If a moth flaps its wings in Princeton...

"Computers don't make mistakes, but they carefully execute every mistake *you* make."


Cute, isn't it? It does, however, parallel something I've repeatedly said to a number of people (including, to what I believe is her eternal frustration, my mother) - "Computers don't make mistakes. They do *exactly* what you've told them to do, whether you meant it or not." I was reading Slashdot this morning, of course, and one of the articles was "the top ten worst catastrophes caused by computers" or some such. The comments, in a lot of ways, were more interesting than the article; but I did pick up a few worthwhile links.


http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/363580/when-computers-go-wrong

http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2005/11/69355

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/25/2038217

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ariane_5_Flight_501



Interesting, funny, and just downright scary stories about the things computers do - because noone told them not to. This entire thing, of course, is inspired by both the Stuxnet worm and the Wikileaks DDOS attacks (more the former, but the latter has come up in most of the discussions about it that I've seen or been part of).


Anyway. Video and Audio entries put up on the other blog, some time soon. Tonight if we're all lucky.