Virtual Reality

Read in the San Francisco Chronicle about the following incident that happened this morning: "BART is experiencing a computer glitch and other technical difficulties this morning at a number of stations, causing lengthy delays throughout the Bay Area that have stymied the morning commute. A computer at the Embarcadero station saw a 'ghost train' at 7:30 a.m., requiring operators to drive their trains manually at no more than 25 mph, rather than the normal 70 mph, said Jim Allison, a spokesman for the transit agency. That created a backup in the Transbay Tube that saw as many as eight trains inside the tunnel at one time. That slowed the entire system to a crawl, and by 11 a.m. trains headed to the East Bay from San Francisco were still being delayed by 15 minutes." Say again? Did I read that right? "Ghost train"? This should be more than a little frightening to anyone who relies on public transportation systems (and this includes air traffic control systems). Phantom objects showing up on critical systems affecting the safety of hundreds of thousands... yikes. Eerily reminiscent of the closing scenes from the movie Wargames (link) in which the two protagonists (played by Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy), along with the entire war room at NORAD, watch in horror as the large screens display what everyone believes is a nuclear holocaust; but later turns out to have been a self-generated computer simulation involving phantom intercontinental ballistic missiles. Wonder if someone hacked into the BART system much like the Broderick character in Wargames. Or maybe the BART system simply runs on Microsoft XP... that would explain a lot.