PLEASE NOTE: There is no mention of Y2K-caused glitches in this article. Although the computers were purchased in 1996, they were not in general use until about six months ago. I am posting this article because I feel it underscores the soft belly of IT which, when combined with any Y2K problems, might cause more widespread problems.

Wednesday December 22, 1999 06:39 PM

Durham Police Still Find Bugs in 3-Year-Old Computer System

DURHAM (WRAL) -- Durham Police have fancy laptop computers in their squad cars, but three years after taking the high-tech road, there are still major bugs in the system.

Durham was one of the first communities to get the high-tech patrol car computers, but many other departments got their systems up and running much faster.

Now, Durham has hired the expert who helped Wake County get started with this technology.

Officer Daniel Osman says his patrol car computer takes some of the risk out of answering calls.

"You can press in a key and find out all the calls to that address in the last two or three months. In terms of officer safety, it could throw a red flag to tell you that you might need some more back up," said Osman.

Durham's 50 patrol car computers have received dispatches from its 911 center since January, but the computers have been in the cars for more than three years.

By now, Durham Police were hoping the $1.5 million computer system would do a lot more, including vehicle and driver record searches plus in-field police reports.

The person brought in last month to straighten this out says the blame lies in part with the software companies hired to install the technology.

"We've had contractual deadlines that have been missed by our vendors, and we've done our best to hold their feet to the fire," said Randy Browning, information services director.

The police department believes it will have all the bugs worked out of this system by the summer.

Even if the system does get up and running by the summer, the new information services director says that they may have to replace all the laptops because they have become obsolete.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), December 23, 1999

Answers

85% of large software projects are late, 25% get cancelled.

8 days and a few weeks until we see if programmers were slacking for 40 years.

-- Servant (public_service@yahoo.com), December 23, 1999.

Sounds like a Y2K problem.

-- (mark@brethril.org), December 23, 1999.

----what ya wanna bet they bought into "cheaper is better" and have wintell platform laptops? hehehehehehehehehehehe Micro$cam strikes again! easy to use(phooey), fast(rigged numbers), y2k compliant (whoops download these dozens of "patches"), our puter "experts" can fix anything (more hahahahahahahahaha)

wintell=yugo you get what you pay for. Personally, I'm hoping all the wintell platforms crash and burn, worldwide, end the dominance of that absurd company once and for all. I don't think it's a coincidence that macroscams CFO just quit, either.....or that billy boy gates will be on a converted navy ship/yacht off australia at rollover, for that matter....

-- zog (zzoggy@yahoo.com), December 23, 1999.