Word: breakdowns
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Although none of the experts would speculate on a timetable, they agreed that growing forces within the two Germanys will necessitate a conglomeration in the near future. The breakdown of the Berlin Wall this winter was only the beginning of a long unification process, they said...
...Sprint. The glitch simultaneously deflated AT&T's multimillion-dollar "reliability" advertising campaign and handed its competitors a once-in- a-career sales pitch. "An important message to everyone whose telephone is the lifeline of their business," began a print ad rushed out by US Sprint after the breakdown. "Always have two lifelines...
...operators made matters worse on Monday by refusing to give stranded customers instructions for calling via MCI or Sprint -- a standing order that was reversed 3 1/2 hours after the breakdown began, too late to do East Coast businesses any good. To help make amends, AT&T announced late last week that it had asked the Federal Communications Commission for permission to offer long-distance discounts to all callers on Valentine's Day. But the phone company's aura of infallibility will not be so easily repaired...
...technology more reliable. Fault-tolerant computers like those built by Stratus, Tandem and, for that matter, AT&T reduce runaway system errors by a kind of "paranoid democracy," where modules working in parallel constantly evaluate whether their electronic co- workers are "sane" or "crazy." Unfortunately, as last week's breakdown showed, it is possible for all the modules to go crazy at once. Software, always the skittish part of any system, can also be made more dependable by imposing the kind of discipline on programmers that engineering standards impose on, say, bridge designers. A program like AT&T's faulty...
...breakdown shows the vulnerability of computer systems everywhere. -- Blasts for a cigarette aimed at blacks. -- Andrew Tobias on saving energy...