Message-ID:	<3746C5ED.5CEEC12E@pmail.net>
Date:	Sat, 22 May 1999 16:57:49 +0200
From:	Fred Backman <fredrick DOT backman AT pmail DOT net>
Organization:	www.femmefetish.com
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To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com
Subject:	Re: ? array[n] or array[n+1] ?
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Reply-To:	djgpp AT delorie DOT com

Sean wrote:

> Endlisnis wrote:
> >
> > Guillermo Rodriguez Garcia wrote:
> >
> >     You can usually just ignore it, and most of the time screwing with memory will do
> > nothing or make your program crash.  I've talked to many programmers and I've never
> > actually hear of a recent even of hardware breakage, so you can put it out of your mind
> > unless you are working on an old machine or on a VERY CRITICAL system.  All-in-all, it
> > is practically impossible to accidentally hurt hardware, but my point was to show you
> > that it was still possible under certain very unlikely conditions.  (odds around 1 in
> > 2^10000)
> > --
> >      (\/) Endlisnis (\/)
> >           s257m AT unb DOT ca
> >           Endlisnis AT HotMail DOT com
> >           ICQ: 32959047
>
> 2^10000??  I doubt that a lot.  Since ummm, I doubt there's anywhere
> near 2^10000 bits on your hard drive... and if you had an equal chance
> of changing each one... but anyway, I doubt there's 2^10000 programs out
> there and I'm also sure that more than one has done that.  Sorry for the
> nitpicking.  But if 2^100 were written every second (that's 1.27 *
> 10^30) for the last 50 years, then only 2 * 10^39 would be written or
> less than 1.5 * 2^130.  And even that's a gross exaggeration.

Huh? Who said 2^10000 was the number of "bits on the hard drive"? Theoretically, the number
of _possible_ programs out there (regardless of whether they have been written yet or not,
and regardless of what they do) is a very very high number - I'd say much more than 2^10000.
(I also love nitpicking :-)

I might have misunderstood the whole discussion, but I think the point is not a question of
how many programs or bits there are, but how likely it is to write a program which would do
so. I never heard of anyone doing so myself (but I've read about a command which literally
can make the monitor burn into flames), but I'd still say there's a possibility of that
happening, esp. with monitors, hard drives or other mechanical hardware.

With hard drives, I'd say the worst that could happen would be reformatting or similar.You'd
be amazed what some people consider to be "hardware problems"! A crashed disk is not always
physically broken...

NEway - does anyone know of any documented proofs of such hardware crashes?

Fred

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