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justin66 • today at 1:03 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

To me the funny part of this story is that they used to show you this warning as part of the EULA when installing Windows NT 4, which I remember joking about:

NOTE ON JAVA SUPPORT. THE PRODUCT MAY CONTAIN SUPPORT FOR PROGRAMS WRITTEN IN JAVA. JAVA TECHNOLOGY IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND IS NOT DESIGNED, MANUFACTURED, OR INTENDED FOR USE OR RESALE AS ONLINE CONTROL EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE PERFORMANCE, SUCH AS IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, DIRECT LIFE SUPPORT MACHINES, OR WEAPONS SYSTEMS, IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF JAVA TECHNOLOGY COULD LEAD DIRECTLY TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE. Sun Microsystems, Inc. has contractually obligated Microsoft to make this disclaimer.

Also:

The machine's purpose was to report status of the control rods that mitigate nuclear reactions. Basically, "are the rods inserted, and if so, how many / how far?". I want to emphasize that this was reporting only, NOT control.

It would take a whole lot more context to make this somehow comforting. :D


Replies

SenHeng • today at 6:28 PM

> It would take a whole lot more context to make this somehow comforting. :D

This is this fascinating 6 part documentary about the Chernobyl incident explaining how it was caused by bad control rods. But the main point is that control rods prevent the facility from going boom, so be glad it’s not the AmigaOS emulator on a NT machine handling it.

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