NASA uses DOS

[kleinma]

Interesting article about how data from a disk drive recovered from the columbia disaster was salvaged, thanks to the computer running DOS instead of another operating system, including Windows.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/0....ap/index.html

[kleinma]

on the other hand.... this article made me feel kind of old, when they called DOS ancient

[Tom Sawyer]

Well, at least they don't use Vista. Wouldn't be good to have every shuttle blow up.

[kleinma]

A Vista bashing comment? how clever.. haven't seen one of those in ages

[Tom Sawyer]

You can always rely on the old classics.

[wossname]

but the 340-megabyte drive was only half full

...We mortals can only dream of the wonders of near-unlimited government funding.

[BillGeek]

We mortals can only dream of the wonders of near-unlimited government funding.

[Quasar6]

As someone who uses Vista I might be a little biased, but I think Tom Sawyers comment was ...

... completely accurate.

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

In your case, it's most likely a pebkac error. The only computer you couldn't crash would be one that you hadn't figured out how to turn on.

[Quasar6]

No? Try me.

It would take a bit of effort, but I could probably get a BSoD on a computer which wasn't even plugged in... providing, of course, that Windows was already installed.

Besides, I used XP for a good 4 years without seeing a BSoD (although I have no doubt they occured... BSoD's are sneaky creatures)... and then I get two within an equal number of weeks with Vista.

On the other hand, maybe you shouldn't try defragging, rendering, copying, playing a game and coding at the same time... [trails off...]

Worst thing was, I lost my unsaved render, my code and my game. Bloody Vista.

[MaximilianMayrhofer]

Oh my, yeeees, blame Vista for not being able to pander to all of your geeky desires simultaneously

Might as well blame the processor for not supporting parallel processing.

[Foxer]

Might as well blame the processor for not supporting parallel processing.

That would be Micro$ofts fault to.

[techgnome]

The reason for the use of DOS. ... the shuttles run on 5 8086 chips... in fact there was a call out from NASA looking for old machines that still had the 8086 chips, as they were stockpiling in order to have spares.

-tg

[mendhak]

Imagine a space shuttle that ran on the OSX. It wouldn't do anything, "But look, it fits in a plain manila envelope!"

[kleinma]

if the space shuttle ran on OSX, Apple would have required NASA to also let them build the shuttle

[Quasar6]

And then the shuttles would only be able to launch from Apple-built pads, which would only be constructed in Apple-owned countries.

Might as well blame the processor for not supporting parallel processing.

I'll have you know I'm running a quad core. My geeky desires are fully pandered.

That would be Micro$ofts fault to.

Exactly! Now you're getting it.