Too much belief to the computer.

Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) is not only the center of the economy of Japan, but also one of the biggest financial center of the world.

On last tuesday, November 1, 2005, TSE turned down for 3 hours.
Transactions for all the stocks listed in TSE had stalled.

It was caused by software glitch.

As the economy becomes active, number of transactions everyday increases.
We had never experienced the transactions as much as 3.7 Billion stocks per day, recorded on November 2, 2005.
This is primarily caused by the increase of "day-traders", who buy and sell stocks within a day and won't hold any stocks overnight.
Internet trade allowed us to join in the stock market easier, faster and cheaper.
It can also be verified by the number of accounts in internet trade, which was 750,000 accounts on March 2003 became 7 million accounts on March 2005.

Thus, TSE were urged to expand the capacity in processing, and they did so on October, from 6.2 million processes to 7.5 million processes per day.
That caused the new software unable to find where are the new locations of the database.

They had a backup for the database, but it was useless since what was down was the software.

They were able to resume, but 3 hours is too long in this world.

Were there no any possible remedy?
Well, the answer is NO!
We can never tell that system glitch will never happen.

Computers will make no mistake.
But computers are made by human, and when the input is wrong, of course the output will be wrong too.

However, transactions by "signs and gestures" are too old in this times.
Could anybody process 7.5 million a day?

What is important here is an attitude towards system glitch.
They must not just rest on the computer's laurels.
If the problems are irresistible, they must prepare to solve quickly.
Or else, they're gonna lose trust.

By the way, November 1, 2005 marked second to the highest upswing on this year.
If I was there, how much did I earn in just one day!?