The System360 Model 20 Wasn't As Bad As All That 3876

Think bank account information. How are the numbers stored? Does the old-new software work well with negative numbers. Does it do its arithmetic in floating point or integer or none of the above. Is there a bug in the new OTS where it forgets to move the double word (containing a value) and only moves one word. Does the brand new Micpoo completely f*** up^W^Wfix up the spread sheet data, converting it to its brand new "kill the compebreastion" format?

There are a thousand more checks that need to be done. If you move your data from a 36-bit machine to a 32-bit machine, you are going to lose something. If you copy over the net from an unknown machine, you have to do some kind of sanity check.

There is that. Now expand the single calculation to a data base that involved a trillion calculations. How do you test that the new system produces the same outcome (not necessary correct) as the previous system. Think about all the currency exchanging going on in the world every second. What if one of the nodes drops eight high order bits whilst transferring.

What if program which reports medical data was written by an idiot that never knew that a dash was a minus sign, as in AB- bloodtype? The billing code for my water usage was written by somebody who dropped all minus signs. So if I pay my water bill ahead of time (producing a negative balance), the minus sign is dropped and whatever I paid in comes out as the amount I still owe.

BAH