Over the years, we've seen a bunch of stories about people winning computerized games in casinos, only to be told that the prize was a glitch, and the casino wouldn't pay (or wouldn't pay nearly as much). It seems to happen pretty damn frequently. Slashdot points us to the latest example, of a couple who thought they had won $11 million from a slot machine, only to have the award reduced to $1627.82 after the casino, and the state gaming authority, determined that it was a glitch. According to the casino:

"The $11 million was what we call a 'reset value.' It's what the jackpot would have been after the prize was claimed."

That article notes that a similar situation happened back in March, with a $42 million prize being taken away. Given how frequently this seems to happen, isn't it about time someone got to working on all these "glitches"?

Apparently the Prince George County high school spent over $4 million on a nice new computer system... and the system is so buggy that students have been unable to attend class for the first two days of school, since the computer system refuses to give them their schedules. The kids still went to school, but just got to hang out in the gym or hallways since no one seemed to be able to figure out where they were supposed to go. The thing that gets me... is how did they get to the beginning of the school year and just realize this? I know I went to school way back before all this was computerized, and we got our schedules sent in the mail a few weeks before school. You have to think that the school would have realized this was a problem earlier and at least figured out some sort of manual way to get schedules to people?

It was an all too familiar scene at Los Angeles International Airport this weekend, as a computer glitch temporarily left 20,000 passengers stranded. This summer has seen a bevy of glitches and delays, as the civil aviation infrastructure gets stretched to the breaking point. This time, the failure was not on the part of the airlines, but on the US Customs service, which prevented passengers from properly getting screened. Obviously, glitches are going to happen now and then, and so it's not a realistic solution to simply eliminate them. But seeing as every minor ripple ends up creating such a calamity, costing millions in lost time and profits, a greater emphasis needs to be placed on developing systems that fail gracefully.