System crashes in the 80s and 90s were often caused by creeping problems: resource deadlock, memory leaks, stack overflow, thrashing, that sort of thing. Rebooting the system made it operational again (ignoring the relatively rare hardware failures for the moment). Hit the reset switch, wait for the reboot, and then log back on and continue business. I've been at my credit union when this has happened! When the computer's up again, the application accuracy remains 100% -- that is, it still works.
A Y2K bug, on the other hand, will be persistent (and insistent). When a system or application fails or screws up because of a Y2K bug, it's accuracy (or performance) could be 0%. Rebooting, shouting, praying, or taking a coffee break will not help the application learn how to do it right (aren't computer's stupid!?) |
