The part that makes Siemens look real bad is: "The scheme lasted for two years . . . fell apart when Tinley was out of town, and had to hand over an administrative password for the spreadsheets to Siemens' IT staff." No competent operation would run critical infrastructure on a system they don't control, develop software without using a version control system, or put code into production without even basic audits of the changes. Whoever put those policies in place needs to get the boot, too, along with all the people involved in hiring them.
@Jon
Since we're on the 'signed/unsigned' counter kick, may I personally strangle (in 2038) whichever Unix guru decided that 'seconds from the epoch' should be a SIGNED integer!?
Why? Dates prior to 1970 needed to be represented, too. And it's hardly going to be as big a problem in 19 years as Y2K was 19 years ago. Most systems already have 64-bit time values in place so, signed or not, I don't see a reason to strangle anyone before the next fractal Big Bang.
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