Re: Quote for the Day

[lonjers@prc.unisys.com (Jim Lonjers)]

[Hi, Tim, how're tricks?  The band playing a lot?]


I think something positive can come of this discussion.  When the phone
system was designed, it was not meant to be a fail-safe, life-critical
system as are most military systems.  (No, I do not want to discuss whether
military systems are meeting these goals -- that would not be constructive).

The design principles that still live in the phone system is that it is
basically a human system:  If the call fails to go through, people will
simply try again.  It doesn't happen much any more, but it hasn't been too
long when not getting a dial tone was reasonably common.  You simply hung
up and picked up the phone.  A circuit was probably cleared up in the mean
time.

The steelman requirements address a different sort of problem.  The fact
that AT&T used C for a large application that has some similarity to some
military systems is an interesting note, but does not conflict with the
view (at that time) that C would not meet the Steelman requirements.