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Subject[OT] Crashed ATM (was: Ken Thompson interview in IEEE Computer ma gazine)
Date
	>> heh. I found this pic somewhere on the web:
>> http://battlemech.ml.org/winntatmcrash.jpg
>> shows you how reliable NT is ;)
>It shows a crashed application. Last time I checked, applications
can crash
>on Linux, too.

Actually, it shows (in Swedish) the application popup message, familiar to
all NT workstation users (especially those who use MSIE), which in English
is

"System Process - Out of Virtual Memory"

"Your system is running low on virtual memory. Please close some
applications.
You can then start the System option in the Control Panel and choose the
Virtual
Memory button to create an additional paging file or to increase the size
of
your current paging file."

This represents pretty crass design and testing by the implementors of the
ATM, which I agree is possible in any language and on any OS. Here, for
example, I imagine the memory leak is probably in the app, not NT. However,
one wonders to what extent Microsoft's domination means that anyone who can
get past chapter 1 of the MFC documentation is now a "senior
analyst-programmer" (in software house terms) and thus "qualified" to roll
out any old crap because "on a Microsoft platform the laws of physics don't
apply, we're all Superman, thank you Bill for being so wonderful".

Using commodity PC hardware as the motor for an ATM would seem to be a
pretty dubious design decision, too. For example, see
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/18.47.html#subj5. ATMs are increasingly
mission-critical to many banks, but for some reason, a cheap way of putting
up pretty colour graphics images of banknotes is more important to many of
them than maximising availability. I don't like the idea of my ATM
transactions going through non-parity memory to FAT filesystems on IDE
disks...

Nick Brown, Strasbourg, France (Nick(dot)Brown(at)coe(dot)int)








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