Mars Rover is alive again ... amazing!

"Julius Kilo" wrote in
news
The worm had been uplinked to ME by a
ham in the Netherlands with a UHF yagi.

What was his name?

Ian Stirling writes:

In sci.space.policy jimmydevice wrote:
Does NASA release its flight software for public review?
Maybe it's time to open up NASA and the projects to engineers
who have experience that dwarfs the knowledge of the 20+ YO MIT
grads. As we further abstract the machine, problems occure.
Even with C, libs are poorly written and have undefined fault
paths. The higher the complexity, IE: C++ the greater the chance
that faults may occure. Who do you trust?

Can you do FOIA for publically developed software?
Is the software publically developed?

I don't know, at least because I don't know what "publically
developed" means. Almost all "NASA software" is not developed by
NASA, but by entities that they hire. Real NASA software would be in
the public domain (no copyrights). Instead they pay companies to
develop the software and then let them keep the copyrights to profit
off it as they can. Such a deal. A good example is many of the Linux
network device drivers which were widely said to have been developed
at/by NASA, but are actually owned by someone else who keeps them
proprietary, offering them only under GPL (and other) licenses so
that they may not be used in OSes like FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and
Windows without payment to the copyright owner.

No doubt NASA could find reasons to keep at least some of the software
from FOIA (eg, to prevent radio jamming) but it maybe all of it to
avoid the diminution of its value to the real copyright owners.

I doubt if public review would be worth much anyway. Such software is
hard enough to understand by those with the related design and other
documents and with knowledge of the hardware and other knowledgeable
people to talk to. Outsiders would erroneously find ten thousand
false bugs for every real one they found, if they even thought they
found one.

On Sat, 24 Jan 2004 16:40:08 -0500, G=EMC^2 Glazier wrote:


,for the reality is NASA cost me another 400 million dollars because
their thinking is off the mark . Bert

Cost _you_ another 400 million! So, you've got one of those houses you
keep complaining about other people buying? What's the matter, are they
blocking the view or something?

Seems to me Bert, you are taking this NASA stuff a little bit too
personal.

Yeah! You (as a citizen {You _are_ one aren't you?} of the US) have a say
in the doings of NASA (it is a government agency isn't it?) but, that say
is 1/(adult population - non-citizens) and the cost factor would work out
about the same wouldn't it?

All evidence would seem to point to the fact that the majority of
population (with right to comment) are happy (or at least not un-happy)
with the job NASA does perhaps, that's because they believe NASA do a
reasonable job.

Sure, they screw up occasionally, who doesn't? That's how people learn &
sometimes screwups are repeated because sometimes things require
repetition to be learned, the trick is to minimise the amount of
repetition.

Yes! Lives (a few) have been lost but, those lives were almost certainly
willingly given, its not as though the astronauts didn't know (and accept)
the risks. More people die on the roads (usually without them knowing the
risks), in mines, steel mills, in banks or shops, the armed forces,
policemen (gender irrelevant) & fire fighters etc. Do you bad mouth them,
not that I see!

In short, IMO, you are being unfair to NASA, they seem to be doing far more
good than most other US institutions/agencies!


Note: I am in _no way_ associated with NASA, except as a viewer of their
activities.

"G=EMC^2 Glazier" wrote in message
...
When thinking of NASA best not to give them the benifit of a doubt(they
don't deserve it) they could be showing us the great sharp pictures
taken by the 1976 Viking 2 lander which came down on Utopia Planita
(good spot for finding water and life) NASA will fudge(lie) now as
always. I knew something was going bad,but held back,and now my fingers
are uncrossed ,for the reality is NASA cost me another 400 million
dollars because their thinking is off the mark . Bert

Dang Bert,

Forget NASA... give me the 400 million instead! If I'd known you were so
wealthy, I would have been much more respectful. *grin*

Hi Kilolani Yes I do have a few bucks,but money does not earn one
respect. Truth is NASA has plenty of money,but they don't use the money
to bring into NASA people with brains. NASA has one war cry when they
screw up "We need more money" Bert PS 400 million for each rover is
a lot of money. If it was built in China it would cost $ 38,732 and
come with a dozen egg rolls Bert