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Needles in the Craystack
When Machines Get Sick
- In Sickness and in Health: The Three Laws [HTML,PDF]
Usenix ;login: December 2000, Volume 25, Number 8
In the early days of science fiction it was popular to write stories about how computers would go mad and destroy the world. To many who use computers today, this prophesy comes true on a daily basis...
- A Kind Of Magic [HTML,PDF]
Usenix ;login: February 2001, Volume 26, Number 1
In the 1960's science writer Arthur C. Clarke came up with a maxim, actually he called it a `law'. He said that any sufficiently advanced technology would appear to us to be indistinguishable from magic.s...
- The Myth of Computer Control [HTML,PDF]
Usenix ;login: April 2001, Volume 26, Number 2
If apathy could place our technological future in jeopardy, making us slaves rather than masters of our contrivances, then the diametric pitfall is a simple arrogance: the desire to control it all...
- Entropy: The Good, the Bad and the Aged [HTML,PDF]
Usenix ;login: June 2001, Volume 26, Number 3
You and I, and everyone on the planet are doomed to die because of a memory leak in the human genome. ...
- In Search of Cleopatra's Needles [HTML,PDF]
Usenix ;login: July 2001, Volume 26, Number 4
...Symbolism is at the very root of our being. It is about the attachment of meaning to patterns (patterns of material or of behaviour). It is an seemingly irrational phenomenon, not unique to humans, but quite possibly the very essence of our intelligence. Symbolism is interesting because it underlines an important dichotomy: the difference between information and meaning....
- Clusters and Parallels: Ecologies [HTML]
...The rumours of our perfection have been greatly exaggerated. Sickness prevails in our bodies, in our thoughts and beliefs, in our societies and even in our creations. What is this sickness, and why is it there?...
- Diagnosis - the projection of LISA to come? [HTML,PDF]
Usenix ;login: October 2001, Volume 26, Number 6
...One might get the impression from all of this that the situation for understanding and stabilizing computer systems is rather hopeless, that system administration is really a "soft" subject with no hope of rational analysis....
- Christmas Carol [HTML,PDF]
Usenix ;login: December 2001, Volume 26, Number 8
It was the best of crimes, it was the worst of crimes. It was a crime of neglect and a crime of trespass...
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