Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!nic.MR.NET!shamash!tank!mimsy!tove.umd.edu!folta From: folta@tove.umd.edu (Wayne Folta) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: 6.0.2 and Word Message-ID: <15944@mimsy.UUCP> Date: 14 Feb 89 19:37:31 GMT References: <35727@bbn.COM> <730@wpi.WPI.EDU> <330@bridge2.3Com.Com> Sender: nobody@mimsy.UUCP Reply-To: folta@tove.umd.edu.UUCP (Wayne Folta) Distribution: usa Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science,gs Lines: 20 I feel strange defending Microsoft, but all of the blame being placed at their doorstep may not be deserved. Let's face it: the present Mac does not have any memory protection, and that is just asking for instability. That is, any program (including, of course, INITs) that one has run since one last rebooted could be the culprit that causes a crash. Any program can overwrite anyone else's data or code with impunity, so a Word "crash" might actually have been set up by the game one played before bringing up Word, or by the DA one used to do a word count, or by one's nifty screenblanking INIT, or... Of course, Word could be at fault, or even 6.0.2, I am not trying to exhonorate the guilty or blame the victim here. I just want to suggest alternative causes for our problems. [Then there is always the paranoid suggestion that a virus caused a crash. That is about as likely as the beginning programmer's excuse that a compiler bug screwed up their code. :-)] Wayne Folta (folta@tove.umd.edu 128.8.128.42)