Software developers rarely like to worry about resources like file system tables. They normally take care of themselves and they are usually part of the operating system. In this case, they were developing the operating system as part of the product. With the limited resources available on Spirit, I am sure that they did look at some of the storage limits. I am sure that it has been added to JPL's list of things to design in future systems. Jennifer also recommended that the Opportunity team delete some files before the 18th day. They do have procedures to clean up the data, but they had been leaving it there because they had plenty of room in the Flash memory. They still have data left from the long cruise to Mars. Dave -----Original Message----- From: Joe Bauman [mailto:bau@desnews.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2004 7:19 AM To: Utah Astronomy Subject: [Maybe Spam] Re: [Utah-astronomy] Yesterday News Conference Hi Dave, I watched the news conference too and I thought her analysis seemed reasonable, not that I know much about computers. A colleague had a computer crash because it had too much stuff in it, so I think that makes sense. But the question that immediately comes up is, Why didn't someone think of this? Suerely the federal government has plenty of computer scientists who know exactly what happens when too many files stack up -- so why didn't they give poor Spirit a protocol to dump files before they got too numerous? Best wishes, Joe _______________________________________________ Utah-Astronomy mailing list Utah-Astronomy@mailman.xmission.com http://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/utah-astronomy Visit the Photo Gallery: http://www.utahastronomy.com