The maker of a life-saving radiation therapy device has patched a software bug that could cause the system’s emergency stop button to fail to stop, following an incident at a Cleveland hospital in which medical staff had to physically pull a patient from the maw of the machine.

The bug affected the Gamma Knife, a device resembling a CT scan machine that focuses radiation on a patient’s brain tumor while leaving surrounding tissue untouched. A patient lies down on a motorized couch that glides into a chamber, where 201 emitters focus radiation on the treatment area from different angles. The patient wears a specialized helmet screwed onto his skull to ensure that his head doesn’t move and expose the wrong part of the brain to the machine’s pinpoint tumor-zapping beams.
[...]
When the hospital called the company that makes the Gamma Knife, it learned that there was a “known software bug problem” affecting the unit’s couch sensors. Known, anyway, to the company, Stockholm-based Elekta AB.

“Elekta was aware of the software ‘bug’ at the time of the December 2008 event and had implemented actions to correct the ‘bug’ in a future software release,” says Thomas Valentine, director of quality assurance and regulatory affairs for the Elekta’s U.S. arm, in an e-mail.

Since then, he adds, “The ‘bug’ has been corrected in software upgrades that have been implemented to all of the affected sites in the U.S. The U.S. NRC was notified of the completed status of software upgrades to correct the identified ‘bug’.”

We don’t know why “bug” is in quotes; surely this wasn’t a feature.

And then there was this:

The chief executive of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said Thursday that he regretted the “circumstances” that subjected 206 patients to radiation overdoses and laid out reforms made since the hospital discovered that a CT scanner had been set erroneously for 18 months.

iRobot’s soft, shape-shifting robot blob can roll around and change shape.

“T-Mobile’s popular Sidekick brand of devices and their users are facing a data loss crisis. According to the T-Mobile community forums, Microsoft/Danger has suffered a catastrophic server failure that has resulted in the loss of all personal data not stored on the phones. They are advising users not to turn off their phones, reset them or let the batteries die in them for fear of losing what data remains on the devices. Microsoft/Danger has stated that they cannot recover the data but are still trying. Already people are clamoring for a lawsuit. Should we continue to trust cloud computing content providers with our personal information? Perhaps they should have used ZFS or btrfs for their servers.”

Curiouser and curiouser.

Apple contractor Foxconn has said that it has suspended a security official after the death of a Chinese worker.

Sun Danyong, 25, reported a missing Iphone 4G phone prototype and was beaten by Foxconn employees who were terrified of the wrath of Steve Jobs.

His house was illegally searched and Sun’s body was found at the bottom of his multi-story apartment block.

Initial reports in China, quoting Foxconn, reported the death as a suicide. However once police started investigating the scene the language in the official press swiftly changed to say “apparent suicide”.

Chinese coppers are apparently examining CCTV footage of the death of Danyong which should give them a few clues.
[...]
In comments on blogsites, some Apple fanboys have looked at the story and said it is interesting because it shows that Apple has a new Iphone 4G prototype in the works.

Others have dismissed reports of the death, saying that it was all a front by the Microsoft inspired press to cast a shadow over Apple’s wonderful second quarter results.

This morning, hundreds of Amazon Kindle owners awoke to discover that books by a certain famous author had mysteriously disappeared from their e-book readers. These were books that they had bought and paid for—thought they owned.

But no, apparently the publisher changed its mind about offering an electronic edition, and apparently Amazon, whose business lives and dies by publisher happiness, caved. It electronically deleted all books by this author from people’s Kindles and credited their accounts for the price.

…

You want to know the best part? The juicy, plump, dripping irony?

The author who was the victim of this Big Brotherish plot was none other than George Orwell. And the books were “1984” and “Animal Farm.”

35 more years until “1984″ enters the public domain!

TRAVIS, N.Y. (WABC) — A teenager is recovering after falling several feet into an open manhole. She was texting and walking when it happened.

“I fell in a hole,” Alexa Longueira said. The Travis resident laughs about it now, but when the accident happened, it was a shock. She was walking along Victory Boulevard about to read a text message on her girlfriend’s cell phone when the sidewalk was suddenly gone. “Like, there was no warning about a big, open hole,” she said.

It was a big, open manhole. Alexa tumbled six feet underground and landed in four inches of raw sewage. “A manhole. My kid falls down a manhole,” Kim Longueira, said. In a word, Alexa’s mother says it was horrible. “She was smelly,” she said.

Alexa also had cuts across her arms and down her back. They know it could have been worse if the sewer had been full or if Alexa had hit her head.

Workers on the scene told kim they had left the manhole unattended in order to get cones to mark it off. “DEP is conducting a full investigation of what happened during a manhole incident on Victory Blvd. where workers were flushing a high-pressure sewer on Wednesday evening. We regret that this happened and wish the young woman a speedy recovery,” said DEP spokesperson Mercedes Padilla.

Meep Meep…    Har!