[orborde]

> Meanwhile, I have friends who work for companies who write the software that control train scheduling throughout the country. After what they've seen, they refuse to ride on trains, and from the stories they've told I don't blame them.

Can you tell us more about this?

[kibwen]

The stories are mostly the mundane sort of terrible, rather than of the outlandish and entertaining variety. You know, impossibly buggy software plagued by decades of half-rewrites and no documentation or tests, the sort of stuff that's typical for most big companies except that this particular big company is responsible for shepherding untold quantities of earth-scorching chemicals via an infrastructure so archaic that they often have no idea where the trains actually are unless the conductors call in personally and read out the signs of the towns they're passing through. Hair-raising close calls. Problems that we have the technology to affordably solve, but are merely too apathetic to. I'm enough of a non-expert that if I attempted to relay anything more specific then I'm afraid that I'd just be talking out of my ass.

I should note that my friends do not work for Amtrak specifically, or even necessarily have anything to do with Amtrak. However, I can tell you that there are definitely major companies involved, if you're looking for a particularly Fight-Clubby response.

[clebio]

Interesting (terrifying) synopsis. I might have to borrow that last bit, too: "he was a bit too fight-clubby for me".