I read Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park recently.
It seems obvious to the average person that a dinosaur park containing vicious species such as the acid-spitting Dilophosaurus, the intelligent hunters Velociraptor, aggressive flying Pterodactyls, and the ferocious Tyrannosaur was going to end in disaster.
A more docile park could work as long as other mistakes aren’t made. If we ignore the dangerous dinosaurs, it’s essentially poor software and a malicious developer that is Jurassic Park’s downfall.
The software controlling the automation contains many bugs and is also closely tied to the security and surveillance system. Computer programmer Dennis Nedry is brought to Isla Nublar to fix some bugs and add improvements. However, he uses his access privileges to take down the system which allows him to physically access restricted areas and steal the dinosaur eggs.
So the software is bad architecturally from a security aspect, but then Nedry was a malicious insider that abused this software flaw. The power outage and the aggressive dinosaurs is the main catastrophe that happens, but there’s also the existing issue of dinosaurs leaving the island undetected.
They don’t realise the dinosaurs have been breeding because of the way the software is designed. The user has to enter a number for the expected number of dinosaurs, then the park is scanned and stops counting when it finds that amount; so the system can only report that same value or fewer. This efficiency was added because the scientists have only cloned female dinosaurs – so it is “impossible” for them to breed. However, the dinosaurs can change their sex due to a type of frog DNA also being used in the genetic cloning process. This means some dinosaurs have switched sex to male, and have been breeding. The increased population has gone undetected, and some dinosaurs have been hitching rides on the ferry off the island.
This is definitely a cautionary tale of software issues.
Stranger Coding Tings 