RE: Murphy's Law: (was Re: off-topic: scheduled backup to external hard drive

["Phil White" pdwhite@xxxxxxxx]

The real problem is designers who are so focused and optimistic about their
idea that they never stop to imagine what could possibly go wrong; this
leaves whatever they have done wide open for Murphy's law to do its thing.

This is especially true in software development. It not only makes bugs more
likely to occur; it is also the primary enabler for people writing viruses,
worms and other kinds of malware.

Philip D. White,
Senior Information Architect
University of Houston, CASA Testing Center

Phone: (713) 743-4135
Fax: (713) 743-8630
Email: pdwhite@xxxxxxxx

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-xywrite@xxxxxxxx
[mailto:owner-xywrite@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of George Scithers
Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2006 1:13 AM
To: xywrite@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Murphy's Law: (was Re: off-topic: scheduled backup to external hard
drive


> For instance,
> lots of times I've plugged the data cable to a drive upside
> down.

Then-Captain Murphy first formulated his law, "If there's
anything the contractor's tech rep can do wrong, he will," when a
contractor's rep plugged in something upside down. I'm told that
there's an Air Force Warrant Officer who spent some decades in
the lock-up at Fort Leavenworth because he whittled away some of
the shell of one plug in an airplane so that he could stick that
plug into a socket where it wasn't supposed to go. The result was
a fatal plane crash. . . .

Murphy's point: make it so difficult to plug things together the
wrong way that lazy [insert pejoratives] will find it easier to
put them together the way they should be put together. This is
why a well-designed 110-volt plug is so difficult to plug into a
220-volt outlet.

George H Scithers