Matthew Garrett ([info]mjg59) wrote,
@ 2008-12-27 22:11:00
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Entry tags:advogato, fedora

So. Burning down the house. Uniquely Welsh concept[1] or near-inevitable consequence of design failure? I present the following:


Innocent Christmas ornament or HARBINGER OF DOOM?

Note how the candle descends into the foliage. There's a good inch and a half of candle left there, embedded into a block. The foliage is, in fact, plastic. The block it's embedded into is some sort of hydrocarbon-based foam. It turns out that lighting one of these and leaving it for a while is a good way to trigger all kinds of excitement. Of the "Goodness me, there appears to be a large lump of petroleum byproduct burning quite vigorously in the hall" variety.

The software design moral: Everything is shit and will attempt to kill you when you're not looking

Now. Back to eating turkish delight and wondering what to do for New Year.

[1] Yes, yes, it's a cover. THAT'S THE JOKE.

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[info]angoel
2008-12-27 10:33 pm UTC (link)
The software design moral: Everything is shit and will attempt to kill you when you're not looking

Alternatively, things that were designed to be monitored and who's only useful purpose is in being monitored, should not be left unmonitored.

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[info]_nicolai_
2008-12-27 10:49 pm UTC (link)
But things that kill you if the active monitoring fails in any way, should be redesigned to be fail-safe.
Somewhere on the Internet there's a "Computer Purity Test" and it has the questions: "Ever destroyed software from hardware?" and "Ever destroyed hardware from software?". At least the latter should be a lot harder than it sometimes is; I've met computers with price tags starting at GBP1M where misconfiguring the software would destroy the hardware.

There is no mention of candles or showers in this comment.

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[info]angoel
2008-12-27 11:41 pm UTC (link)
But things that kill you if the active monitoring fails in any way, should be redesigned to be fail-safe.

I think that candles, like cars, are things which if made fail-safe lose a lot of their point.

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[info]_nicolai_
2008-12-28 12:20 am UTC (link)
In this case it's easy: you end the wick part way up the candle, so that the wick runs out and the candle extinguishes above the plastic. I'd need a minute or two alone with the offending object pictured above and my swiss army knife for some investigation as to where the wick really ends to see if that is the case here.

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[info]king_of_wrong
2008-12-28 11:35 pm UTC (link)
How so? Cars can quite easily be made to refuse to start up if they're broken (e.g. no brake pressure - which lorries already do), which is quite definitely failing safe. Trains/buses/trams already have "oh, shit, the driver's asleep!" detection... though, admittedly, it's a lot easier to fix with a train as there's no steering.

You can't fix everything, but there's definitely an ALARP argument for candles burning out safely rather than relying on being extinguished. All it'd take is a thin bit of metal around the candle, like on tea lights. No, you can't stop someone from using it to set the curtains on fire, but you can definitely stop it igniting the table if you fall asleep.

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[info]ajaxxx
2008-12-27 11:23 pm UTC (link)
No, I like the original better.

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Brings back memories
[info]alanpope [launchpad.net]
2008-12-27 11:35 pm UTC (link)
A few years ago I spent Christmas at the in-laws. Some hours after the meal had finished I walked back into the dining room/kitchen and noted a conflagration on the table. I shouted "dining room's on fire!" to the relatives comatose in front of the telly. Nobody bothered to get up. Unfortunately the first receptacle immediately to hand in the sink which I attempted to drunkenly fill with water was a colander. Fail.

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[info]thaytan
2008-12-27 11:48 pm UTC (link)
Happy Chrismukkah señor Garrett!

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(Anonymous)
2008-12-27 11:58 pm UTC (link)
So many grammatical errors. So little time.

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[info]np237
2008-12-28 09:00 am UTC (link)
I think your message is very offensive against the Welsh, regardless of whether you say it is a joke or not.

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[info]mjg59
2008-12-28 11:25 am UTC (link)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Down_the_House#Covers

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[info]fooishbar
2008-12-28 11:49 am UTC (link)
Your very existence offends far more people than the population of Wales, but we mostly tend to not complain.

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[info]king_of_wrong
2008-12-28 05:10 pm UTC (link)
[1] Yes, yes, it's a cover. THAT'S THE JOKE.

I thought the Cornish were doing a cover version of a Welsh hit, not t'other way around.

(Reply to this)

stupidity
[info]dnivie
2008-12-29 09:59 am UTC (link)
It's simple really, it's just an example of things sucking in general. As you say, it's simple matter to engineer this fail-safe, yet the demographics that buy these kind of things near-universally do not care about that, so thus it's seldom done. Sad but true.

The combination of fail-dangerously candle-decorations, lots of people in the house, frequent consumption of alcohol and a breakup of normal daily routine is indeed a deadly one, ask any fireman.

(Reply to this)

pies?
[info]alex [the.earth.li]
2008-12-31 01:08 am UTC (link)
You had some mince pies, though, right? Bonfires just aren't the same otherwise...

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[info]mimeograph
2009-01-02 06:23 am UTC (link)
Merry Christmas and happy new year, Matthew. You have yet to fail to make me laugh and I'm glad that your house did not burn down.

Hopefully I'll see you on this side of the world next year. :)

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[info]mjg59
2009-01-02 12:26 pm UTC (link)
Almost certainly! Are you still doing FOSDEM?

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[info]makepurple
2009-04-26 11:49 pm UTC (link)
Nice Floral arrangement..

- GK

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