Your question is about Formal Methods. This field in computer science seems more popular in Europe than in the US theese days.
Two good articles you should read :
J. A. Hall, "Seven myths of formal methods", IEEE Software 7,5 (Sept. 1990), 11-19. ( quoted here)
J. P. Bowen & M. G. Hinchey, "Seven more myths of formal methods", IEEE Software 12,4 (July 1995), 34-41. ( quoted here)
If your question was about their use in practical projects in industry, I've heard recently of teams doing serious work for Airbus (safety-critical embedded software using either B or Esterel) or for Gemplus (entirely proven JVM for javacards using B).
Patents originated in England with the Statute of Monopolies 1693 under King James I of England.
...while the first USian patent statute was passed on April 5, 1790, by the Congress of the twelve United States and signed into law on April 10 by the President.
But the concept of patent appeared about 500 B.C. in the Greek colony of Sybaris. The Sybarites, who enjoyed living in luxury, made a law that if any confectioner or cook should invent any peculiar and excellent dish, no other artist was allowed to make this dish for one year. He who invented it was entitled to all the profit to be derived from the manufacture of it for that time.
On a side note, the earliest English letter patent known is dated April 3, 1449. It was granted to John of Utynam for his art of making colored glass.
The European Commission has proposed to override the current clear and uniform European patentability rules (Art 52 EPC: "mathematical methods, schemes and rules for mental activity, methods of doing business and programs for computers are not patentable inventions") and replace them by a confusing set of nationally implementable rules which authorise patenting of algorithms and business methods, as it has been practised at the European Patent Office (EPO), openly since 1998 and more or less covertly since 1986.
The "European Parliament committee" cited in the article is the European Parliament's Commission on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market (JURI). Some members of this comittee submitted amendments to the European Commission's software patent directive proposal. While some Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are asking to bring the directive in line with Art 52 EPC so as to clearly restate that programs for computers are not patentable inventions, another group of MEPs is endorsing the EPO's recent practice of unlimited patentability, shrouded in more or less euphemistic wordings.
What happened Tuesday is the vote of some pro-software-patenting amendements by the JURI. Theese amendments will now be presented to the plenary of the European Perliament for decision during the first week of either july or september.
It's definitely VERY BAD news.
This site summarizes the situation and the efforts from all around Europe to fight software patenting.
Ooops ! Previous post incomplete. this one should be ok.
Please stop equating Vivendi (2001 revenues : $60 billions) with its game publishing departement (2001 revenues : $ 500 millions). The total worldwide market for computer and console games was $16 billions in 2001.
Vivendi is too big a fish for Microsoft (2001 revenus : $25 billions).
Don't forget Vivendi is also the global leader of environnemental services with Vivendi Water (water), Onyx (waste management), Dalkia (energy) and Connex (transport). This alone accounts for $30 billions annual revenues.
Please stop equating Vivendi (2001 revenues : $60 billions) with its game publishing departement (2001 revenues :
Vivendi is too big a fish for Microsoft (2001 revenus : $25 billions).
Don't forget Vivendi is also the global leader of environnemental services with Vivendi Water (water), Onyx (waste management), Dalkia (energy) and Connex (transport). This alone accounts for $30 billions annual revenues.
I would NOT advise anyone to take ephedrine as I would not advise anyone to take amphetamines
or cocain : the side effects, risks of addiction and risk of overdose are too high in both case.
First I have to say that ultra-long coding sessions are NOT the best way to meet schedule.
That said, you sometimes have to do it. In that case, the following substances may be of some help to be efficient past 12 hours of coding:
Coffee (of course)
Glucoronamide (in Guronsan(R) in association with caffeine and Vit.C)
Note : in some countries, modafinil and adrafinil are only delivered on medical prescription (indication: narcolepsy).
My longest coding session using only coffee was +/- 24 hours. With Adrafinil I did 72h+. My advice : avoid coding more than 48h in a row : after 48h, the number of bugs seems to increase exponentially even if you feel perfectly awake.
HTH
Re:Best way to stop Palladium
on
Stopping Palladium?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't understand why you think the end user will be annoyed by palladiun.
Good question, simple answer : fair use. In order to be effective, Palladium has to deny fair use.
Here is a list of things any end user can do now which should become impossible with palladium-enabled PCs and media:
- copy a cd to a tape in order to listen to it in his car
- use legally licenced music/movie/software after a processor upgrade
- lend a cd/dvd to a friend
- play a home-made song/movie
- burn backups
- and so on
Repeat after me : We will not win a lobbying/PR war. period.
So let them (Microsoft, Intel, AMD, RIAA, MPAA) try to please Hollywood : if Joe User has a true alternative to the annoyances of Palladium, he will switch in no time.
What about:
- GNU/Linux instead of Palladium Windows
- A PowerPC G4 based PC instead of a Palladium Intel/AMD based one
- ogg/mp3 and divx instead of Palladium cds and dvds
- P2P instead of Palladium Amazon
Yes, Joe User prefers Windows/Intel/DVD/Amazon for now. But the choice will be very different when he will be annoyed by palladium every time he wants to listen to music or watch a movie.
Just be patient : they're working for us. And in the meantime, you can help to improve the alternative (hint, hint.)
Obligatory disclaimer : I'm not advocating the use of P2P as a means of avoiding buying music/movies. I'm just saying that if Hollywood impose unfair licencing terms, Joe User will switch to P2P, be it legal or not.
You need a fundamentaly different method of IP addressing, new routing protocols, and methods for interacting with the current net as it exists.
Such a routing protocol exists : the Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing algorithm is a routing protocol designed for ad hoc mobile networks. AODV is capable of both unicast and multicast routing.
There are several free (speech and beer) implementations for intel or ARM (I use this one)
Some hotspots are already using AODV in Europe (AFAIK in Bruxelles and Paris).
I installed Null 7.3.94 beta three weeks ago.
For the first time ever, I thought :
Maybe the time has come for my old mum or my non-geek friends to switch to linux!
The major reasons were:
flawless hardware detection and config (including the wheel of the mouse)
out-of-the-box anti-aliasing (it IS important for newcomers)
and above all the Gnome/KDE integration with a smooth clean unified theme
Don't forget it's only a default setup. If you're enough of a geek to not like it (I am), you should be able to change it in less than 5 mn.
On a side note, that version is not stable enough to be really usable yet (two X-windows crashes in the last three days). You should wait the real 7.4 to give it to aunt Tillie.
...when men were men and were happy to hack 15 hours a day and weekend?
If you really enjoy what you're doing, you're probably already working 15 hours a day and weekend.
If you don't enjoy it, just quit and do something else.
But please stop whining !
A rainbow apple bitten into : the reference to Alan Turing seems obvious.
(as you probably know it, Alan Turing committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide).
The article doesn't say. What was the previous record?
The same french tokamak (Tore Supra) had set the previous record of 120 seconds in 1996. The figures on this page (in french) shows that the reactor produced 2MW during most of that 1996 experiment. That is 2MW of *excess* power for such a small experimental reactor!!!
import/export from/to Rational Rose using XMI are not (yet) totally working but a third party tool exists to do the translation (can't recall the name)
SVG output (!)
you can add all the plugins you want/need on top of the core app (MOF metamodel and GEF graphical framework)
commercial support provided by Gentleware (if you've got a PHB to convince)
All in all a very cool app if you need something like Rational Rose. BUT I'm not aware of any support of Entity/Relationship diagramming or sql generation in either of those apps.
In the 15th century, such composers such as Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel became huge as composers, the musical "rock stars" of the time and their names are still well known. However, how many of you can think of an author from the 1600's?
Check your facts :
1605 Cervantès : Don Quijote de la Mancha
1616 Death of Shakespeare
1631 Calderón: La Vida es Sueño
1637 Descartes : Discours de la Méthode
1637 Corneille : Le Cid
1667 Milton : Paradise Lost
1667 Racine : Andromaque
1668 La Fontaine : Fables
1687 Newton : Principia mathematica
These authors had a larger audience than Bach, Vivaldi or Haendel. For example in the middle of the 14th century, there was 120 bookshops for 30 000 inhabitants in the french city of Lyon.
But you may be right if you compare the audience of theese autors to the number of people who where listening popular music of that time (most of which was disdained by history and is now lost.)
"...the role of the lone inventor is over"
Tell that to Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall, Bram Moolenaar, etc etc...
What would Linus have done without standing on the shoulders of the original inventors of UNIX (a list would be too long) and the GNU project ?
What would Larry have done without standing on the shoulders of Kernighan and Ritchie (for C), Stephen Bourne (for bourne shell) and Bill Joy (for C shell) ?
What would Bram have done without standing on the shoulders of Bill Joy (again, for original vi) ?
Software is the most proeminent example of a field where invention results of an incremental and collaborative process. There are brilliant individuals, but they are definitely not "lone inventors" - letting aside the fact that Kernighan, Ritchie, Bourne and Joy were all working in the Bell Labs...;-)
Also, providers don't "switch to DOCSIS". DOCSIS modems will do squat unless there's a DOCSIS compliant cable network for them to get their info from.
Taht's why when a provider switch his network from CDMA to DOCSIS, they have to replace the CDMA cables-modems of their clients by DOCSIS cables-modem (they have done it in some european cities e.g. Paris some months ago).
Incidentally, it's true that Surfboards will bring up the ethernet interface eventually, [...] only after cable side negotiation has failed.
That's why you have to temporarily unplug the cable before trying to fool the cable-modem.
but only for the limited purposes of acting as a DHCP server on a LAN,
That's basically untrue : be it a on purpose or a design flaw, the Motorola SurfBoard 4100 do try a negotiation for obtaining a config file on the ethernet side if the cable side negotiation has failed.
The people who wrote the docsis spec [cablemodem.com] aren't idiots. Cable modems will not look on the ethernet side for a TFTP server.
The people who wrote the docsis spec aren't idiots, but the people who implemented it in some cable-modems are : some motorola cable-modems are looking on both sides (cable and ethernet) for a TFTP server. Yes it's stupid... but they do.
I tried it 6 month ago (when my provider switched to DOCSIS), with great success.
Nethertheless I don't do it anymore : capped cable is better than no cable at all...
222. For example, the component
needed just to run a particular sound card depends upon a great many other components of Windows, in some cases including all of the components involved in providing Web browsing functionality. Certain of these interdependencies may seem counterintuitive, but they reflect basic engineering efficiencies, and they make it extremely difficult to create a version of Windows from which various components could be removed without degrading the rest of the operating system. Source : Microsoft Legal News (emphasis mine)
The person whose cage we should be rattling is in California. Dianne Feinstein.
That's damn right. From 1997 to 2002, she raised $22,750 from Disney (4th contributor) and $18,100 from AOLTW (7th contributor). I think GeekPAC can raise much more than that. And throwing that money on his opponent would be a good complement to grassroot actions (grin).
I don't like senators to be for sale, but so it is. Then why not just buy them ?
disclaimer: I sent my check to GeekPAC two days ago, and I'm not even an american citizen. So what are you waiting for ?
For example, the apps are rough around the edges and source code for them doesn't seem to be available.
OpenZaurus
is a community version of the root filesystem / romimage for the Sharp Zaurus SL-5000d PDA (the developper version you could buy at LinuxWorld or JavaOne prior to the official launch of the Zaurus). The current release is beta 2.6 and it is fairly useable. A SL-5500 version will probably be released soon (there are very few hardware differences).
On a side note, you should have a look on the Zaurus-general mailing list archive for all your questions about this fabulous PDA.
Disclaimer : I'm probably biased as I bought one at LinuxWorld, and I'm in loooove with it.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Your question is about Formal Methods. This field in computer science seems more popular in Europe than in the US theese days.
Two good articles you should read :
If your question was about their use in practical projects in industry, I've heard recently of teams doing serious work for Airbus (safety-critical embedded software using either B or Esterel) or for Gemplus (entirely proven JVM for javacards using B).
But the concept of patent appeared about 500 B.C. in the Greek colony of Sybaris. The Sybarites, who enjoyed living in luxury, made a law that if any confectioner or cook should invent any peculiar and excellent dish, no other artist was allowed to make this dish for one year. He who invented it was entitled to all the profit to be derived from the manufacture of it for that time.
On a side note, the earliest English letter patent known is dated April 3, 1449. It was granted to John of Utynam for his art of making colored glass.
The European Commission has proposed to override the current clear and uniform European patentability rules (Art 52 EPC: "mathematical methods, schemes and rules for mental activity, methods of doing business and programs for computers are not patentable inventions") and replace them by a confusing set of nationally implementable rules which authorise patenting of algorithms and business methods, as it has been practised at the European Patent Office (EPO), openly since 1998 and more or less covertly since 1986.
The "European Parliament committee" cited in the article is the European Parliament's Commission on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market (JURI). Some members of this comittee submitted amendments to the European Commission's software patent directive proposal. While some Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are asking to bring the directive in line with Art 52 EPC so as to clearly restate that programs for computers are not patentable inventions, another group of MEPs is endorsing the EPO's recent practice of unlimited patentability, shrouded in more or less euphemistic wordings.
What happened Tuesday is the vote of some pro-software-patenting amendements by the JURI. Theese amendments will now be presented to the plenary of the European Perliament for decision during the first week of either july or september.
It's definitely VERY BAD news.
This site summarizes the situation and the efforts from all around Europe to fight software patenting.
Just one more link : a direct link to the Nantero press release (pdf).
Ooops ! Previous post incomplete. this one should be ok.
Please stop equating Vivendi (2001 revenues : $60 billions) with its game publishing departement (2001 revenues : $ 500 millions). The total worldwide market for computer and console games was $16 billions in 2001.
Vivendi is too big a fish for Microsoft (2001 revenus : $25 billions).
Don't forget Vivendi is also the global leader of environnemental services with Vivendi Water (water), Onyx (waste management), Dalkia (energy) and Connex (transport). This alone accounts for $30 billions annual revenues.
Please stop equating Vivendi (2001 revenues : $60 billions) with its game publishing departement (2001 revenues : Vivendi is too big a fish for Microsoft (2001 revenus : $25 billions).
Don't forget Vivendi is also the global leader of environnemental services with Vivendi Water (water), Onyx (waste management), Dalkia (energy) and Connex (transport). This alone accounts for $30 billions annual revenues.
I would NOT advise anyone to take ephedrine as I would not advise anyone to take amphetamines or cocain : the side effects, risks of addiction and risk of overdose are too high in both case.
First I have to say that ultra-long coding sessions are NOT the best way to meet schedule.
That said, you sometimes have to do it. In that case, the following substances may be of some help to be efficient past 12 hours of coding
- Coffee (of course)
- Glucoronamide (in Guronsan(R) in association with caffeine and Vit.C)
- Adrafinil or Modafinil (in Provigil(R), Olmifon(R) or Modiolal(R))
Note : in some countries, modafinil and adrafinil are only delivered on medical prescription (indication: narcolepsy).My longest coding session using only coffee was +/- 24 hours. With Adrafinil I did 72h+.
My advice : avoid coding more than 48h in a row : after 48h, the number of bugs seems to increase exponentially even if you feel perfectly awake.
HTH
Good question, simple answer : fair use. In order to be effective, Palladium has to deny fair use.
Here is a list of things any end user can do now which should become impossible with palladium-enabled PCs and media
- copy a cd to a tape in order to listen to it in his car
- use legally licenced music/movie/software after a processor upgrade
- lend a cd/dvd to a friend
- play a home-made song/movie
- burn backups
- and so on
Repeat after me : We will not win a lobbying/PR war. period.
So let them (Microsoft, Intel, AMD, RIAA, MPAA) try to please Hollywood : if Joe User has a true alternative to the annoyances of Palladium, he will switch in no time.
What about
- GNU/Linux instead of Palladium Windows
- A PowerPC G4 based PC instead of a Palladium Intel/AMD based one
- ogg/mp3 and divx instead of Palladium cds and dvds
- P2P instead of Palladium Amazon
Yes, Joe User prefers Windows/Intel/DVD/Amazon for now. But the choice will be very different when he will be annoyed by palladium every time he wants to listen to music or watch a movie.
Just be patient : they're working for us. And in the meantime, you can help to improve the alternative (hint, hint.)
Obligatory disclaimer : I'm not advocating the use of P2P as a means of avoiding buying music/movies. I'm just saying that if Hollywood impose unfair licencing terms, Joe User will switch to P2P, be it legal or not.
Such a routing protocol exists : the Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing algorithm is a routing protocol designed for ad hoc mobile networks. AODV is capable of both unicast and multicast routing.
There are several free (speech and beer) implementations for intel or ARM (I use this one)
Some hotspots are already using AODV in Europe (AFAIK in Bruxelles and Paris).
I installed Null 7.3.94 beta three weeks ago. For the first time ever, I thought : The major reasons were
- flawless hardware detection and config (including the wheel of the mouse)
- out-of-the-box anti-aliasing (it IS important for newcomers)
- and above all the Gnome/KDE integration with a smooth clean unified theme
Don't forget it's only a default setup. If you're enough of a geek to not like it (I am), you should be able to change it in less than 5 mn.On a side note, that version is not stable enough to be really usable yet (two X-windows crashes in the last three days). You should wait the real 7.4 to give it to aunt Tillie.
...when men were men and were happy to hack 15 hours a day and weekend?
If you really enjoy what you're doing, you're probably already working 15 hours a day and weekend.
If you don't enjoy it, just quit and do something else.
But please stop whining !
here :
http://voynich.no-ip.com/folios/
A rainbow apple bitten into : the reference to Alan Turing seems obvious.
(as you probably know it, Alan Turing committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide).
The same french tokamak (Tore Supra) had set the previous record of 120 seconds in 1996.
The figures on this page (in french) shows that the reactor produced 2MW during most of that 1996 experiment. That is 2MW of *excess* power for such a small experimental reactor!!!
- 100% java
- BSD licence
- only a few UML v1.3 features not (yet) supported
- import/export from/to Rational Rose using XMI are not (yet) totally working but a third party tool exists to do the translation (can't recall the name)
- SVG output (!)
- you can add all the plugins you want/need on top of the core app (MOF metamodel and GEF graphical framework)
- commercial support provided by Gentleware (if you've got a PHB to convince)
All in all a very cool app if you need something like Rational Rose.BUT I'm not aware of any support of Entity/Relationship diagramming or sql generation in either of those apps.
1605 Cervantès : Don Quijote de la Mancha
1616 Death of Shakespeare
1631 Calderón: La Vida es Sueño
1637 Descartes : Discours de la Méthode
1637 Corneille : Le Cid
1667 Milton : Paradise Lost
1667 Racine : Andromaque
1668 La Fontaine : Fables
1687 Newton : Principia mathematica
These authors had a larger audience than Bach, Vivaldi or Haendel. For example in the middle of the 14th century, there was 120 bookshops for 30 000 inhabitants in the french city of Lyon.
But you may be right if you compare the audience of theese autors to the number of people who where listening popular music of that time (most of which was disdained by history and is now lost.)
What would Larry have done without standing on the shoulders of Kernighan and Ritchie (for C), Stephen Bourne (for bourne shell) and Bill Joy (for C shell) ?
What would Bram have done without standing on the shoulders of Bill Joy (again, for original vi) ?
Software is the most proeminent example of a field where invention results of an incremental and collaborative process. There are brilliant individuals, but they are definitely not "lone inventors" - letting aside the fact that Kernighan, Ritchie, Bourne and Joy were all working in the Bell Labs...
From the list of signatories to the brief :
George A. Akerlof
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, 2001
Kenneth J. Arrow
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, 1972
James M. Buchanan
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, 1986
Ronald H. Coase
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, 1991
Milton Friedman
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, 1976
Impressing!!!
I tried it 6 month ago (when my provider switched to DOCSIS), with great success.
Nethertheless I don't do it anymore : capped cable is better than no cable at all...
That's damn right. From 1997 to 2002, she raised $22,750 from Disney (4th contributor) and $18,100 from AOLTW (7th contributor). I think GeekPAC can raise much more than that. And throwing that money on his opponent would be a good complement to grassroot actions (grin). I don't like senators to be for sale, but so it is. Then why not just buy them ?
disclaimer: I sent my check to GeekPAC two days ago, and I'm not even an american citizen. So what are you waiting for ?
On a side note, you should have a look on the Zaurus-general mailing list archive for all your questions about this fabulous PDA.
Disclaimer : I'm probably biased as I bought one at LinuxWorld, and I'm in loooove with it.