New York Times Film Reviews Lost in NYTIMES.COM Hyperspace

A broken hyperlink is no big deal. Some days it's a regular occurrence. It's another matter altogether when a major media outlet has more than a few dead links to itself.

The Times indexes its film reviews on a single page. Readers can select by title, year, genre, critic or country of origin. Title seemed a natural choice.

My search began on the "A" page. Select just the recommended films. The very second starred review, "A Man and His Dog," results in a dead link (error 404?). A fluke? Try "A Christmas Tale." "A Girl Cut in Two." "A Mighty Heart." "A Toute de Suite." "Across the Universe."

And so it goes, and not just titles beginning with "A". A casual attempt to find the "Man and His Dog" review through Google and Bing turned up an interview with the leading actor in this film. Is that the hidden review?

Yes, the New York Times has lots of reviews of lots of films. This symptom is to be expected (but no less annoying) when news stories move from headline position to archive or bit bucket. Yahoo's third party new story links are notoriously short-lived for this reason. But a recurring error across a valuable content area reveals a systemic problem at the Times. Perhaps its recent downsizing has resulted in the loss of valuable content, quality control staff, or, at the least, a certain lost expertise in how to use -- or compel proper usage of -- a content management system.

Glitch Precaution: D.C. Metro Trains Running On Manual

The day after a deadly D.C. metro train wreck, the entire system was operating on "manual," according to an AP report (via Forbes). This precaution, according to reporters Karush and Westley, was being taken because the train that probably caused the crash was in "automatic mode" at the time of the accident. According to the report, this means that the train "was controlled primarily by computer."

The report doesn't clarify whether the issue may have been software, impaired sensor signalling or faulty wiring. Computerworld's Patrick Thibodeau pointed out that the software in question was specifically designed to avoid rear end collisions. Possible computer-related causes could include incorrect configurations, security breaches, human error in interacting with the system, or hardware failure. Thibodeau does not mention whether the introduction of such automated systems reduced the incidence of rear end collisions and near-collisions.

Air France 447: Software Risk Underestimated?

At least one observer speculated that the crash of Air France 447 may have been caused by a software failure. Most reports have focused instead on pitot tubes (speed sensors), but as an ABC News story put it, "Virtually no hypothesis or theory about what happened is off the table."

Information Week's Paul McDougall was one of the earliest to suggest a software failure of some sort -- based not particularly on the specifics of Air France 447 or the Airbus 330, but a reminder that there had been recent problems with the Air Data Inertial Reference Unit (ADIRU) on previous flights. McDougall and others may or may not be onto something here, but there is reason to be concerned about software-enabled systems reliability and the complex interdependency that evolves between pilots and the fly-by-wire technology that supports them. 

Meanwhile Time Inc added to the speculation about possible technology failures. Revisiting that same previous ADIRU failure on a Quantas flight in October 2008,  Time's Jeffrey Iverson suggested that the Quantas investigation had not reached a satisfactory conclusion:

. .  . Even if there are recommendations to be made, it's unlikely they will come anytime soon. According to an aviation source close to the Australian investigation, Qantas remains perplexed by the phenomenon, finding that since October 2008 that particular A330 has never suffered a repeat ADIRU failure, even when flying the same routes under similar conditions. "So it's something they need to get to the bottom of," says the industry insider, who requested anonymity. "Because it's so unpredictable — it happens one time, and then never happens again — they're still trying to work out what it is." 

Tweeted: Amazon Merchandise "Unavailable" Glitch Hits Some

At least some Amazon.com visitors experienced a curious glitch of some kind. According to @mit429, @LeighEllwood, @vagari, @WeberBooks -- to name a few, Amazon showed some or all titles as "unavailable." According to @Chris_Rotella, when he phoned Amazon (you can do that?), they told him that systems were being "updated" at the time.

According to the Twitter timestamps, the problem occurred sometime after 11A Eastern.

The Amazon AWS status page reported an ECS power failure that affected certain instances running in a specific affected server rack, but that had been remedied by 1:20A PDT. I don't know whether Amazon proper is running on the Amazon Web Services infrastructure, (despite use of the inset AWS image) but it may not be coincidental. The buzz would have been much larger if all of Amazon everywhere had been affected.