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Swift Justice? Mobile Justice In Brazil
tech_imp writes: "Yikes! Talk about swift justice. The BBC is reporting that Judges 'roaming' the streets in Brazil will be using laptops and an app written in VB to help dispense justice. I'm not sure that I would not want to trust my judgement to a VB app ... couldn't they have at least written it something more robust ... like Perl? I can see it now ... your sentence is GPF :')" Three words that spring to mind: "General Protection Fault."
...like gunning down street kids for fun and profit.
That's right. The real reason it isn't stable is that it FUCKING SUCKS MY ASS SO HARD MY TONSILS ARE HURTING.
As for readability, you're just being foolish. Who are we talking about reading it here, a coder who should understand the language in which they program, or a 14 year old being instructed in the first principles of programming?!
To those of you who think VB is a decent language, good for you. I hope you're my competition in a job interview. Do you know what BASIC was originally designed as? I'll tell you. It was the original programming language MS packaged with DOS for the Altair. It's primary purpose was to fit in like half a kilobyte of memory (I forget the actual figure, but it was small). Talk about legacy hmm? C++ has memory issues, but f'ing A!! The only thing Visual Basic should EVER be used for is INSTRUCTION. PERIOD.
>>VB is easily maintainable and readable, whereas Perl resembles abstract art...
First, (s)he said Perl was more *robust*, not readable. Second, name one product written in VB that has any kind of market visibility. Third, VB programs tend to be much longer than *decent* programs; which reduces maintanability. Fourth, Larry Wall's brain could whoop your brain with one lobe tied behind its' back.
VB isn't evil because it's made by the Great Satan of software (M$), it's evil because it's a stupid, clunky piece of inelegant 5hit. If you like VB, use it. I'll use Perl and C++ and Fortran and we'll see whose programs live into the next decade and whose languish on obsolete storage devices.
1) It is slow 5) Did I mention that it is so slooooooooow
So is perl.
4) It isn't a real programming language
How do you define that except by being turing-complete? Which, I believe, VB is.
In a real language you can write a compiler for your language in that language and have the compiler compile itself. (This can be done with gcc) VB can't do this.
I don't see why it couldnt be done in VB. Do you have any arguments for this?
I truly, TRULY, despise the MS-bashing around Slashdot, when VB is perfectly okay for a lot of purposes. I would really love to see someone who wrote a Windows GUI program that prints out documents from a MS SQL database that use a weird metalanguage in half an hour - which is an example of where the money in the real world comes from.
If you code C++ safely, ie:
1) use STL strings
2) boundary check every array access
3) validate floating point operations
4) assert every pointer operation
...then hey, guess what? The C++ code runs at the same speed as VB. Give me reliability over speed.
Could a 12 cluster beowolf be the jury here? :)
:)
(no, I don't know if jurys are required down there, but it was too easy. Far too easy to think of this one.
bash: ispell: command not found
This sig left intentionally blank.
It could be some time before a similar system takes the place of an English court. "It would have to satisfy the authorities that it was absolutely foolproof first," says a spokesman for the Lord Chancellor's office, which oversees courts in England and Wales.
Does that mean that English judges are fools?
Personally, I think this would be a lot more fun ... well, :)
of a place to live if *everyone*
everyone who isn't grossly unattractive... had
colorful lycra outfits
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
It's probable that the reason for the program is
that judges often need to dig through books and
such to find the needed info. This might make
that unneccesary...
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
That's the problem with combo boxes; they all don't work that way. Some will add to their list, some don't. Additionally, if the user mis-types something, they've suddenly got a whole new problem to deal with.
Sure, it's a little thing, but it's the little things make your GUI a pleasurable experience for your user.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
Hmm, let's see...
The difference between drop down lists and combo boxes are indistinguishable. You have to use it to know what it is, by which time the advantage of using a drop down list is lost. Plus, most users don't know the difference between the two, which, again, defeats the advantage of using a drop down list.
Most two-bit GUI programmers (see VB programmers) don't know the difference either, and use the two interchangeably.
The function of most combo boxes is unclear. Do I type my own string? Do I have to pick one from the list? Can I leave it blank? Have you ever typed a string into a combo box just to find out that the string must match from the list? After a while, it makes me want to throw my PC out the window.
The combo box by far the worst GUI element to ever come out of MS school of GUI design and infect our lives. It is the most classic reason why the Win32 GUI, and the GUIs that blindly copy it, suck.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
Give me an example of a combo box, and I'll tell a more intuitive way to do it. Sure, there are times when you want to give the user the choice of Edit or List, but there are much better ways to do it. I don't use combo boxes in any of my software (or native drop downs, because they look like combo boxes). You can accomplish the same with Buttons, Menus, and Edit boxes, and your intent is much more clear to the user.
The advantage of an effective GUI is to allow the user to manipulate it instictivly, without the need to stop and think about what's going on.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
go to www.m-w.com and look up the word "irony"
If you still don't get it... oh well. There are 2 types of people: the ones with a sence of humour and the ones without.
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Don't we already have drive-through church? Try to beat that!
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Sounds like a General Prosecution Fault to me...
Haven't used VB in several years (same for Windows! :), have they dumped that pathetic text editor they used to lock you into using? I remember the awful gyrations I had to go through bouncing between a DOS version of vi and their GUI design tool.
"I once preached peaceful coexistence with Windows. You may laugh at my expense - I deserve it." Be's Jean-Louis Gass
Anyone recall the episode when Bender went to the Robot planet and the rest of the crew followed, and were tried by a robot judge? The progress bar labelled "Judging..." hit about 50% and the judge crashed.
"Reboot it!" "No, jiggle the cable!"
-dwd-
I've been programming in VB for over 3 years now.. and it is a very good language if you want to create an application with a good gui fast. I know most of the MS bashers on here will never like it.. will never use it.. I don't care. Just don't force your opinions on me.
perl has it's faults too.. Can you create a GUI with perl and ONLY perl? non one this Tk/Perl stuff.. you can't. Don't get me wrong... Perl is all I use when I'm programming on a linux machine (when I'm at home), at work I use VB. They are have their string points and weak points.
Honestly I don't know what I respond to MS bashing.. its not like your minds are as open as the source you love...
"It's not like your minds are as open as the source you love..." - Me to the majority of Slashdot.
I Like Judge Dredd in Spanish. I am the law!
Too bad I failed high school Spanish.
This comment is © _xeno_ and may not be used without prior permission.
Hey, _xeno_ ... I'm using your comment without prior permission. Whatcha gonna do about it?
--
A host is a host from coast to coast...
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
(I had to re-read it a few times to get it...)
--
Just a observation here, but first off..., the judge in question would have to be armor proofed to the max, preferably in a M1 tank. Automatic weapons fire tends to ruin ones day. I'd be more concerned with that vs what the damn program was written with! ;) Oh, and the laptop better be bullet proof also.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
Uh..umm..duh..lauwh
VB is about to grow up.
Something tells me the ambulence chasers won't let this happen.
Microsoft proclamed basic dead quite some time ago.
I can't say I have any disagreement on this..
Microsoft keeps making visual basic becouse people want it.. no biggy.. bend to the might of market demand..
However it is very unprofesional...
Visual basic is a toy...
Not the sort of thing you put your trust into...
I don't actually exist.
It's that visual basic is well.. a run time compiler basic.
Basic still strikes up images of the old days of Commodore Vic20s and Apple ][ computers..
Basic just isn't that welcomed anymore...
Your right about how often the best solution is still stuck in proprietary world (for now) however Basic isn't one of those things...
Also Visual Basic.. or any basic.. is very close to open source.
Sence the program must be run from the programming environment (usually) this means any given user has access to the source code.
As such it is an open only programming environment.
Last basic I used was Qbasic and it was rather robust for a basic I can only expect that Visual basic is even more robust...
It is still worrysom... nearly all programmers can code in basic but most don't...
It leaves me to wonder... did he code in it becouse he likes vb or becouse thats all he knows?
I don't actually exist.
Your right...
Why use something some collage student hacked together for free when you could pay for something some collage drop out hacked together...
I don't actually exist.
Did you ever consider that the fault did not lie with the tool, but with the person using it?
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said it well:
"Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away."
Your app probably could have been written better, even in VB. (I know because that is what I do for a living.)
Jim In Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
I mean, hell, with a half-decent preprocessor, you could write INTERCAL code that would be quite easily readable (and therefore maintainable). Yes, it's blasphemy, but it's also the truth. Just something that could handle something like:
Or, something that allows you to define how to substitute:
with
and
with
with
all this assuming, of course, that something akin to the following had been properly set up beforehand:
Of course, this preprocessor would also expose a way to include "proper" comments, but who comments their code anyway?
Last but not least, it would absolutely neccesarily have to have an
ability, to allow for standard libraries to do messy things like IO and character/string handling.
So you see... you can write readable code in pretty much any language, as long as you have a half decent preprocessor. Even assembly can't hide
--
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
I'd say one of about 5 things is happening here:
I say this because I am just currently finishing up a seemingly similar application, also in VB. It reads and writes records to/from a MUMPS (medical) database over a TCP/IP connection, with verification. It can handle 4 different types of record, each of which has roughly 50 different business rules they must be read against, embeds the capability for the user to connect to the host the database is on via a telnet screen, and correlates these records against code tables stored locally in an MS-ACCESS database (not a format known for file size efficiency). This local database contains 17 tables with a total of about 60,000 records (between 5 and 20 fields per record).
The install files, executable and data files altogether come in at only about 6.5 MB. And the MS-ACCESS code table is over half of that. I'd give you the source code to show you except it's kinda proprietary. But it is nevertheless the truth.
I repeat again, something is wrong with the scenario you described. And it's not all VB that's wrong unless you are doing something VERY strange..
--
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
I'm not claiming that VB is as robust as other languages ( perl, c++, java ) but _in my experience_ I have found that if VB isn't capable of performing a task, it will easily use a component written in to the COM specification. That's a strong features of VB. It can use any COM component, and you can write COM objects in many languages, including Delphi and C++.
...
Sure. It can *use* any automation object (the object does have to derive from IDispatch, not just IUnknown). *But* it has repeatedly done things which take a fairly loose reading of the COM spec, including:
* creating COM objects with interfaces that have gaps in their vtables
* changing the meaning of the CAN_CREATE flag on the CoClass so that there is no way to distinguish between an object which should not be created and an object which can be created only with additional support structures
* creating COM objects with interfaces whose methods are retrieved by GetFuncDesc() in non-vtable order
In addition, there are a fair number of flat out bugs involving the logic to determine what flags to set on a CoClass which makes the state of controls created in VB highly unreliable.
But of course, VB is the standard, so everyone else has to comply with it
[These are the reasons I dislike using objects *created* in VB. I dislike programming in it for a different reason: no type safety].
Is anyone worried about the lack of flexibility implied in a system like this? How does software consider extenuating circumstances?
...
Right now, the law is sort of like a computer program for people: a set of explicit rules set in stone. The rules are interpreted by *individual humans* because there is a belief that the people establishing the rules can't possibly forsee every possible scenario, and circumstances may arise in which strict applications of the rules would be counterproductive or flat out harmful.
Turning the task of interpretation over to a machine is scary, because the designers of the machine can't forsee every posisble scenario, either; and rmeoving the element of human judgment means that either every scenario *must* be forseen, or people will be punished for things which are technically illegal but in fact understandable/reasonable.
I sincerely hope never to see these in use in my home country for any sort of criminal case
Judges aren't about forgiveness, they're about ensuring that laws are enforced.
....
Wrong. The *police* are about ensuring the laws are enforced. Judges are about deciding *if the law was violated* and, if so *what the punishment should be*.
Sometimes circumstances make a technical violation acceptable --- "yes, sir, I brandished my gun at him, which I admit is illegal, but he was trying to kidnap my 3-year old child and the gun made him stop." That's what a judge (or jury) is there to determine
This leads to broken function prototypes that only work in VB, not in Delphi, PowerBuilder or C++.
....
You'd be amazed at how much special-casing Delphi has to have in order to handle this sort of problem
Back in the 1.0 days, it was in every single license agreement they put out. Pretty funny I thought. The idea of running a Nuke Plant from a little Applet, I havn't seen it in a while, though. I don't know if they still have that restriction...
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
the fact that VB is easily maintainable and readable
What's this? How do you define "maintainable" -- as meaning "if you leave it alone, it keeps working, as long as you don't upgrade interpreters" ?
In your defense of bad programming languages, do you miss out of hand that VB's parser is mostly brain-dead, allowing for the occasionally undiagnosable mis-read include file?
I do believe this post calls for an Obfuscated VB Contest. Anyone?
--
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
"Eu sou a lei! Deixes cair tuas armas e preparais para ser julgadas!"
oh, you know...
(what language do they speak in brazil again?)
--
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
You know, the only valid statement you made was the first one - it has inconsistent syntax.
Weak typing system? Add "Option Explicit" to the start of your files (the reason you have to put it there is for backwards compatibility).
Poor coherence? Looks like you were trying to write *basic* with it, not VB code. VB supports a whole host of control structures which make it almost C-like.
Mathematical/logic statements different? In what way? The only differences I saw were that (a) they require stricter typing (you can't just say "if it's nonzero it's true") - hey that's just like JAVA, and (b) they don't early-abort the statements the way that C or Java would (every term in a logical statement is executed - which is actually more logical behavior, if less efficient).
Sure, it's not the best language in the world. Give me C or Java any day. But you shouldn't be shooting your mouth off without knowing what you're talking about either.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
- you have a redundant comment ("Three words: General Protection Fault", which is already in the story)...
- You imply a pun on "General [Police] Protection fault", which doesn't come through too well IMHO.
Considering that the silly (but sometimes really nifty) comments people like you and Roblimo and CmdrTaco put after the messages are very close to, if not ==, "first posts", shouldn't they be moderated like everything else?Sigmentation fault - core dumped
Fuck off, it's power and usefulness are, in alot of ways, better than Java and C++ for a skilled programmer.
The key is that it is easy to write shitty VB code that does something, it's alot harder to write shit C++ or Java code and still have it do something useful.
VB is actually a very powerful tool when used for specific purposes. I personally believe that in Windows programming the best/fastest way to create an windows application is to write the interface in VB and the computations in C++.
*nod*
at least some basic facts should be checked before posting something like this...
Why?
It's "Rio de Janeiro".
Okay, my bad.
"Sanchez" is a Spanish name
So?
And, aren't you thinking of Bolivia...?
Thinking of Bolivia how? Where?
"Gonzalez" is again Spanish.
So?
You'll find "federal judges" in Brasília, the capital, not in Rio...
Who cares?
Then again, 30% of Americans still think the capital is Buenos Aires
30% of Americans can't differentiate between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.
And, Starbucks in Brazil...? Now that is hilarious!
Not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed, are you? That was the whole point. (The running Onion joke is about a Starbucks opening a new Starbucks in the bathroom of an existing franchise.) If you're going to point that out, you should have also pointed out some other factual inaccuracies:
- No drug dealer in Brazil was ever actually sentenced to a "blue screen of death"
- Ed Muth, who works for Microsoft, is not actually Brazil's "Minister of Justice"
- George W. Bush did not stop at Berkeley; in fact, there is no evidence he plans to go anywhere near it
- There is probably nobody named "Mary Madalyn Murray Coughlin O'Laughlin" who works for the National Council of Churches
- There is no Service Pack that administers Brazilian justice available for Windows 2000, so there is no way it can be part of the default installation
- Linus Torvalds did not actually say the things that were attributed to him
- "The black guy from The Green Mile" contributed nothing
Here's some advice: It's a joke. Lighten up.We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Judge Dredd would have used C.
What is with the VB bigotry? In your review of competing products, do you dismiss out of hand the fact that VB is easily maintainable and readable, whereas Perl resembles abstract art drawn from the inner, inarticulate recesses of the mind that coded it?
Code is art to those who care, code is money to those from Microsoft.
-- iCEBaLM
You know, when i first saw this story my first thought was Not "Ew, they used VB?" so much as "Er.. judges are walking around sentencing people on the street?" I'm all for geekiness, but methinks someone's priorities are a midge skewed :)
Dreamweaver
"If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live" -- MLK, Jr.
well..duh. i prefer java myself.
Don't you know? To get a troll moderated up, it has to be humorous, fresh, and innovative. Frankly, we're all sick of 'Cmdr. Taco Sucks his mom's dirty dick' jokes.
Can you do song parody?
Please justify this.
I have never in my four years developing in VB had a single GPF with it or any of the apps I've written in it.
People tend to bag VB as if all you can do with it is what the text books teach you. If anything, it makes a fantastic language to hack with because it limits you in very few ways. (I have much code that says you don't need to do things the MS sanctioned way.) You should separate the language, the platform (Windows) and the use of it and critique them separately.
Do you know how many bugs are introduced by manual memory management? How about obfuscated code?
I wish people would give VB a break, infact, anything that may provoke bitterness from those that know more about toeing the OSS/MS-sucks line than the products themselves.
Thanks--I was starting to question my sanity, not being able to find a mention in the episode archive, and all!
Anyone remember the JURYVAC robot jury on the Jetsons in the episode in which George was on trial? So when are those food replicators coming?!
That would be "_em_ portugues", not "no portugues" (aside from the missing accent marks).
(8-DCS)
Only the Brazilian legal system, which is based on the European system, is not based on trial by jury.
The guy has two options. Solve this in court without a trial by jury in something between eight months to a couple of years, or solve it without a trial by jury right after being caught in the act.
(8-DCS)
Ok, it's funny. :-)
It doesn't have a single feature linking it to Brazil, though. No typical brazilian names, and even RJ is spelled incorrectly.
(8-DCS)
Actually, no.
Sun makes its licensers clearly specify to their end users that Java should NOT be used for mission critical apps, such as: nuclear power plants, hospital life support systems, ect.
As for c/c++, that be ok..
----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
Timothy, once I had great respect for you, but man... you think this is funny, but you just repeated the article poster. Has your time at the geek compound really warped you so. Have Hemos sweet kisses and commander taco's gordita warped you so?
In the future ( and I'm sad I have to tell you this), keep a tape recorder with you and record everything. Whenever you have a thought, play back the tape a little bit. If your thought is on that tape in some one else's voice... keep your fucking mouth shut.
Simple, isn't it?
Phew, I'm glad somone likes VB, I thought I'd never get laid again, this rash is killing me.
But seriously...VB and Delphi are the better choices for writing Windows-based workplace productivity apps, especially for writing apps that access databases and are more UI-centric. You could certainly write the app in Visual C++, but there's you're now in MFC-land, which should be avoided whenever possible. If you're really out to prove your dick size with C++ and still maximize your productivity, use Borland's C++ builder, which has a good IDE builder and a very sane class library.
As for Basic's or Pascal's "simplicity," who cares? In programming, it's always best to follow the principle of Occam's Razor (which is also on eof the guiding principles of all UNIXen): the simplest solution should be the one that is selected.
Police a "protective layer between the citizenry and judges"????? I don't know what you could mean. If anything, judges are a protective layer between the citizenry and the police. What keeps police reading the Miranda warnings and getting you a lawyer when you want one? The judge throwing out your "voluntary confession" if the police didn't do so. I agree that mandatory minimums can be a bad idea, because they prevent judges from using discretion to be a protective layer between the actual guilty party (with extenuating circumstances) and the politically popular (i.e., legislated) idea of what a criminal in the abstract should get for the crime). Police aren't the solution to that problem. They let people off with a warning regardless of the eventual sentence they would get, probably to avoid their paperwork. Also, DAs will let you plead to a lesser charge to save them a trial. Don't imagine they really have your interests at heart.
I think you're completely missing the point of VB... yeah, we geeks don't mind (actually, i rather enjoy) an 'interesting' interface, but unless you want to spend a couple hours a day taking calls from your users, you want the interface to look as familiar and non-threatening to them as possible. enter VB. with VB, I can make a UI that my users are comfortable with, and I don't have to spend a healthy chunk of my development cycle doing so. I just drag a combo box, a couple of text boxes, and maybe a telnet object onto a form. bam. done. that leaves me more time to do the coding.
i've spent my time in UI hell- COBOL screenfaces. bleargh! so it's nice to have something quick and easy that my users won't be afraid of.
my karma ran over your dogma
The AI Jury (written in good ole fashioned BASIC, with line numbers)
10 PRINT "Virtual Jury"
20 INPUT "Enter evidence: ",evidence$
30 a = INT(RND*2)
40 IF a = 1 THEN PRINT "Guilty"
50 IF a = 2 THEN PRINT "Not guilty"
- Damnit, I'm dead Jim
Not to mention that this "roving judges" concept has a lot of precedence in the English judicial system. During the Victorian era, Judges would roam around, passing sentences and solving problems throughout different villages. They'd meet and discuss the cases they had delt with and talked about the sentences they passed. This helped to make sure that the law was applied evenly to similiar cases.
It's also important to note, for those readers who didn't even read the article before starting to swear that a BSOD would sentence them to death, literally, is that a REAL judge is toting these laptops around, and the REAL judge places the final judgement/sentence. The program merely assists the judge in assigning fair punishments uniformly for certain crimes.
Coolfish
You can use va_args foo in C to handle variable numbers of arguments. It's documented in K&R, so it's not just a C++ thing; it's how glibc implements printf, for instance.
I ain't sayin' it's pretty or as transparent as, say, Perl's methods. But it's there.
OSS.:
Are the VB languages specs published? If so, does MS actually forbid people from implementing VB? I don't do VB (my dev work pretty much all on Solaris or Linux), so I wouldn't know 'bout this.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Well aside from the whole argument on if this is a good thing legally to have in place, its an excellent example of expert system technology at work. It will be interesting to see, after a few months of use, how often it is determined to be right and wrong by the human judge.
I wonder how large it is as well, I had to do just a small expert system for an assignment once, and the number of rules needed was huge. Legal matters can have so many complications it must be a large undertaking to actually complete this.
Maybe - Will you be my friend?
Yes.
--
"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
Actually, this "mobile judges" proposal seems much worse than any trial-by-jury could be. Even assuming that the judge is knowledgeable about the law and the facts, and not corrupt, do you really believe that he will be able to give a well thought out sentence from the top of his motorbike seat in just 2 minutes?
Say no to software patents.
An ugly piece is neither a work of art nor a masterpiece of craft.
Say no to software patents.
If your employees live in a stimulating and satisfying environment, where they are allowed to use powerful tools, which are pleasant to work with and allow them to write their code as a work of art, they'll be more productive, which is good for the bottom line. And satisfied employees will stay longer at your company too, which will save training costs for the new replacements (which might leave just as quickly...). Yes, art can save money too.
Say no to software patents.
Aren't these just standard boilerplate "no warranty disclaimers" terms that we find in all licenses, even VB (...err... especially VB).
Say no to software patents.
This looks more like an application developer's error to me, rather than a problem with combo boxes as such. Maybe, it's because VB attracts so many novice "app developers"... But there are situations where combo-boxes are useful:
Currently, I am developing a Web-based student management system for highschools. On one screen you can define a new student (name, firstname, etc.), and select a class for him. You can select either from the existing classes, or define a new one (if this is the first student of a newly created class). A combo-box would be perfect for this kind of functionality, but unfortunately HTML forms do not have any such item (that I know of...).
As much as I hate Micro$oft (and those who know me know how much I hate them...), I must admit that combo-boxes are one of the rare sensible ideas that they had.
Say no to software patents.
Ok, so this program can ask some simple questions and provide a verdict and suggested sentence. What I don't understand is how it's saving time. The article cited questions like did he run a red light, or was his BAC above legal levels. How long does it really take to deal with cases to which the answers to questions like this are clear.
Now, I must admit that I know nothing about the Brazilian legal system and I am asking questions that may be grounded in my own views, which are based on my knowledge of laws in the United States. It would seem to me that in the US, if a person is accused of running a red light, and they admit to that, then they will be pleading guilty. This leaves sentencing, and I find it hard to believe that an experienced judge would really need much time to senetnce a person for running a red light or littering.
So, I would think that the time savings would be in slightly more complex cases, but I don't see how this program is going to deal with this, at least not based on the examples provided in the article. What if the suspect and the arresting officer disagree as to what happened? How does this program reconcile the different accounts of the events that took place. It would seem to me that more than yes/no questions would be necessary. As for witnesses, can the program assess their credibility? There are just so many factors that are taken into account by a human judge in a real court that I can't see this helping much, unless the judges really have trouble keeping track of all of the laws that pertain to the situation.
-joe
Ignoring the VB issue, rapid justice for straightforward cases is fairer and more effective. In psychology 101 we were told that negative reinforcement is only effective if it occurs immediately after the offense. A rapid judgement and punishment system will probably reduce the number of repeat offenders.
Well, he could force you to retract your post by making slashdot remove it or suffer under penalty of law, or he could pursue a copyright violation case, fining you for breaking copyright law.
(I think... don't quote me on that)
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
Very similarly I believe in Pittsburg's hockey arena fan disturbance was such a problem that they built a courtroom under the arena to dispense instant justice during rowdy games!
-- From my Best Friend (Written to me over ICQ): "i was gonna go to a party...but i had to reinstall windows"
1) It is slow
:-)
5) Did I mention that it is so slooooooooow
Well, it sure loads slow, if no other VB apps are running, cause it has to load the runtime library. But once that is loaded, it ain't slow. Sure, it isn't exactly hand-tuned assembly, but it is indeed a compiled language. Yes, complied to machine code, at least in the modern versions.
Although programs may look simpler to read and maintain in VB in reality it is just hiding the grottyness under a high level API.
Isn't that what they call "abstraction"? =)
In a real language you can write a compiler for your language in that language and have the compiler compile itself.(This can be done with gcc) VB can't do this.
Well, duh. MSVC++ can do this too. But can Perl? Can Java? Python? Otherfavoritelanguage?
(Yes, I'm sure you can hack together a complier for some of the above languages in those languages, but the same goes for VB. You only really need string manipulation to write a complier, and they all have that.)
2) It is proprietary
3) It only runs on windows
Yes. Ultra-true. This is the real downside of VB.
Also, try to judge VB for what it is. It's a GUI hack language. Kindof like shell scripting or Perl for GUI's. If someone asks you to write, say, a 3D game in VB, I feel your pain.
-
__
Comment submitted. There will be a delay before you understand what you posted.
No pointers? Go away and learn the language, with particular reference to VarPtr, StrPtr, ObjPtr and AddressOf and then come back and say that.
No inheritance? Well, it does interface aggregation rather than implementation inheritance - whether this is a good or a bad thing can be debated until the cows come home but suffice it to say that interface aggregation has no impedance mismatch with COM. Oh, and VB7 does have inheritance (it's claimed) although whether this is a good or a bad thing is as yet undetermined.
No polymorphism? Not entirely true. If you're referring to the type of polymorphism shown in C++ and related languages where pointer-to-any-one-of-several-derived-types can be treated as pointer-to-base-type with vtable binding picking up the slack then no it doesn't: it does, however, allow run-time binding (like Smalltalk et al).
And the idea of a "type-free" language should make most coders vomit in fear...
Again, I say to you "Smalltalk". And wait for 'Option Strict' if you want true B&D.
How about subclassing from VB..? A lot of very weird errors and breakdowns can be the result of a single forgotten line.
Translation: if I get the code wrong I get bugs. Well, no shit!
In what way do you feel VB limits you? Sure, there are several things it won't do (high-performance services, free-threaded COM components), but that's not the contract. It is very good at what it does: if you can't develop big systems in it then look at your processes and methodologies.
--
Cheers
Cheers
Jon
s/MS/Larry Wall/g
<g>
--
Cheers
Cheers
Jon
In my experience, you have to work pretty hard
to write hard-to-follow control flows in python.
My problem has always been getting the data
structures clean. I usually end up re-writing
scripts that I change frequently, because I see
an easier way to arrange the data. But the
appropriate data-structure is problem-specific.
Alex.
Yes, the truth as in VB is not the most scalable solution to many programing problems and the one operating system it runs on is not the most reliable.
___
In this light, shouldn't vb be more acuratly compared to DHTML or XML or XUL or DOM for being "interface tools"?
___
Millions and millions pumped a PR machine that has yet to be rivaled in this moden age. As a result of this overwhelming influence, there is little doubt you're a VB fan (how could you possibly know better?).
Our little (/.) is the only forum in a sea of MS bullsh*t where programers can dare to speak the truth.
Please allow us that one little thing.
___
I'm from the government and here to help . .
I read it on the internet, so it must be true..
vb is ok
___
I would agree that it is faster. I was just pointing the double meaning of the phrase general protection fault as both a windows error message (or a feature if your name is BillG) and the general falure to protect the public good.
___
While VB is easily maintainable, it is also a weak language
Please justify this.
Easy..: No pointers, no inheritance and no polymorphy.
I have never in my four years developing in VB had a single GPF with it or any of the apps I've written in it.
That describes a robust system. Not a strong language.
People tend to bag VB as if all you can do with it is what the text books teach you. If anything, it makes a fantastic language to hack with because it limits you in very few ways. (I have much code that says you don't need to do things the MS sanctioned way.) You should separate the language, the platform (Windows) and the use of it and critique them separately.
I disagree..! VB limits you in every way possible. Granted, you can do a lot with subclassing, but then you are stressing the system and risking breakdown.
And the idea of a "type-free" language should make most coders vomit in fear...
Do you know how many bugs are introduced by manual memory management? How about obfuscated code?
How about subclassing from VB..? A lot of very weird errors and breakdowns can be the result of a single forgotten line.
I use VB in my everyday work. As a RAD it is great. But as soon as you have 3 developers working on a system with 250+ forms and 400.000+ lines of code in VB you have a problem. VB is totally inept in terms of project management. Source Safe is a feeble attempt to correct the problem. It GPF's more often than not.
Remember, there are no stupid questions. But there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
Given what impressions I've had of the jury system, I can't say I really want to be tried by a jury of my "peers".
It's quite likely most of them will turn out to be morons who are easily swayed by a quick-talking lawyer or a false but emotional argument.
At least the computer might be a little consistent and actually consider the facts.
I think that's my devil's advocate post for the day :-) (BTW, I did get the pun)
General Protection Fault? He's related to Major Systems Failure or some Kernel or other isn't he?
Of course the *real* reason they are carrying laptops is to mete out such on the spot sentences as "Install Windows 2000 server" and "count the bits in a gigabyte, out loud, one by one" (the former being the heavier sentence).
Adds a whole new meaning to the phrase,
"Blue Screen of Death!"
Thanks for your civil post! :-) I started out in VB and have been learning Java over the past year. My company uses VB for a large scale client server program that is used in the USA and Europe by hundreds of users (maybe between one and two thousand).
I would argue that VB can be a great language for database programming (Oracle, in our case). And this is what many people use VB for.
The fact that VB ties you to MS for development and platform is of course a major downer. That's why I'm happily learning Java.
I'd say he committed an illegal operation.
Is there a [computer] language on earth that does not allow comments?
VB is certainly not my language of choice, but *if* the code is well-written, it could even be somewhat stable. IMHO, Delphi is better, but that's my own HO.
BTW: Why not put up 'Justice vending machines' with a help-yourself application? "I want to turn myself in, I've robbed the bank" -- "That's three prayers, an MS License Agreement and three weeks in the slammer. Would you like to have whip blows with that?"
Use The Source, Luke!
Actually, this is how the Dark Judges must've gotten started :(
:)
Through applied logic, they decided the only way to reduce crime was to kill everybody
Honestly, get thee to Segfault.org and submit the story! This is great!
bun-fhuinneog agam!
Let's keep it cival. Every programming language has a purpose. A good programmer knows when to use and when not to use a language. VB is fine if you want a program that will only be ran under windows and doesn't need the speed or portability of C/C++. To say that VB is more powerfull then C++ is truly a load of shit. VB is usefull for some small projects or interfaces but that is all.
A truly powerfull programming language is one that can be used for almost any type of programming. Given the number of programs both windows and linux that use C/C++ I would say that C++ is the clear winner.
I don't particularly like java but that's only because it has speed problems. It definatly beats almost all other languages that are as usefull in portability hence it's wide spread use.
I've heard this plenty of times. "A true hard core programmer only writes code in assembly language." It's been awhile since I've heard that but not that many years ago, that's was what many programmers would say.
The reason many people here hate VB so much is that anything coded in VB can't be ported to any other platform. Also most people that use VB come from a DOS/Windows background. These people were useing GW-basic(the god of spegetti code) then QuickBasic(Easy to teach in schools) and finally Visual Basic. Many of the people on slashdot come from a unix background and learned to program in C.
I went to a highschool that thought that programming == QuickBasic. I had to learn C, assembly language, and pascal on my own. I've not regreted learning Basic programming it's good for teaching logic and made learning real programming languages easier. I'm glad that I moved away from the basic programming languages. No self respecting computer science department teaches Visual Basic, we leave that to the CIS students.
Just my opinion I could be wrong.
Environmentalists are their own worst enemy. ~tricklenews.com
Kinda funny really coming from user # 148044.
I must protest. Almost any language is easier to write mantainable code than Intercal. =)
Weapons of Mass Analysis
VB does cheesy database UI better than anyone out there.
What about Hypercard?
An app like that should be 100k in VB. And the libraries are about 2 megs, as far as I can remember.
Assuming that rights to trial by jury are similar to those in America, I see no problem with someone appealing the decision and getting their trial. In all other cases, it is faster, no?
-----
Vikhozhu odin ya na darogu;
Skvoz' tuman kremnisti put' blectit;
Noch' tikha. Pystinya vnemlet bogu,
Rhapsody in Numbers
Ah, a pun! I get it!
-----
Vikhozhu odin ya na darogu;
Skvoz' tuman kremnisti put' blectit;
Noch' tikha. Pystinya vnemlet bogu,
Rhapsody in Numbers
In reality, both Perl and VB are pathetic excuses for scripting or programming languages. IMHO the only really good scripting languages is Python and Scheme (if you count it as a scripting language - there are interpreted and p-code implementations of this). They both are very simple yet powerful languages. I haven't really used Scheme, but I know from experience that Python really kicks the shit out of Perl. I once try to write a small NNTP spam scanner bot in Perl. I got so frustrated that I switched over to Python. It was much easier to try to write it *well* in Python. Perl is a text manipulation language hacked into a general purpose scripting language. It's small amount of object orientation is a joke, and Perl code is far dirtier than Python code. Python code to do a complex task is usually much cleaner and easier to understand than Perl code. This is very important if you are concerned at all with maintainability. Overall, Python is a far better language than Perl. Yes, they can do the same things, but Python is far cleaner, far simpler, and tends to lend itself to better programming practices than Perl.
maybe YOU shouldn't be trying to do anything, since you're saying 0 = 1.....
Code is also money to your employer or client. Thats if you work for a living. If you just sit around and recompile your kernel all day its not so important I suppose.
One should of course point out that 1. the "master criminal" (I presume you mean Kenneth Noye) is now doing life for a road-rage murder. 2. the man who killed the burglar (Tony Martin,I presume) shot him in the back with an illegally held pump action shotgun, and had previously had his gun licence revoked after other incidents involving firearms. Regards, tree_frog
I agree! I do have some BIG concerns over the whole precedence this sets. It is scary on one hand because there is so many variables that go in human behavior (legal and illegal) that I would be amazed that any piece of software would be able to digest this and come up with something that would be fair. You comment about lowering the operator skill level does get at what twisted my guts on this. We are already seeing this in 'managed' health care. - the imp p.s. I know that the GPF comment was a cheap shot ... I just couldn't help myself ...
Hmmm...if it said "Abort, Retry, or Ignore?" then answering "retry" would be double jeopardy, so wouldn't they need a special version of Windows?
Being judged by a computer... why do I feel uneasy about it...
I guess it wouldn't be bad in OBVIOUS situations like parking tickets, traffic violations, drunk in public, etc. But then there goes your "jury of fellow peers"
The "Man" will be a computer running a Microsoft app? I KNEW Gates was behind it all. It's not some bankers in New York, or the FBI/CIA... it's that geeky guy in Redmond, WA!
You can create a simple web server using Microsoft's Winsock control in less than 50 lines of code. Now that is powerful.
The VB IDE is fantastic, lint, gdb, and others can't even compare to the debugging capabilities of VB. Sometimes I feel I can code blindfolded in VB, while I spend 3x the time using command line tools in Linux. If only an IDE existed that had the scope of VB for gcc, that'd be really kickin'
*(for those of you who are going to flame me for calling VB object oriented, keep in mind that it's common knowledge that VB does not support inheritance and polymorphism. But did you know you can simulate inheritance through Dim'ing objects within your class modules?!?)
I hear that everytime these judges issue a citation the VB app will gather DNA from the keypad and embed it into the ticket.....Let's just hope we can keep that DNA cloning under wraps this time ;)
This is just stupid. I have never heard of anything like this here in Brazil. And I suppose this whole thing is being blown out of proportion. I think this GPF-waiting-to-happen system is just to help them with something, not do actually judge anyone...
If I had moderation points I'd give ya some karma ;-)
"The court today has been adjourned, due to a VB runtime error."
"I'm sorry - due to a bug, you got life for a parking offence, but that's the cost of progress!".
Is anyone mildly worried by a Micro$oft product getting involved in the justice system ? It's a good job it isn't already in large-scale use in the US......
M.
This is a great application of the Turing Intelligence Test. Can you tell whether your judgment was brought down by a human with a silly wig sitting on his head, or a piece of software run on a computer with a silly wig sitting on top of it. The sooner the interpretation of the law is handed over to a piece of software instead of judge/jury/lawyers/dollars/threats/crime bosses, the sooner we will *all* be able to: 1) Afford justice 2) Compete on a legal footing against $-laden opposition The big question is how seriously we take the judgements handed down by software. This is a prime example of Garbage In, Garbage Out. At least putting the Garbage In would be cheaper than hiring an expensive and skillful lawyer to vomit the garbage into a court hearing. Maybe the case would lean to the side that could type their case in quicker, e.g. Did too! Did not! Did too! Did not! Did not! Did not! Did not.... JUDGEBOT: NOT GUILTY THROUGH WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE
http://pcblues.com - Digits and Wood
Instead of a GPF it will use a different build of some obscure lib and will just seg fault or sig 11.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Isn't the law hard enough to read already?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Yeah, VB will do that to anyone. :) Sorrry :)
I guess you could say this is the first "powerful" application ever developed in VB? (I know, I know. Thank God there isn't a Score: -1 Bad Pun).
kwsNI
If you as a society are running around on the streets dispencing "Justice" is the computer really neccessary? I get the feeling the computer is just there to make it seem fair.
Am I the only one that's reminded of Judge Dread? "You have been Judged." MUAHAHAHA! JoeDark
As long as it's Sylvester Stallone doing the judging, I think everything will be fine.
GollyGee Blocks -- 3D creativity software for kids.
I'm a C++ fascist. If it isn't C++ it sucks.
This seems to me to be an excellent use of computer technology, more specifically of AI. If you can read Portuguese you may take a look at the State Court's web site where they comment about this "Justice on Wheels" inniciative. There is some sort of a pun in this name, I think, for the service is specifically intended to solve disputes involving damages from car crashes. It was a local population claim that these disputes be solved in less time. Each team is formed by a judge, forensic experts and an administrative person. The page does not mention the existence of such software, from what I can infer that this is completely instrumental, not the emphasis. And that's is why I say it is an excellent usage of AI: helping an expert (the judge) to solve problems in a narrow domain (car accident damages) in a situation where he/she may be constrained as to what material can be referred to. One more thing, these civil disputes are not ruled by jurys in Brazil.
I work as a tax auditor for another state government, and I've been dreaming on building my own AI system to help me and my colleagues. Sometimes it's really easy, due to stress and workload, to overlook important aspects of some case, and software is still dumb enough not to get pissed off or distracted, looking at every possible ramification of thought.
Sure, I would write it in C++. ;)
Personally I use my computer to remember my employer's phone number and my best friend's email address. Christ knows I'd be lost if I had to memorize 10,000 laws as well.
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
But if it's an expert system coded in VB on portables, why do they need to send judges out to use it? Surely the whole point is to limit the amount of time judges have to deal with trivial cases? Now they have to run out to the SOC and question everybody.
Maybe I'm just to unfamiliar with Brazilian law ... do judges regularly go out and judge on the streets down there?
--
It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Does this bring new meaning to... The Blue Screen of death???
------- What exactly is real?
It could be some time before a similar system takes the place of an English court. "It would have to satisfy the authorities that it was absolutely foolproof first," says a spokesman for the Lord Chancellor's office, which oversees courts in England and Wales.
I think this spokesman is mistaken. American judges won't want this system to be foolproof. They would feel jealous.
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Dammit, my mom is not a Karma whore!
Agreed. I've written horrible C++ programs which had 12 4-dimentional arrays instead of the 4 object classes that it should have had, and I've also written Perl code that, while not necessarily elegant, is intuitive, reads easily, and can be readily understood.
It really _IS_ up to the programmer to maximize readability, and although extremes such as Python's strict definitions of whitespace and assember's "I won't understand this code no matter how many times I read it" certainly exist, in most cases, it's equally easy to write good/bad code in any language.
My $0.02
Think of this as a "humor" story, if you'd like. It's certainly less serious than stories like "BeOS to drop Be?" that we had earlier today. Nonetheless, that doesn't make this story "stupid," or "useless," and I've personally learned a great deal just from reading the comments here moderated to 3 or higher.
Now, if only they could replace the basic with Scheme or another functional language, THAT would rock.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
MS Bigot?
I use a real OS - You should try one too
Not my original nick - Several accounts. Thanks user #102806.
My original is in the 50k's. Took a year before I signed up for that one.
So PISS OFF NEWBIE!
Point taken - Although I'm not convinced the poster I replied to could be lumped in the people that know either.
"Signing off for good"
Promise?
Maybe - Will you be my friend?
Nice to see what a little drunken flame can do ;).
Also nice to see this was taken correctly and mod'ed as "funny"... Kinda restores my faith in SlashDot... OK, I'm back.
Some people are just too sensitive.
The problems with VB are roughly as follows
1) It is slow
2) It is proprietary
3) It only runs on windows
4) It isn't a real programming language
5) Did I mention that it is so slooooooooow
Although programs may look simpler to read and maintain in VB in reality it is just hiding the grottyness under a high level API. Because the libraries that it depends upon are precompiled you can't go and look what a function actually does when it doesn't act as expected.
It is slow, the language only recently began to be compiled. Pprevious attemps included embeding code+interpreter in a Windows PE format executable.
In a real language you can write a compiler for your language in that language and have the compiler compile itself. (This can be done with gcc) VB can't do this.
PERL is only hard to read if you don't know PERL, I find VB hard to read as it is verbose where as PERL is rather terse.
-dp
I'm not trying to say that VB is forever bound to relational databases, nor am I saying that VB will never be able to access databases of other types. I just find it appalling that a language would take print(rset.get("foo")) and allow you to make it into
With Rset
Print !foo
End With
I have seen this used in real VB code, specifically in the middle-tier of a large (wannabe-)enterprise application, that was deployed as the "backbone" of an intranet in a company with more than 100k employees. It makes me sick to think about all the various kludges that were implemented to make that thing work because VB (and MTS) simply were not up to the task.
I claim otherwise and I'm not ignorant.
Some languages do have a clearer syntax than others. You imply that some assembly or intercal code would be as easy to maintain as VB or C if it's coded straight? This is just plain wrong.
---
guillaume
give me all your garmonbozia
Obviously some people have no sense of humor. This is really funny (I especially like the part about George W. Bush).
Come on, moderators, don't be stupid and moderate that post up.
---
guillaume
give me all your garmonbozia
Ha, ha, VB suckz! GPF! Ha, ha! GPF! GPF jokes are cool. You guys are so cool. Perl rockz, man. VB walkz, man. GPF! Ha, ha!
I think you could use a minimum age limit on the posters. You drive intelligent people away when you get bigotry instead of news.
VB for database programming? I've used Informix 4GL, Visual FoxPro, Delphi, and VB for various database applications and VB is far and away the most difficult, pain-in-the-neck language I've ever seen when it comes to accessing and manipulating data. It can be a good and useful language to develop in, but I would never recommend it for databases.
So thankful for Unix and Informix - no GUI!
Death is but a doorway.
Here, let me hold that for you.
Since this is an anti-Windows joke, moderate up to funny.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I Like Judge Dredd in Spanish. I am the law!
Too bad I failed high school Spanish.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
He's not JonKatz, so it's OK. I'll just ignore it :)
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
ERROR
"The Justice System you are using has executed an illegal immigrant, and may have become unstable.
Please close down any court facilities you are currently using, and reboot your government."
-----
Now justice can be not only blind, it can be lagged and susceptible to page faults, too. I wonder how many people will slip through the memory leaks?
"You have been judged, please reboot for the changes to take effect". Sucks to be running Windows...
I mean really, the ++ in C++ refers to the additions to C, a strictly functional language.
You would have a hard time convincing me to switch from C++ to Java. C++ is faster, has pointers, templates, exception handling and other features that make it blow away Java. Yet all these features are hacks by your definition.
If I need something quick n' easy for Windows(which sadly is what I mostly get paid for) VB is great. But if I need something object oriented I think I'll stick with C++.
Not trying to flame you, I'm actually interested in what you have to say.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
If you have IE5 or Netscape 6, try reading slashdot.xml.
It would be interesting if it only blew up in IE.(further proof of MS not adhering to standards.) You can fix it by editing the file and taking out the á character in the word 'Máximo' in the dept. line.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I like my open source grits as much as the next person, but as long as VB and Microsoft are still alive, why not make some money off it? Its so easy to turn just about any pile of code into a VB program. So I could be working on a perl project for most of the day and take a 1 hour break to convert my code into a program I could sell.
Consider...unlike open source, I can completely seal off the source code, package it in a nice friendly self-installing binary, and sell it as shareware.
It may not be the fastest thing out there(I think its still more of an interpreter than a compiled language) But knocking out apps is so quick, why not. The people who buy Visual Basic based applications are usually not looking for anything that requires god-like speed.
There's also nothing wrong with me posting my source code if I decide to do that.
Anyway, I know its next to prostitution but its the only way I know how to support myself if I want to get more into open source. I suppose I could be a sysadmin, but I'd rather just write code all day.
I know someone will say I should come up with something proprietary like a software/service package for Linux. However, the people who buy Windows software are used to paying for software, whereas most people using Linux would not need my services. If there's any genius to Microsoft its to target their sales toward those who don't know any better. And considering it would support a noble cause, why shouldn't I do the same?
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
It could be worse.At least they're not dispensing out justice from vending machines...hmmm,for some reason,I could see this happening at Riverdale High...
Teacher:So,you got caught handing out The Red Star(The best fake propaganda money can't buy!)again Matt?
Student:Uhh...yes.
Teacher:-Sigh-.Take this punishment slip to the Punishment Machine(tm)and get your detention sentance.
Student:-Grumple-.Fine.-Grumble-
So remember to always look on the bright side of life.
Etot "sig" byit pisyat v Russki!
(35.0% Slashdot nezdorovi.)
------------------------
Thus Spake ComradePenguin
It does suck.
I have made an application for 14 different locations of the same customer and have to install it there. It was a pain and sometimes I must go there because nobody did nothing and the thingie starts having conflicts or because someone installed outlook and it hangs.
If I had to do it now I'd do a web application in perl
Consider: How is this going to save the judge time? If he is saved time because he does not have to look at all of the evidence, how is he going to make a fully accurate assessment of how valid the computer's judgment is? Personally, I would not want a judge to spend 2 minutes reviewing a computer's decision based on facts he has never seen before.
With that in mind, I really do not see how this plan will help an overburdened court system.
I have a strong belief in the Second Amendment.
Actually, it's not so different than getting a speeding ticket here in the U.S. If you just pay the ticket, you're essentially agreeing to 'sentencing' of the arresting officer. If you're a fan of the domino theory, the first domino has already been tipped, it's just a matter of how many offenses fall under this auto-sentencing scheme.
Sorry, in Brazil we speak Portuguese...
Juíz Dread for us here...
"Eu quero Juíz Dread em *Português*!!! Sou a lei."
Geography rulez
It makes me proud to be a techie. Another major civil liberties issue reduced to an argument about coding. Maybe Amnesty International should just throw in the towel and get MCSEs. Are the Perl Monks in fact a humanitarian organisation?
If I were Brazilian I would be more concerned with what was used as the knowledge base for building the application and who programmed the application. Just think of it. One little errant branch and it's 2 years instead of 30 days! In this case, programming bugs would be intolerable. System crashes would be OK, but bugs, no way.
In this one case I would say that Open Source would be ideal for this project. Not because everyone would contribute code, but because private citizens could review the code and point out any logic weaknesses.
I've done it now. Microsoft will probably stop sending me the bribe checks cuz I said something positive about OSS!
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
are you insane? you might as well replace the criminals with jewish women and the roaming judges with the ss or hitler youth!
i would rather it a big brother police state than see the next third reich form on the continent just to the south of me.
When the pack animals stampede, it's time to soak the ground with blood to save the world. We fight, we die, we break our cursed bonds.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
im not a "gay homosexual" as you so eloquently put it. I'm just trying (unsucessfully) to enlighten your pitiful little Nazi life.
When the pack animals stampede, it's time to soak the ground with blood to save the world. We fight, we die, we break our cursed bonds.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
Under Hitler, those sort of things happened to Jews, especially in the ghettos? Or is your master der fuhrer, shielding you from the truth with lies?
When the pack animals stampede, it's time to soak the ground with blood to save the world. We fight, we die, we break our cursed bonds.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
should be hung, drawn, quartered, shot at, and then really hurt. X=
When the pack animals stampede, it's time to soak the ground with blood to save the world. We fight, we die, we break our cursed bonds.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
that are going big brother/police state really care about any double jeopardy laws...
When the pack animals stampede, it's time to soak the ground with blood to save the world. We fight, we die, we break our cursed bonds.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
Maybe in the courts, it would be useful for judges to have a program to help them figure out what the best sentence for a crime is, but on the streets? It just does not make any sense.
Equip the police with a computer in each car, with some sort of map/gps program to help them in chases or something, get updates on criminals, but keep the judges in the courtrooms.
All it takes is a few wrong answers on purpose, and you have yourself a police state.
When the pack animals stampede, it's time to soak the ground with blood to save the world. We fight, we die, we break our cursed bonds.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
I work @ ICL, which are a really PRO ms company. We even got this alliance with the and all, gr8t this means VB for everybody kidz. My latest headace was when i needed to convert 7932 acsii files to a word format(paste headers into them all), this took about three DAYS to compute.. I tried doing something simular with perl. Here we talk hours/minutes. NOT DAYS.
AND NO, Im not a totally uncompetent VB programmer. And i even had a MCSD to look at optimizing it, face it VB suck..
"Theres alotta savages in this town.."
Ah, indescriminate justice. No more biases getting in the way. Damned judges enforcing their opinions on everyone. We need STANDARDIZATION! Standardization is the key.
Instant Crisis
Police a "protective layer between the citizenry and judges"?????
...
They let people off with a warning regardless of the eventual sentence they would get, probably to avoid their paperwork.
You answered your own question about what I meant here. Judges can theoretically set aside sentences, too, but they generally don't. I simply meant that police are occasionally a firebreak between "I did something bad" and "I'm going to jail".
I don't have any special love for or trust of cops, but I think you see what I mean, at least.
A combination of mandatory minimums and these roving judges could make our lead in per-capita imprisoning even more solid. Right now, the police act as a protective layer between the citizenry and judges. "Throw out the joint, buddy, and I won't bust you."
Unfortunately, this sort of leniency gives police too much power, but eliminating the police as a stop-gap means everyone will get screwed.
Judges aren't about forgiveness, they're about ensuring that laws are enforced. Who would want a roving judge and jury posse? It smacks of the Convenient Police State.
...I never broke the law, I am the law!
I wrote a timekeeping application for the engineering department of the company at which I co-op'ed. The project codes changed regularly, but once used, they were generally used for a few months. I used a combo box to allow the user to select from the list of previously entered project numbers, or add a new one when appropriate. I thought it to be a very effective system, and the engineers thought so as well.
The subject was supposed to read The Eternal Score:1 Post.
Alright, I reposted it once. Now it's time for someone else to step in. Let's see if this works.
Wow...This is a big day for laptop hard drive advances. They can now fit all of the "libraries" that constitute a VB app onto the micro platters.
.csv file. When the verdict (package) clocked in at around 10 meg -- I quickly dismissed ever using VB again.
I had one of my programmers create a "quick" little app that would grab some info from a database, and parse it into a
Is it not a "toy" language?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
YES, we DO speak portuguese here in Brazil, but we do NOT use Babelfish to do that.
You should try "Eu quero Juiz Dread EM português! Eu sou a lei!"
A question: if a damn simple translator used by half planet does not work 100% how could a "Electronic Judge" do it well? Thanks God we do not have lifetime/death senteces here!
- Signature? Where? It's mine!!!
- Please, ignore everything written above.
Right - it's good for creating interfaces or simple apps for Windows. I could see it doing fine with something that just uses yes/no input to make a simple decision. Since this is an expert system, I'd figure they'd use Lisp, but then again, there may have been speed problems, difficulty getting a good interface going. But then again, maybe it doesn't even have to be a real expert system. It might just use the yes/no answers to walk down a tree.
Around ten or fifteen years ago the Judge Dredd series visited South America a couple of times. The local law enforcement and judiciary were portrayed as brutal and corrupt, respectively, perhaps as reference to current affairs of the day, which was something the 2000AD writers were prone to do. If I still had all my comics I'd be able to quote it a little better.
More relevant to the use of Spanish (and babelfish) here at /. would be this morsel: one episode, set in Mega-City 1, showed mexican or latino gang members referring to the Judges as 'La Placa', or The Badge. Judge Dredd is seen re-writing their graffiti to say la placa rifa, or 'the badge rules' (2000AD's translation). Babelfish translates placa as 'board' and doesn't translate rifa, go figure. Gotta get me some of them neural SONY memory sticks... they should re-open their ESP division... grumble
alex4.0
================================Department store BASIC on a demo C64
10 print "K-Mart sucks"
20 goto 10
run, run, run.
By the time you finish reading this sentence will end.
The code is only as good as the programmer who wrote it, but has little to do with the language it's written in.
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Can you say "I ... am ... the ... law", Stallone?
© Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp
Those are all inappropriate to the crime. Instead, they :)
should be subjected to the blue screen of death
"THIS LANGUAGE HAS AN OPERATOR TO TALK TO ODBC DATABASES!!! "
This is a good thing. Once you agree that there is a place for big languages (Perl, ADA, etc) it makes alot of sense to start putting core stuff like this into operators. Look at Perl with its regexp operator and filetest operators. These would be abhorrent in a 'clean' language like Java or C, but the Perl people said "Hey, other languages consider only logic to be a core part of the language. We realise that nowdays things like regexps and handling files are core parts of what a language needs to do".
Likewise, VB is above all a quick and easy way to create database front-ends. ODBC is core to the whole VB thing. It makes sense to make it an operator.
-----
--
-- Slashdot sucks.
I wouldn't mind judges being more efficient and getting more done. I don't mind that they use software. As it said in the article, if a lot of cases are just logic calls, then why not let a computer do that? That's what they're for.
The PROBLEM would come if judges start using this damn thing like people use a calculator. The reason most math profs hate calculators is because people blindly punch in the numbers, and write the answer down as if it had fallen from Jesus' lips, and never question why it is what it is, or how the answer was arrived at. The problem is with errnoeous input. I'm in a statistics class right now, and the professor will ask "What is the probability of event A and B and C happening?" and people come up with answers like "5.7" which is TOTALLY impossible, since 0 = probabilities = 1. Other math problems are similar, where people spit out impossible answers because their calculator told them that.
If the judge still uses his brain, and uses his power to "overrule" the computer extremely liberally, I don't see anything wrong with this. If they start using them like calculators, then I'm moving to Cuba, because at least I'll know that my rights will be violated by a human and with purpose, rather than just getting the shaft electronically.
These could be a tool. This could also massively suck. It's how you use it that makes the difference.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
Yo Quiero Juiz Dredd en Espanol! Soy la ley!
(I can't believe I just said that.)
(And I really can't believe I trusted Babelfish to translate it for me...)
that truly excellent Joey Skaggs prank from the OJ Simpson trial, where he masqueraded as a Columbia Law professor and demoed (for several major TV networks) his own verdict-rendering program. Of course, it had the obligatory flashing red "GUILTY" displayed over the defendant's face. It was awesome.
spawn_of_yog_sothoth
Scary thing is, they ARE working on it in the United States...as a way to resolve traffic accidents and the like quickly.
The Second Amendment Sisters
Finding God in a Dog
("Feu xyz") means ("The late xyz")...
--
Here's my mirror
"This criminal has performed an illegal operation and will be terminated immediately. If the problem persists, appeal to a higher court."
-Joe
I'm not sure that I would not want to trust my judgement to a VB app
I'm not sure I would trust the judgment of your spell checker.
Where does Sun say this?
----------
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
Only stupid lawbreakers will get sentenced by this program. Those of us that have seen "Logan's Run" 30 times will have no problem. Simply tell the computer "this statement is a lie" and watch it start blinking and saying "does not compute" over and over again until it explodes in a shower of sparks. I can't wait till they get these stateside. I'll get liquored up, smash my taillights and drive around chanting "there is no spoon" -- and get away with it too.
--Shoeboy
(former microserf)
I wonder if they have some sort of colourful lycra outfit to wear (the rapid justice team, that is). "Quick lawboy, to the law-mobile!" Lawman and lawboy, dispensing rapid justice from Wintel boxes in an effort to save the world from petty crime!
The person who wrote the program was not a professional programmer. Her was a professional judge. I quote from the New Scientist's piece on it:
A keen programmer, Feu Rosa wrote the E-Judge program in the Visual Basic language. It presents the judge with multiple choice questions, such as "Did the driver stop at the red light?" or "Had the driver been drinking alcohol above the acceptable limit of the law?"
So, why didn't this amateur programmer use prolog? Because prolog is a crap language. Unless you are an expert system specialist. The VB program looks nice, and does no logic more than a traffic light control program.
In short, despite the fact the media report it as an AI program, it's not. That's why an AI language wasn't used. This is plainly evident from the New Scientist web page.
[Aside: Why do people trust the BBC's Sci-Tech web pages? They are, without exception, the worst reporting mechanism for science and technology news. The BBC generally is poor in that area, and litters articles with inaccuracies and bad reporting]
In Brazil, they speak Portuguese, not Spanish. Maybe you meant to say "Eu quero o juiz Dredd no português! Eu sou a lei!"
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Here is Joey Skaggs's website. And here is the Soloman Project, the hoax in question.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
"Eu sou a lei!"
-- iCEBaLM
Or am I missing the point because I'm so ignorant, and - if so - why don't you englighten me Mr I'm-Not-An-Ignorant-Programmer-But-Everyone-Else-H ere-Is.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I'll keep VB around thanks. It may not be the greatest language for large-scale applications, but it beats the pants off any other language (maybe not Object Pascal in Delphi) for quick GUI-programs. I will recant those words only when I see VisualPerl or PerlBuilder or something of similar quality.
-----------
"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
Pfffffft. Some languages ARE easier to read and maintain than others. The obvious proof would be assembly, but I'll assume you're talking about high level languages. Languages with single, well-defined, ways to do things are easier to read and maintain. Perl is lauded for the fact that the same thing can be written in many ways. That means ten programmers could possibly write the same thing ten different ways...the potential differences in "identical" programs can mushroom. Readability and maintainability sure has a whole lot more than a "little" to do with the language it's written in.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
My major gripe with VB is that it is so loosely typed as to appear incredibly sloppy. Whenever I look at VB code, even "good" VB code, it just seems so utterly sloppy to me. Instead of adding structure, as a high level language, it appears to toss it out the window. That just rubs me the wrong way with coarse sandpaper.
;)
But in it's defense, stuff like Perl and writing of large and/or GUI apps with Python or Tcl (for heaven's sake) glue also rubs me the wrong way.
You can probably tell that I'm a strict-typing OO bigot, if the sig hasn't given it away already
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
let alone the fines and/or sentences for a given case. This is probably where a thing like this would be most useful. The judge rules guilty, and looks up the punishment. Red Light? that'll be 150 GMU (generic monetary units). drunk driving? 1 driver's licence please.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
This really brings home some of the commentary in the recent article thread concerning the consequences of poor interface design. Just the site of that nine-tabbed-panel-hell window makes my brain want to turn off, and I'm only reading a BBC article, not trying to decide issues of law and order in the heat of the situation. It's hard enough for judges to interpret and apply the law on sober courtroom consideration; asking them to fight with a typical VB interface in order to do their (difficult) job is just plain cruel. And not just to them, but to the people whose fates they're deciding. I know that poor Windows and X interfaces impede my judgement, and I'm usually judging the computer itself. It seems to me that this sort of application really begs a custom Palm-style or Mac-ish simplified interface, and Brazilians would probably be better off if they'd waited to develop one.
The stability issues are so obvious they don't really bear further mentioning (beyond the rather redundant two times in two sentences for "GPF" in the article capsule).
-- Life is short. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. ~ Robert Doisneau
Obviously written by someone who has never been exposed to APL, Snobol, 90% of Forth code or any of these languages.
Believe me, there are bad languages. VB probably isn't one of them, though I'm not qualified to offer an opinion (having never used it).
"Well, we've feed all the evidence into the computer, and we'll see what comes out...
Well, Mr. Gates, it seems you've done nothing wrong, but we have all been sentenced to death...."
www.eFax.com are spammers
"I Don't Know"
Uhmm.. then let the people that know give their opinions without being chastised by the people that don't know. VB does in fact suck. It's power and usefulness do not compare to languages like Java or C++ or even perl. And thats the point: it is a language written for managers and PHB's, not hackers, as most slashdotters are.
A negative informed opinion about something is not bigotry.
"Signing off for good"
Promise?
--
"And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
VB is okay. Best thing ever for throwing together a working proof-of-concept in a couple of hours or for throwing a pretty wrapper around that cryptic little bastard you've had hanging around. It's generally NOT the best thing, but you can do just about anything in VB.
Now that I've said that, I'm back to finish this plain 'ol C++ program in joe, skim 'Perl Cookbook' for some inspiration, and then I'm going to contemplate a gcc port to AS/400..
.sig: Now legally binding!
What do you not like about combo boxes?
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Man, you are WAY off on your VB knowledge. For one thing, there is already a way to get to non-relational data. OLEDB bypasses ODBC (although you can still use the OLEDB/ODBC bridge). Also, unless I'm way off, the "!" is for VBA and doesn't work in VB (at least, I've never SEEN anyone use it.)
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
well, I agree with you, that's not very neat OR mantainable. I didn't even know you could do it in VB. I've seen it in access. One of the things with Vb is it is such a HUGE language. It has tons of commands that are holdovers/whatever that you never use. I guess it is fairly impressive that you can almost always open a Vb 4 or 5 app in 6 and recompile and you're fine, but I wish they'd sacrifice a LITTLE backward compatiblity and get rid of some crud.
---
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
So, in short, this form of mobile justice really is a general protection fault.
:)
___
RIO DE JANIERO
It's "Rio de Janeiro". Brazilians speak Portuguese, not Spanish, although a recent poll showed that 60% of Americans are unaware of this.
Luis Sanchez, overlord of a drug cartel that stretches from the Cape Horn to the Bering Strait...
"Sanchez" is a Spanish name - see above. And, aren't you thinking of Bolivia...?
"Gonzalez" is again Spanish. You'll find "federal judges" in Brasília, the capital, not in Rio... they moved decades ago. Then again, 30% of Americans still think the capital is Buenos Aires
And, Starbucks in Brazil...? Now that is hilarious!
I suppose the rest of the names and statements might make sense to an American...
at least some basic facts should be checked before posting something like this...
And you asked:
Why?
For two reasons:
1) the joke's easier to understand if not cluttered up by factually wrong details, and
2) the point's less dependent of secondary jokes like the "running Onion" thing.
Here's some advice: It's a joke. Lighten up. :-)
Hey, I said "NITS", didn't I...? ;-)
If we're going to talk about VB, then we'd better talk about Slashdot. I don't know what Slashdot runs on, but it certainly isn't very reliable. According to some e-mail responses, "it's my ISP." Yeah, right...that's why I get returns on pings, but no HTTP. :) Perhaps Slashdot should upgrade to VB for higher availability. After all, it is the single most-used programming language on the planet.
Hi!
Um, actually, the "!" isn't an operator for ODBC. It is a shorthand way of referring to a default property of a referenced object. You can use it in all sorts of places, in much the same way that you can use default values.
When you assign a value from a recordset, for instance, you might use this snippet:
' Assume lValue is already declared as a long
lValue = rsData!CustomerID
It is syntactically identical to this:
lValue = rsData.Fields("CustomerID").Value
The "!" operator retrieves the default property (Value) of a referenced object (the Field object, a member of the Fields collection).
This has nothing to do with ODBC--it is related to the COM object model. This works with any COM object, not just a database component.
This is a nice idea... If your court system is overloaded, put the most common 100 or 200 things in a simple database. You hit a few buttons, the software figures out what specific violation it is (if you say, have 10 levels of reckless driving, etc), and prints out a reasonable judgement.
As long as the appeals process is unchanged, this is helpful. Instead of needing the judge to lookup the difference between the different laws and write up a whole judgement, a simple mail-merge type deal prints out a judgement.
This won't be used on major crimes, but it a good way to determine what should happen with traffic type crimes.
At least it is if you don't ask it to do anything too complicated. However, for a simple branched logic program such as might be implemented for this judiciary system, it would be perfectly adequate, and easily implemented. There won't be that many possible paths that they wouldn't be quickly debugged as problems are reported from the field.
For that matter, a program written in Perl, or C, or Java isn't necessarily going to do the job any better than one written in VB. It might be more robust, but if the logic is wrong, its wrong.
Gonzo
This is different, this isn't just the sentencing of an already guilty person. This software is the replacement of a trial. Fortunately they are allegedly only using it for "straightforward" cases, but it is still a little scary to an American. The US constitution guarantees the accused a fair trial with a jury of their peers.
Furthermore, many people, some of whom are federal judges, believe the Federal Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Guidelines are a travesty of justice. They do not allow the judge much discretion, if any, because the sentence is determined by the charges. Prosecutors determine the charges, not the judges. Mandatory minimus effectively remove sentencing descions from judges, where they should be, and place them in the hands of the Proscutors.
Please see Families Against Mandatory Minimums
Burris
One of my hmmn.. what was being thought posts.
:)
How can Perl and Visual Basic even REALLY be compared as programming tools? I thought to myself. Oh wait im sure there is a CPAN Module for a GUI Drawing Interface.. or Perl+GTK or Perl/TK. Basically in Perl for a quick and easy GUI that you can distribute to 95% of the business world oh wait.. you cant do that can you?... VB Is the way to go there.
You guys are kind of deluded doing an outright comparison of VB and Perl, crawl out of the command line and remember where Perl/Linux/Open Source are.
c 'fireproof' 'Hmmn?'
Jeremy
They'll coordinate their cyber-thuggery with the help of a Linux-based distributed supercomputer, the GNU Robot-Enhancing Network Doing Evil with Linux, or G.R.E.N.D.E.L. (Some pundits say that "Beowulf" slaughters G.R.E.N.D.E.L., but that's just a myth!)
Ultimately, the Brazilian rent-a-judges will be overwhelmed by this evil, mechanized horde. The robots will win the war. Soon Rio de Janeiro will lose its status as the world's safest city!!
Mwa ha ha ha ha ha! Victory is mine!
Stay up hacking each weekend. Sleep is for the week.
This is just as stupid as you can possibly get. Of-course any, even the most simplistic compiler/translator/virtual machine that can implement finite automaton will work BUT! There are actually languages the whole and sole purpose of which is to interpret logic.
for those of you who never did any AI, they are:
Prolog - Programming Logic (the language is a database that defines atomic truths and their relations, the Prolog engine is a 4-cylinder processor that works completely recursively to find out your question, so if you ask to: contcatenate X and Y you will get Z by doing the following concat(X, Y, Z), on the other hand the same line will return the necessary Y, if X and Z are known, and if X and Y are not known, then all possible concatenation sequences will be returned by simply recursing over Z.
LISP - orgasmic (otherwise known as lots of silly parentesis)
SCHEME - variation on Lisp (virtually orgasmic)
ML - strongly typed Meta Language (tough language but fair)
Just don't, Don't tell me there is no way to use these languages because they are lacking something, in fact they are not lacking anything. There is even visual prolog today (if it wasn't in my wet dream)
Some of these languages are successfully used to even write HTTP servers and Device Drivers without mentioning their actual use for AI.
So WTF? I ask you, WTF!!!???!!!
You can't handle the truth.
Fight Spammers!
For the last 5+ years, I've coded in VB, C, C++, Java, perl, php, assembler, and others that I can't remember ( or don't want to ).
Each language has it's strengths and weaknesses, without exception. Yes, VB does have some drawbacks. It is not portable. It doesn't have certain OOP features *yet* ( See VB7 ). It does offer rapid development, native 32-bit _compiled_ code ( VB hasn't been interpreted for a couple years now ) that, when _well-written_, can run just as well as an application written in MSVC++.
** Note ** I'm not making any comment in regards to the stability of the OS, which can play devils advocate for _any_ application.
I'm not claiming that VB is as robust as other languages ( perl, c++, java ) but _in my experience_ I have found that if VB isn't capable of performing a task, it will easily use a component written in to the COM specification. That's a strong features of VB. It can use any COM component, and you can write COM objects in many languages, including Delphi and C++. You can even access CORBA objects!
Applications can be written poorly in _any_ language.
IMHO,
http://www.battleaxe.net
I agree - Fuck this site. Used to be cool.
Does VB suck? I don't know, since I never really used it. Am I prejudiced against it? No.
I've had enough of SlashDot bigotry... Signing off for good.
-hotaine
Amen. For the love of god.
Visual Basic does what it is supposed to do and, over the years, has come to do it damn well. True, earlier revisions of the language were really weak, but it has evolved into an excellent language for rapid application development. It is quick to write, easy to debug, and, with a bit of creativity, can be used to do a bloody lot. For someone who has to do a lot of quick, turnkey Windows application development, I can vouch for the legitimacy of the language. I can write 98% of the code I need in VB, debug it, package it, and deploy it very quickly, and not have to worry about killer alloc problems, whatnot. Other people may not like it, but there is certainly a sizable chunk of people who do.
VB is criticized for being a "Basic." So the English-centric language is more accessable to the novice programmer than C. This results in a greater number of novices using VB than using C, thus meaning that there are going to be a larger concentration of novices in the VB world than in the C world. It is easier to turn out compilable code in VB than C. But given a good programmer, you will get good code out of either language. It's the programmer that really matters, remember? A good programmer can pick a convenient tool and turn good stuff out of it. Not all of us live in a non-Microsoft world.
But, if we're really going to talk smack about languages, then, for the love of god, don't hold C or Javascript up as some kind of "perfect" creation. The principals of something like Squeak make for much better argument.
----
I am not a Microsoft groupie, but I'm not going to break my neck avoiding them when there are more productive and convenient ways for me to get my job done.
But, like so many other technologies that are "good in their niche", Microsoft is building up VB to handle things that it was never ever intended for. This language has no solid foundation. It has no standard, no specification. MS will throw any feature necessary into this thing to make it EASY at all expense.
This language has five different ways to say "NULL." This language has so many keywords its sickening. THIS LANGUAGE HAS AN OPERATOR TO TALK TO ODBC DATABASES!!! (its the excalamtion point ("!")) Yes, sure it makes it easy, but how long 'til all these features come back to bite you on the ass.
What do we do with the ODBC OPERATOR if/when RDBMS technology goes away in favor of object databases? What we have here is a case of lack of forward thinking. These are the people who brought you 8.3, GUI-in-the-kernel, the (corruptable) binary registry, and WINNT/SYSTEM32! They are thinking only of getting the product out the door with the most features first... at the price of not thinking about the long-term effect. Once you can't stand it anymore they'll tell you everythings going to be alright by coming out with kludges like Windows File Protection (fixes WinNT/system32) and Windows 95's hack for long file names... (everythings really still 8.3!) And you'll buy into it. ENJOY!
1) a hacker
2) a virus
3) Y2K
I have a strong belief in the Second Amendment.
While VB is easily maintainable, it is also a weak language. On the other hand, the great languages, C/C++, Perl, Java (although it's a real bitch), they may be complex, but you can make an honest to god rocket control system with any of them. Anyways, we dont want missiles that GPF on us, do we? {=
When the pack animals stampede, it's time to soak the ground with blood to save the world. We fight, we die, we break our cursed bonds.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
Was it
Answer : Linux Torvalds. Source : Linux Journal.
...
http://www2.linuxjourn al.com/articles/conversations/006.html
Personally, I prefer Perl, but there ya go
Camaron de la Isla 'When I sing with pleasure, my
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
People would be pretty proud of it, or at least the IDE.
Of course, no open source project would contain a language as ugly and inconsistent as VB's Basic; but the IDE is very nice for bolting together ActiveXs and UI widgets in a quick and dirty way. A lot of MIS type projects fall into this category.
One of the best things about VB is the ability of the IDE editor to understand and catalog ActiveX methods, which can only be discovered dynamically (sorry, no static IDL). That said, this also leads to the worst thing about VB, which is that its popularity encourages ActiveX developers to be lazy. Really, the only test of an ActiveX seems to be does it work in VB. This leads to broken function prototypes that only work in VB, not in Delphi, PowerBuilder or C++. Another wonderful case of interproduct synergy brought to us from the Microsoft monopoly. it's great for people whose application fits in the VB solution space, it sucks for everyone else.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Just because VB isn't open source doesn't mean it is not robust. I think open source software is the way of the FUTURE. The reality is that the best solution for many (not all) things today is still stuck in a proprietary world.
Umm, I'd argue that this is arse. While it is possible to write bad code in any language it is without doubt easier to read _average_ code in one language over another. As always with these things lets take the example to an extreme.
In the blue corner we have PentiumIII assembler, in the red corner the beast of all languages Ada, your task is to write a Multi Radar Processing system. We estimate it will take 3 years with 10 people to write. It is classified as being mission and safety critical (cat 1).
Do you think that the assembler app will be as maintainable or as manageable as the Ada app ?
Of course not. Certain languages are tailored towards certain things, FFT in FORTRAN is a breeze, I'd image its slightly harder in VB.
I've seen systems (as in had to interface to) written in many different languages (including all those written above, + Ada, COBOL, Perl, Assembler et al) assuming that most were written by a team and thus the ability is around the average I can safely say that certain languages lend theirselves to extendability and comprehension. Other can produce good and readable code but their normal standard is lower than the normal standard of other languages.
VB isn't one of the best mind. In fact that honour goes to Ada IMO. There have been many studies done on development times/maintainance times in different languages and it DOES make a difference what you code in.
Otherwise we'd all be using Turing Machine Instruction sets.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
OK, so the computer asks you "did he run the red light?".... ok the computer isn't exactly running some fuzzy-logic artificial intellegence program to determine wether the person is guilty or not, now is it? what kind of computation goes on behind the scene when you reply "yes, the driver did run the red light"? it must be microsoft bloatware... maybe a little dancing paperclip will pop up and say "this program has automatically sentenced the offender to death, would you like to know how to turn this feature off in the future?"
My father (a district judge here in the US) has shown me the tables that judges use to ensure that their verdicts fall within the guidelines set by the various laws that have been passed madating minimum & maximum sentences. So the system already exists here.
As for all the obvious jokes about the stability of VB apps: we're not talking about Quake here - it's just a very basic database & the rest of it is UI. VB does cheesy database UI better than anyone out there. If I have no idea who the programmer is, I'd trust a cheesy UI written in VB to a cheesy UI written in C/C++ any day. There are a lot more programmers out there able to write stable VB apps than there are those that can write stable C apps, given that the app is simple in the first place.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
BRAZILIAN DRUG KINGPIN SENTENCED TO BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH
Harsh Sentence From Judge Raises Some Eyebrows
RIO DE JANIERO (UPI) - Luis Sanchez, overlord of a drug cartel that stretches from the Cape Horn to the Bering Strait, was sentenced to the blue screen of death this afternoon by a federal judge. Judge Roberto Gonzalez carried out the sentence at a Starbuck's coffee house in downtown Rio after he was spotted by undercover agents. The agents called in Gonzalez and restrained Sanchez until he arrived with his laptop computer, running the Automatic Brazilian Justice Service Pack (ABJSP) of the Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system. The ABJSP is part of the default installation.
Opponents of the blue screen of death penalty were quick to criticize Gonzalez's actions. "The blue screen of death penalty is never justified," explained Mary Madalyn Murray Coughlin O'Laughlin, a representative of the National Council of Churches. "What sort of message do we send when we carry out a penalty like this? It puts us in the same boat with countries like China, Iran, and Afghanistan. It's brutal, it's barbaric, and it's an idea that is about a thousand years too old."
Famous programmer Linus Torvalds agreed with Coughlin O'Laughlin. "I'm from Finland," explained Torvalds, "and I can tell you that I have never, ever seen a blue screen of death penalty carried out. Ever. It's just something that doesn't happen in a sufficiently evolved society."
Ed Muth, newly-appointed Brazilian Minister of Justice, had a slightly different take.
"We need the blue screen of death penalty," explained Muth. "Studies have shown that it acts as a deterrent, that it gives criminals something to think about, that it stops them from committing violent crimes. Also, we cannot forget about the closure factor. While it might seem barbaric, I've had family members of murder victims come up to me and thank me for blue-screening a criminal. They'll tell me that they're finally able to get a good night's sleep, now that their long nightmare is over."
Texas governor and United States presidential candidate George W. Bush agrees. "The blue screen of death penalty remains a necessary evil," Bush explained during a campaign stopover at Berkeley. "It sends a compassionate, yet conservative message to the criminal population of the world." Over the past thirty years, Bush's home state of Texas has blue-screened more inmates than the rest of the Western world combined.
The big black guy from "The Green Mile" contributed to this report.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I'm not sure that I would not want to trust my judgement to a VB app ... couldn't they have at least written it something more robust ... like Perl?
What is with the VB bigotry? In your review of competing products, do you dismiss out of hand the fact that VB is easily maintainable and readable, whereas Perl resembles abstract art drawn from the inner, inarticulate recesses of the mind that coded it?
I like VB, and I'm not alone in liking it. Lay off.
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
Give me a break. This is just a stupid story to fill space and generate a lot of banal arguments about nothing.
If the Judge wore sneakers with holes through them, it would say nothing of the judgements he made.
If the Judge drove a Fiat, it would not suggest bias or improper legal process.
If the Judge wired her decision to the clerk's office using Handspring or Linux or BeOS, it would not aid nor hinder the quality of justice.
And if the laptop in question burned up because it wasn't using a low-heat Transmeta chip, but was instead slogging away at slashdot-impoverished microsoft-laden Dell/Intel circuitry instead, the criminals would just have to wait for a handwritten slip to meet their legal fates.
(Judge, not Computer, is Interpreter of Law =anagram>
Mature projection upsetting free world.)
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