Word: foolproofing
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Hall acknowledged to committee members that she had done less than a foolproof job. She typed the false memos on new stationery that was not available when the originals were made. The attached documents were removed from one memo, but she failed to delete a listing of the attachments on the memo itself. Then, before she could switch the phony papers with copies of the originals in her own files or get the new "originals" back to the nearby documents room, a more urgent chore arose...
...Erdman formula for economic disaster is not foolproof. Despite their Rent-a-Wreck plots and Who's Who characters, his books about high finance require more concentration than is usually applied to mass-market fiction. Mixing dollars and sensibility is the problem with fiscal novels in general, and Erdman's The Panic of '89 in particular...
...test involves comparing the DNA of blood, semen or hair roots found at the scene with the DNA of a suspect. What makes it virtually foolproof is that no two people (other than identical twins) have the same genetic characteristics. While considering this fact in 1983, Alec Jeffreys, a geneticist at the University of Leicester in England, realized it might be the basis for an important new tool in criminal investigations. Using restriction enzymes as "scissors," he cut the DNA taken from several people into segments and arranged them into patterns that somewhat resemble the bar codes found on supermarket...
...fear to flat-out horror. Those big bugs are smart in their yucky way, and they are everywhere. Each time one of their human opponents opens a door or rounds a corner, you know terrible trouble is about to ensue. Anytime someone confidently announces what looks to be a foolproof plan to exterminate the aliens, you can be equally sure that this is another example of pride going before a slimy fall. Add to this plenty of snappy dialogue, gloriously staged combat sequences, imaginative hardware and special effects, the assured direction of James Cameron, and you have the elements that...
Other C.P.A.s dissent roundly from that fatalism. "It's wrong to confuse a business failure with an auditing failure," argues William Gladstone, chairman of New York City-based Arthur Young. "Auditors don't manage companies." To Gladstone and many others in the profession, the kind of foolproof auditing that some critics demand is prohibitively expensive for clients and, at times, beyond the purview of C.P.A.s. Accounting executives contend that corporate auditors must be hypercautious in issuing statements that could affect the survival of individual corporations. Asks a Big Eight C.P.A.: "What company has not gone through a bad patch...