Time to Think

So much for software engineering!

I just read on Spirit mission status website that the source of problem with the Mars rover has most probably been a faulty flash memory chip. The funny thing though is that the operating system software has been resetting itself continuously (for more than 60 times) because it could not check the OK status on the memory! This has drained the battery power of the rover to death.

I think this is a heck of a flaw in the design of operating system! One of the mission managers said in an interview that the software is designed in such a way that if any part of the hardware in its priority list fails to respond during the boot up process, the computer will automatically interpret it as a failure and starts resetting itself. What kind of stupid software does that? It is like programming it to kill itself. Maybe they have put Windows on the Mars rover to make it compatible with their PCs on Earth!

Change of address

I finally moved the weblog to its new location with a dot com address. This implementation allows me to use Movable Type which is much more powerfull than Blogger. Those free blogspaces are like living in a hotel for free. It is good for a while but you eventually get frustrated because the manager of hotel does not allow you to modify the room and bring new furniture inside!

I managed to transfer all the posts to the new blog but do not have time to do the same thing for the comments (because Haloscan commenting system does not have export feature-at least I do not know how to do it). I have to import the quicklinks too (it should be done manually, which is too much hassle). I will keep the content of my old blog running for a while but do not post anything new there. If you have my blog listed in your blogrolling or other bookmarks, please change its address to http://time2think.plonix.com so you can see the pings correctly.

This layout is one of the basic layouts of Movable Type and I will change it for sure. Right now, I am too busy writing my thesis and even this post is done during my break time!

Michel Strogoff

One of the most popular TV mini series broadcasted on Iranian TV just before 1979 was Michel Strogoff. I remember it very well because at that time I was very fond of Jules Verne (and I am still fond of him). Its broadcast was continued even after 1979 but with lots of censorship that eventually changed the story line completely and made it so stupid. There are many versions of this story produced for TV. The one broadcasted on Iran was a French production. The main character of the movie who played the role of Michele Strogoff was Jean-Pierre Decourt.

I think one of the strongest point of that mini series was its music which was composed by the famous French composer Vladimir Cosma. Those Iranians who are old enough probably remember that music very well. I was looking for that music for a long time until I found it recently. I put it here temporarily. Listening to music like this brings back such good memories for me. You will probably enjoy the music even if you did not see the series before. This version is only 32kbps with minimum quality to reduce the webserver loading. You will need Windows Media Player plugin for listening to the music.