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COMDEX SPRING and WINDOWS WORLD 95
Power Panel - "What's Wrong with Software Development"
** In The U.S. Only **
$81 Billion = 31% of software development gets cancelled before complete

$59 Billion = 53% of software development has cost over-runs of 189%

16% success - project success and failure ratio

61% customer requested features and functions make it in

Maintenance and repair is where most of the U.S. dollars are going, instead of new, better, easier to use software.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN - Sept. 1994
Article - "Software's Chronic Crisis"
Mary M. Shaw of Carnegie Mellon University, observes a parallel between chemical engineering evolution and software engineering evolution. However, this evolution has not made the connection between science and commercialization required to establish a consistent experimental foundation for professional software engineering.

---

Pretty much there is a difference between what is called a Software Engineer today and what a genuine software Engineeer is. That difference is between what is a majority of psuedo Software engineering or the skill of reinvention vs. limited cases of genuine software engineering in the form of isolated examples of algorithims, data structures, compiler construction.

What this says, is that most of what goes on today is not software engineering, but rather doing again what has already been established. Or what should be better automated so that even the typical end user could much more easily "program".

It is the creation of such automaton that makes programming easier for everyone, that is where genuine software engineering has it's place today.

Such a direction as is generally described by IBMs autonomic computing direction only not with such a stiff white collar high pay end user perspective.

The product of genuine software engineering should not be the final product but the tools used by everyone to do what in essence is programming, that of automating what one needs to automate in order to make their use of computers more productive. And I'm talking about the end user doing what they know they need, not the psuedo engineer/programming reinventing something again not quite what the user wants to again sell it to the user.

The science of Software creation, the practice of automation creation by the end users is what the goal is of genuine software engineering should technically be.

A structural engineer figures out and creates the blue prints. But it is the builder that then use that blue print to create the structures. Sometimes in the process of building, even finding errors in the engineering, which are then feed-back to the engineer to verify and correct.

Personally I believe what I've described within a Responce to a USPTO RFC, as the Virtual Interaction Configuration, is that "expermental foundation" needed and refered to by Mary Shaw, as well as being the specific configuration of functionality and details of, which is absent in IBMs presentation.
.
.

Yes there was. Have you forgotten Gate's infamous letter to hobbyists? He was complaining because people were swapping software. Some of that was binary, but some of it was source.

Swapping of software started the day that a single computer architecture was installed at two different sites, and it's continued on to this day.

BTW, best episode ever? The Day the Earth Froze . With the short Here Comes the Circus... "Oh my god! They're doing it clown style!"

I thought the line for the gold would be much longer...

Oh, for crying out loud. Have you read anything about Nancy "N.K." Stouffer's books or, for that matter, anything having to do with how plagiarism is defined by law? To extend your analogy, if the "Jawas" of your example were a race of godlike beings who wore skimpy togas and led exemplary lives of self-actualization, rather than furtive cloaked second-hand droid dealers, and that "jawa" has been part of the English language for centuries... that would kind of take the wind out of your sails, wouldn't it? At any rate, plagiarism consists of more than a few similar names and commonly-used themes; you have to show that the bulk of the later work--plot, dialogue, descriptions of characters and scenes, etc.--is lifted verbatim from the earlier work, and not even Stouffer herself is claiming that. Even her lawyer has dropped her.Don't you think that it's high time you dropped this, as well?

It's funny how not only MS doesn't realize what it is deaing with but that even a large number of linux supporters don't realize.

MS being fearful of linux/gnu/gpl is as silly as being afraid of the ground doing damage to the foundation of a house. Trying to dig the dirt away to protect the foundation.

Linux/gnu/gpl is a natural evolution of common open computer science/industry/application that is only comming into focus now because MS's distraction (which started with Bill Yelling Piracy) is being seen for what it is, a distraction of what would have otherwise beter evolved.

There is no way to stop this evolution, it's been held back long enough. And to add to this, IBM has begun to recognize the need to openly move towards auto-coding techniques - autonomic computing and an open source bridge tool eclipse

As a matter of genuine computer science and the core of autonomic computing there are the NINE action/function constants

In short: MS is trying to battle what is in essence genuine computer science, the natural laws of the physical phenomenon of how we use abstractions. Inherently MS will lose, for even it has to use these in the distractions and distortions it tries to create.

The fact this direction is being called linux is perhaps a distraction from the GNU effort which is in fact just a label that is being used to identify this open source direction.

MR. GATES: Let me start out, really the reason that you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines, and the bios of that should be open to everybody to use, and all the extensibility should be there.

How very droll.

Of course, the author meant to refer to An Open Letter to Hobbyists. One wonders if this mistake was made by the original author, or by well-meaning but ignorant editors.

This piece is typical first-MBA-thesis quality, and I agree it casts doubt on the quality of the peer review and the site that publishes it.

Maybe they'll make a new cartoon about a huge company that spends millions of dollars lobbying the government to *retroactively* extend copyrights 20 years just as the copyrights to its valuable intellectual property is about to expire.

See this link to see how the public domain is being robbed.

Can someone get me a copy of that paper by some IBM employee? Seriously.

Auto-coding - Virtual Interaction Configuration:

Knowledge Navigational Mapping - Virtual Interaction Configuration
The Matrix Metaphores
VIC legal, equations, definitions and concepts
Command specs
Knowledge Calculator

Can someone get me a copy of that paper by some IBM employee? Seriously.

Auto-coding - Virtual Interaction Configuration:

Knowledge Navigational Mapping - Virtual Interaction Configuration
The Matrix Metaphores
VIC legal, equations, definitions and concepts
Command specs
Knowledge Calculator

Can someone get me a copy of that paper by some IBM employee? Seriously.

Auto-coding - Virtual Interaction Configuration:

Knowledge Navigational Mapping - Virtual Interaction Configuration
The Matrix Metaphores
VIC legal, equations, definitions and concepts
Command specs
Knowledge Calculator

Can someone get me a copy of that paper by some IBM employee? Seriously.

Auto-coding - Virtual Interaction Configuration:

Knowledge Navigational Mapping - Virtual Interaction Configuration
The Matrix Metaphores
VIC legal, equations, definitions and concepts
Command specs
Knowledge Calculator

Can someone get me a copy of that paper by some IBM employee? Seriously.

Auto-coding - Virtual Interaction Configuration:

Knowledge Navigational Mapping - Virtual Interaction Configuration
The Matrix Metaphores
VIC legal, equations, definitions and concepts
Command specs
Knowledge Calculator

The CLI was the first UI
The GUI was the Second UI
The third UI is related to the pipe.

The Third UI is the side door to application control.
It is the UI that programmers equate to the API, script writers use thru
the primitive pipe, but Users accesses thru an applications side door. An
example of this is the Amiga Arexx "PORT" (not AREXX mind you, but the
side door) to sending the application commands/instructions from outside
the application. Meaning you have a command/instruction vocabulary set
that the application can understand (I.E. ImageFX [amiga] doesn't need
arexx for the user to send the application such commands/instructions).

These three user interfaces are like the primary colors of light, Red,
Green, and Blue, where having these three the user can make up any other
color, but remove one of these primary colors and you greatly reduce what
the user is allowed to do.

But once you have these three primary user interfaces established on a
system and in applications, then you can think about the functionality
that ties these three together (and any other UI that comes along like
voice to text, etc..)

So innovation is not at the level most preceive it to be, and it is this
perception so many have that is the biggest problem or barrier to get
over.

But once it is gotten over, then you can begin to see that what
functionality and configuration of, that is needed to provide ultimate
versatility to the user in handeling such application, library, OS
functionality vocabularies. This includes the vocabulary sets of GUI, as
well as CLI interfaces and the side door, so there is no restriction as to
what interface the user ends up using.

Computers and programming them is a matter of automation. By identifying
the core set of required functionality to enable ultimate versatility in
user manipulating and even creating/extending such vocabularities, you'll
have nine commands.

RFC to Patent Office response covering nine commands

And believe it or not, these nine commands fit rather well the characters
in the movie, The Matrix. 3rd of a 3 page loop

And a python start to creating this "Virtual Interaction Configuration."
Just one of the commands using facets of some of the others to make it
stand alone Python IQ

The CLI was the first UI
The GUI was the Second UI
The third UI is related to the pipe.

The Third UI is the side door to application control.
It is the UI that programmers equate to the API, script writers use thru
the primitive pipe, but Users accesses thru an applications side door. An
example of this is the Amiga Arexx "PORT" (not AREXX mind you, but the
side door) to sending the application commands/instructions from outside
the application. Meaning you have a command/instruction vocabulary set
that the application can understand (I.E. ImageFX [amiga] doesn't need
arexx for the user to send the application such commands/instructions).

These three user interfaces are like the primary colors of light, Red,
Green, and Blue, where having these three the user can make up any other
color, but remove one of these primary colors and you greatly reduce what
the user is allowed to do.

But once you have these three primary user interfaces established on a
system and in applications, then you can think about the functionality
that ties these three together (and any other UI that comes along like
voice to text, etc..)

So innovation is not at the level most preceive it to be, and it is this
perception so many have that is the biggest problem or barrier to get
over.

But once it is gotten over, then you can begin to see that what
functionality and configuration of, that is needed to provide ultimate
versatility to the user in handeling such application, library, OS
functionality vocabularies. This includes the vocabulary sets of GUI, as
well as CLI interfaces and the side door, so there is no restriction as to
what interface the user ends up using.

Computers and programming them is a matter of automation. By identifying
the core set of required functionality to enable ultimate versatility in
user manipulating and even creating/extending such vocabularities, you'll
have nine commands.

RFC to Patent Office response covering nine commands

And believe it or not, these nine commands fit rather well the characters
in the movie, The Matrix. 3rd of a 3 page loop

And a python start to creating this "Virtual Interaction Configuration."
Just one of the commands using facets of some of the others to make it
stand alone Python IQ

The CLI was the first UI
The GUI was the Second UI
The third UI is related to the pipe.

The Third UI is the side door to application control.
It is the UI that programmers equate to the API, script writers use thru
the primitive pipe, but Users accesses thru an applications side door. An
example of this is the Amiga Arexx "PORT" (not AREXX mind you, but the
side door) to sending the application commands/instructions from outside
the application. Meaning you have a command/instruction vocabulary set
that the application can understand (I.E. ImageFX [amiga] doesn't need
arexx for the user to send the application such commands/instructions).

These three user interfaces are like the primary colors of light, Red,
Green, and Blue, where having these three the user can make up any other
color, but remove one of these primary colors and you greatly reduce what
the user is allowed to do.

But once you have these three primary user interfaces established on a
system and in applications, then you can think about the functionality
that ties these three together (and any other UI that comes along like
voice to text, etc..)

So innovation is not at the level most preceive it to be, and it is this
perception so many have that is the biggest problem or barrier to get
over.

But once it is gotten over, then you can begin to see that what
functionality and configuration of, that is needed to provide ultimate
versatility to the user in handeling such application, library, OS
functionality vocabularies. This includes the vocabulary sets of GUI, as
well as CLI interfaces and the side door, so there is no restriction as to
what interface the user ends up using.

Computers and programming them is a matter of automation. By identifying
the core set of required functionality to enable ultimate versatility in
user manipulating and even creating/extending such vocabularities, you'll
have nine commands.

RFC to Patent Office response covering nine commands

And believe it or not, these nine commands fit rather well the characters
in the movie, The Matrix. 3rd of a 3 page loop

And a python start to creating this "Virtual Interaction Configuration."
Just one of the commands using facets of some of the others to make it
stand alone Python IQ

Renegade (hello backdoors!)

Scroll to the bottom for Cott Lang's response.

Has anyone had any experience with these remote controllers, which supposedly can be used to remotely control WinAmp? They're listed as Packard Bell equipment, but there are other sites that have software that works universally with Windows applications.

I know that in the audio/visual spectrum, the trend recently has been to hook up more traditional mixer/movie editing controllers to PC's designed around these tasks. Go figure, turns out the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus and Pointing device) interface isn't the greatest for everything, after all. :-)

Well, the best stand you can make for your rights to privacy and assembly is probably two fold:

1. Exercise them, by encrypting everything you send until they either make it illegal or engage in the debate effectively and attending assemblies of like minded citizens lawfully petitioning their government for redress.

2. Write a check to the ACLU or your favorite civil-rights group (EFF, whatever). Face it folks, Dollars Vote . Nothing expresses your opinion like purchasing power. So I would recommend, in effect, "purchasing" more advocacy and voice in the system. This is not to say this system is right, it is to say this system is reality. We can complain that it shouldn't be this way all we want, but unless we show a force (read: $$) that those with power respect, we're pissing in the wind.

Personally, I use PGP and have been for a while now. (My Public Key) I probably don't use it as much as I should, but it's definitely used for some conversations at work I wouldn't otherwise want seen. So far, none of my employers have had an issue. I don't - yet - encrypt everything on my home computer, but I'll probably buy something to do that in the near future. (Recommendations welcome!)

My company actually mandated everyone get encryption (in our case, Entrust) on our laptops before we went on a project in Asia last year. Turns out, the clients we were doing the work for would attempt to hack into our computers while we we're using their network. They dove into some folks' laptops and read/copied email, files, etc. and then used the information when negotiating with us! We started encrypting everything related to the project before going on site and the client became a bit easier to deal with. (No comments on why they remained our client, please, I still don't know the answer to that one! Decision not in my hands.)

I mention this because I think there's a possibility to make privacy at an personal level a common cause between corporations and individuals. We just need to make the case loudly and effectively. (which brings me back to my support your local civil rights organization point :)

all thats going out the window. If you dig a little deeper your talking about IActiveScript interface.

IActiveScript became the ban of my job a while back, it's buggy, barly documented overall not intended for external use. If you want to write a debugger your your neato active scripting languge you need to get into about a bizilion other interfaces called 'Smart Host'. this isn't documented beyond comments in a idl file.

anyway the whole thing is going to be abandand soon. MS is moving to a nifty .NET thing.

whatever.

I hope this picture aids in the capture of elimination of Osama Bin Laden
bin Laden and supporters

Not really. Neither Saab nor Kia are independent. Saab is owned by GM, Kia by Hyundai (and 7% by Mazda, which is 33% owned by Ford). So HP/Compaq is more akin to GM/Ford. :-)

I find it hard to believe anyone could be concerned about or loyal to HP or Compaq's PC/Intel server operations. They're both commodity producers. I'm not in IT, but in my limited experience they both sometimes produce ok hardware, sometimes produce lemons. If they both disappear tomorrow, there will be plenty of commodity PC manufacturers/marketers (I don't know to what extent either actually manufactures PC hardware) remaining.

I actually think the merger could work, if the opportunity is taken to drop/sell all reduntant and (especially) nonperforming units. Some of the financial press has been telling HP to drop its PC operation for awhile. Perhaps they'll do this now that they have the Compaq PC operation.

All HP really needs to buy now are the remains of slashdot's owner. :-)

From the article: Any part of the Mac OS user experience that exactly duplicates the experience on another platform ceases to be a compelling reason to buy a Mac. I totally disagree. I had absolutely no interest in Macs until OS X, and the reason I switched was because it acts just like a *nix.

The fact that you can run Unix apps may have removed a reason for you to avoid Mac OS, but it is not a compelling reason to switch in and of itself. If Mac OS X acts "just like Unix", why would you switch to it from Unix? Obviously there was some other compelling reason to switch--something that differentiates it from other OSes that are also Unix or Unix-like. Those differences are what make people switch. Features that are the same merely remove those features form the decision making process.

P.S.-If you read any of the reader mail from my OS X reviews, you'd know that I'm really a PC bigot ;-)

From my own Web pages Blue Pill vs. Red Pill

The Nature of a Patent is "The Right To EXCLUDE"

Interpretations of the Patent statute by the courts have defined the limits of the field of subject matter
which can be patented, thus it has been held that the laws of nature, physical phenomena and abstract ideas
are not patentable subject matter.

TWO VIEWS:

The BLUE PILL (a part)"Protection of industrial property is not an end in itself: it is a means to encourage
reative activity, industrialization, investment and honest trade. All this is designed to contribute to more
safety and comfort, less poverty and more beauty, in the lives of men.

The RED PILL (the whole) WHO WE ARE AND HOW WE WORK IS NOT TO BE KEPT FROM US,
NOT TO BE HIDDEN FROM OUR ABILITY TO PERSONALLY USE! AND CERTAINLY NOT
SOMETHING TO CHARGE US FOR THE RIGHT TO ....USE, ....!

AI is a by product of intelligence. An illusion of intelligence. But then anyone who applies action constants to automate, should already know this.

Action Constants of the Matrix Agents and Resistance

AI is a by product of intelligence. An illusion of intelligence. But then anyone who applies action constants to automate, should already know this.

Action Constants of the Matrix Agents and Resistance

This is actually correct, but beware of what governing bodies might do upon hearing cha-ching and seeing $$$. Here's a link to some excerpts of patent information. What is and not patentable. Patent Clips and notice the red text under "Inventions" near the bottom.

God, you're all a pitiful bunch of losers. Why aren't you arrested adolescents doing something worthwhile--like jacking off? Fanboy Brian Stretch (complete with milky momma's boy photo here) is the perfect icon for you worthless mounds of protoplasm.

Jocko homos: you're ALL devo.

....Matrix Community, where even some of us participated in a official documentary on the movie.

and for clearer understanding of the metaphor of the Movie:
matrix metaphors

And a U.S. Patent Office RFC responce

And of course my response to the EU consulation on Software patents -- rue.pdf

Good thing, it'll give me more time to build this GPL project
Know Python and wanna help?

....Matrix Community, where even some of us participated in a official documentary on the movie.

and for clearer understanding of the metaphor of the Movie:
matrix metaphors

And a U.S. Patent Office RFC responce

And of course my response to the EU consulation on Software patents -- rue.pdf

Good thing, it'll give me more time to build this GPL project
Know Python and wanna help?

....Matrix Community, where even some of us participated in a official documentary on the movie.

and for clearer understanding of the metaphor of the Movie:
matrix metaphors

And a U.S. Patent Office RFC responce

And of course my response to the EU consulation on Software patents -- rue.pdf

Good thing, it'll give me more time to build this GPL project
Know Python and wanna help?

In Switzerland, laws (including federal laws) can be overturned after the collection of a certain number of signatures -- which according to the constitution forces a binding referendum. Citizens can also legislate in the same manner. The day to day running of the government is however done by elected politicians, just like in other countries.

When the Swiss secret service started acting up and become abusive, the citizens used this way to force a vote on whether the secret service should even be allowed to exist anymore. A majority accepted its existance but this was enough to keep decision makers and politicians on their toes and force immediate radical reform on the organization.

It seems like the ideal government to me. The Swiss constitution is by far the best I've read so far.

Good sources for those interested in reading up on the topic include the book The Referendum - Direct Democracy in Switzerland by Kris Kobach and the website of Direct Democracy League, an organization fighting for direct democracy in the United States.

If you did any math in your youth, you'd know that this is a perfectly valid way to do a proof. It's called "coming up with a counterexample". If somebody claimed that all prime numbers were odd, it would be perfectly valid to point out that 2 is both prime and even. Discarding the proof because "you purposefully picked 2 to show me wrong" is invalid, as this is the whole point of the proof.

Likewise, in this case DNS-and-BIND claimed that all infinitely long irrational numbers have necessary a long sequence of 8's in them. I refuted his claim by showing him a number which had no 8 at all inside. Now, what exactly is your problem with my refutation of that claim?

> But that doesn't tell us anything about wether or not there is a string of 5,646,498,765 8s in pi or any other irrational number in decimal.

You're right on that, but nobody claimed the contrary. Saying "not all irrational numbers have a long string of 8's in them" is not the same thing as "no irrational numbers have a long string of 8's in them".

It's like in real life: "not all pies are cream pies" (or expressed differently "it is a pie, so it has to be a cream pie"): indeed, there are also apple pies...

But that doesn't mean that "no pies are cream pies" (i.e. cream pies don't exist): indeed Bill Gates was hit by one in the face...

...who's to say they won't drug you and use your body against you?

They've already tried that. Ever heard of MK-Ultra?

Very well said, and I agree with your points. Switzerland, the country with my favourite constitution, expands upon this concept further by giving citizens the right (through collection of a certain number of signatures) to have a binding referendum on laws -- and to even create new ones in the same way.

It's a very intriguing concept. There are individual states in Germany and the US and other countries with similar mechanisms but in Switzerland the federal laws and constitution are included.

Lost of interesting info about direct democracy concepts can be found on the website of the US organization Direct Democracy League.

Here are a few modern, independently-written Interactive Fiction games that match or beat anything Infocom has produced:

Photopia (scroll down)
Metamorphoses
For a Change
Babel
Worlds Apart

For lots more, head over to The Best of IF.

PVC is a bit weak for BattleBots. I used it on my first robot, The Tunabomber, but that was for DragonCon's Robot Battles, where they don't have killsaws or robots like Whacker and Ziggo. Incidentally, my website has a tutorial similar to the one referenced in this story, but with more detail.

An onboard PC is certainly overkill for control. I do give it points for hack value, though. Competitors who want computer control functions usually use the IFI system. This also allows you to use PC joysticks to control your robot remotely (a joystick setup was mentioned in an earlier post, this is almost certainly what was used).

I wonder why the guys who built this robot didn't compete with it. After going through all that effort, it should be worth it to get to the competition, if only to see your robot ripped to shreds.

Finally, please moderate down all those people who talk about how easy it is to build a winning robot, unless they've actually done it. Slashdotters: as with Open Source, it's put up or shut up.

It's becomming clearer and clearer that things like the GPL are the check point in the system that is correcting and will keep inline the rest of the software industry. Up untill such things as the GPL became popular enough as it now is, the profit seeking part of the software industry had pretty much all the freedom to become lazy and overpriced thru marketing BS. But the GPL provides the counter balance that will help make and keep the rest of the industry honest and hard working. Simply because it is the way people can say, and without being easily ignored, NO to the BS. The GPL and other varieties of licenses are more intune with the true spectrum of the possible. A spectrum that Bill Gates damaged rather badly when he yelled "PIRACY" and made the TIME magizine cover story in doing this name calling. The cover story was "The Great Software Flap" IIRC, and back in the mid 1970's. But it is where the natural evolution of software development direction was rudely interrupted.

This growing counter balance now, is really only the beginning of getting the software industry back on proper track. This GPL compatability of python is a good step in that direction.

I'm sure any program anyone writes in the python language is up to the programmer/author of the work (or their employer) to determine what license the program will have. So long as it doesn't contridict the Python License by altering python.

It'll be a brighter day when such things as auto-coding come about that enables the typical user to create application on their own and as they see fit. But that's not something easy to happen without first establishing the tool set to do auto-coding. All things considered, such a thing as auto-coding for the general public is not going to come from the profit targeting section of the software industry, but rather from the GPL side of the spectrum. So with this in mind, python and other GPL side of the sprectrum programming languages are certainly good. For me python is proving to have what I need and commercial langages don't. A step in the direction of Auto-coding - Python-IQ


3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!

This is a good question, and I'll see if I can answer to you, and your peers, satisfaction.

Let's see... Well, I linked to Sakura ("that child", my daughter) because I wanted to show that I do indeed have a daughter.

A lot of the time, people who are fearful of sex, "stretched bodily holes", any threat to their authority/concept of decency, children learning the truth about sex, and Harry Potter, suggest that people who are into unrestricted Internet access don't have kids of their own.

I want to show that that is not the case. When Sakura can hold a mouse and click links, she can look at any page she wants to. Oh no! What if she sees porn on the Internet?! Since she's already seen hentai (I'd link to something better, but fear the slashdotting...) on the TV/VCR (she doesn't bat an eye), she shouldn't be all that surprised. I don't think the better resolution will have a huge affect on her.

You may believe and teach your children that sexual material is harmful, evil, and fearful; I, however, will not.

Hey nice sig man !
For the ones who never heard about the genius from Belgium called Noel Godin, the man responsible of bakery crime on Bill Gates, I urge you to go to his official web site :
www.gloupgloup.com.
Those guys are looking for team members in the US and Europe, so go and join the bakery alliance !
It had to be said, although it's completely off-topic.

What's not Patentable!


3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!

According to this site it is barrb@mindspring.com

Extreme Programming. The extreme programming (XP) methodology grew out of a Smalltalk project 3-4 years ago. The founder of extreme programming, Kent Beck, advocates Smalltalk as the most productive language for XP, as does Ron Jeffries, the author of the Extreme Programming Installed book.

Refactoring. The term "refactoring" has become popular in the last few years, due in large part to the work done on the Refactoring Browser for Smalltalk by John Brant and Don Roberts. (Martin Fowler's book on Refactoring includes a section on the Refactoring Browser.) The Refactoring Browser lets you perform automated behavior-preserving code refactorings, such as abstracting references to an instance variable, pushing a method up into its superclass, etc. (There have also been some refactoring tools written for Java, but the nature of the Java language will make it difficult to create a tool as powerful as the Refactoring Browser for Smalltalk.)

IDE's (Integrated Development Environments). Smalltalk has generally been considered a leader in this area, with its integrated code browsers, the ability to reliably look up all senders or implementors of a method, etc. (There is the occasional effort in other languages to catch up in this area, such as VisualAge Java with its integrated browsers, but VA/Java was also written in Smalltalk.) Also, to shamelessy toot my own horn for a minute, I've created an object-oriented "stacking" code browser for Squeak/Smalltalk called Whisker. I used Smalltalk to create this because the IDE supports this sort of experimentation well.

So, to claim that Smalltalk is somehow dead or obsolete is obviously false. True, it doesn't have the marketing hype (and market penetration) that Java does, but then, what else does? :-)

(Also, I still consider the language features of Smalltalk to be more technically "advanced" than those of Java. My personal hunch is that if you conducted a random poll of developers with *significant* experience with both languages (say, a minimum of 1 year full-time experience with each), probably 90-98% would agree with this. Of course, the same is probably true of Scheme vs. Java, or CLOS vs. Java, etc.)

Anyway, Smalltalk is obviously not the answer to all programming problems. (I wouldn't use it to write a device driver, for example.) But it is still one of the best (if not *the* best) options for many larger programming problems.

This particular subject of evolving ICs is very primitive, alot of number crunching effort to produce a simple function. Perhaps community computing power could be put use as it is in RC5 encription breaking competition or public genome research or private company cancer research....

But it certainly seems to me that the old issue of the mass of growing complexity (Tower of babel) will also find the same solution direction as man has in the past.

I do wonder how the following might be useful in such matters as FPGA programming.
Knowledge Navigational Mapping thru the Virtual Interaction Configuration


3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!

I don't think programming FPGAs would be such a stated difficulty if the approach is right. And although what little I've read seems to still be more difficult than it needs to be, I Suspect the source of the problems are human mentality oriented, or what you might call programming of the human mind problems..

consider the details exposed in this link!


3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!

As posted to the site/article mentioned:

The science of computing hasn't yet identified and made generally available the core functionality of abstraction manipulation mechanics. To use an analogy - what the patent office has done is something along the lines of accepting the earth is flat. But the earth is not flat and the limitation of sailing off the edge of the earth is a fabrication of illusion.
When genuine computer science reaches enough understanding of what computers are in terms of abstraction manipulation machines then it will also come to understand that most software patents are invalid. Although it is not uncommon for patents to be overturned, there will be an overload. How that problem will be resolved is hard to say as it's not so easy to determine what would have happened had not faulty constraints been applied in software thru invalid patents.

There are some things that international patent system can and do agree on. Such as, you cannot patent natural law, physical phenomenon and abstract ideas, and several other smaller but as important concepts like mathmatical algorythims and "inventions" which would be considered common obvious conclusion in the given field of use, etc. But upon a twisted and error prone foundation of distorted computer technology, patents are being to quickly issued, issued before the science has gotten back to being genuine, rather than biased and short sighted towards what can make money now.

These things, not patentable, are at the genuine foundation of abstraction manipulation mechanics and extend beyond computing. Through computers we can better recognize and objectively make use of such abstraction manipulation machinery.

To get a better idea, consider what is in the context of a USPTO RFC response to issues regarding prior art.

www.mindspring.com/~timrue/KNMVIC.html

3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!

Maybe something involving waves in fluid like Scophony would work.

Actually Computer Science does exist in the form of "Abstraction Manipulation Machinery". Math is just a subset of all possible abstractions. It is no big deal that anyone can define an abstraction, to give an abstraction a definition, a meaning. But the machinery we call computers, that we use to manipulate abstractions... Well you do need to understand the phycial phenomenon of the natural laws of abstraction manipulation in order to build such a device better (Meaning what we have now and our general population ability to use, is in direct relationship to the CS understanding and honest application of Abstraction manipulation mechanics.) And CS hasn't done a very good job of understanding the physical laws of abstraction manipulation, and/or they are not being very honest about it.
NINE Natural laws of Abstraction Manipulation Mechanics (to be found within text body)


3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!

http://www.mindspring.com/~anuta/volodya/resume.pd f

All Science is a product of the mind, and as such the common ground is a matter of understanding the mind in what we do in all that we do, regardless of what and where.

A NEO overview of becomming aware!
Knowledge Navigational Mapping and the Virtual Interaction Configuration


3 S.E.A.S - Virtual Interaction Configuration (VIC) - VISION OF VISIONS!