Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!apex!chuckh
From: chuckh@apex.UUCP (Chuck Huffington)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Workstation Data Integrity
Message-ID: <75@apex.UUCP>
Date: 31 Aug 90 17:24:06 GMT
References: <1990Aug3.204358.330@portia.Stanford.EDU> <40694@mips.mips.COM> <2399@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <1990Aug10.171744.9639@zoo.toronto.edu> <2421@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <1990Aug18.210132.25203@sco.COM> <2434@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <6797.26d6edce@vax1.tcd.ie> <2469@crdos1.cr
Reply-To: chuckh@apex.UUCP (Chuck Huffington)
Organization: Apex Computer Co., Redmond  WA
Lines: 26

In article <3294@awdprime.UUCP> tif@doorstop.austin.ibm.com (Paul Chamberlain/32767) writes:
|In article <2469@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen) writes:
|>No answer is better than a wrong answer. What would anyone
|>bother to run on a computer which is so valueless that they don't care
|>if they get a right answer, just so that you get an answer?
|
|I'm sorry, but I have to go into reality mode here.  I can understand
|if you were running a simulation on the space shuttle you'd rather
|get no answer than a wrong answer.  But let's say you were doing something
|more typical, like ... oh ... replying to a long article in news.  You've
|been typing and researching for an hour now.  I ask you this: would you
|rather I just blow away that entire article and crash your machine or change
|a single random character?

Two points:

1) How do feel about a single random character in an ilist or
   in a free block map?

2) Are there really that many workstations that are ONLY used to read
   news?  And NEVER used to do anything critical?  How do you prevent
   a toy workstation from being used in a critial application?  And
   in the same line, what defines critical?  It would be really nice
   to have fault tolerant systems, but failing that, I would usually
   prefer to have a system crash instead of corrupting its filesystems,
   or silently making "innocent" errors.