That is indeed a comfort. I'm able to view this problem report with some equanimity because there was no data loss, but rather an embarrasment of riches. I was more genuinely concerned when Tom reported that the Escape key in a message form causes complete deletion of the message. That is bad, bad, bad!

I sure wish I could view that site on spacecraft design. I've been fascinated by the subject since I was kid. One of my treasured possessions is a first-edition copy of Max Faget's "Manned Spacecraft Design" which I devoured one summer between Gemini missions. I've spent a lot of my career working with autonomous systems--process control, SCADA, traffic signals, etc.--and so you can imagine how I'm particularly fascinated by the design of robotic spacecraft. My server's about 30 miles away and service calls are a bitch--I've paid particular attention to the work of JPL in building reliable systems and remotely administering, diagnosing, and fixing them. I get a sense that when I design a Web server, I'm designing a cousin to Voyager et al that has to make its way through (cyber)space pretty much on its own.

My reference to the need for people to adapt a bit to technology didn't sit well with Justin, so I feel like I should clarify myself. Microsoft has not yet released Brain Wave Compiler 1.1 (never install 1.0 anything from Microsoft!), and until then any machine, including software, will not be entirely natural and intuitive. Concessions to technology are necessary to the extent that people have to learn how to work it and what the controls do. No matter how ergonomic the handle, you still have to pick up a hammer and hold it correctly and learn to hit the nails on-target. I certainly didn't mean to imply any shortcoming on your part! If there's a shortcoming, it's in the inability of technology to completely cater to human desire. Yet.

Humans are always a wild card. Back in 1990 I wrote the manual for Autodesk's AutoSketch entry-level CAD program, and I wrote this advice in the troubleshooting appendix:

If you think your computer has crashed and you want to save your drawing, don't do anything!. Look at the situation carefully--the worst thing you can do right now is to try to force things to start working again. Don't start pressing keys in frustration, and don't reboot your computer. In spite of what your instincts tell you, you can do nothing in a hurry to fix things.



If your computer really has crashed, it's stable that way. It's extremely unlikely that things will get worse.



My editor watered down that final line, and not for the better, IMHO; it originally read: "At this point, it takes a human to make things worse!"

People have a love-hate relationship with technology, and can be so delightfully perverse in finding ways to bend it out of shape and sometimes unconsciously sabotage it. Good engineering requires protection against human faults as well as technical faults. But humans will always be one step ahead of engineers. Which I find rather reassuring, actually. We're still the boss of technology, even if we sometimes demonstrate it in self-defeating ways.

--Robert