Glib's Laws of Reliability

1. Computers are unreliable, but humans are even more unreliable.

Corollary- At the source of every error which is blamed on the computer you will find at least two human errors, including the error of blaming it on the computer.

2. Any system which relies on human reliability is unreliable.

3. The only diffrence between the fools and the criminal who attacks a system is that the fool attacks unpredictably and on a broader front.

4. A system tends to grow in terms of complexity rather than simplification, until the resulting unreliability becomes intolerable.

5. Self-checking systems tend to have a complexity in proportion to the inherant unreliability of the system in which they are used.

6. The error detection and correction capabilities of a system will serve as the key to understanding the types of error which they cannot handle.

7. Undetectable errors are infinite in variety, in contrast to detectable errors, which by definition are limited.

8. All real programs contain errors unless proven otherwise, which is impossible.

9. Investment in reliability will increase until it exceeds the probable cost of errors, or until somebody insists on getting some useful work done.