crash during file writing, how to recover ?

[Roedy Green]

I do not know if this story is true, just
relating it as a piece of trivia/memorobilia.

Everybody heard the story if you were around in computing circa 1962.

 

[Roedy Green]

The way I heard it was that it was a bank in California. The programmer
made off with millions and moved to Mexico. Because of publicity fears,
not only did the bank not go after him (extradition and all) but they
hired him (at a six-figure salary!) to work remotely and ensure that
nobody else could pull off a similar stunt.

the other hoary story involved a man who worked for Coca Cola who had
a feeling he was about to be laid off. He set a timebomb in his code
that would go off in X months if he was not employed to continually
disarm it.

When it went off, it printed "Drink 7UP" on the bottom of every page
of a major report. Nobody could find out where the code that did this
was hidden, so they solved it with a guillotine.

 

[Roedy Green]

When it went off, it printed "Drink 7UP" on the bottom of every page
of a major report. Nobody could find out where the code that did this
was hidden, so they solved it with a guillotine.

This story inspired my most popular essay ever,
http://mindprod.com/unmain.html

how to write unmaintainable code.

 

[Kasper Dupont]

There are two situations which could
have cause the problem, one of which is
*probably* not IBM's fault.

I don't know the details. But multiple people knowing
more details than me have told, that there is no doubt it
was IBM's fault. If I understood it correctly, it happened
as some IBM technical personel was doing some maintainance
on the system. And it also sounded like some software bug
in the database must have been part of the reason.

Later IBM actually payed part of the 10 million dollars of
damages. Though I think the exact amount IBM payed in this
case is kept secret.

 

[Darko Aleksic]

Unfortunately, no.

Hm, I thought everyone knew it was Richard Pryor ;^D

Darko

 

[Michael Borgwardt]

If you really wanted to be safe, you have three teams running it and
three programming teams working to the same spec.

Indeed. Failing to do this brought down the EMS coordination system in
Berlin during the millenium change. IIRC it was a bug indirectly related to
the Y2K problem. They had a mirror. Which exactly replicated the bug.
Then they switched back to their old system. Which couldn't handle the
load of emergencies generated by 4 Million people partying...

 

[Chris Sonnack]

In the US we round 0.50..0 of anything up to 1.0, which produces
a bias of some size. If the perpetrator had been satisfied with
this he might still be collecting. Rounding down also produces
a bias, while round to even is (normally) unbiased.

Isn't "Banker's Rounding" rounding to even (or similar)?