[c-nsp] Ode to the old days

[Jon Lewis]

On Thu, 8 Dec 2016, Howard Jones wrote:

> The good old days of absolutely shocking software testing...
> e.g. the Ascend Max software build that never released IPs from the assigned 
> client IP pool - 200 user connections later, the helpdesk goes crazy. Or the 
> awesome Nortel Baystack bugs where pressing the "wrong" key in the "wrong" 
> menu would just crash the whole stack. Both in GA firmware. Nortel had a 
> whole selection of similar issues in their errata.

Reminds me of a bit of consulting I did way back on a SCO Unix server. 
Being used to Linux, and curious what was in the /etc/hosts file, I 
half-typed/half-tab completed "cat /etc/host" and hit enter, not noticing 
that it'd stopped short of the s.  The system immediately crashed / locked 
up.  Realizing, what I'd done, (on SCO, /etc/host is a binary), I expected 
crap in my terminal...but not that the system should crash from that. 
It's owner called SCO support, explained what happened, and was told it 
was a known bug...and "would you like to buy the update that fixes it?" 
WTF?!?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Jon Lewis, MCP :)           |  I route
                              |  therefore you are
_________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________