Publisher's Synopsis
Super bloopers from the world of high technology! The current buzz about the Millennium Bug is just the latest in a long line of 'gotchas' that have plagued the computer industry since its beginning. Many great advances in technology have resulted from risky experimentation, but its critical to remember and study the spectacular failures that also resulted from some of those risks. Failures can be mundane, like the typical complaints of software projects that are behind schedule and over budget, while others can be much more extravagant. In Computing Calamities, Robert L.;Glass has collected war stories from around the industry, including: The brilliant engineers whose software allowed viewers to play along with TV game shows, if only they could find a cable system that would support the bandwidth Supercomputing budgets that collapsed along with the Soviet Union, as Cold War funding dried up A French company that stole an American companys product design, then sued the American company for copying them The management team that put a former clothing manufacturer in charge of the inventors of Pong, nearly bankrupting a company that had held 80% of its market The 'improved' HMO database that could reject 1,000 claims if one Social Security number was entered in the wrong field Laugh at these mistakes, and learn from them. Someone elses failure could be the foundation of your success.
