Touch and Go to Snout - sol 13, Feb 06, 2004

Opportunity Navcam sol 13
[larger image and caption]

On sol 13, Friday, February 6, Opportunity drove to the right side of the crater outcrop to "sniff out" the rock named Snout with its science instruments. After a smooth 1.6-meter (5.2-foot) drive, Opportunity slipped a bit in the soft soil while climbing up a slope and stopped a little short of Snout (30 to 40 centimeters).

On sol 14, Opportunity will touch the soil at her current location and take another microscopic image. Then, she will go the final small stretch to Snout. The mission team calls this maneuver "touch and go."

Over the next few sols, engineers and scientists plan to drive in an arc along the bottom of the outcrop area, taking additional pictures and science measurements with Opportunity's suite of instruments as she progresses. This analysis will help scientists assess the composition of the rock outcrop and the geologic history of Meridiani as part of their quest to understand the role of water on the red planet.

A look at the rock nicknamed 'Snout', out the front of Rover Opportunity

Update: The image at the left shows a look (extracted from a larger version of the animation below -- click the image for the larger image in a new window). The animation is a series of the images from Sol6 to Sol13.

Engineer's Papers Dispute Hubble Decision

By DENNIS OVERBYE

Published: February 7, 2004

NASA's decision to abandon its crown scientific jewel, the Hubble Space Telescope, cannot be justified on safety grounds, according to a pair of reports by a NASA engineer that have been circulating in scientific and political circles in the last few days.

The unsigned documents are attracting attention on Capitol Hill, particularly in the House Science Committee, which is expected to discuss the Hubble decision at a meeting on Thursday.

"We're reviewing the Hubble decision, looking at it very closely," said a spokesman for Representative Sherwood Boehlert, Republican of New York and chairman of the committee. "We're going to be examining the views in this particular document as well as a whole host of others."

The documents have also created a buzz among astronomers, who hope that their wider distribution will help spark a larger debate about the telescope's fate. The reports have deepened astronomers' skepticism that safety and not politics and money was the issue last month when Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, announced the cancellation of the space shuttle's planned 2006 maintenance visit to the telescope. As a result, the telescope will probably die in orbit within three years, astronomers say, instead of lasting into the early part of the next decade as originally planned.
[more]

Don Murdoch, CISSP, GCIA, MCSD, MCSE (NT/2K)
Former MCT (wasn't worth keeping).

Today's Sun Tzu Quote:

"To fight and conquer in all your battles is not
supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's
resistance without fighting."
-- Sun Tzu

FLIPPING ORKUTFLIPPING ORKUT

FLIPPING ORKUTFLIPPING ORKUT

FLIPPING ORKUTFLIPPING ORKUT

Where You Been?

create your own visited states map


create your own visited country map

Above, Rover Spirit positions the RAT over the rock Adirondack. Below, a microscopic image of the rock. NASA/JPL did not say whether this image was taken after the RAT was used to brush the dust off Adirondack Thursday, or whether the image is after the RAT was used to grind below the surface of the rock (which was scheduled to happen today). Click the image below for a larger version (750K) in a new window.

Mars Exploration Rover Mission Status

February 5, 2004

NASA's Opportunity rover drove about 3.5 meters (11 feet) early Thursday toward a rock outcrop in the wall of a small crater on Mars, and mission controllers plan to send it the rest of the way to the outcrop late Thursday.

Opportunity's twin, Spirit, successfully reformatted its flash memory on Wednesday. Flash is a type of rewritable memory used in many electronic devices, such as digital cameras, to retain information even while power is off. Problems with the flash memory interfered with Spirit's operations from Jan. 22 until this week. Engineers prescribed the reformatting to prevent recurrence of the problem.

On Thursday, Spirit's main assignment is to brush off an area on the rock nicknamed "Adirondack" to prepare for a dust-free examination of its surface. On Friday, controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., plan to have Spirit grind off a small patch of Adirondack’s outer surface and inspect the rock's interior. Spirit may start driving over the weekend toward a crater about 250 meters (about 270 yards) to the northeast.

The Bill O'Reilly Iraq WMD Apology Countdown Clock

Bill O'Reilly - Good Morning America - 3-18-03 -- "And I said on my program, if -- if -- the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush administration again."

Google revives discredited Microsoft privacy policy for Friendster clone

By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 05/02/2004 at 21:35 GMT

Can you trust Google's Friendster clone Orkut? The search engine behemoth certainly has ambitious plans for your innocent musings. And be careful about any business ideas you express there.

The privacy policy, which fades beautifully into view, looks innocent enough. But Orkut's terms of service harbor a nasty payload -

"By submitting, posting or displaying any Materials on or through the orkut.com service, you automatically grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, sublicenseable, transferable, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to copy, distribute, create derivative works of, publicly perform and display such Materials."

It's startlingly similar to the Microsoft Passport Terms which caused a storm of outrage two years ago, a reader points out.

Here's the old Passport policy:

By posting messages, uploading files, inputting data, submitting any feedback or suggestions, or engaging in any other form of communication with or through the Passport Web Site ... you are granting Microsoft and its affiliated companies permission to:

1. Use, modify, copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, publish, sublicense, create derivative works from, transfer, or sell any such communication.

2. Sublicense to third parties the unrestricted right to exercise any of the foregoing rights granted with respect to the communication.

3. Publish your name in connection with any such communication."

Microsoft was forced to amend the terms five days after our first story, amidst threats of defections.

On a parallel theme, Jeremy Zawodny - a software developer who works for rival Yahoo! (which has its own dubious privacy practices) - is nevertheless correct when he observes that Orkut provides the missing link for Google's marketeers.

"If you've been thru the Orkut registration process, you know that it attempts to collect a ton of data about you. The kind of demographic data that marketing folks drool over. And right now there are lots of folks dying to get that special invite and begin the sign-up process," he wrote here last week.

Orkut's cookie now nests cosily alongside Google's cookie, set to expire in 2038, which in itself suggests that Google plans to be in the data mining business for a very long time.

However it's the cloning of the notorious MSN Passport conditions that strikes us as a fascinating comparison in trust.These days, you only have to tell people you'll do no evil and they'll believe you.

Don't you love the way that Privacy Policy fades into view, just as your privacy fades out of sight? ®

Bootnote: We're assured that because Orkut runs on Microsoft® Windows™, there will be no security issues. Good choice.

I Think We've All Gone Crazy

Stu Savory

Mind like a steel trap - Rusty and Illegal in 37 states.

Not Much Happening On Mars

Opportunity Passes Her Driver's Test!
sol 12, Feb 05, 2004

"Just like you would want to perfect your parallel parking abilities before trying to make it to an appointment on a tight schedule in a big city, engineers tested Opportunity's ability to maneuver on Mars on sol 12, which ended Thursday. She passed with flying colors!" reported Mark Powell, Science Downlink Coordinator. Engineers commanded Opportunity to do a little dance, making three arcs -- two to the left and one to the right. Opportunity then did a 30-degree turn in place where you can see the most radical track curves in the image. For its grand finale drive, Opportunity proceeded straight for 1.8 meters (5.9 feet), completing a total traverse of 3.54 meters (10.6 feet).

The plan for sol 13 is to do a 1.1 meter (3.6 feet) drive straight toward the outcrop and take some more pancam and mini-TES instrument images of the outcrop area.Scientists have decided to wait to trench for a few days until they can drive to an area with a higher concentration of hematite.

Spirit Rover Status: Spirit's Surgery Successful!

Spirit woke up earlier than normal today at 6 a.m. local Mars time to the tune of Surfari's "Wipe Out" in order to prepare for its memory "surgery." Engineers ended the memory overload problem today by erasing and reformatting the flash file system. The operation was a success, and the patient is doing very well. Spirit is scheduled to brush off any loose dust on the rock Adirondack tomorrow to prepare for the first exciting grinding event with the rock abrasion tool this weekend, which may reveal historical clues about the rock's formation and the past environment on Mars.

Uninstalled

Michael O'Connor Clarke's New Service

My friend Michael is now offering a new service:

This map of a portion of the small crater currently encircling the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity shows where crystalline hematite resides. Red and orange patches indicate high levels of the iron-bearing mineral, while blue and green denote low levels. The northeastern rock outcropping lining the rim of the crater does not appear to contain much hematite. Also lacking hematite are the rover's airbag bounce marks. This image consists of data from Opportunity's miniature thermal emission spectrometer superimposed on an image taken by the rover's panoramic camera.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University/Cornell

Opportunity Sees Tiny Spheres In Martian Soil

Mars Under the Microscope

This magnified look at the martian soil near the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity's landing site, Meridiani Planum, shows coarse grains sprinkled over a fine layer of sand. The image was captured by the rover's microscopic imager on the 10th day, or sol, of its mission. Scientists are intrigued by the spherical rocks, which can be formed by a variety of geologic processes, including cooling of molten lava droplets and accretion of concentric layers of material around a particle or "seed."

The examined patch of soil is 3 centimeters (1.2 inches) across. The circular grain in the lower left corner is approximately 3 millimeters (.12 inches) across, or about the size of a sunflower seed. Click on image to see larger version in new window.

NASA's Opportunity has examined its first patch of soil in the small crater where the rover landed on Mars and found strikingly spherical pebbles among the mix of particles there.

"There are features in this soil unlike anything ever seen on Mars before," said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the science instruments on the two Mars Exploration Rovers.

For better understanding of the soil, mission controllers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., plan to use Opportunity's wheels later this week to scoop a trench to expose deeper material. One front wheel will rotate to dig the hole while the other five wheels hold still.

The spherical particles appear in new pictures from Opportunity's microscopic imager, the last of 20 cameras to be used on the two rover missions. Other particles in the image have jagged shapes. "The variety of shapes and colors indicates we're having particles brought in from a variety of sources," said Dr. Ken Herkenhoff of the U.S. Geological Survey's Astrogeology Team, Flagstaff, Ariz.

The shapes by themselves don't reveal the particles' origin with certainty. "A number of straightforward geological processes can yield round shapes," said Dr. Hap McSween, a rover science team member from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. They include accretion under water, but apparent pores in the particles make alternative possibilities of meteor impacts or volcanic eruptions more likely origins, he said.

A new mineral map of Opportunity's surroundings, the first ever done from the surface of another planet, shows that concentrations of coarse-grained hematite vary in different parts of the crater. The soil patch in the new microscopic images is in an area low in hematite. The map shows higher hematite concentrations inside the crater in a layer above an outcrop of bedrock and on the slope just under the outcrop.

Hematite usually forms in association with liquid water, so it holds special interest for the scientists trying to determine whether the rover landing sites ever had watery environments possibly suitable for sustaining life. The map uses data from Opportunity's miniature thermal emission spectrometer, which identifies rock types from a distance.

"We're seeing little bits and pieces of this mystery, but we haven't pieced all the clues together yet," Squyres said.

Opportunity's Mössbauer spectrometer, an instrument on the rover's robotic arm designed to identify the types of iron-bearing minerals in a target, found a strong signal in the soil patch for olivine. Olivine is a common ingredient in volcanic rocks. A few days of analysis may be needed to discern whether any fainter signals are from hematite, said Dr. Franz Renz, science team member from the University of Mainz, Germany.

To get a better look at the hematite closer to the outcrop, Opportunity will go there. It will begin by driving about 3 meters (10 feet) tomorrow, taking it about halfway to the outcrop. On Friday it will dig a trench with one of its front wheels, said JPL's Dr. Mark Adler, mission manager.

Opportunity's twin, Spirit, today is reformatting its flash memory, a preventive measure that had been planned for earlier in the week. "We spent the last four days in the testbed testing this," Adler said. "It's not an operation we do lightly. We've got to be sure it works right." Tomorrow, Spirit will resume examining a rock called Adirondack after a two-week interruption by computer memory problems. Controllers plan to tell Spirit to brush dust off of a rock and examine the cleaned surface tomorrow.

Each martian day, or "sol," lasts about 40 minutes longer than an Earth day. Spirit begins its 33rd sol on Mars at 2:43 a.m. Thursday, Pacific Standard Time. Opportunity begins its 13th sol on Mars at 3:04 p.m. Thursday, PST.

The power of Google

Google giveth
and Google taketh away
Blessed is Google?
[Roger Bagula]

Eastern Standard Tribe by Cory Doctorow available online

Tor Books, March 2004

ISBN: 0765307596


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blurbs:
“Utterly contemporary and deeply peculiar—a hard combination to beat (or, these days, to find).”
- William Gibson,
Author of Neuromancer

“Cory Doctorow knocks me out. In a good way.“
- Pat Cadigan,
Author of Synners

“Cory Doctorow is just far enough ahead of the game to give you that authentic chill of the future, and close enough to home for us to know that he’s talking about where we live as well as where we’re going to live; a connected world full of disconnected people. One of whom is about to lobotomise himself through the nostril with a pencil. Funny as hell and sharp as steel.”
- Warren Ellis,
Author of Transmetropolitan

via Easy Bake Coven

"There's A Cat In The Kettle..."

Susan mentions a very funny flash song (click the picture) today -- after a great Heinlein quote yesterday (see "quote of the day" post below), she's really hitting it.

Peace Sign On Mars?

Humanity is a very visual species. We rely on our eyes to tell us what is going on in the world around us. Put any image in front of a person and that person will examine the picture looking for anything familiar. Even if the examiner has no idea what he/she is looking at in a picture, he/she will still be able to make a statement about the picture, usually preceded by the words "it looks like..." The image above is part of the surface of Mars, but is presented for its artistic value rather than its scientific value. When first viewed, this image solicited a statement that "it looks like..." something seen in everyday life.

This particular image contains an interesting symbol in the bottom-left corner; perhaps it's a peace sign.

[Questions? Email images@themis.asu.edu]

[Source: ASU THEMIS Science Team]



Note: this THEMIS visual image has not been radiometrically nor geometrically calibrated for this preliminary release. An empirical correction has been performed to remove instrumental effects. A linear shift has been applied in the cross-track and down-track direction to approximate spacecraft and planetary motion. Fully calibrated and geometrically projected images will be released through the Planetary Data System in accordance with Project policies at a later time.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in collaboration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Arizona State University

Boffins make heaviest ever element?

By Lucy Sherriff
Posted: 03/02/2004 at 16:56 GMT

A collaborative research team of Russian and America scientists may have created two new heavyweight elements. Provisionally named Ununpentium and Ununtrium, if confirmed, these will be the heaviest elements on official record, with 115 and 113 protons in the nuclei, respectively.

Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia bombarded an Americium target with heavy Calcium atoms. Initial results suggested that an atom with 115 protons in its nucleus had been created. This existed for 90 milliseconds* before decaying into a smaller, but still massive element with 113 protons in its nucleus. This stayed around for 1.2 seconds, enough time for some interesting chemistry, according to a report in Nature**.

The scientific world is reacting cautiously to the news: in 2001 a scientist was found to have faked results indicating that he had created an even heavier element with an atomic mass of 118. Since that incident, verification of any results has been an absolute priority.

The findings also hint that scientists are getting close to the predicted ‘Island of Stability'. This is a region in the periodic table where very heavy atoms are stable, because of the particular arrangement that the nuclear particles may take.

The heaviest element to occur in nature is Uranium, weighing in at 92 on the atomic mass scale.

Heavier elements than that decay rapidly as the strong, attractive nuclear force is overcome by the repulsive, electrostatic force between protons. The heaviest officially-certified*** synthetic element, Darmstadtium, had 110 protons. Researchers have reported finding elements with 111, 112, 114 and 116 protons. These are yet to be officially confirmed.

However, a zone in which the protons could find a stable arrangement is predicted, and these ghostly sightings indicate that this could be getting close. In this region, elements may remain stable for a number of years. By contrast, the lives of ‘normal’ elements however, are of the order of the age of the universe.

The findings were originally reported in Physical Review . ®

February 2, 2004

So now it really begins in earnest. Opportunity has been cranking away for several sols now, and as of yesterday Spirit is back up and running too. So now, for the first time, we have two rovers with twelve wheels in the dirt, both doing science.

It's not easy to deal with. The two landing sites are on totally opposite sides of the planet, which means that when it's the middle of the night for one rover, it's noon for the other. The bottom line is that there's something going on pretty much all the time. But as tempting as it is to try to work on both rovers at once, you just can't do it. Unfortunately, you just have to sleep sometime! Personally, I've been working on Opportunity, where the big story is that fantastic rock outcrop less than ten meters away from us. We're going to spend some sols working on the soil before we head over to it, but it shouldn't be long.

And on Spirit (from what I hear... I've been sleeping, really) the news is that they're back to work on the rock we've named Adirondack. Now that we know what the outside of Adirondack looks like, the next step is going to be to take the RAT to it and see what it's like on the inside.


Rock Outcrop Spectra

The color image on the lower left shows a rock outcrop at Meridiani Planum, Mars. This image was taken by the panoramic camera on the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity, looking north, and was acquired on the 4th sol, or martian day, of the rover's mission (Jan. 27, 2004). The yellow box outlines an area detailed in the top left image, which is a monochrome (single filter) image from the rover's panoramic camera. The top image uses solid colors to show several regions on or near the rock outcrop from which spectra were extracted: the dark soil above the outcrop (yellow), the distant horizon surface (aqua), a bright rock in the outcrop (green), a darker rock in the outcrop (red), and a small dark cobblestone (blue). Spectra from these regions are shown in the plot to the right.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell

Bruce Schneier on ID cards and the "illusion of security"

Microscopic Imager Non-linearized Full frame EDR aquired on Sol 9 of Opportunity's mission to Meridiani Planum at approximately 15:27:30 Mars local solar time, Microscopic Imager dust cover commanded to be OPEN. Click on image for larget image in new window.
Image credit: NASA/JPL/Cornell/USGS

{today's quote}
Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards. ~Robert Heinlein

That's All, Folks!

Apparently, while I've been focusing on issues such as Elvis and the irrelevance of academic prose, Howard Dean has been declared unelectable due to his use of an overly directional microphone. Juliet Clark: "They interview Dean and his wife and they sound perfectly reasonable, and then the anchor comes on and says, 'But his campaign just can't seem to escape the memory of that scream -- because we're about to show it again!'"

So unlike the demure behavior of our own dear Texas queen.... Just imagine the gleaming array of cutlery being polished for John Kerry!

This is why it's best to control both intelligence gathering and mass media.
The rule is "Repeat." That rule again: "Repeat." You need a repetitive medium for that.
Intelligence gathering is just gravy.

It's an old gag. Moustached phrenologist Bugs or Daffy feels (squeegy-squeegy) Elmer's head, and -- "No bumps? We make some!"

That's how it works. How to break it is a tougher problem. As I recall, Termite Terrace usually resolved things with a big explosion and everyone waking up in Hell.

Send SMS Via Weblog

January 31, 2004

What a wonderful day. We now have twelve wheels safely on martian soil. I've said since the very beginning of this thing that there were six terrifying events over the course of this mission... two launches, two landings, and two egresses. All six of those are behind us now. We have two healthy rovers, each with completely healthy payloads, on the surface of Mars and ready to explore.


We also have a whole bunch of hematite at Meridiani! The first Mini-TES results are in, and we've got a slam-dunk identification of hematite in the gray soil granules around the lander. This spectrum shows a laboratory spectrum of hematite (the red curve) and a Mini-TES spectrum of the dark soil near the lander (the yellow curve). The close match of the up-and-down lines at the right end of the plot is what tells us we've definitely found the hematite.

There's lots more news to tell, but a bunch of people are about to head out to celebrate (at 7:00 AM Pacific time!)and I'm going to join them...

MyDoom downs SCO site

Last modified: February 1, 2004, 8:42 AM PST
By Jeff Pelline
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

The MyDoom computer virus knocked out SCO Group's Web site on Sunday, and the company expects the massive denial-of-service attack to continue until Feb. 12.

SCO said an onslaught of data had made its Web site 'completely unavailable.' The attack began Saturday night and by Sunday morning the software firm's site was completely flooded with requests, Utah-based SCO said.

'This large scale attack, caused by the MyDoom computer virus that is estimated to have infected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world, is now overwhelming the Internet to requests www.sco.com,' Jeff Carlon, SCO's director of Information Technology, said in a statement.

SCO had posted the statement on its Web site. But at 7 a.m. PST the site could not be accessed. SCO spokesman Blake Stowell read the firm's statement from his home in Utah. [more]

Welsh Whisky To Challenge The Scotch

By WILLIAM LYONS

SCOTCH whisky has its global rivals in Japan, Canada and America. But now the threat is a little closer to home with news that the Welsh have produced their first whisky in more than a century.

In little more than a month’s time the first bottles of Penderyn four-year-old single malt will be available to consumers across the United Kingdom.

The premium malt, which is produced by the Welsh Whisky Company (Y Cwmni Wisgi Cymreig) with barley malt from Cardiff, is being made at the Penderyn Distillery in the Brecon Beacons in mid-Wales.
[more]

How to Hack an Election

Concerned citizens have been warning that new electronic voting technology being rolled out nationwide can be used to steal elections. Now there is proof. When the State of Maryland hired a computer security firm to test its new machines, these paid hackers had little trouble casting multiple votes and taking over the machines' vote-recording mechanisms. The Maryland study shows convincingly that more security is needed for electronic voting, starting with voter-verified paper trails.

When Maryland decided to buy 16,000 AccuVote-TS voting machines, there was considerable opposition. Critics charged that the new touch-screen machines, which do not create a paper record of votes cast, were vulnerable to vote theft. The state commissioned a staged attack on the machines, in which computer-security experts would try to foil the safeguards and interfere with an election.

They were disturbingly successful. It was an "easy matter," they reported, to reprogram the access cards used by voters and vote multiple times. They were able to attach a keyboard to a voting terminal and change its vote count. And by exploiting a software flaw and using a modem, they were able to change votes from a remote location.

Critics of new voting technology are often accused of being alarmist, but this state-sponsored study contains vulnerabilities that seem almost too bad to be true. Maryland's 16,000 machines all have identical locks on two sensitive mechanisms, which can be opened by any one of 32,000 keys. The security team had no trouble making duplicates of the keys at local hardware stores, although that proved unnecessary since one team member picked the lock in "approximately 10 seconds."

Diebold, the machines' manufacturer, rushed to issue a self-congratulatory press release with the headline "Maryland Security Study Validates Diebold Election Systems Equipment for March Primary." The study's authors were shocked to see their findings spun so positively. Their report said that if flaws they identified were fixed, the machines could be used in Maryland's March 2 primary. But in the long run, they said, an extensive overhaul of the machines and at least a limited paper trail are necessary.

The Maryland study confirms concerns about electronic voting that are rapidly accumulating from actual elections. In Boone County, Ind., last fall, in a particularly colorful example of unreliability, an electronic system initially recorded more than 144,000 votes in an election with fewer than 19,000 registered voters, County Clerk Lisa Garofolo said. Given the growing body of evidence, it is clear that electronic voting machines cannot be trusted until more safeguards are in place.
[more]

How Can We Help?

This dialogue appeared in the Comments to the post on “A Problem From Hell”, below. Justin is an Irish software engineer based in California; Caitríona is an Irish human rights worker based in Iran.

The question I keep asking myself is, is there a way to help human rights without full-scale immersion — that is, without going over there, cutting off links with your family and friends, and dedicating your life to it?

I try to do little bits to help these causes here and there — like developing open source software that’s useful for everyone; I’m ecstatic when I hear of an NGO getting good use from one of those apps. I keep contemplating doing more. But I haven’t — yet — and the idea of breaking away to such a degree is the big problem.
Posted by Justin at January 30, 2004 03:15 PM

Every little bit helps Justin. In fact, the most important person in our little office in Tuzla was Andre, our computer expert. He designed a special software to match postmortem data from the bodies we exhumed with ‘antemortem’ or ‘living’ information from the surviving families. His work alone reuinted countless families with their missing loved ones.
Posted by Caitriona at January 31, 2004 03:57 AM

So how do we do a better job of putting the Justins in touch with the Caitríonas? We need a matchmaking service to hook up tech professionals with the dedicated field workers who need help. (New York Cares is a good example of a matchmaker service for volunteers.)

The open source community is engaged and civic-minded, and clearly capable of building tools remotely. Product managers (like me) could ask NGO field workers what they need, helping them to build a collection of “user stories”, Extreme Programming style, for volunteer engineers to work on in their spare time.

Any examples out there of this working already? Perhaps the ambitious JHAI Remote Villages project, where Linux meets Laos.

Favorite Cartoon Gods

        

Click smaller pictures for larger images in new windows.