User: GreyFairer

OCL: formal specification in UML

On: Can Open Source Be Trusted?

Being a formal methods student myself, I'd like to point you to a specific feature in OO software engineering with UML, the well-known Unified Modeling Language.

It's called OCL: Object Constraint Language, and it can be used to model formal limitations on methods accessing your objects. A usefull site might be: OCL Home

This language could be fit not only to specify your goals, but also to 'prove' in a mathematical way, that your implementation is following the specification. At the Univ of Karlsrühe, the Key project is specifically aimed at developing software while always checking the specs automatically.

Maybe that is the direction that secure software should take, whether it's Open Source or not: first specify a formal "Security Constraint" in OCL and then start programming.

--Grey

GA free library

On: Genetic Algorithms Improve Combustion Engines

There is a free GA library we use at our university, it's at lancet.mit.edu/ga

--Grey

Re:A dangerous statement

On: Genetic Algorithms Improve Combustion Engines

Well, I guess if you really want to figure out the 'real' efficiency, one should only take into account the energy put into the movement of the content of the car, that is, the passengers and the eventual luggage. And then you would probably have max 6% of overall efficiency.

So let's all take busses or trains, or, why not, bikes for transport means.

--Grey

Re:Not so much as a comment as a question

On: Genetic Algorithms Improve Combustion Engines

I had a course on Industry and environment, and as an example of ecologic rules, our teacher stated that a technology designed for transport that could only put 6% of the produced energy into the movement (94% lost in heating etc.), and produce so much pollution as a car, would never be allowed by modern European ecology laws.

I'm wondering how much is this % in current cars? I guess it's still well below 50%.

--Grey