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Window(s) on the World
We've gotten several submissions of this Wired story about life on space station Alpha. The story was written from these logs (which we linked to a few days ago) kept by the commander of the most recent ISS mission. So, let me recommend the logs once again - like the Wired reporter, I found them fascinating reading. For instance, the commander describes losing a washer because everyone's hands were full and they couldn't grab it - obviously letting go of dozens of washers to grab one, in zero-gravity, would not be a good idea - and they can't just "put them down" somewhere.
they really should use IBM Solaris.
Oh, man. Solaris in the context of Russians on a space station. This is getting entirely too Tarkovskyian for me. Did the dead wife of a cosmonaut show up there by any chance?
They need to get a techy up there! "Bob, my email isn't working" "That's because you use outlook, if you would just telnet to the unix box and use pine I wouldn't have to reboot the exchange server every day" "So, umm, are you gunna fix my email?" "In a minute ok? I'm reading Slashdot." And to think, the Internet access was supposed to stop them from going insane up there in space.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I really only see one specific reference to a Windows NT problem in the logs...
At about 2200, we were reconfiguring some mail files which, with a lot of help from Windows NT, got put in the wrong place during the backup procedure.
Beyond that, they seem to be complaining about a lot of hardware-relating things.
When we finished restoring the files, the network was down and would not come back up. We worked this for several hours. Finally, jiggling some cables brings just a part of the net back. (that really instills confidence in the stability of your network). And when they're not jiggling cables, they're bitching about the wireless nodes on the LAN.
They also run Unix, so where can we find more evidence of Wired's claim that "Most of the problems appear to be related to Microsoft's Windows NT"?
Okay, there is the Jan 21st entry: "We are continuing to see some strange things on our e-mail". But I see strange things on my e-mail every morning. They should just run a Inbox Rule to filter out references to "credit rating", "get out of debt" and "hot teens". That would eliminates much of the strange stuff.
My best guess is they're using Solaris.
From the Dec logs...
"Sergei swapped hard disks from Russian Laptop #2 to the operating laptop on the central post. It is back in working order. However, we do not have a backup for the Solaris/Unix OS which gave us the problem and we are operating on our only working load. We request that 4A bring at least one complete hard drive as a backup for the Russian laptop."
...
"Approx 1930 experienced a "crash" with the Russian PCS laptop. Attempting to reboot the PC gave indication that the Sun OS would not load. Boot s/w can not read root directory correctly. Even Sergei didn't understand this one. Talked with TsUP and decided to wait for specialist advice tomorrow."
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
- Nietzsche