On 13:37:28 Dec 31, Steve Shockley wrote:
quoted text
> Girish Venkatachalam wrote:
>> Correct me if I am wrong but I believe it was this that saved the Mars
>> lander from total disaster a few years ago. I heard it was due to the
>> brilliant idea of some Indian professor. I don't remember much about it
>> now.
>
> It's somewhat more difficult to access the hardware on the Mars lander, let 
> alone replace parts.

Read this and 'CTRF-F' for watchdog.

http://research.microsoft.com/~mbj/Mars_Pathfinder/Mars_Pathfinder.html

If I remember right this made a lot of headlines few years ago.

This is not on topic but other threads don't look any good anyway.;)

-Girish