From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me
X-Spam-Level: 
X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham
	autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Thread: 103376,7272aa7508a3d83f
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
Path: 
 g2news1.google.com!news4.google.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newscon06.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.net!newsfeed-00.mathworks.com!nntp.TheWorld.com!not-for-mail
From: Robert A Duff <bobduff@shell01.TheWorld.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: pointer questions
Date: 02 Nov 2005 08:39:59 -0500
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Message-ID: <wccu0evp3rk.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com>
References: <djp1tm$186k$1@node3.news.atman.pl>
 <A_Z7f.2112$Rl1.1471@newsread1.news.pas.earthlink.net>
 <wccvezjrqvv.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com>
 <djr2pa$d33$1@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com>
 <19cfb$4361207d$4995001$19541@ALLTEL.NET>
 <djr9p4$d33$3@nwrdmz02.dmz.ncs.ea.ibs-infra.bt.com>
 <pan.2005.10.28.11.59.53.86658@linuxchip.demon.co.uk.uk.uk>
 <WHw8f.3106$yX2.1585@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net>
 <wccek623aku.fsf@shell01.TheWorld.com>
 <RJi9f.3950$yX2.944@newsread2.news.pas.earthlink.net>
 <pan.2005.11.02.00.51.10.448346@linuxchip.demon.co.uk.uk.uk>
NNTP-Posting-Host: shell01.theworld.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Trace: pcls4.std.com 1130938799 14110 192.74.137.71 (2 Nov 2005 13:39:59
 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: abuse@TheWorld.com
NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2005 13:39:59 +0000 (UTC)
User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2
Xref: g2news1.google.com comp.lang.ada:6120
Date: 2005-11-02T08:39:59-05:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>

"Dr. Adrian Wrigley" <amtw@linuxchip.demon.co.uk.uk.uk> writes:

> On Mon, 31 Oct 2005 06:21:37 +0000, Jeffrey R. Carter wrote:
> 
> > Robert A Duff wrote:
> > 
> >> That's hard to believe.  Dr. Wrigley said the hardware failures turned
> >> from "insideous" to "catastophic" when he changed some sort of Things to
> >> pointers-to-Things.  I take that to mean, he got wrong answers before,
> >> and crashes after.  Is that right, Dr. Wrigley?
> 
> I Thinks so, but the error rate was very low, so it is hard to tell.

Interesting.

Some years ago I used a computer that developed a hardware problem.
It would randomly flip the fifth bit of some bytes, once in a while.
It took a long time to even notice the problem, because that changes
letters to/from upper/lower case, in ASCII.  So we would look at
a text file, and fix some "typos" -- change "hEllo" to "hello".
Until it started happening more and more.

- Bob