Slashdot Mirror
Debugging The Spirit Rover
icebike writes "eeTimes has a story on how the Mars Rover was essentially reprogrammed from millions of miles away. 'How do you diagnose an embedded system that has rendered itself unobservable? That was the riddle a Jet Propulsion Laboratory team had to solve when the Mars rover Spirit capped a successful landing on the Martian surface with a sequence of stunning images and then, darkness.' The outcome strikes me as an extremely Lucky Hack, and the rover could have just as likely been lost forever. Are there lessons here that we can use here on the third rock for recovery of our messed up machines which we manage from afar via ssh?"
Here on earth we can't even build cars that require no maintainance and last more than 10 years.
Sure we can. It's just that nobody does, because making completely reliable, long-lasting products is not good business.
If your products die one day after the warranty is up, or if they last forever, you kill your repeat business. Companies have to strike that happy medium to keep people coming back for more.
Regardless of your personal experience, it is Ford's habit to replace reliable vehicles with unreliable ones. The classical example of this is the Festiva. Those little things just went and went, got excellent reviews in Consumer Reports, and really upset a few Ford corporate executives.
They replaced the vehicle with the Aspire, which Ford dealership automechanics quicky nicknamed the "expire" due to their regular need for maintenance. They still sold quite a number of them due to the reputation of the previous vehicle.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
MEGABYTES. You mean MEGABYTES. Don't use that revisionist MiB crap - 1024^2 is MEGA in computers and always has been. Don't let storage manufacturers redefine the language for their own gain!
Disclaimer: IANAL. This post is, however, legal advice, and creates an attorney-client relationship.
There are lots of 91 escorts on the road. Pieces of junk? Yes, but they are still running.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
German cars have great build quality but crappy parts. BMW, Mercedes, VW, Audi all have much worse reliability than the Japanese manufactuers. The cars however are much more fun to drive than the japanese appliances.
Scuttlemonkey is a troll