Dead code takes down another system. A perfect storm of failures that they made themselves. My gut feeling is that most trading firms could suffer a similar loss. Having worked for a 3rd party accounting management firm that kept logs for smaller traders I really realized how borked the whole system is. 60s era pen and paper stuff moving at the speed of light.

> Sadly, the primary cause was found to be a piece of software which had been retained from the previous launchers systems and which was not required during the flight of Ariane 5.

http://www.vuw.ac.nz/staff/stephen_marshall/SE/Failures/SE_A...