[Infrastructures] state machines

[Wesley Craig]

On 19 Sep 2006, at 18:31, Tracy R Reed wrote:
> Wesley Craig wrote:
>> On 19 Sep 2006, at 12:14, Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH wrote:
>>> (b) can you reliably record *and later restore* the state at  
>>> *all*  of those levels?
>> So, you're arguing that backup and restore don't work?  Is that   
>> because of the quantum effects you mention?
>
> I'm not sure if you are joking here or not. If a photon hits your  
> computer the quantum state of the computer is changed. I, for one,  
> don't care about that as far as my software goes. Unless it gets to  
> the point where my computer melts. But then I have problems other  
> than software.

I guess you can say I'm joking.  I'm pretty sure that backup &  
restore work in most cases.  Brandon seemed to be saying that backup  
& restore don't work.  I'm perfectly willing to discuss the edge  
cases where backup & restore are imperfect, just so long as we can  
acknowledge that we're doing backups *so that we can restore*.  And  
that we're going through the pain of backing up because restores *do  
work*, where "work" is defined as accomplishing something useful in  
the realm of managing systems.

> Theory may say it is impossible to do it *perfectly* but in  
> practice all most of us need is "good enough" and that is the only  
> thing that allows any of us to actually get any real work done.

Amen.

:wes