Messages in this thread | | | From | BROWN Nick <> | Subject | [OT] Crashed ATM (was: Ken Thompson interview in IEEE Computer ma gazine) | Date | Thu, 6 May 1999 09:22:35 +0200 |
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>> 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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