196 Programming
Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston is switching to
Unix systems for real-time data acquisition. Hmmm.Catching Bugs Is Socially Unacceptable
Not checking for and not reporting bugs makes a manufacturer’s machine
seem more robust and powerful than it actually is. More importantly, if
Unix machines reported every error and malfunction, no one would buy
them! This is a real phenomenon.
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 90 09:07:05 PST
From: Daniel Weise <[email protected]>
To: UNIX-HATERS
Subject: Now, isn’t that clear?Due to HP engineering, my HP Unix boxes REPORT errors on the
net that they see that affect them. These HPs live on the same net as
SUN, MIPS, and DEC workstations. Very often we will have a prob-
lem because of another machine, but when we inform the owner of
the other machine (who, because his machine throws away error
messages, doesn’t know his machine is hosed and spending half its
time retransmitting packets), he will claim the problem is at our end
because our machine is reporting the problem!In the Unix world the messenger is shot.