest assignment has them investigate reports of grave robbing,^[30] however, they are shocked to find the village of Willow Creek besieged by undead Ghasts.^[31] They clear the village, and learn the grave robbing leads to the keep of Baron Kildaer.^[32] They head to the keep and see hundreds of Thrall moving towards Tallow. Crüniac sends a runner to warn the villagers, while The Legion attack the keep.^[33] Crüniac proves a more skilled military tactician than his men believed, masterminding an attack which results in Kildaer's death.^[34] Soon thereafter, the runner returns with news that every village in the vicinity has been destroyed, and an undead army is amassing nearby. Crüniac sets fire to the Keep, and The Legion flee into the Clouspine Mountains.^[35]

However, their rearguard is attacked, and Crüniac mortally wounded. With his dying words, he reveals the undead are led by Soulblighter. The rest of The Legion make it to a World Knot and teleport to Madrigal,^[36] where they inform Alric of Soulblighter's return. Alric fears he is trying to find "The Summoner", who, it is foretold, will resurrect the Myrkridia.^[37] News soon arrives that Soulblighter has sacked several cities as he moves towards Madrigal, and that Shiver, a Fallen Lord killed during the Great War, has been resurrected.^[38] Alric is soon forced to abandon Madrigal, fighting his way through a Myrkridian assault led by Shiver.^[39]

The Legion head to Tandem, where Alric plans to hold the fortress at White Falls, on the river Meander, thus preventing Shiver from moving north.^[40] Meanwhile, he decides to find The Deceiver, a Fallen Lord who was openly antagonistic towards the others during the Great War. He was thought killed, but his actual fate remains unknown.^[41] Alric sends a small detachment to The Deceiver's last known location, and they learn he was trapped in the Dramas River when it froze solid around him, forcing him to use what little sorcery he had left to keep himself alive, unable to break free.^[42] The detachment locate and release him, and he advises them to head north to enlist the aid of the Trow, allies of his in ancient times. The Legion do so, and the Trow agree to join the fight against Soulblighter.^[43]

The detachment, The Deceiver and the Trow head south and meet with the rest of The Legion, learning Tandem has fallen. However, Alric has ordered The Legion to recapture Muirthemne, formerly Llancarfan, capital of the Cath Bruig Empire.^[44] His plan is to find the Ibis Crown in the city's haunted catacombs, and reclaim the title of Emperor, rallying humanity behind him.^[45] A small group of volunteers enter the crypts of the city and find the Crown, with Alric declared the new Emperor, and the journeymen resuming their position as the Emperor's Royal Guard; the Heron Guard.^[46]

Meanwhile, The Deceiver and a detachment travel to Forest Heart to locate a fragment of the Tain, in which Alric believes The Summoner to be hiding.^[47] They successfully find the fragment, enter the Tain, and kill The Summoner, cutting off Soulblighter from the Myrkridia.^[48] Acting on his own authority, The Deceiver then attacks Soulblighter's camp, but he and his men are captured.^[49] However, Phelot, a shade in charge of the prison, is in the service of The Deceiver, and frees them. The Deceiver attacks Soulblighter, who turns into a murder of crows to escape. He succeeds, but The Deceiver kills one of the crows, preventing him from fleeing in this manner again. The detachment then meet a scouting party near Silvermines; Alric and The Legion are moving to attack Soulblighter, but have been pinned down by Shiver, whom The Deceiver immediately heads to confront.^[50][51] He hunts her down, and Phelot destroys her army. The Deceiver then kills her, but her death triggers a magical energy backlash that also kills him.

With Shiver dead, Soulblighter is forced back against the Cloudspine.^[52] His army is defeated, but he flees into the volcano Tharsis, where he plans to shatter the Cloudspine itself, causing widespread devastation. Alric and The Legion pursue him,^[53] and Alric breaks the rock on which he stands, plunging him to his death in the molten lava. With Soulblighter's death, the narrator learns of "The Leveler", an immortal evil spirit. The forces of Light and Dark rule the world successively in thousand-year cycles, with each Age of Light climaxing with the arrival of The Leveler, who ushers in an Age of Darkness. The Leveler inhabits the body of the hero who defeated him in the previous cycle — thus the hero who saves civilization is destined to destroy it; so Connacht returned as Balor. However, Soulblighter was not The Leveler; he tried to force the cycle, and as a result may have broken it. Whether this is the case will not be known for over nine hundred years, when it comes Alric's time to assume the mantle of The Leveler.^[54]

Myth II: Chimera[edit]

When Alric restored the Cath Bruig Empire and reformed the Heron Guard, Four Bear Silent Oak chose to remain a journeyman, electing to lead a life of scholarship. Now, ten years later, he is plagued by visions of a mysterious woman, and a foreboding sense of evil. Convinced he must act, he seeks out his old ally, the legendary warrior Fenris, who has isolated himself in the fir'Bolg forest of Ruewood.^[55] Fenris agrees to join Four Bear, and they decide to elicit the aid of ne'Ric, a celebrated fir'Bolg. However, they soon learn the Banded Wasps of Ruewood, a normally peaceful race of giant wasps, have suddenly become aggressive.

Fending off an attack by the Banded Wasps, and accompanied by fir'Bolg, a band of human warriors, and several dwarves, they head to the tomb of their former ally, Kyrand the Mage, where Fenris plans to take possession of Kyrand's amulet.^[56] There, they encounter the woman from Four Bear's visions; a sorceress named Kyrilla, who also plans to retrieve the amulet. She orders an army of Thrall to prevent Four Bear, Fenris and their men entering, but they defeat the army. Kyrilla disappears, and they enter the tomb, retrieve the amulet, and resume their search for ne'Ric, who is fighting the Banded Wasps elsewhere in Ruewood.^[57] As they search, they again encounter Kyrilla, who reveals it is she who is behind the Banded Wasps' attack. They eventually find ne'Ric, and force the Wasps to retreat.

Fenris then receives a letter from Baron Geoffrey Volsung begging him for help, as he believes Kyrilla has put in motion a plot to assassinate him.^[58] Fenris, Four Bear, ne'Ric and their men head to meet Volsung on the beachhead at Cavanaugh. However, upon arriving, Volsung accuses them of betraying him. Fenris is able to convince him he is incorrect, narrowly avoiding a clash between Volsung's army and their own men. They then help his men repel an attack from an army of undead. Kyrilla appears, revealing she had hoped Volsung and Fenris would kill one another. Awaiting an attack in her castle, she summons the power of her "Lord", begging him to give her the strength to avenge her father's death.^[59]

The heroes and their army attack the castle, defeating Kyrilla's undead legions. She confronts them, revealing herself to be Kyrand's daughter. Four Bear gives her Kyrand's amulet, in which are stored his memories, and she realizes her "Lord", the demon Cartuke, was actually the one who killed Kyrand, who sacrificed his own life to wound Cartuke and save the lives of Fenris, Four Bear and ne'Ric.^[60] Cartuke had been manipulating Kyrilla in an effort to regain his power, but now she sees the truth, and joins the others. They head to his lair, finding him inside an energy sphere. Killing all of their men, he leaves only Fenris, Four Bear, ne'Ric and Kyrilla. In an effort to distract him, Fenris and Kyrilla attack, and as he turns them to stone, ne'Ric fires a magical arrow which kills him. Four Bear laments that once again, he has failed to save the lives of his friends, but he and ne'Ric take some consolation in the knowledge that Cartuke has finally been defeated.

Development[edit]

Bungie conceived of Soulblighter prior to the release of The Fallen Lords in 1997, with the only thing that would prevent them from making it being if The Fallen Lords was a commercial failure.^[61] However, when the original game proved a success, becoming Bungie's biggest selling game thus far,^[1] the sequel immediately went into development. One of their main goals with the sequel was to include numerous gameplay aspects and game mechanics which they had wanted to feature in The Fallen Lords, but had been unable to implement due to time constraints. Alex Seropian, co-founder of Bungie, explains "there were still some things at the end of Myth that we wanted to do, but we just ran out of time. Myth was a terrific product, but we knew we could do a lot better."^[61] Of the initial planning for Soulblighter, Seropain states

We had a lot of specific design goals for Myth II. Part of those things are enhancements to the engine as well as the gameplay. There were some things in the gameplay and artificial intelligence that made the original annoyingly difficult, and those were some of the things we wanted to enhance. In addition to that, we decided to touch basically every facet of the game. We wanted to make the music and sound better, the graphics - so we basically retouched every area of the Myth gaming experience.^[61]

New to Soulblighter were moving 3D models within the gaming world, something none of Bungie staff had ever created before. For example, the opening level features a fully functional windmill, and a later level features a drawbridge that closes as the level begins, and which the player must then lower so their army can gain access to a castle. Although the original game featured the same kind of 3D polygonal models, none of them moved, and implementing this feature proved to be one of the biggest challenges the team encountered in making the game.^[1] Another challenge also involved something not seen in the first game; a level set indoors. For this level, which is set in a large castle, the AI had to be rewritten as two enemy units could be right beside one another but not be able to see each other because of a wall between them. Previously, two units standing beside one another would automatically attack. Writing this new code into the AI scripting language proved especially difficult for the programmers.^[62]

The team also approached the cutscenes differently. In The Fallen Lords, the cutscenes had been created by an American animation studio, but had received a mixed response from both the developers and fans of the game, with some feeling they felt cartoony, and were tonally disconnected from the rest of the game. This was something the team wanted to ensure was not repeated in Soulblighter. As Seropian explains,

Myth has a different style to it, almost like a classic kind of look, and we just thought that rendered animation wouldn't look as good with it, so we went with cel animation. Some people liked it, some people didn't, and in the final analysis we decided that it looked a little more cartoon-like than we wanted. For Myth II we decided to go with a Japanese company and have more of an anime style, more of a cutting-edge, rougher-edge look and feel to the animation.^[63]

In terms of the game's graphics, as with The Fallen Lords, each level in Soulblighter is constructed on a polygonal mesh. However, the mesh used is four times finer than in the original, and hence the graphics are more detailed and smoother. Also like the first game, although the game world itself is fully 3D, the characters populating each level are 2Dsprites. However, the sprites in Soulblighter have many more frames of animation than those in The Fallen Lords, and so move much more smoothly.^[64] Explaining why the team stuck with using 2D sprites in a 3D terrain, producer Tuncer Deniz states,

it's a performance issue. The reason we went with sprites for the characters is because in Myth you can have one hundred units on the screen at the same time, and if they were all polygonal models, even those with the fastest home computers wouldn't be able to play the game.^[65]

Delays[edit]

Originally scheduled for North American release on November 1, 1998, Bungie were unable to have the game ready in time. According to Tuncer Deniz, the initial release date was missed because of "the time frame given to do the game, which was very small as opposed to most major titles. We added so many new things - ultimately that ends up extending the development cycle."^[1] The team then set a release date for just prior to Christmas, meaning the game would need to go gold by the first week of December.^[1]

By November 13, Bungie were still writing code for individual levels, although lead programmer Jason Regier felt "it seemed there was an end in sight."^[1] On November 21, the team held a meeting, discussing whether to continue to aim for the Christmas deadline, or work to incorporate all of the still-evolving gameplay ideas and fix every bug, which would mean almost certainly missing the deadline. Deniz ultimately argued the team should continue to develop the gameplay and fix bugs, but they would also need to accept that not every detail they wanted to add was going to be included.^[1] On November 22, Diane Donohue (director of operations) and Doug Zartman (director of public relations) sent out one-hundred-and-forty copies of the game to game reviewers across North America. The staff at Bungie had become so stretched trying to finish the game on time that Donohue and Zartman were hand inking the "This Game Is Huge" blurb, and then pressing them onto the boxes themselves.^[1]

On November 24, the team decided to aim for a December 13 finish, which would get the game on shelves between Christmas and the new year. Zartman explains "It's not as catastrophic as it sounds. The second biggest time to buy games is immediately after Christmas. Gamers are taking back the game they didn't want and getting the game they did want - and they've also got all that holiday money."^[1] By December 7, the entire Bungie staff were either playtesting the game or fixing bugs.^[1] On December 10, the game went gold, with Zartman sending out an email to gaming websites;

Bungie Software tiredly but happily announces that Myth II: Soulblighter, sequel to 1997's seminal 3D strategy title Myth: The Fallen Lords, has gone to replication. As you read this, a plant somewhere in Atlanta is replicating and boxing hundreds of thousands of copies and preparing to ship them to the far corners of North America. Elsewhere in the world, GT Interactive, Pacific Software Publishing and other publishing partners are doing the same ... this sequel has been turned in a mere seven months.^[1]

The game made it to store shelves on December 28.^[1]

Uninstall bug[edit]

On December 28, the day the game was shipped to stores, Bungie's head-office was contacted by their Japanese publisher, who informed them a woman working on the Asian translation of the game had discovered a major bug in the Windows version. She had installed the game in the root directory of her hard drive, and then used the uninstall program to uninstall it. The game was successfully uninstalled, but much of the contents of her hard drive were also erased. Jason Jones attempted to replicate the problem, quickly discovering what was wrong, and figuring out how to correct the faulty code. However, roughly 200,000 copies of the game were already in transit to major retail stores across North America. Jones, Alex Seropian, Doug Zartman, Diane Donohue, and David Joost (sales and marketing director) quickly convened a meeting to decide what to do. The team essentially had two choices. On the one hand, they could say nothing, and quietly fix the bug in a patch that would be immediately made available for download on their website. In favor of this course of action, it was argued that installing a game to the root directory of a hard drive was an unusual thing to do, something there was little chance of anyone repeating, and so it was unlikely anyone would ever encounter the bug. The other option was to publicly announce the problem and recall the game. This is what they did.^[1] According to Jones,

The thing that made the decision easy was that if we were to ship the game anyway and try to fix the problem later, some people were gonna get screwed. And that was wrong. It might not have been very many people - maybe one or two. But it would have bothered us the rest of our lives. Maybe not - maybe just two years. We'd be sitting around today: "Damn, wonder when the next person's gonna call?" It was so clear that there was one decision that led down the road of eternal damnation. The other was to spend a lot of money and do the right thing - and never make the same mistake again.^[1]

Bungie recalled every shipped unit of the game, a decision which cost them $800,000 in expenses and fines from retailers for missing their release deadline.^[1] Meanwhile, Donohue called the Bungie factory in Atlanta and told the production managers to immediately stop printing copies of the game, and hold any shipments that hadn't already gone out, while Joost began calling the stores that were still awaiting shipments, telling them to refuse any orders that arrived. As the units that were in transit began to arrive back at the factory, each individual one had to be repackaged by hand.^[66] Joost explains,

You open the carton, then the box for each individual unit, take out the jewel case, unwrap the shrink wrap, take out the old CD and destroy it, put in the new CD, re-shrink-wrap the jewel case, repack it in the box, put on a new UPC label that would electronically read this as version 1.1, and put a red sticker on the box saying that this is the new updated version 1.1.^[1]

By December 30, v1.1 was on the way to stores. Bungie also issued a statement on their website telling players who had managed to get a copy of v1.0 to uninstall the game by manually dragging the game's folder to the recycle bin. They also made the v1.1 patch available for download.^[67] The gaming press lauded Bungie's handling of the situation, praising their decision to take the financial hit and recall the game.^[1]

"Fear" and "Loathing"[edit]

With the release of Soulblighter, Bungie included two programming tools called "Fear" and "Loathing", which allowed players to create new units and maps.^[69] Both The Fallen Lords and Soulblighter had been created using four tools developed by Bungie themselves; "Tag Editor" edited the constants stored in the cross-platform data files; "Extractor" handled the 2D sprites and the sequencing of their animations; "Loathing" acted as the map editor; and "Fear" dealt with the 3D polygonal models such as houses, pillars, and walls.^[70] Speaking of Fear and Loathing, The Fallen Lords's producer and programmer Jason Jones explains, "Loathing is basically the map editor for Myth. You import your map into it, you change the heights, and you place your units on the map in Loathing. Fear takes care of all the models; it is used to import the 3D rendered models into Myth."^[71]

Loathing was specifically built around the Myth engine and allowed the team to modify the 3D landscape, apply lighting, determine terrain type, script the AI, and position structures, scenery, and enemies. The 3D models were then imported into the game using Fear.^[70] Bungie themselves strongly encouraged the creativity of their fan base in using these tools. For example, in April 1999, they issued a press release regarding the World War IItotal conversionMyth II: Recon, saying "This kind of plug-in was exactly what the Myth II tools were intended to inspire, and is an excellent sign that Myth mapmakers are taking this game world in fascinating new directions."^[72]

Technology[edit]

The Fallen Lords originally supported both software rendering and 3dfx's Glide hardware acceleration.^[73] Soon after it was released, Bungie released a v1.1 upgrade patch, which added support for Rendition's Redline,^[74] and 3dfx's Voodoo Rush.^[70]Soulblighter originally supported software rendering, all 3dfx and Rendition GPUs, and any graphics cards that supported Direct3D for Windows and QuickDraw 3D for Mac.^[75][76] The game also supported 3D audio, specifically Aureal Semiconductor's A3D and Creative Labs' EAX.^[77]

Later releases[edit]

In 1999, Bungie re-released Soulblighter for Mac OS and Windows as part of a special edition called Myth: The Total Codex. The bundle included The Fallen Lords, Soulblighter v1.3 (Bungie's last official update of the game^[78]), the Soulblighterexpansion packMyth II: Chimera (developed by the Myth mapmaker group Badlands, in association with Bungie themselves), and official Strategies and Secrets guides for both of the main games.^[79]Soulblighter was later ported to Linux by Loki Entertainment.^[80]

In June 2000, Take-Two Interactive, who had purchased 19.9% of Bungie's shares in 1999, acquired the Oni and Mythintellectual properties after Bungie was purchased outright by Microsoft.^[81][82] Take-Two's first Myth release was Green Berets: Powered by Myth II in July, 2001.^[83] Set in the Vietnam War, Green Berets is a total conversion of the Soulblighter engine, and includes a copy of Soulblighter, as well as the Fear and Loathing tools.^[84] Developed by mapmakers from within the Myth community, in association with TalonSoft, Green Berets also features eight new multiplayer maps, and the option to use Green Berets units while playing the Soulblighter single-player campaign.^[85][86] Take-Two's second release was Myth II: Worlds in October.^[87]Worlds includes a copy of Soulblighter, the SoulblighterStrategies and Secrets guide in PDF form, and two disks of fan-created single-player campaigns, multiplayer maps, and gameplay mods.^[88]

Community[edit]

Although the official Bungie.netMyth servers closed in February 2002,^[89] the Myth series continued to have an active online fanbase for over a decade, particularly Soulblighter. After Bungie released the Total Codex bundle in 1999, which contained The Fallen Lords v1.3, Soulblighter v1.3 and the Soulblighter expansion pack, Myth II: Chimera, they ceased working to develop the game's source code, as Microsoft, who purchased the company in 2000, wanted them to concentrate on Halo.^[90] As such, they were approached by a group of programmers, artists and coders known as MythDevelopers, who asked for access to the code so as to continue its development.^[91] With the blessing of Take-Two, Bungie released their entire archive of Myth-related materials to MythDevelopers, including the source code, artwork, all creative files, and documentation.^[91] MythDevelopers were also granted access to the source code for Myth III: The Wolf Age, which was developed by MumboJumbo in 2001.^[91] Bungie also open sourced their Mythmetaserver source code in 2002.^[89]

MythDevelopers used this material to improve and further develop the games. Although their initial focus was on the bug-ridden release version of The Wolf Age,^[91] they also worked to update the first two games to newer operating systems on both Mac and PC, fix bugs, and create unofficial patches to enhance both the games themselves and the mapmaking tools.^[91] They also developed their own library, dubbed the Myth Core Library, which provided networking, input routines, and other low-level functions.^[78] This enabled MythDevelopers to avoid the necessity of licensing any external libraries, and instead allowed them to develop everything in-house. This was part of their deal with Take-Two, as they couldn't incorporate anything into the games which they would be unable to give Take-Two the rights to should the company ever ask for the source code back; all modifications remained the intellectual property of Take-Two, who were free to use them in a future commercial version of Myth, if they ever wanted to re-release an upgraded version of one or more of the games, or incorporate the modifications into the development of a new Myth game.^[91]

MythDevelopers disbanded in December 2003, with Project Magma becoming the main development group for The Fallen Lords and Soulblighter,^[78] and FlyingFlip Studios for The Wolf Age.^[92] From 2003 to 2018, Magma released several major patches for Soulblighter, each of which featured fixes for bugs, graphical problems, gameplay problems, and interface issues, as well as improve the Fear and Loathing tools and the online multiplayer mode.

Reception[edit]

Soulblighter received "generally favorable reviews." It holds an aggregate score of 88 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on twelve reviews.^[93]

GameSpot's Michael E. Ryan scored the game 9.3 out of 10, calling it "about as good as a computer game can possibly be." He felt it improved on the original in every way, specifically citing the graphics, gameplay, and multiplayer mode. He also praised the mapmaking tools. He concluded "Bungie basically improved all the good features in Myth; added a number of gameplay, multiplayer, and graphical enhancements; and then threw in some slick and powerful editing tools to boot. The end result is one of the best games to be released this year."^[22]

Game Revolution's Calvin Hubble rated the game an A-, calling it "both one of the best sequels to hit the scene and one of the finest titles on the RTS market." He too felt it improved on the original, writing, "Bungie did an excellent job at reading the faults of the original by making change where change was needed and leaving the successful areas alone." He praised the level design and gameplay variety, citing "some of the most creative and immersive environments in the industry." He also lauded the graphics and multiplayer mode, concluding "Myth II offers the best real-time strategy experience in the industry. It has everything that made Myth one of the best games of last year, plus a free set of steak knives ... Myth II is simply one of the best sequels ever designed."^[19]

IGN's Tal Blevins scored it 8.9 out of 10, praising Bungie for seeking fan feedback from The Fallen Lords, and implementing the most requested changes. He was especially impressed with the graphics, writing "watching a line of troops wade across a stream, their reflections bobbing in the river's current is simply spectacular." He concluded by "highly recommending this game to anyone, even those who have never played an RTS game before ... Myth II breathes enough new life back into this series to qualify as an incredibly fun game with tons of replayability."^[2]

PC Zone's Paul Mallinson scored it 8.5 out of 10. He praised the improved controls, and the enhancements made to the game engine, concluding "If you liked the original Myth, you'll love this. Graphically, Soulblighter is much better, and there's not much wrong with the gameplay. There's a fine single-player game to get your teeth into, and an easily workable multiplayer alternative to back it up. There's even a campaign editor which enables you to make your own missions. Add all these things together and you have to conclude that Myth II: Soulblighter is undoubtedly an excellent package."^[96]

CNET Gamecenter named Myth II the best Macintosh game of 1999.^[98] It was a finalist for Computer Games Strategy Plus's 1998 "Real-Time Strategy Game of the Year" award, which ultimately went to StarCraft.^[99]

Next Generation reviewed the PC and Mac versions of the game, rating them four stars out of five, and stated that "Myth II: Soulblighter's charm lies in a bundle of improvements and high production values that make the parts greater than the whole. While it may not have reached WarCraft or C&C status yet, the series is deservedly a growing legend in its own time."^[94]

Sales[edit]

Soulblighter considerably outsold The Fallen Lords, which had been Bungie's best selling game up to that point. In North America, pre-orders for the game reached 140,000 units.^[1] When v1.1 was released on January 7, day one sales equaled the number of units the original sold worldwide in total; 350,000.^[1] In the United States alone, it sold 87,175 copies by April 2000.^[100]

References[edit]

Description:

- Animated blood, gore and violence

Since the Beginning of Time the forces of Order and Chaos have been engaged in an eternal struggle to decide the fate of all Creation. That struggle has now come to the Mortal Realm... And neither Man, Demon, nor Angel will be left unscathed... own on-line gaming servers, Battle.net, has taken Blizzard titles into a new dimension.

After possessing the body of the hero who defeated him, Diablo resumes his nefarious scheme to shackle humanity into unholy slavery by joining forces with the other Prime Evils, Mephisto and Baal. Only you will be able to determine the outcome of this final encounter...

In Diablo II, return to a world of dark fantasy. As one of five distinct character types, explore the world of Diablo II -- journey across distant lands, fight new villains, discover new treasures and uncover ancient mysteries, all in the quest to stop the Lord of Terror, once and for all...

Game Features

• Five all-new character classes with unique attributes and abilities
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• Advanced combat system which incorporates class-specific fighting techniques and spells
• Full Multiplayer support, including Internet play over Battle.net
• Optional 3Dfx and Direct3D support

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-- One of the rebellious women who have wrested the secrets of magic use from the male dominated Mage-Clans of the East, the Sorceress is an expert in mystical creation ex nihilo. Though somewhat lacking in the skills of hand-to-hand combat, she compensates for this with fierce combative magics for both offense and defense. Solitary and reclusive, the Sorceress acts based on motives and ethics inscrutable to most, sometimes seeming capricious and even spiteful. In reality, she understands the struggle between Order and Chaos all too clearly, as well as her role as a warrior in this battle.

Single-Player PC System Requirements: Windows� 2000, 95, 98 or NT 4.0 Service Pack 5, Pentium� 233 or equivalent, 32 MB RAM, 650 MB available hard drive space, 4X CD-ROM drive, DirectX� compatible video card

Multiplayer PC System Requirements and Options: 64 MB RAM, 950 MB available hard drive space, 28.8 Kbps or faster modem. Up to 8 Players: Over TCP/IP Network or Battle.net� (Requires low-latency Internet connection with support for 32-bit applications)

Macintosh: G3 processor, Mac OS8.1 or higher, 64 MB RAM plus virtual memory, 1.5 BG free hard disk space, 4x CD-ROM drive, video support for 256 colors display at 800x600 resolution (Optional 800x600 resolution mode is not recommended for systems near minimum specifications for RAM or processor speed).

Optional 3D Acceleration Supports Glide® and Direct 3D® compatible video cards with at least 8MB of video RAM. Direct 3D® requires 64 MB of system RAM

Includes:

• (3) CDs
  • (1) Install Disk
  • (1) Game Disk
  • (1) Cinematics Disk
• (1) Manual

Price: 10.00