The tl;dr version is that there are 10^80 atoms in the known universe, a computer with 1MB of memory can be in 2^1,000,000 or 10^300,000 possible states. Worse with a thousand times more memory. The easiest, quickest, perhaps the only, way to get it into a known state is to reboot it.
(Amusing introduction: "I took Friday off to be at home, because I can't get any work done at work, too many interruptions")
(I like Joe Armstrong's sense of humour here, dry, understated: "A prompt came up saying 'there's a new version of Open Office' and I thought 'That's good, it'll be better'.".)
The tl;dr version is that there are 10^80 atoms in the known universe, a computer with 1MB of memory can be in 2^1,000,000 or 10^300,000 possible states. Worse with a thousand times more memory. The easiest, quickest, perhaps the only, way to get it into a known state is to reboot it.
(Amusing introduction: "I took Friday off to be at home, because I can't get any work done at work, too many interruptions")
(I like Joe Armstrong's sense of humour here, dry, understated: "A prompt came up saying 'there's a new version of Open Office' and I thought 'That's good, it'll be better'.".)