bugs and features

[DAVID IBBETSON <ibbetson -at- IDIRECT -dot- COM>]

Daniel Deane asks
>Carla Martinek <carlam -at- MINERVA -dot- ODESTA -dot- COM>
>>
>>"If you document a bug, it then becomes a feature."
>>
>>Carla Martinek

>I know you are making a funny. But, perhaps you might have some truth to
>the above saying. Have you ever heard of a bug becomming a feature? Or a
>bug being beneficial?


In the dim and distant past, when computers were made from discrete
components a European company built a computer that depended on hole-storage
effects in the transistors.

Hole storage effects are normally considered undesirable, and their supplier
improved the transistors to such an extent that the computers wouldn't work.
Fortunately for the computer company the transistor manufacturer was also
one of their customers. It was impossible to service their computers until
hole-storage was restored as a feature.

David (the idiot who learnt to program in machine code on these computers)
Ibbetson

David Ibbetson                                   ibbetson -at- idirect -dot- com
133 Wilton St, #506, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5A 4A4
Phone (416) 363-6692    Fax (416) 363-4987

Standing among savage scenery, the hotel offers stupendous revelations.
There is a French widow in every bedroom, affording delightful prospects.
----   Gerard Hoffnung, supposedly quoting a letter from a Tyrolean
landlord. in speech at the Oxford Union, 4 December 1958
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