I’ve been watching yet another “Air crash investigations” film yesterday. To make a long story short, the crash (B737 disintegration in the air) has been caused by improper pilot actions in response to airplane roll in poor weather conditions. When the investigators sank deeply into the details of the catastrophe, they found out that all the pilots of the air company (Adam Air, Indonesia) were trained defectively. To be exact, they were trained comprehensively to handle normal situations, while having absolutely no knowledge about what to do in abnormal situations.

Then I have realized that many bricks which our world is built of are quite weak, but no one sees it. A really great number of devices, constructions, rules are designed to work when everything goes as expected, however, they will immediately fail as soon as something starts going wrong. I am concerned a bit about the situation in the information protection field. It is horrible to accept that many software products intending to protect sensitive data do not actually protect it (though giving the illusion that they do). What is the worst, it is almost impossible to detect such weaknesses from the outside, as everything looks good as long as the environment is appropriate. The pilots of Adam Air have performed dozens flights successfully -- thanks to the absence of abnormal situations -- and who could ever imagine that something is wrong? Many of us live beside potentially dangerous objects: various nuclear reactors, factories, dams. Who can be sure that the personnel working there has enough skills to handle all the possible situations? Who can be sure that -20 frost will not break them down due to constructors’ assumptions that “such frosts have never been noticed in this area”?