The law of unintended consequences
The Register points out some examples of the law of unintended consequences – a sort of Murphy’s Law for people, whose good ideas don’t always have the effect expected. For example:
Denny’s (a US cafe/restaurant chain) is known for being open 24 hours a day, every day, always. The story goes that in 1998, for the first time in 35 years, Denny’s decided to close its doors on Christmas, but there was a big problem: since Denny’s was always open, many stores didn’t have locks on the doors, so they couldn’t close.A more serious problem for the US government is also covered – if you provide your allies with state-of-the-art currency printing presses, it can become a serious problem after a change of government in the allied country.