🚀 go-pugleaf

Jaliya Jayawardena wrote:
> 
> On 24 Mar 96 21:30:51 GMT, danpop@mail.cern.ch (Dan Pop) wrote:
> 
> >In <nevin-2203960538520001@mac-nevin.cs.arizona.edu> nevin@CS.Arizona.EDU (Nevin ":-]" Liber) writes:
> >
> >>What version of Netscape?  Go to a JavaScript page and let it sit there
> >>for a while.  People have reported not only noticeable slowdowns of their
> >>machines, but even crashes of the supposedly uncrashable Unix (it has
> >>memory protection; how could an app possibly crash it?  How could the
> >>Titanic sink?).
> >
> >Give me an URL which will cause Netscape 2.0 to crash my Unix box or cut
> >the crap.
> >
> >Dan
> 
>         I can't remember the URL but NS 2.0 has crashed twice on our
> Unix system (irix I think) It crashed so that I had no keyboard
> control or anything. However, not a *fatal* crash: I could rlogin from
> another machine and kill it. It still sucks that it can do that
> though.
> 
>                 Jaliya

That's not crashing.  If you can switch to another console (or virtual console)
and kill it, it has *not* crashed you're system.  All it did was trap the input
device (keyboard) so the OS couldn't tell that you wanted to kill it.  It's a
bit like the difference between hijacking a boat (if that's how you would say
it) and sinking it.

That's why Unix is said to be uncrashable.  In, say, DOS, stupid, careless 
errors on th part of the programmer can bring the computer to its knees, and
you helpless to recover, because DOS trusts any running program with exclusive
control over the computer.  *That* is crashing a computer, my friend (and a
stupid move on the part of the authors of DOS)