Re: climate gate and programming bugs

["Tomas L. Byrnes" <tomb () byrneit net>]

So far:

Overflows from assigning the values of real calcs to integers without
rounding, truncation or conversion (documented in the Readme).

Possible bug, depends on the compiler used: Assign reals to integers
without type conversion. At least when I did fortran (f77 on S-100
machiens), that was a random number generator.

Overall, the code is downright awful.

What I don't understand, given that this is publicly funded research
supposedly in the public interest, why there isn't just a "open source"
approach. IE, have a sourceforge project for the code, and make the data
available to everyone.

I'm sure some pretty sharp minds will code up a significantly better set
of code to run the models that can run on boinc a lot faster than a few
researchers who spend more than half their time on the talk circuit and
chasing grants.

I wouldn't use the CRU code to set pricing for a lemonade stand, never
mind be the foundation for changing the entire world economy.


-----Original Message-----
From: funsec-bounces () linuxbox org [mailto:funsec-bounces () linuxbox org]
On Behalf Of Dan Kaminsky
Sent: Tuesday, December 08, 2009 3:56 PM
To: Gadi Evron
Cc: funsec
Subject: Re: [funsec] climate gate and programming bugs

Any actual bugs yet?



On Dec 8, 2009, at 6:34 PM, Gadi Evron <ge () linuxbox org> wrote:

> http://newsbusters.org/people/john-graham-cumming
>
>
> A segment on the Dec. 3 broadcast of BBC's "Newsnight," showed the
> implications of the story behind the so-called "ClimateGate" scandal  
> are
> more than just e-mails concealing data, but an incompetence analyzing
> the data by way of faulty computer code.
>
> John Graham-Cumming, a British programmer known for the open source
> "POPFile email filtering program" explained how the University of East
> Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU) had wholesale problems with its
> computer programming analyzing climate change data, with billion, if  
> not
> even trillions of dollars, on the line.
> _______________________________________________
> Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts.
> https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec
> Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
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