21st Century UN*X - Bugs??

[John A. Weeks III]

In article <5393 at buengc.BU.EDU> bph at buengc.bu.edu (Blair P. Houghton) writes:
> In article <3222 at umn-d-ub.D.UMN.EDU> rhealey at ub.d.umn.edu (Rob Healey) writes:
> 
> >	I think the CORRECT statement should have been:
> >
> >	Due to the lazyness and lack of foresite of certain programmers alot of
> >	PROGRAMS under ALL forms of computers and OS's will not make it
> >	into the 21st century. i.e. don't have any of your money in a bank
> >	on new years eve 2000 or the negative intrest rate might zero
> >	it as 1999 becomes, effectively, 1900...
>
> Don't bet on it.  First of all, big bucks await
> crufty-systems programmers in the 90's as every bank in the
> world converts to bigger date-fields.

Don't bet on it...as a person who works for a real company (i.e., staying
open on a day-by-day basis) that supports hundreds of systems at other real
companies (i.e, some of which pay their bills on time), all too often I
see systems where "up and running" means the system analyst claims that
it is working, and s/he things they have a good shot at getting to the
airport before the customer figures out what is happening.

> Second, any of these bugs that are missed will be nonfatal, as
> the banks will be sure to make full backups of their asset data
> before the clock rolls over.

Have you ever asked someone who has just experieced a disk crash
about back-ups?  Often times you get a rather neat blank stare when
you ask this question.  People usually do not care about preventing
a computer disaster until after they get burned once.

> Any funds suddenly zeroed-out will be reinstatable,

Right.  At my bank, the "computer" is never wrong.  Us mere mortal
humans are not even allowed to question the actions of their 
electronic gods...even if it did credit one of my paychecks to 
some other Mr. Weeks, and then proceede to charge me $18 a shot
for 12 bounced checks.

> and the anomaly will in fact become just another
> debugging tool, pointing like a trillion-dollar neon lint(1)
> to the erroneous code.

...which will be used all of three college students trying to make
brownie points with a T/A.  In the real world, I have yet to see
lint being used 'cause everyone has way too much work and impossible
deadlines.  I don't hope for miracles, I rely upon them... and I'm
still going to miss my next deadline.

>				--Blair
>				  "Third, I'll have busted into your
>				   account and stolen all your money
>				   LONG before then... Moo-ha-ha."

				  Remember when I was 9 years old and
				  I ran you over with my bicycle?  Well,
				  I drive a computer now...

The only saving grace that us UNIX hackers have is that nobody in
banking uses UNIX.  Then again, UNIX is probably the only current
O/S that has a chance of still being around in 10 years.

-john-

-- 
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John A. Weeks III               (612) 942-6969               john at newave.mn.org
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