Does anyone find the use of formal methods any practical use ?
I studied them at uni, and found them dreadful things to use at the time. The main benefit to using them seemed to be that they took about 5 mins per line of source code - anything you do that makes you spend that amount of time looking at your code is going to help you find problems. But I might have been biased, because I wasn't an experienced programmer back then.
I can't agree with your statement that there are plenty of commercial services that do the same job better, and cheaper. This is just your personal opinion. My personal opinion is that there are NO commercial services that do the same job better.
Two channels with several hours a week of watchable TV is much preferable to 40 channels of unwatchable crap.
PS: The Perfect Day advert was a little curious - did the BBC realise it's actually about heroin addition ?
"...countries like Somalia and Afghanistan, that harbor terrorists, and going down. One after another, like dominos, until we have accomplished our task"
I shouldn't really rise to this, but here goes....
Taking down whole countries now are we ? How many innocent people will this kill ? How many people will become sworn enemies of the USA as a result ? How many of these will want to take direct action to avenge the deaths of their innocent loved ones ? How many more innocent Americans will die as a result ?
Just getting angry and shouting your mouth off might make you feel good, but it isn't going to help anyone.
Yes, the US should go after Bin Laden and co (if they're sure they were responsible for Sept11), but going after people who just happen to live in the same country as terrorists is not sensible.
After all, you might be living in the same country as someone who's causing terrorism with Anthrax.
I do hope this doesn't appear "clueless" or "knee-jerk" in response to your reasoned post.
Re:I'd have a hard time taking this book seriously
on
God's Debris
·
· Score: 2
From dictionary.com:
Satire:
1a) A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.
b) The branch of literature constituting such works. See Synonyms at caricature.
2) Irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity.
I don't agree with your point about removing virtual memory from the operating system, but I am surprised that more people using Linux in a server role just don't buy enough RAM to ensure that the minimum amount of swap is actually required.
Desktop use is a different matter - many people who use Linux on the desktop don't have a lot of money to spend on extra hardware (including RAM), and Linux should be able to run decently on as wide a range of hardware as possible (including cheap, old machines).
But for server use, if you can afford the price differential of SCSI over IDE (which you should, for any server supporting any serious load) you should also be able to afford enough RAM to deal with most loading situations.
REBOL might be fantastic for all I know. But when I hear some-one say that something "was designed from a meta-circular view of language semantics" that sounds like the perfect description of bullshit to me.
Agree with the Code Free Software comment. - find an itch, then find a new way to scratch it (i.e. learn a new language/technique/whatever).
However, project design is NOT management. It is very definitely a technical role, and should be something most senior programmers see as part of their job. Even one-(wo)man projects need some design effort.
While I'm very happy for Dmitri Sklyarov, it's rather a sad indictment on the judicial system that having the one of the best lawyers seems to matter so much.
Surely any competent lawyer should be sufficient to point out the facts of the case, and allow a reasonably impartial judge and jury to judge the case accordingly.
Sadly, this doesn't appear to be the case.
And no, this isn't intended just to be an attack on the US justice system. I'm sure other countries are as bad (even if some of our laws aren't as bad in this regard - at least, not yet).
"As the technology is mired in classified work and patents....."
Odd that a process designed to keep something secret (classifying it) should be combined with a process designed to make something public knowledge (patenting it).
"The premium that the rich people pay help companies charge less for the lower-line products that poor people buy."
Really?
So it's got nothing to do with the fact that people who buy less-expensive cars are often looking for good value-for-money and competition (remember that ?) amongst car manufacturers mean they have to keep prices low if they want to sell cars.
So why do companies sell less-expensive cars at all if they don't make money out of it ? Please, don't make out that by driving a Merc you're doing poorer people a favour.
Interesting to note that the operating system which is "a long way from cracking the desktop market" is used as a client workstation by two-thirds of the people who use it.
Several months ago, I posted comments here asking people to help make their views known to the UK patent office, which was running a consultation exercise.
I remember replies to that comment which basically said "Don't bother, it's all about money, you're wasting your time" - and these were modded up quite highly.
Well the war may not be over, but a battle has been won. Perhaps if a few more of the doom-spreaders got off their a[rs]ses and did something (even ten minutes effort from the very seat you're sitting in now) perhaps laws like the DMCA and UCITA in the US would not have been passed (this comment is, of course, addressed to those Americans who don't support those laws).
Companies are going to put themselves at a serious disadvantage by doing this. There are too many bad techies in this industry, and too few really good ones.
Employees happy to sign agreements of this nature are likely to:
a) have nothing worth declaring - either they don't have much experience or they don't hack for fun - treating their techie job strictly as a 9-to-5;
b) lie, or hide the truth - ideal people to have around if a project starts going wrong;
c) be in real need of a job - let's face it, many people are, and many have families, etc, to support - and unable to get one anywhere else.
The very sort of people they want to attract are going to be the first people to be put off by a contract like this.
At the end of the day, companies who do this are going to lose their competitive advantage to those which don't - companies more likely to get the best employees.
Do these companies really know what they're doing with clauses like these, or do they just consider them part of a "standard" contract ?
Slashdot Mirror
Does anyone find the use of formal methods any practical use ?
I studied them at uni, and found them dreadful things to use at the time. The main benefit to using them seemed to be that they took about 5 mins per line of source code - anything you do that makes you spend that amount of time looking at your code is going to help you find problems. But I might have been biased, because I wasn't an experienced programmer back then.
Does anyone have any different opinions on this ?
.....betweeen a Microsoft Product and a Virus/Trojan ?
The EULA.
Or something like that.
I can't agree with your statement that there are plenty of commercial services that do the same job better, and cheaper. This is just your personal opinion. My personal opinion is that there are NO commercial services that do the same job better.
Two channels with several hours a week of watchable TV is much preferable to 40 channels of unwatchable crap.
PS: The Perfect Day advert was a little curious - did the BBC realise it's actually about heroin addition ?
If he did it from /. did he lose all his comments too ?
I shouldn't really rise to this, but here goes....
Taking down whole countries now are we ? How many innocent people will this kill ? How many people will become sworn enemies of the USA as a result ? How many of these will want to take direct action to avenge the deaths of their innocent loved ones ? How many more innocent Americans will die as a result ?
Just getting angry and shouting your mouth off might make you feel good, but it isn't going to help anyone.
Yes, the US should go after Bin Laden and co (if they're sure they were responsible for Sept11), but going after people who just happen to live in the same country as terrorists is not sensible.
After all, you might be living in the same country as someone who's causing terrorism with Anthrax.
I do hope this doesn't appear "clueless" or "knee-jerk" in response to your reasoned post.
Satire: 1a) A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.
b) The branch of literature constituting such works. See Synonyms at caricature.
2) Irony, sarcasm, or caustic wit used to attack or expose folly, vice, or stupidity.
Nothing there that says satire can't be subtle.
Unless, of course, "random bugfix" refers to correcting the kernel's generation of random numbers.
Desktop use is a different matter - many people who use Linux on the desktop don't have a lot of money to spend on extra hardware (including RAM), and Linux should be able to run decently on as wide a range of hardware as possible (including cheap, old machines).
But for server use, if you can afford the price differential of SCSI over IDE (which you should, for any server supporting any serious load) you should also be able to afford enough RAM to deal with most loading situations.
REBOL might be fantastic for all I know. But when I hear some-one say that something "was designed from a meta-circular view of language semantics" that sounds like the perfect description of bullshit to me.
Agree with the Code Free Software comment. - find an itch, then find a new way to scratch it (i.e. learn a new language/technique/whatever).
However, project design is NOT management. It is very definitely a technical role, and should be something most senior programmers see as part of their job. Even one-(wo)man projects need some design effort.
While I'm very happy for Dmitri Sklyarov, it's rather a sad indictment on the judicial system that having the one of the best lawyers seems to matter so much.
Surely any competent lawyer should be sufficient to point out the facts of the case, and allow a reasonably impartial judge and jury to judge the case accordingly.
Sadly, this doesn't appear to be the case.
And no, this isn't intended just to be an attack on the US justice system. I'm sure other countries are as bad (even if some of our laws aren't as bad in this regard - at least, not yet).
Odd that a process designed to keep something secret (classifying it) should be combined with a process designed to make something public knowledge (patenting it).
Really?
So it's got nothing to do with the fact that people who buy less-expensive cars are often looking for good value-for-money and competition (remember that ?) amongst car manufacturers mean they have to keep prices low if they want to sell cars.
So why do companies sell less-expensive cars at all if they don't make money out of it ? Please, don't make out that by driving a Merc you're doing poorer people a favour.
"...that could be used to drop bombs on any Earthly target within 90 minutes of takeoff."
Better enjoy that illegally-downloaded MP3 while you can.....coz you ain't got long.
Oh yeah, silly me.....
So that's why DVD's cost about 50% more in the UK than they do in the States.
So tell me again, who's paying ?
Interesting to note that the operating system which is "a long way from cracking the desktop market" is used as a client workstation by two-thirds of the people who use it.
Monte on Python
Oh please, let me be the first to p*ss on a circuitboard wired up to the mains.
PS: Believe it or not, Siemens really does have a Staines office (Siemens Building Technology). If only Wang had an office in Cologne.
Several months ago, I posted comments here asking people to help make their views known to the UK patent office, which was running a consultation exercise.
I remember replies to that comment which basically said "Don't bother, it's all about money, you're wasting your time" - and these were modded up quite highly.
Well the war may not be over, but a battle has been won. Perhaps if a few more of the doom-spreaders got off their a[rs]ses and did something (even ten minutes effort from the very seat you're sitting in now) perhaps laws like the DMCA and UCITA in the US would not have been passed (this comment is, of course, addressed to those Americans who don't support those laws).
"...some of the servers are located overseas ... it will be more difficult to enforce compliance with a shutdown request".
Too damn right it will. Especially if no national laws are being broken in some of those countries.
So they'll have to make do with threats instead.
Companies are going to put themselves at a serious disadvantage by doing this. There are too many bad techies in this industry, and too few really good ones.
Employees happy to sign agreements of this nature are likely to:
a) have nothing worth declaring - either they don't have much experience or they don't hack for fun - treating their techie job strictly as a 9-to-5;
b) lie, or hide the truth - ideal people to have around if a project starts going wrong;
c) be in real need of a job - let's face it, many people are, and many have families, etc, to support - and unable to get one anywhere else.
The very sort of people they want to attract are going to be the first people to be put off by a contract like this.
At the end of the day, companies who do this are going to lose their competitive advantage to those which don't - companies more likely to get the best employees.
Do these companies really know what they're doing with clauses like these, or do they just consider them part of a "standard" contract ?
I should point out that the URL above refers to the current Ximian Gnome, not 1.4Beta1.
Ximian Gnome is available for Mandrake from (for example) http://spidermonkey.ximian.com/distributions/Mandr ake-7/ (as well as via the Ximian installer) and this includes 7.2-specific versions of some packages.