Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 9, 1994 TAG: 9401020187
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Software- those ubiquitous instructions which tell computers how to do\ everything from defrosting creamed corn in a microwave to shutting down the\ space shuttle when someone leaves a valve open - is dangerous. Written by\ humans, it is dangerous because it is endowed by those who use it with\ superhuman expectations. Software is like a baseball umpire, it must start out\ perfect and improve over time. In "Digital Woes," author Lauren Ruth Wiener\ quotes several cases where a reliance on software has cost lives: where an\ radiation therapy machine administers 100 times to much radiation, where\ improper software in a Patriot missile battery prevents the interception of a\ SCUD missile during the Gulf war resulting in 28 deaths, where a bug causes the\ Bank of New York to lose $5 million in untraceable loans.
Subtitled "why we should not depend on software," this book explains why\ slavish obedience to computers is dangerous. It reinforces to the layman a fact\ understood by anyone in the software industry - computers are only tools, not\ revelations.
- LARRY SHIELD
Thirty Years After: An Artist's Memoir of the Civil War. By Edwin Forbes.\ Louisiana State University Press. $65.
Edwin Forbes put together this book of reconstruction and remembrance in\ 1890, 25 years after the Civil War's end. William J. Cooper, the Boyd Professor\ of History at LSU, helps put this new edition in perspective with a concise\ introduction.
Looking back on these black and white sketches is a haunting experience, for\ this was one of the last wars to be detailed without at least the rudiments of\ motion pictures. How might our perspectives of that great war have been altered\ had we real film of Lee preparing for the third day of Gettysburg instead of the midget Martin Sheen's pitiful portrayal in the current film of that name? Forbes' sketches have both the advantage and disadvantage of being frequently unlabeled - an "army on the march," for example, instead of more specific names and places. The advantage, though, can be seen in the timeless horror of five soldiers seated on their coffins just as a firing squad blasts them into eternity.
This is a coffee table book, with a dining table price, and, despite all its\ charm, unwieldy.
Larry Shield trains dogs and horses in Franklin County.\ Robert Hilldrup is a Richmond writer and former newspaperman.
by CNB