Jim Phillips wrote:
>
> ~~~ Absolute Confidence! ~~~
>
> At a computer software course, the participants were given an awkward
> question to answer: "If you had just boarded an airliner and discovered that
> your team of programmers had been responsible for the flight control
> software, how many of you would disembark immediately?"
>
> Among the ensuing forest of raised hands only one man sat motionless. The
> instructor asked the lone brave man why he would be so content to stay on
> board.
>
> "With my team's software," he reasoned, "the plane would be unlikely to
> successfully taxi to the runway, let alone take off."

The 2nd shuttle launch was delayed by a fuel spill on the tiles. During
the delay the crew practiced various abort scenarios to stay trained.
During one simulation of a Transatlantic Abort all four primary
computers went catatonic and the displays went "X". (Large
corner-to-corner X's on each screen indicating that the screen was no
longer being updated).

Turns out that all four hit the exact same condition whereby it went
into an infinite interrupt loop. The crew was quite upset by this
because the shuttle CANT be flown manually - even hand-inputs instruct
the computer what the astronaut wants and the computer figures what
surfaces to move to do that.