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I guess since the two units are on free time, they figure it is ok to screw them up now.

As far as I know the On-Board Shuttle Software Group has a track record of 3 (in words: 'three') software bugs in installed operating code within 30 years of writing code. That's all the code running on the Orbiters regular systems, exept only the third-party experiments with own systems and a non-critical original mid-nineties Thinkpad or two they take along ... which - believe it or not - run a version of Windows 95, a frozen setup from back in the nineties, of which the software guys know every bit by it's first name.
To give you a picture of what they have to deal with: A timing mistake in some piece of the shuttles navigation code by one cpu clockcount would put the shuttle 3 miles off course.
The Voyager Software Team reprogrammed a 20 year old device 3-quarters across the solar system to send color pictures instead of black and white - with a system that was only built to picture and send black and white.

You have not the slightest idea what these spacecraft-software guys are capable of and how insanely bulletproof their code is.

How can a business "open source" something which is not code?

It's a pretty intriguing question actually. Maybe not open source, but businesses can certainly be a lot more open. At Slim Devices we pushed that envelope quite a bit by inviting customers to participate meaningfully in developing the products. <plug>There is an interesting article just posted at Fast Company which asks Is this the company of the future?.</plug>

I believe it _is_ a model that will work well for many other companies, and in fact I've spent plenty of time wondering just how far you could take it. As an extreme, imagine if a new business were to begin with open discussions of strategy, fund raising, hiring, executive comp decisions, etc. Discuss it all on forums and let an open community create the whole thing, not just the products.

Teachers call back NIST committee, they flunked the sixth grade. But NIST itself does many wonderful brainy things.

As an IT person and as an election judge here in Texas here are my comments. I omit those of despair

PARALLEL LOGIC. Voting electronics are PC embedded based (the ones I have seen boot up). Votes are precious. Lets assume the operations part of voting goes wacko clear down to the chip level. So create electronics based on outer space electronics. Copy each vote (time stamp and who voted for) to a dedicated vote saver chip that is completely separate from the operations part. Something that is write only for that election. Something that is electronically non volatile. This would be a different electronic KIND of saving counts than that on the main operations part of the system. For a weak example, say main operations saves to a register and dedicated save is a writable CD.

REDO THE VOTING MACHINES. One committee member decried changes saying everything would have to be replaced. You bet fella! Its brkoe ('broke'; see I had to replace my misspelled word).

THE VOTE PROCESS HAS A DIFFERENT PHILOSOPHY FROM IT. The vote process is kind of slow and crusty because it values those votes. So we have a problem with an IT approach (flush everything & reboot) vs be careful with everything approach. Really there is no happy medium. We must move to a more careful approach. Almost as far as keeping a change database of each line of operations code.An example is NASA's "They Write the Right Stuff".

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml

Thanks slashdot for tickling our brains,
Jim Burke

They actually did apply the test to non criminals. If I recall correctly, the BBC got hold of one generation of this test (before it was comuputerized) and applied it to CEOs.

A score of 20+ out of 40 implies you're likely to exhibit some degree of psycho- or socio- pathic behavior. Something like 50% of all prisoners in the U.S. score 20 or above.

The median CEO scored something like 22.

For amusement value, here is the link for Robert Hare's PCL-R subset of questions for identifying sociopaths in the workplace.

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/40/wf_gatto.html

Well said and insightful... //modup+2//

are these projects just to sprawling and optimistic to actually work? My money is on yes.

• yes, NASA has known of this for a while;
• it's considered a limitation, not a bug;
• no, none of your two second psuedo code hacks are of any value or insight,
• because the ~450,000 lines of operational software is written for 0 bugs and in HAL/S (so thanks for the quick C++ hacks, they are useless),
• calendar math is trickier than it looks; many date libs are replete with hacks and magic numbers
• you are not a better programmer than the guys and gals who write this stuff, and Lockheed has quite a bit of experience in doing this stuff.

Considering that we give NASA less than we give the National Park Service, it's utterly dumbfoundingly breathtaking what they are able to accomplish.

It also doesn't hurt that the shuttle software engineers are a totally different breed. Or more to the point, the way they write software is totally different. This is a good writeup about why.

You are totally missing the point here!!!! May be you should read: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml Give me the name of a software company out there that actually considered Y2K being a problem when they were designing their piece of code? NAME ONE PLEASE....

You are totally missing the point here!!!! May be you should read: http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml Give me the name of a software company out there that actually considered Y2K being a problem when they were designing their piece of code? NAME ONE PLEASE....

I thought five 9's was the standard for uptime/availability. And you don't achieve that by having 1 server that has five 9's, you achieve that by having a group of servers, so when one goes down, your service is still up.

Space shuttle's a little different:

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml

Here we're talking *six* 9s of *bug-free code* (1 error in 420,000 lines of code in the previous version). Not uptime -- bugs. Mistakes. For the simple reason that if you make a mistake on the Shuttle, people die.

You won't get a Java implementation that bug-free without a crack team of developers working for decades, by which point Java will be just as outdated then as the Shuttle code is now.

Remember -- if it ain't broke, don't fix it!

This isn't Microsoft. Or even an ordinary safety critical software development. This is how NASA develops sofware. A 5 second fix will require an investigation into why the fix is needed in the first place, what can be added to the procedures to prevent anything similar happening again, an investigation into how this will interact with every other module, scenarios, a test plan, and verification.

What makes it remarkable is how well the software works. This software never crashes. It never needs to be re-booted. This software is bug-free. It is perfect, as perfect as human beings have achieved. Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors.

Apparently the below article was full of shit:
They write the right stuff

???

Consider these stats : the last three versions of the program -- each 420,000 lines long-had just one error each. The last 11 versions of this software had a total of 17 errors.

This is not the first time that the shuttle programme has been faced with the year-end rollover problem. On a Hubble servicing mission in 1999, the year of the overblown Y2K computer scare, the shuttle landed on 27 December (see Fuel fault delays space repair). To make sure the shuttle got back on the ground before 31 December, mission managers decided to drop one of the four planned spacewalks.

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml..is [fastcompany.com] this the same team from Lockheed that coded the "Right" stuff ??

Maybe it's because Linus Torvalds was 12 when the first shuttle launched in 1981 and they kind of needed a computer system then? The software for the Shuttle is some of the most bug-free code around ... check out http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml for details.

you need to inspect the compiler and other tools as well

So use an open source toolchain, and have it audited thoroughly and then frozen before use. Each change has again to be carefully audited. The federal govt is supposed to have expertise on tap about such things.

You do not control the hardware,

You do if you (the government) bought it and mandated standard, easily verifiable hardware. This is a non-issue with the proper controls, so long as you don't hire cowboys interested in delivering the lowest quality for the highest price to do your work. Start from a known standard base and each change has to be audited. If your machines aren't running the latest, cheapest hardware, so what?

How do you trust that the version you reviewed is the one used?

This is a logistical issue, and is eminently fixable - no last minute patches, all-party oversight, and all changes audited well in advance and then the release frozen.

Paper ballots can be stuffed too, very easily if you corrupt or coerce the officials (how do you think Musharraf got 98% of the vote in the last 'free' election in pakistan?). Indeed you saw this in the last election in the states in Florida with so-called hanging chads being discounted. The issue with electronic voting is not with electronic voting per se (as your objections illustrate), but with the disorganised, slipshod, negligent manner in which it's been carried out in the US at present. It's perfectly possible to design a system that works well and is audited, verifiable, and very difficult to influence, but that's not really in the interest of any parties involved except the voters, is it?

"They Write the Right Stuff"
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml

that company has a very interesting history
they started in pure DotComBubble 1.0 style around 2000 with an 100 million investment .. and refused another 200 millions or so ... i bet a lot of people had bad dreams about that decision :)
their product was a better laser (cheaper and less enerygy) for long-haul fiber optic networks ... when ppl stopped investing in those nets, they "shortened" their product to support metro-area fiber optic netwoks.
looks like now they shortened that laser a bit more :)
at least for the stubborness and that never-give-up attitude, i wish them all the luck

The linked article talks about Arasor International. If you read carfully, the real company behind this innovation is US company Novalux. Arasor just makes one of the chips.

Novalux has an interesting history. They first wanted to target long haul telecom with their technology (laser on a chip). As of 2002, they were developing lower powered lasers for short haul markets. Their web site also claims a forey into bioinstrumentation.

Certainly, this seems like a technology looking for a market. Will this be the right market? Will the products live up to claims? We'll see.

Hmmm... is there a gene (or a set of genes) responsible for, say, the desire to make huge amounts of money?

I just wonder if we'll be able to isolate genes for sociopathy from the sample group.
I mean, Michael Milken, the Junk Bond King? I know he's done a lot of charity work since then, but he, like some other people on that list, got where he is through highly unethical (sociopathic?) business behavior.

Fight back. Buy from companies that resist Walmart.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapp er.html

Wal mart runs rough shod over its partners and suppliers. When there's no more blood to draw, they find some other "partner." And you thought Microsoft played rough.

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/77/walmart.html

Nobody forces people to do business with Wal-Mart.
Nobody forces people to work at Wal-Mart.
Nobody forces people to shop at Wal-Mart.

Again, my comment You'd be hard pressed to find a better retailer with a liberal return policy as theirs. still stands regardless of the arrangement the distributor has made with the manufacturer.

If the manufacturer complains about the return policy then:
A) Don't do business with Wal-Mart
B) Don't push a crappy product

If you made a product that you wanted everyone to have, you'd be salivating if Wal-Mart wanted to distribute your product.
At least to get to the negotiating phase.
The Snapper mower story comes to mind where there was a quantity vs. quality issue. Proof there is that the company wanted Wal-Mart to push it's products as it is an attractive arrangement even if the eventual outcome wasn't healthy for the company.

There isn't a cheaper place to get diapers for $11 a pack of 68. And that is money that basically gets thrown away.

You're missing an important point. Walmart is a source and cause of the lower class. When Walmart enters an area--especially a lower-middle class area--they drive wages down. They FORCE people to shop there, because they have no choice after their buying power has been reduced.

Furthermore, they way that they can afford such low prices is by squeezing the suppliers and producers. How's the farming industry in the US right now? Most farmers can barely afford to make ends meet, and it's not because they're buying premium goods at premium stores, it's because they're being told "we'll pay you 70% of fair market value, and you have no choice since we're the biggest buyer in the nation."

Consider how well they've benefited Vlassic, as laid out in this article:
http://www.fastcompany.com/online/77/walmart.html

Walmart isn't about savings--it's about false savings, and short-term cash in pocket driving long-term economic ruin.

Only if you make cheap junk; if you produce a high-quality product and are not willing to make compromises, then Wal-Mart is not your retail outlet.

Here is a good story about how the CEO of Snapper stood up to Wal-Mart - http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapp er.html

recent slashdot link: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/108/open_light bulbs.html I knew they were more efficient, but the numbers are pretty staggering. CFL's are the next wave... until LED's become cost effective for mojor lighting tasks

Finding a million examples of folks misusing any common phrase is not difficult. It doesn't make them right, either.

The top results from a quick Google search back up the description of drinking the kool-aid as an act of self-destructive or blind faith:

http://www.wordspy.com/words/drinktheKool-Aid.asp
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/92/debunk.html
http://www.wordorigins.org/Words/LetterD/drinkkool aid.html
Also, see the "Hacker Slang" section of the page at http://www.answers.com/topic/kool-aid

The only dissenting explanation is far more pithy, and evidences less research:
http://www.clichesite.com/content.asp?which=tip+19 48

Why do you expect from a bunch of psychopaths?

Rather than promote her (even in title, maybe not with a raise), they decided to eliminate the position. That's how much they didn't want to promote her (or anyone else). Big Biz has raised the concept of "penny wise, pound foolish" to an art form.

This article from Fast Company is coming up on ten years old and I've carried a bookmark for it since that time.

Read through it and see how much software you're aware of which is as capable as it is, the bug count, the lack of nights of old pizza, etc.

There are a lot of Earth-bound companies which write software on a large scale (source line count) which should take a page from what this article details.

Fast Company Magazine actually just posted an article regarding Google Mashups being used for Games. Check it on out! http://blog.fastcompany.com/archives/2006/08/10/go ogle_games.html?partner=rss

just may be some of these CEO are mentally ill. Narcissist and psycopath as CEO's. http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/96/open_boss.h tml

In contrast, corporate psychopaths typically grew up in stable, loving families that were middle class or affluent. But because they're pathological liars, they tell romanticized tales of rising from tough, impoverished backgrounds. Dunlap pretended that he grew up as the son of a laid-off dockworker; in truth, his father worked steadily and raised his family in suburban comfort.

Psychopaths succeed in conventional society in large measure because few of us grasp that they are fundamentally different from ourselves. We assume that they, too, care about other people's feelings. This makes it easier for them to "play" us. Although they lack empathy, they develop an actor's expertise in evoking ours. While they don't care about us, "they have an element of emotional intelligence, of being able to see our emotions very clearly and manipulate them," says Michael Maccoby, a psychotherapist who has consulted for major corporations.

Psychopaths are typically very likable. They make us believe that they reciprocate our loyalty and friendship. When we realize that they were conning us all along, we feel betrayed and foolish.

no - just non-evil.

"Chainsaw" Al Dunlap might score impressively on the corporate Psychopathy Checklist too. What do you say about a guy who didn't attend his own parents' funerals? He allegedly threatened his first wife with guns and knives. She charged that he left her with no food and no access to their money while he was away for days. His divorce was granted on grounds of "extreme cruelty." That's the characteristic that endeared him to Wall Street, which applauded when he fired 11,000 workers at Scott Paper, then another 6,000 (half the labor force) at Sunbeam. Chainsaw hurled a chair at his human-resources chief, the very man who approved the handgun and bulletproof vest on his expense report. Dunlap needed the protection because so many people despised him. His plant closings kept up his reputation for ruthlessness but made no sense economically, and Sunbeam's financial gains were really the result of Dunlap's alleged book cooking. When he was finally exposed and booted, Dunlap had the nerve to demand severance pay and insist that the board reprice his stock options. Talk about failure to accept responsibility for one's own actions.

Back in the 80s, the space shuttle control software was 80+mln lines

I don't know where you are getting your information, but according to this article the flight control software for the Space Shuttle is 420,000 lines. Since this software has to be perfectly debugged, 80,000,000 lines would be insane.

http://www.fastcompany.com/online/06/writestuff.ht ml

Not saying your co. could have done this, but there's an interesting article about a similar situation here: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapp er.html

The thing is that yeah, they sell name-brand stuff, but it's not the same name-brand stuff that you buy elsewhere. They put so much pressure on the manufacturers, that most of their manufacturers have one regular version, and a Wal-Mart version. That's PART of the reason that I would never spend any money at Wal-Mart:

Good example of the Wal-Mart version

I suspect reading some of the points of view in this series of postings
the facts will likely be lightly treated...

Here are some interesting articles and other sources of information I've come across that have helped me form my opinion of Walmart.

Do your homework before having an opinion. Google, some judgement and
chosing reputable sources goes a long way.

The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapp er.html

The Wal-Mart You Don't Know
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.htm l

Wal-Mart
How big can it grow?
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory .cfm?Story_ID=2593089

Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_40 /b3852001_mz001.htm

Is Walmart good for America? US Trade with China: Expectations vs. Reality.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walm art/china/trade.html

For those of you that don't read, check out:
Walmart the high cost of low price.
http://www.walmartmovie.com/

Personally I believe the market only works to the benefit of the consumer in the long run when there is true competition. This is something that becomes very difficult when the competition is the size of Walmart and shops in China.

I see Walmart as part of the negative side globalization that is leading to a hollowing out of America, and in the long run is a significant part of what is feeding the trade deficit with China. What makes Walmart so profitable is that in many areas it has little or no competition (small town America) and effectively has almost a monopoly. A monopoly is a form of market failure, and in the long run is never good for the consumer (although its great for the shareholder). In the short term it has lowered prices in many areas, but then its lowered wages too.

Hey but don't take my word for it. Get your own facts, and then make a decision. That's what democracy is about, be an informed citizen, not an opinionated one.

I suspect reading some of the points of view in this series of postings
the facts will likely be lightly treated...

Here are some interesting articles and other sources of information I've come across that have helped me form my opinion of Walmart.

Do your homework before having an opinion. Google, some judgement and
chosing reputable sources goes a long way.

The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapp er.html

The Wal-Mart You Don't Know
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/77/walmart.htm l

Wal-Mart
How big can it grow?
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory .cfm?Story_ID=2593089

Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_40 /b3852001_mz001.htm

Is Walmart good for America? US Trade with China: Expectations vs. Reality.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/walm art/china/trade.html

For those of you that don't read, check out:
Walmart the high cost of low price.
http://www.walmartmovie.com/

Personally I believe the market only works to the benefit of the consumer in the long run when there is true competition. This is something that becomes very difficult when the competition is the size of Walmart and shops in China.

I see Walmart as part of the negative side globalization that is leading to a hollowing out of America, and in the long run is a significant part of what is feeding the trade deficit with China. What makes Walmart so profitable is that in many areas it has little or no competition (small town America) and effectively has almost a monopoly. A monopoly is a form of market failure, and in the long run is never good for the consumer (although its great for the shareholder). In the short term it has lowered prices in many areas, but then its lowered wages too.

Hey but don't take my word for it. Get your own facts, and then make a decision. That's what democracy is about, be an informed citizen, not an opinionated one.

I wasn't ... It's because their CEO was Novell CEO who used a very interesting system of managing a company. See http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/25/geeks.html for more infos. It's quit an interesting read !

I know you're being facetious but the statements are somewhat on-point. I'll translate and hopefully not offend anyone's intelligence by doing so.

Basically they mean to say that businesses are becoming more and more open to externalizing anything that is not the core part of the business.* So, a company selling cooking grills no longer has an employee or department who handles email. They simply contacted 'Turnkey Enterprise e-Solutions Ltd.' and had them handle everything about email for the cost of $5 per address**, per month. After all, this company is in the grill business (core competency) not in the email business. Why worry about maintaining a server, or setting up users, or doing backups, or handling spam? The executive just wants to make better grills and sell them to more people.

So, let's say something like that (email) is proposed. Let's say our grill company (GrillCo) needs about 400 email accounts. Since they are not buying email servers or hiring spam gurus, there's no large initial investment for them. They can test it out with one department (accounting) and if the ten people there like it, they can expand to doing everyone's email that way. It eliminates risk for the buyer.

Now, is this a better way to go? The truth is anyone that will provide a definitive answer either way is off their rocker. It may work for some things, it may not work for others.

But the reason things like these are discussed, and possibly becoming more and more popular, is simple; for better or for worse, cost-cutting is being highly rewarded at the executive level. If you run a publicly-traded company and do not appear to be "cost oriented" then you raise suspicions among boards, shareholders and Wall Street.^ There's a whole crop of companies whose only goal is to cut costs for their clients (for example, ICG Commerce). Of course, sometimes these pressures come other sources.

So, by performing a buzzword-ectomy on the above, we result with something like this, "It has become fashionable to look at costs above other parts of a company's overall performance. Software-as-a-Service can sometimes help cut costs, so it is being considered more widely as an option."

Unfortunately for the tech crowd, it has less to do with AJAX and new whiz-bang applications and more to do with the business side (shudder) of things.

* Whether or not this is true I don't know, but that's what they are proposing.
** I'm picking a number out of thin air.
^ I'm not saying it's good, that's just largely how it is.

Good point... but you have to compare the companies that don't participate with walmart to those companies that do participate. Vlassic found that their $3/gallon walmart deal sold like gangbusters, but it cannibalized their sales at other stores ... as a result, profits went down.

This is hardly surprising. Wal-Mart has had quite a stranglehold on the supply sie of the market for a number of years. Technically, they're not a monopoly, but for all practical purposes, they wield the power of a monopoly from one end of the supply chain to another. You have to admire their innovation (they've revolutionized the modern retail supply chain), but it's also quite scary how much control they have.

Although it's been linked to numerous times here and elsewhere, I'd like to point those interested in learning more about how Wal-Mart deals with supppliers to the now-famous Fast Company article on the subject.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/102/open_snapp er.html

You have no idea how true that is. Heres what an expert in criminal psychology states about mafia hitmen, rapists and CEOs.

From here:

According to the Canadian Press and Toronto Sun reporters who rescued the moment from obscurity, Hare began by talking about Mafia hit men and sex offenders, whose photos were projected on a large screen behind him. But then those images were replaced by pictures of top executives from WorldCom, which had just declared bankruptcy, and Enron, which imploded only months earlier. The securities frauds would eventually lead to long prison sentences for WorldCom CEO Bernard Ebbers and Enron CFO Andrew Fastow.

"These are callous, cold-blooded individuals," Hare said.

"They don't care that you have thoughts and feelings. They have no sense of guilt or remorse." He talked about the pain and suffering the corporate rogues had inflicted on thousands of people who had lost their jobs, or their life's savings. Some of those victims would succumb to heart attacks or commit suicide, he said.

Then Hare came out with a startling proposal. He said that the recent corporate scandals could have been prevented if CEOs were screened for psychopathic behavior. "Why wouldn't we want to screen them?" he asked. "We screen police officers, teachers. Why not people who are going to handle billions of dollars?"

...

"I always said that if I wasn't studying psychopaths in prison, I'd do it at the stock exchange," Hare told Fast Company.

...

"The change myth assumes a very narrow view of people. If frogs can do it, people definitely can."