Richard, On Tuesday 12 October 2004 14:42, rkimber@ntlworld.com wrote:
On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 13:17:41 -0700
Randall R Schulz
wrote: I hope you realize that symptoms of this sort (system freeze) cannot be pinned on Opera or on any user-level code. When a system with protected memory exhibits gross, system-wide failures, it is by definition a bug in some privileged code (kernel or driver, e.g.) or a failure of some hardware component.
Actually I was using 'system' to mean my PC. I can't tell whether it's a 'system freeze' in your sense.
But, OK, I can live with the fact that a bug-free Opera is the only app that ever triggers whatever badness there is, over a period of nearly 5 months continuous general use.
I don't mean to be pedantic, but ... Wait a minute. I do mean to be pedantic! I'm a big raving pedant!! Anyway, I am most surely _not_ asserting Opera (or any other given piece of software) is "bug free," since for all practical purposes today, any non-trivial piece of software cannot be made bug-free. Nonetheless, there is a rather strict division of labor, responsibility and authority (if you will) among different classes of software (kernel, drivers, file systems, libraries, applications, servers, etc.) and most of those classes of software cannot undermine the system as a whole. And of course, if there's a hardware issue, all bets are off. There can be anywhere from complete predictability to total randomness of occurrence and manifestation from the myriad of conceivable (or even likely) hardware failures.
- Richard. -- Richard Kimber
Randall Schulz