stock@uwvax.ARPA (daniel L. stock) (09/28/83)
I am going to give a talk on computer reliability soon, and I would like to pepper the talk with several good examples of famous bugs (by which I mean any computer error, be it hard or soft) throughout history. Although I have heard of several such bugs, I have not been able to find good, technical references that have said exactly what went wrong. I am looking for such references. Some of the particular bugs of interest are: 1) The "Mariner space rocket to Venus, lost because of the lack of compulsory declarations in FORTRAN." [Quote from Tony Hoare's Turing Lecture in the February, 1981, Communications of the ACM. Unfortunately, this is all that is said about it there] 2) The false missile alerts given by the NORAD system in November 1979 and June 1980. 3) The bug that caused massive flooding of the Colorado River this past spring by allowing too much water through various dams. Please let me know of any good references to these or other comparable bugs. SEND REPLIES BY MAIL, NOT BY NETNEWS; I will post replies to the net if there is sufficient interest. Thank you all! -- daniel stock stock@uwisc ...!seismo!uwvax!stock