Re: OT: Programming (was Re: word creation algorithm)

On Jan 27, 2008 12:49 PM, ROGER MILLS <rfmilly@...> wrote:

> Would this have arisen in tribute to an early Arthur C. Clarke story
> (IIRC),
> in which a computer runs amok, and is only stopped when the command "I
> tell
> you three times!!" is given?

More likely in response to a race condition (real or perceived) where the
system might not be in the right state to act on the command the first time
around, but it is hoped that the attempt to do so will put it in a more
receptive frame of mind.  The three-times-means-I-mean-it thing doesn't seem
like a very secure system design to me - we computer geeks always try things
multiple times when they don't seem to be working.  (Something about
definitions of insanity springs to mind...)

In a similar vein, for a long time the standard idiom to reboot a UNIX
system was to run the command "sync", then run the command "sync" again, and
only then run the command "reboot".  The "sync" is supposed to "sync"hronize
the portions of the file system buffered in memory with the actual files on
disk, so that the system comes back up in a consistent state, but it
actually only puts a request for a sync operation in the OS's processing
queue, so if you do the reboot right away it might not have done anything
yet...






--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>

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