NSI bulletin 097-004 | Root Server Problems

Thu Jul 17 22:05:47 UTC 1997

"Perry E. Metzger" writes:
> I admit that the problem at NSI is larger by three orders of
> magnitude, but essentially the same sort of scripts could be run. If
> such scripts were in place at NSI, such failures, which have occurred
> multiple times, would never have happened.
> 
> Humans CANNOT be trusted with this sort of thing. Humans are
> fallible. You can't have humans involved in this sort of release
> process.

And who wrote the QA scripts you describe?  Complex systems have
complex failure modes.  Yes, there are clearly steps that can be
taken to minimize the problems, but anybody who claims that building
"robustness" into complex systems is anything other than "hard"
should spend some time reading the RISKS archives
(http://www.CSL.sri.com/risksinfo.html).