> Realize that some people make jokes about
> tragedies. It makes them feel better.
I understand that. Completely. But posting sophomoric, heartless comments less than an hour after the loss of seven lives is no more apppropriate than heckling the mourners at a funeral.
Mark my words, as a result of this development the Australian downhill team will be unbeatable at the next Winter Olympics. I mean, the motivation to avoid an "agony of defeat" moment with a fece-bank and to get off the hill as soon as possible would be incredible.
Of course the gas masks will make their skiers less aerodynamic, so it might even things out.
VO >> NASA isn't run by rocket scientists, after all.
AC > NASA is being run by *administrators*.
No, that's not right either. And it seems to be a very common misconception among SlashDotters.
NASA is, in fact, run by Senators and Congressmen. You could install the world's best brains in NASA's management and the most they could ever do is propose projects and hope that government committees -- politicians, not scientists or engineers -- approve them, and approve sufficient funding. They often do one and not the other.
Anybody who thinks that the U.S. government hands NASA billions of dollars every year and then says "do whatever you want with this" doesn't understand the first thing about government.
Anybody who thinks that the Space Shuttle is an example of inept engineering doesn't understand the political history of the U.S. space program.
And anybody who thinks that government-funded R&D in the Basic Sciences doesn't pay for itself many times over doesn't understand the basics of large-scale economics.
So even though the history of NASA is full of decisions that are easy to second-guess in hindsight, the result is far, far, far better than doing nothing.
All that being said... Like many, I am an advocate of both Space Exploration and Space Exploitation, and moving large parts of it (basically everything within the Moon's orbit) from government control into the hands of private industry. But the undeniable fact that private industry has not yet managed to do it means that the government needs to continue subsidizing it for a while longer.
A 486 running Linux is a fine choice. I was just questioning why the opening paragraph of the story made it sound like Linux was to be given credit for the speed of the pour. It seems the same as saying "my car, which uses a 486 chip and Linux in the dashboard, can go 100 miles an hour."
> The Bar-Monkey is a bar built around a 486 running
> linux that can dispense an 8 ounce mixed drink in
> under 10 seconds
I know, I know... If it used Windows it would take much longer.
Doesn't the dispensing speed have a lot more to do with the pump than the OS or CPU? Why put that artificial slant on the opening paragraph?
I mean, a GWBASIC program on a 4.77MHz XT running MS-DOS 2.0 could find an item in a list of 188 and send a control string to a pump in a very small fraction of a second.
Re:Binary computers? How long before base4 compute
on
DNA Goes Binary
·
· Score: 2
> In short, binary is Simple. And that's why
> it works. Once you start trying to get into
> multiple voltage levels, you make things far
> trickier
Exactly. And for a computer, it's a bad thing when errors occur.
But for evolution, errors are necessary. Errors = mutations = progress.
Maybe the reason that DNA uses 4 states instead of 2 is because it introduces errors more frequently, leading to faster evolution. At some point a primitive binary system probably evolved into a 4-state system, which was superior. And perhaps DNA uses 4 instead of 6 because 6 introduces too many errors and the system falls apart.
> Who can companies trust if they're afraid that
> this kind of thing can happen?
Nobody.
> How can they prevent it?
They can't.
Employee misbehavior spans an entire spectrum of seriousness, from stealing paper clips to embezzling billions. You can't prevent a determined and dishonest sysadmin from sabotaging a system any more than you can prevent an accountant from diverting funds or an after-hours custodian from taking things off peoples' desks.
There is no panacea, technological or otherwise.
Preventing employee misbehavior has several parallels with Copy Protection. No affordable and practical scheme is bulletproof if the person is determined enough, so the best method is to remove the motivation. The same rules apply to all employees: treat and compensate people fairly and they will be less likely to want to hurt you.
But even that doesn't work in all cases. If your staff is large enough there will always be people who feel that you are mistreating them, or underpaying them, and who will feel compelled to get what is "rightfully theirs" in other ways, large and small. And many people steal/etc. without regard to the harm it causes the company or other employees; their motivation is purely selfish, so it doesn't matter how well they are treated and paid.
So even if you treat and compensate people fairly, and trust everybody you hire, you must monitor people's activity, investigate suspicious behavior, and, when necessary, prosecute wrongdoers to the fullest extent of the law.
I probably sound cynical, but I speak from experience.
> Computer evolution and Windows de-evolution
> are separate issues.
Oh, you're right, I forgot that using Linux keeps your hard drives from failing, forces everybody to perform daily backups, keeps worms and viruses from affecting your system, makes CPU fans last forever...
> they really don't make [computers] like they used to
If automobiles had evolved at the same rate as computers we would all be driving Jaguars that went 250 miles an hour, got 500 miles per gallon, cost $1000, and self-destructed once a year, killing all of the occupants.
> Most of what's labeled as piracy nowadays is simply acting
> in accordance with the laws of information physics at possible
> detriment to the financial standing of companies that have a
> vested interest in maintaining the status quo with regards to
> content-centric business models.
That's the most absurd statement I have heard since "Information wants to be free".
How is that any different from saying:
"Most of what's labeled as burglary nowadays is simply acting in accordance with the laws of mechanical physics at possible detriment to the financial standing of companies that have a
vested interest in maintaining the status quo with regards to inventory-centric business models."
In other words, you are using big, important-sounding words to say "since it is inherently possible to steal, it's not really theft".
Just because information has no physical reality, and just because it can be copied at virtually no cost, that does not mean that the information has no value.
IMO that's the key point that most anti-copyright proponents miss: Information Has Value. If it didn't, nobody would want to steal it.
Secondarily, and just as important: Information costs time and money to produce.
Third: Companies and individuals often spend time and money producing Information in order to sell it and make a profit.
Fourth: There is nothing inherently evil about that.
When you acquire something that has value without compensating the owner, that is Stealing. When you do it in violation of the current law, whether you agree with that law or not, that is Illegal.
> it will definitely increase the number of
> "leechers" on file-sharing systems.
Does anybody else find it ironic that a community that is based on file-sharing would use the term "leechers" as a disparaging term?
I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's common practice these days to use a carefully-chosen word in order to inherit a negative -- or positive -- meaning "by association".
"Leech". Yuck! That can't be good.
"Sharing". Gee, that sounds so... nice, doesn't it? It must be ok.
Thought experiments like that are fun, and yours is convincing, but consider some of the implications...
During the transfer from inside to outside, suppose you use a machine that has redundant circuits. Each nanobot is replace by a trio of simulated external neurons, so that they can check each other for errors. (If the presumably-binary output of the three disagree, the majority wins and the disagreeing unit syncs to the final result.)
Ok, up to now it's exactly the same situation that you describe, but with additional reliability.
But after the transfer is complete... The trio-links are broken, resulting in 3 perfectly synchronized systems.
Which one is you?
I'm not sure that "continuity" proves anything. Maybe your original consciousness would die slowly, neuron by neuron, as the new consciousness comes to life. If it even does come to life.
Honestly, I don't think the human race yet has the terms to describe the problem, much less speculate about the answer. It's fun to talk about, but so was "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
> if Kazza, etc. is one of the highest
> on the list of affiliates, doesn't
> that mean that more people purchase
> CDs after using something like it?
All other things being equal, if Kazaa (et al) had not done all of this, assuming that their customers really do purchase CDs (which I will happily concede) then their numbers would have placed them somewhere on the list of affiliates. A numerically meaningful place on the list. But if they steal units from other affiliates then they artificially inflate their own numbers are deflate other affiliates'.
So what does that do for the credibility of being "one of the highest on the list"?
> That might just prove (note that I said "might")
> prove that those filthy dirty music pirates are
> actually *gasp* big customers.
HUH?
If I were to install Kazaa and never use it -- or use it for a while and stop -- and I later bought some CDs that should have been credited to a charity, this scam would make it look like I am "a Kazaa user who actually buys CDs". Heck, even if I do use their software Kazaa would get credit for CDs that my wife and kids buy, using our family computer.
Maybe that was a side-benefit of this deception that Kazaa planned. Make it look like Kazaa is a larger source of income for the music industry than it actually is. Attribute CD sales to a company that encourages music theft, and maybe people will start thinking "those filthy dirty music pirates are actually *gasp* big customers."
I know you said "might" but I really don't think so...
The obvious solution is to have some sort of convertor box, like a cable box, that can receive the HDTV signals and output an NTSC signal that a standard TV can display.
But that would allow people to circumvent the copy-protection scheme by hooking up a VCR. Maybe something like the old MacroVision scheme could be used to make the output viewable but unrecordable.
Anyway, my point is that an inexpensive convertor should be possible, once the details are worked out. When the general-public outcry begins (and the impact on the economy is considered) I doubt that the industry will object too strenuously because TVs and VCRs have a limited lifetime, and eventually everything will be converted over to the new technology. I mean, how many black-and-white TVs and 8-track players do you see in stores these days?
I predict that a compromise will eventually be reached, and the old technology will be allowed to fade away naturally.
Thanks for that explanation. It explains some things that have puzzled me for a long time.
But I still don't understand some of the things that the "rubber sheet" analogy implies. I assume that the analogy breaks down fairly quickly.
For example, if the dots were much closer together 14 billion years ago, why didn't light travel from the farthest dot to us sooner, when the distance was shorter? Or is the actual speed of light somehow based on the size of the universe? If so, the speed of light must be getting faster as the universe expands, right?
Also, if light from 14 billion years ago is just reaching us now, what will we see (theoretically, of course) in another billion years? Light from the Big Bang, 15 billion years in the past? If not, then it's a big coincidence that we are alive right now, when light from the birth of the universe happens to be getting here. If we will see light from 15 billion years in the past, that seems to imply that the source of light from the Big Bang is infinite. Some of it is getting here now, and some of it will get here in a billion years, and in two billion...
I have to go now. My brain hurts.
P.S. Rather than answer my specific questions, maybe you can recommend a good book?
Well, it seems to me that when the producer chose the near-future time period for Enterprise -- a great choice IMO -- they had three choices:
1) Live with "the Titanic problem" i.e. everybody knows how it ends. In this case we know that Kirk and Spock explored the galaxy later on, so we know that the human race was not destroyed, Earth was not conquered by aliens, etc.
2) Give up on exploring all of the "big" plots like that.
3) Use time travel to leave open the possibility that the future will not unfold the way we expect.
Personally, I like the whole Temporal Cold War idea. It adds a layer of complexity that would be missing if their travel was limited to three dimensions. But that's just me. I liked DS9 too.
I challenge you to name a single one of the other astronauts who died aboard Challenger
I remembered two others off the top of my head, but what does that have to do with anything? Do you remember the names of more than one of the Iranian hostages? That has no bearing on the magnitude of the event.
I don't, honestly, think much of the nation, save the immidiate families and friends of the astronauts, would mourn. There hasn't been a front page story of a shuttle launch for as long as I can remember, and even TV stations don't broadcast it like they used to do in the 80s.
The last launch of the Challenger in January of 1986 was not covered by anybody but CNN (who still covers them by the way) and it had been that way for a couple of years. But when it blew up it dominated the news for months. Reagan addressed the nation on TV, a presidential commission was formed, thousands of schoolchildren collected money for a memorial...
And it wasn't just because a civilian was on board, the entire crew was mourned. (Don't forget that civilians and foreign nationals now fly all the time.)
I think you fail to realize that NASA has been using Linux in space for a while.
I'm aware of that, and Windows too. But neither one is used for mission-critical software, and that was my point.
The article specifically mentions the software that is used to launch the shuttle. If an experiment fails, oh well. If the launch fails, the entire nation mourns.
Given todays hardware, why you can't just simulate the old system
You can't just buy a system from Dell and put it into the Space Shuttle. You can't use a Pentium, a modern hard drive, Linux, Windows, or Open Source anything.
As far as the hardware goes, everything mission-critical that goes aboard the Shuttle has to be ruggedize against incredible vibration, tested a thousand different ways to make sure that it can't be affected by exposure to vacuum/heat/cold/radiation/cosmic rays/etc., tested another thousand ways to make sure it doesn't interfere with other critical Shuttle systems... and on and on.
And a bug in the newly written software could cause not only the death of several astronauts, but potentially the loss of a Shuttle, a launch facility, and the ISS. Would you, under any circumstances, put your life, five other lives, and billions of dollars in the hands of software that you found in an Open Source project?
On your desk a "Fatal Error" isn't, really. But 60 miles up?
Slashdot Mirror
> Realize that some people make jokes about
> tragedies. It makes them feel better.
I understand that. Completely. But posting sophomoric, heartless comments less than an hour after the loss of seven lives is no more apppropriate than heckling the mourners at a funeral.
I don't know about anybody else, but if even one post about this gets modded Funny, I will walk away from SlashDot for good.
If the posts so far are any indication of the number of Genuine Assholes who frequent this site, it's a lost cause anyway.
This is not funny in any way.
Mark my words, as a result of this development the Australian downhill team will be unbeatable at the next Winter Olympics. I mean, the motivation to avoid an "agony of defeat" moment with a fece-bank and to get off the hill as soon as possible would be incredible.
Of course the gas masks will make their skiers less aerodynamic, so it might even things out.
Bill Gates now claims that he was misquoted. What he really said was that "640K should be more than enough memory for anybody's toaster."
> Modification and re-release (under s different
> name) is explicitly allowed, too
Like changing my browser's font so that an "a" looks like an "s"?
Shouldn't it be a rule that the editors have to use the Preview button? I like Slashdot, but sometimes it should be called Slapdash.
VO >> NASA isn't run by rocket scientists, after all.
AC > NASA is being run by *administrators*.
No, that's not right either. And it seems to be a very common misconception among SlashDotters.
NASA is, in fact, run by Senators and Congressmen. You could install the world's best brains in NASA's management and the most they could ever do is propose projects and hope that government committees -- politicians, not scientists or engineers -- approve them, and approve sufficient funding. They often do one and not the other.
Anybody who thinks that the U.S. government hands NASA billions of dollars every year and then says "do whatever you want with this" doesn't understand the first thing about government.
Anybody who thinks that the Space Shuttle is an example of inept engineering doesn't understand the political history of the U.S. space program.
And anybody who thinks that government-funded R&D in the Basic Sciences doesn't pay for itself many times over doesn't understand the basics of large-scale economics.
So even though the history of NASA is full of decisions that are easy to second-guess in hindsight, the result is far, far, far better than doing nothing.
All that being said... Like many, I am an advocate of both Space Exploration and Space Exploitation, and moving large parts of it (basically everything within the Moon's orbit) from government control into the hands of private industry. But the undeniable fact that private industry has not yet managed to do it means that the government needs to continue subsidizing it for a while longer.
> why bother going to the extra effort
I guess I didn't make my point clear...
A 486 running Linux is a fine choice. I was just questioning why the opening paragraph of the story made it sound like Linux was to be given credit for the speed of the pour. It seems the same as saying "my car, which uses a 486 chip and Linux in the dashboard, can go 100 miles an hour."
> The Bar-Monkey is a bar built around a 486 running
> linux that can dispense an 8 ounce mixed drink in
> under 10 seconds
I know, I know... If it used Windows it would take much longer.
Doesn't the dispensing speed have a lot more to do with the pump than the OS or CPU? Why put that artificial slant on the opening paragraph?
I mean, a GWBASIC program on a 4.77MHz XT running MS-DOS 2.0 could find an item in a list of 188 and send a control string to a pump in a very small fraction of a second.
> In short, binary is Simple. And that's why
> it works. Once you start trying to get into
> multiple voltage levels, you make things far
> trickier
Exactly. And for a computer, it's a bad thing when errors occur.
But for evolution, errors are necessary. Errors = mutations = progress.
Maybe the reason that DNA uses 4 states instead of 2 is because it introduces errors more frequently, leading to faster evolution. At some point a primitive binary system probably evolved into a 4-state system, which was superior. And perhaps DNA uses 4 instead of 6 because 6 introduces too many errors and the system falls apart.
Four may simply be the "sweet spot".
> Who can companies trust if they're afraid that
> this kind of thing can happen?
Nobody.
> How can they prevent it?
They can't.
Employee misbehavior spans an entire spectrum of seriousness, from stealing paper clips to embezzling billions. You can't prevent a determined and dishonest sysadmin from sabotaging a system any more than you can prevent an accountant from diverting funds or an after-hours custodian from taking things off peoples' desks.
There is no panacea, technological or otherwise.
Preventing employee misbehavior has several parallels with Copy Protection. No affordable and practical scheme is bulletproof if the person is determined enough, so the best method is to remove the motivation. The same rules apply to all employees: treat and compensate people fairly and they will be less likely to want to hurt you.
But even that doesn't work in all cases. If your staff is large enough there will always be people who feel that you are mistreating them, or underpaying them, and who will feel compelled to get what is "rightfully theirs" in other ways, large and small. And many people steal/etc. without regard to the harm it causes the company or other employees; their motivation is purely selfish, so it doesn't matter how well they are treated and paid.
So even if you treat and compensate people fairly, and trust everybody you hire, you must monitor people's activity, investigate suspicious behavior, and, when necessary, prosecute wrongdoers to the fullest extent of the law.
I probably sound cynical, but I speak from experience.
> Computer evolution and Windows de-evolution
> are separate issues.
Oh, you're right, I forgot that using Linux keeps your hard drives from failing, forces everybody to perform daily backups, keeps worms and viruses from affecting your system, makes CPU fans last forever...
> they really don't make [computers] like they used to
If automobiles had evolved at the same rate as computers we would all be driving Jaguars that went 250 miles an hour, got 500 miles per gallon, cost $1000, and self-destructed once a year, killing all of the occupants.
> Most of what's labeled as piracy nowadays is simply acting
> in accordance with the laws of information physics at possible
> detriment to the financial standing of companies that have a
> vested interest in maintaining the status quo with regards to
> content-centric business models.
That's the most absurd statement I have heard since "Information wants to be free".
How is that any different from saying:
"Most of what's labeled as burglary nowadays is simply acting in accordance with the laws of mechanical physics at possible detriment to the financial standing of companies that have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo with regards to inventory-centric business models."
In other words, you are using big, important-sounding words to say "since it is inherently possible to steal, it's not really theft".
Just because information has no physical reality, and just because it can be copied at virtually no cost, that does not mean that the information has no value.
IMO that's the key point that most anti-copyright proponents miss: Information Has Value. If it didn't, nobody would want to steal it.
Secondarily, and just as important: Information costs time and money to produce.
Third: Companies and individuals often spend time and money producing Information in order to sell it and make a profit.
Fourth: There is nothing inherently evil about that.
When you acquire something that has value without compensating the owner, that is Stealing. When you do it in violation of the current law, whether you agree with that law or not, that is Illegal.
> it will definitely increase the number of
> "leechers" on file-sharing systems.
Does anybody else find it ironic that a community that is based on file-sharing would use the term "leechers" as a disparaging term?
I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's common practice these days to use a carefully-chosen word in order to inherit a negative -- or positive -- meaning "by association".
"Leech". Yuck! That can't be good.
"Sharing". Gee, that sounds so... nice, doesn't it? It must be ok.
...a Wolf 359 cluster of those!
Thought experiments like that are fun, and yours is convincing, but consider some of the implications...
During the transfer from inside to outside, suppose you use a machine that has redundant circuits. Each nanobot is replace by a trio of simulated external neurons, so that they can check each other for errors. (If the presumably-binary output of the three disagree, the majority wins and the disagreeing unit syncs to the final result.)
Ok, up to now it's exactly the same situation that you describe, but with additional reliability.
But after the transfer is complete... The trio-links are broken, resulting in 3 perfectly synchronized systems.
Which one is you?
I'm not sure that "continuity" proves anything. Maybe your original consciousness would die slowly, neuron by neuron, as the new consciousness comes to life. If it even does come to life.
Honestly, I don't think the human race yet has the terms to describe the problem, much less speculate about the answer. It's fun to talk about, but so was "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"
> if Kazza, etc. is one of the highest
> on the list of affiliates, doesn't
> that mean that more people purchase
> CDs after using something like it?
All other things being equal, if Kazaa (et al) had not done all of this, assuming that their customers really do purchase CDs (which I will happily concede) then their numbers would have placed them somewhere on the list of affiliates. A numerically meaningful place on the list. But if they steal units from other affiliates then they artificially inflate their own numbers are deflate other affiliates'.
So what does that do for the credibility of being "one of the highest on the list"?
> That might just prove (note that I said "might")
> prove that those filthy dirty music pirates are
> actually *gasp* big customers.
HUH?
If I were to install Kazaa and never use it -- or use it for a while and stop -- and I later bought some CDs that should have been credited to a charity, this scam would make it look like I am "a Kazaa user who actually buys CDs". Heck, even if I do use their software Kazaa would get credit for CDs that my wife and kids buy, using our family computer.
Maybe that was a side-benefit of this deception that Kazaa planned. Make it look like Kazaa is a larger source of income for the music industry than it actually is. Attribute CD sales to a company that encourages music theft, and maybe people will start thinking "those filthy dirty music pirates are actually *gasp* big customers."
I know you said "might" but I really don't think so...
The obvious solution is to have some sort of convertor box, like a cable box, that can receive the HDTV signals and output an NTSC signal that a standard TV can display.
But that would allow people to circumvent the copy-protection scheme by hooking up a VCR. Maybe something like the old MacroVision scheme could be used to make the output viewable but unrecordable.
Anyway, my point is that an inexpensive convertor should be possible, once the details are worked out. When the general-public outcry begins (and the impact on the economy is considered) I doubt that the industry will object too strenuously because TVs and VCRs have a limited lifetime, and eventually everything will be converted over to the new technology. I mean, how many black-and-white TVs and 8-track players do you see in stores these days?
I predict that a compromise will eventually be reached, and the old technology will be allowed to fade away naturally.
Thanks for that explanation. It explains some things that have puzzled me for a long time.
But I still don't understand some of the things that the "rubber sheet" analogy implies. I assume that the analogy breaks down fairly quickly.
For example, if the dots were much closer together 14 billion years ago, why didn't light travel from the farthest dot to us sooner, when the distance was shorter? Or is the actual speed of light somehow based on the size of the universe? If so, the speed of light must be getting faster as the universe expands, right?
Also, if light from 14 billion years ago is just reaching us now, what will we see (theoretically, of course) in another billion years? Light from the Big Bang, 15 billion years in the past? If not, then it's a big coincidence that we are alive right now, when light from the birth of the universe happens to be getting here. If we will see light from 15 billion years in the past, that seems to imply that the source of light from the Big Bang is infinite. Some of it is getting here now, and some of it will get here in a billion years, and in two billion...
I have to go now. My brain hurts.
P.S. Rather than answer my specific questions, maybe you can recommend a good book?
> TIME TRAVEL SUCKS
Well, it seems to me that when the producer chose the near-future time period for Enterprise -- a great choice IMO -- they had three choices:
1) Live with "the Titanic problem" i.e. everybody knows how it ends. In this case we know that Kirk and Spock explored the galaxy later on, so we know that the human race was not destroyed, Earth was not conquered by aliens, etc.
2) Give up on exploring all of the "big" plots like that.
3) Use time travel to leave open the possibility that the future will not unfold the way we expect.
Personally, I like the whole Temporal Cold War idea. It adds a layer of complexity that would be missing if their travel was limited to three dimensions. But that's just me. I liked DS9 too.
I challenge you to name a single one of the other astronauts who died aboard Challenger
I remembered two others off the top of my head, but what does that have to do with anything? Do you remember the names of more than one of the Iranian hostages? That has no bearing on the magnitude of the event.
I don't, honestly, think much of the nation, save the immidiate families and friends of the astronauts, would mourn. There hasn't been a front page story of a shuttle launch for as long as I can remember, and even TV stations don't broadcast it like they used to do in the 80s.
The last launch of the Challenger in January of 1986 was not covered by anybody but CNN (who still covers them by the way) and it had been that way for a couple of years. But when it blew up it dominated the news for months. Reagan addressed the nation on TV, a presidential commission was formed, thousands of schoolchildren collected money for a memorial...
And it wasn't just because a civilian was on board, the entire crew was mourned. (Don't forget that civilians and foreign nationals now fly all the time.)
I think you fail to realize that NASA has been using Linux in space for a while.
I'm aware of that, and Windows too. But neither one is used for mission-critical software, and that was my point.
The article specifically mentions the software that is used to launch the shuttle. If an experiment fails, oh well. If the launch fails, the entire nation mourns.
Given todays hardware, why you can't just simulate the old system
You can't just buy a system from Dell and put it into the Space Shuttle. You can't use a Pentium, a modern hard drive, Linux, Windows, or Open Source anything.
As far as the hardware goes, everything mission-critical that goes aboard the Shuttle has to be ruggedize against incredible vibration, tested a thousand different ways to make sure that it can't be affected by exposure to vacuum/heat/cold/radiation/cosmic rays/etc., tested another thousand ways to make sure it doesn't interfere with other critical Shuttle systems... and on and on.
And a bug in the newly written software could cause not only the death of several astronauts, but potentially the loss of a Shuttle, a launch facility, and the ISS. Would you, under any circumstances, put your life, five other lives, and billions of dollars in the hands of software that you found in an Open Source project?
On your desk a "Fatal Error" isn't, really. But 60 miles up?