9/4     Do MS/DOS systems crash?
        \_ Why wouldn't they?
           \_ I dont't know. Simplicity? I just don't remember having to
              reboot my DOS boxes back in the day. Maybe I'm forgetting.
              \_ Even my Commodore 64 has crashed before.
        \_ They can freeze when some program takes over (dos is only a program
           loader, not manager) and won't exit nicely.
        \_ that's "relative" because it was usually a 3rd party program
           you executed taht crashed. otherwise you could spend all day
           typing "dir" and "copy" and there would be no crashes.
            \_ good point.
        \_ DOS programs used to crash and burn all the time. No memory
           protection in the OS led to all sorts of chaos from stray memory
           writes.  This forced coders to fix most of their bad code.  Now
           they're not forced to be as careful, so they arent ...
           \_ Microsoft had entire legions of programmers who's sole
              job was to insert code into MS-DOS that would make Lotus123
              crash, so yes MS-DOS used to crash now and then
        \_ Heh.  MS/DOS has no VM.  Draw your own conclusions from there.
           -- ilyas
           \_ DOS itself *never* crashed.  It's only a program loader.
              \_ Well, two of VM's jobs are illusion of infinite memory and
                 address space isolation.  Without the OS providing the
                 latter, it is no wonder the programs run amok.  I can't say
                 it's the programs' fault either.
                 \_ It's the programs' fault.  They know the environment
                    they're being written for and should play nice.  The
                    fact is DOS didn't need isolation because it was intended
                    to only launch one program at a time which was given full
                    control of the system.  Anyone trying to run multiple
                    programs was waaaaay out of spec and got what they
                    were asking for.
        \_ in general, complex systems with dependencies have more points
           of failure. Take NASA for example. They have an extremely
           complex system, and adding sensors and monitors add even more
           complexity making the system more crash prone. A common way
           to get around it is using the TMR system (triple modular
           redundancy). However the voting system is not fault tolerant,
           so often there are redundant voters as well. But by adding
           even more redundancy you add on even more complexity, and
           modeling it is a nightmare. In short, there is only so much
           progress you can make by adding redundancies in the system,
           at which point your system will simply become more complex and
           more crash prone.                            -ucla cs student
           \_ they taught you all that in sk00l?  wow!