There are huge disasters that come of software mistakes -- but look at the story of the Therac-25 vs. this kind of story. Factual stories don't normally have p

There are huge disasters that come of software mistakes -- but look at the story of the Therac-25 vs. this kind of story. Factual stories don't normally have punchlines. If however many billions of dollars were actually lost due to a server rebooting at the wrong time, would it actually be possible that it remained a secret, only documented in this one humorous and totally un-sourced account? Also note the exaggerations of the incompetence of the IBM datacenter operators. It's an entertaining read, because it's written to be an entertaining read ("a former gnome of Zurich"?). Maybe there's some kernel of truth in there; maybe not -- but there's no way to tell now (without other, better sources) what that may be.