Talk:Big Red Switch

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This article was originally based on material from the Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, which is licensed under the GFDL.

This topic needs some cleanup and verification. "It is alleged", and other weasel-phrases, don't make for a definitive article. -- Mikeblas 03:47, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

There is only one use of a weasel word. Regardless of whether it really did do it, the existance of the belief that it fired a non-conductive bolt, is significant. Therefore I removed the cleanup tag. RJFJR 17:12, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

"generally tidy up the computer's memory contents before power-off" is weaselly, and doesn't make any sense. Once buffers are flusehd to nonvolatile storage, why does the content of volatile memory matter at power off? "can be a nontrivial and cumbersome task taking quite some time" is a little weaselly, but certainly redundant. There are no references.-- Mikeblas 17:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

The claim about IBM 360 firing a non-conductive bolt seems to come from FOLDOC (see [1]). I don't know if that constitutes being cited. RJFJR 04:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

By the way, I'm niot entirely clear what it means to "fire a non-conductive bolt". RJFJR 04:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

FOLDOC also says "alleged", which makes it an unreliable (or unauthorotative, anyway) source, right? I can't guess what it means, either; perhaps there actually was an explosive charge, like a nail gun. But that's hard to understand -- why not just open the circuit, like any other switch does? -- Mikeblas 22:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)