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From: Niclas Hedhman <niclas@hedhman.org>
Organization: Private
To: "Gump code and data" <general@gump.apache.org>
Subject: Re: cvs commit: gump/blog/Issues GumpStorm.txt
Date: Tue, 25 May 2004 14:10:33 +0800
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On Tuesday 25 May 2004 13:35, ajack@apache.org wrote:
> Things degraded exponentially! It brought down the ISP (SendMail in a
> hard in spin), and I was accused of intentional mail bombing. 

:o)
Was that all??

Anecdote Warning;
Back in 92, a single instance (incorrectly configured) of my program in a 
building controller, single-handedly managed to bring the Pager network to a 
grinding halt  (send message, error returned, "Ah, must have been error in 
transfer, try again.", loop).  And I was in the Carribean.

It took Swedish Telecom 2-3 days to locate where the 'spammer' came from, and 
discontinue the 'phone call', since it went via a X.24 network as well.
Nevertheless, when I arrived back, there was a note; "Call Telecom at ...", 
and when I did, the receptionist knew me by name, and the person in charge, 
was laughing hilariously on the border of sounding insane, trying to convince 
me 'please don't do that again'.

Story doesn't end there...

A few weeks later (Easter Friday), whilst trying to fix this problem, I had 
managed to put an inaccessible unit in such a state again, and I called the 
person in charge, and notified that something similar just happened again, 
but that if they modified the error code (i.e. send back number doesn't 
exist), the program would recover. He then jumps into his car, drives the 
300km to his office, do the change, program recovers, change back the number, 
and drive the 300km back... (He lives in the north of Sweden, where 300km is 
'just around the corner').


Same year, by sending a single illegal character to the SOS Alarm service 
(911) VAX computer, the serial port driver crashed, and their Pager services, 
low-priority alarm (such as people stuck in elevators) and other 
communications halted. I saw it as "Hmmm, no response anymore.", a few days 
later, "Ahhh, it is up again...", some more trying to get a program working, 
"Again, no response..." fewer days, and same thing... Support call revealed 
the problem, and what was scary was that it took them so long to notice.


So many fragile computer systems out there :'(


Cheers
Niclas
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