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 Rover Silence Explained (22 Feb 2004 at 10:01)
Remember when the Mars rover Spirit went incommunicado for several days after landing? Apparently that was because of the FAT* file system's limitation on the number of directory entries. It astounds me the level of software errors these guys make, given how much money is invested in the development..

* (guess)
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t		 Adam (c-67-165-107-241.client.comcast.net) – 02.22.04 16:37:28
Yes, it looks like it was most likely FAT, since the datasheets talk of a "DOS like FS" layed upon their wear-leveling flash layer. http://www.windriver.com/products/true_ffs/index.html

But I don't think it was due to a hard directory limitation, or problems with FAT. Instead, it appears that the large number of files ran the computer out of available RAM. So while the filesystem was valid, it was unable to be read under the circumstances. You might say that having a system need to read a full directory into RAM doesn't scale. You'd probably be right.

That is quite a software error, though not as bad as simply having a broken filesystem.
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t		 ndm (216-31-75-132.zianet.com) – 02.22.04 18:01:26
hey you know what else doesn't scale well? The Album-a-day page. Too many albums on one page. I think you should switch to displaying the 20 most recent albums as well as have a complete listing on the artists ranked by number of contributions.

Album-a-day is never going to make the cover of Forbes until it uses dynamic web-programming.
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t		 Tom 7 (h-66-167-161-198.phlapafg.dynamic.covad.net) – 02.22.04 20:24:48
You're in luck, Neal, because I am currently writing a new version of the AAD page (for its upcoming 100 album anniversary) using my newly developed futuristic hyper-technological Aphasia 2 language.

Forbes, here I come!
(Wait, AAD was already in Forbes.)
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t		 max (ce-web2.wesleyan.edu) – 02.25.04 21:53:17
Yeah, maybe your new design will land AAD in "Rational Web Design Techniques Illustrated".
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