Slashdot Mirror
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."
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?"
Whoops. Time to invoke Godwin's Law.
...phil
...phil
"For a list of the ways which technology has failed to improve our quality of life, press 3."
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.
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-- 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.
Hey, at least in the 'burg we ain't throwin no bottles at no coach's heads.
Unlike them jag-offs in Philly...
:)
Finkployd
It would be interesting if it only blew up in IE.(further proof of MS not adhering to standards.)
Actually, it would be much more interesting if you went and learned XML, rather than spout off half-baked Microsoft conspiracy theories. :) I suggest the nice recommendation spec over at www.w3.org.
Your link is spitting out bad XML, most likely due to Slashdot using tools which don't grok UTF-8 encoding. If they want to use ASCII characters in the 128-255 range, like the "á" that IE's parser flags as an error, and don't have any tools which will output UTF-8 characters, then they should be using the appropriate entity in their text instead, i.e. á. Failing that, a less effective solution would be for them to specify a character encoding for their xml file, like ISO-8859-1, since their document doesn't match the default UTF-8.
Oh yeah, and if Netscape 6 allowed that xml to go through without reporting an error, then it has a broken parser.
Now see, learning isn't so hard, is it? And besides, it's so much more original around here than senseless Microsoft-bashing.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Where does Sun say this?
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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)
Expert systems generally don't replace experts but only make their work easier. A judge is fully qualified to judge the output of an expertsystem. By using it he can save time by letting the expersystem figure out all the details.
Probably the expertsystem isn't coded in VB but only the userinterface. Probably the expertsystem is a COM component used in the system. Which is exactly the reason why perl is not very suitable since A) it is a pain to code GUIs in perl B) it is a pain to use com components in perl. The only two alternatives that come to mind for creating this app are delphi and Java (though com support is not optimal).
Jilles
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.
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"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.
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"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.)
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Good point. You can even turn off those "safety" features in the VB compiler if speed is premium (remove array bounds checks, remove FP checks, ect.)
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DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
This blew me away when I first saw it: in Perl you can have a function such as selectSQL() that you can pass an optional number of values to it and it reads them in as an array!
from MSDN ParamArray Optional. Used only as the last argument in arglist to indicate that the final argument is an Optional array of Variant elements. The ParamArray keyword allows you to provide an arbitrary number of arguments. It may not be used with ByVal, ByRef, or Optional.
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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.
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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.
http://msdn.microsoft.c om/library/periodic/period00/vb7.htm
Go to section named "Language Improvements"
Check this out:
"For what seems like forever, there's been a natural tension between developers who are partial to Visual Basic and those who prefer a more "comprehensive" language like C++ or Java. More than once, I've had to defend my favorite programming language from charges that it was somehow a toy language because it lacked certain OOP features. Well, guess what? The next version of Visual Basic should finally put those complaints to rest. Microsoft plans to introduce the big three of object-oriented programming: inheritance, polymorphism, and overloading. And that's not all! Other new constructs, including structured error handling and freethreading, will be introduced to the language."
Steve Balmer's discussion on new VB:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstu dio/nextgen/keynote.asp
etc. etc. etc.
As for you statement about my experiences with VB shush, I was coding ASP over 3 years ago when you haven't even heard about it yet.
You can't handle the truth.
Visual Basic is a functional language from the very beginning with OO added on top of it.
C++ is a multidimensional successor of C. C++ is in itself a language that supports multiple paradigms, which I consider to be the crown jewel of programming world (especially the STL http://www.stlport.org/resources/ StepanovUSA.html - here is a god, kneel.)
However I don't consider C++ to be purely object oriented either, it is as I say multidimentional and supports multiple paradigms. Don't switch, I have to use all of them due to our clients' demands. VB or Java is mostly Money Oriented Programing (MOP). Actually the value of C++ is only increased because it is not completely OO. Templates allow you to write functions independent of objects and that is great. - but that was the idea from the beginning. Idea of VB was QBasic.
If you really don't think what I am telling you about VB is correct, just look at this: http://msdn.microsoft.c om/library/periodic/period00/vb7.htm
better yet look at my post #220.
You can't handle the truth.
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.
Well, I've used VB to write COM for BellMobility (bellmobility.ca) website, they use MTS and IIS4 for their invoice on line stuff, well, it's not object oriented. It's not and was never ment to be. It is a functional language, dual in nature. There will be a real object oriented version of VB coming soon.
...
...
...
They are basically ripping off Java in this case
I wouldn't be surprised if it was all Java underneath VB [Basically Java(tm)].
Still, VB is not cross platform. I don't think that after using Java anyone would want to use a language that has keywords "Function" or "Sub" and where functions do not have to declair their return types and are named with first capital letters! "Dim" and "Set" it just blows into your face, doesn't it?
Class1
Function GetCustomer()
End Function
Class2
Inherits Class1
Function GetOrders()
End Function
---
Sub CreateMyThread()
Dim b As BackGroundWork
Set t = New Thread(New ThreadStart
End Sub
> ---
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.
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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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