My (a startup with about 15 people) company is completely switching gears from seat of the pants/ad-hoc/pseudo iterative-waterfall analysis and design to completely rigorous OOA and OOD using Rational Rose with Java as the main development tool. (The previous development tool was mostly VB6/COM+.)
I was pushed in this new direction by management and new Gurus that they hired. From the begining I've had my doubts that this will result in better product that is more robust in a reasonable timeframe. I'm still on the learning curve but am starting to think this may work. All the "overhead" of the OOA and OOD process is causing us to understand the system in much deeper fashion that we would have otherwise. This will probably result in better implementation decisions on our part.
I do alot of client-side javascript programming for both IE and NetScape. I've always found IE to be MUCH easier and powerful with respect to its implementation of the DOM and what I can do with it. Now I find it is actually more secure too. Why am I using Netscape again? Maybe I don't have any good reasons left.
I agree with you that the biggest strength of SVG is its text/xml format.
The arguments against a textual format, such as XML, are usually performance overhead based. Those arguments melt away as hardware advances. That will be true here.
Regular tape erasing lends itself to recovery by tools like this because the erase process applies an almost "uniform" transform to the tape being erased.
Technology like this may provoke new erase technologies that erase and attempt to obscure the original information. One way to obscure something is to write "similar" information over it so it becomes difficult to tell what is part of what. A demonstration of this technique is the write something in pen on paper. You cannot erase this easily and if you try to darken the words with more ink, a careful eye can still find the pattern of the letters. To really "erase" the words without destroying the paper, write other letters/numbers over the original letters/numbers. If you do enough of these it becomes impossible to read the original words.
The same technique would work for digital and analog recordings. Until now however, such steps would have seemed pointless.
Could we now recover the erased portion of the watergate tapes? Sure it is analog, but that would only make the task more difficult, not impossible.
Re:Naturally occuring plutonium - Out of Africa
on
Helicopter In Space
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· Score: 1
With the pace of technological innovation, I think waiting is a very smart idea. I've seen others post the obvious point that through miniturization alone we may be able to do more in the near future with less power than we could hope to accomplish today. It would not surprise me that a better navigation approach comes to light in the near future also.
Guess its not a good time for me to take advantage of the Dish Network's free satellite dish promotion this week.
Any scientists out there have an opinion on what subscribers can expect this weekend?
Re:Naturally occuring plutonium - Out of Africa
on
Helicopter In Space
·
· Score: 1
Thanks for the reactor link. Very interesting and no, I had not read about that before. However, bear in mind...
1) 1.7 billion years ago there was little appreciable life on this planet and the nasty stuff was way underground. Titan is small and the nasty helicopter would likely spatter all over the ground. 2) Ok, supernovas and the like produce this stuff. But I don't think we are talking about sending plutonium powered toys to moons orbiting supernovas.
You better check your radiation badge before your next shift at the plant. I think your head is getting a little too hot.
The CompSci department when I was at the University of Maryland back in the mid 80's required us to use a campus built Pascal interpretter that worked exactly the same way.
As far as I know, Plutonium does not occur naturally anywhere in the universe. It is sort of man's most toxic contribution to nature.
Do we really want to put that stuff into a helicopter that is going to fly itself using the best technology available today? I think we should do that only if we want to share our hoards of plutonium with the fanciful organisms that may exist there.
Clearly good arguments can be made for, and I believe, against any patent system. It just seems to me the lesser burden to have none.
[the specific case of pharmaceutical research, I think it is very clear that the patent system has sped up the development of new, useful, drugs] That cannot be proven either.
Innovation would still happen, people would still invent/discover, courts would be less clogged. More would happen at the university level.
What is clear is that we get more of what we reward. This system rewards bureaucratic law manipulations and thats more of what we are getting
The argument that they wont do that because all the chips come from the same die is obviously invalid because they are doing something to the hardware to lock the clock. That same process can be leveraged to implement the "AMD xMHz" response.
If CPUs had a special instruction to identify their "factory speed rating" (like tires:)) then we could have utilities that check this out.
Can anyone point to a patent that makes any compelling sense to issue? I cannot think of one. The RAMBUS episode is just the latest example of what patents are really about.
Show me a patent people are cheering for and I will show you a group of cheering lawyers.
The "DISCLOSURE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED" language at the end of the email makes the following point for those that are still missing it: The concept that anyone can by law control what you or I do with information we acquire is at best ridiculous and at worst dangerous. The emperor has no clothes; but we have been conditioned to think they are there. Let's all wake up and stop being blinded by the lawyers and the folkes telling us how crazy it is not to have intellectual property laws.
Frankly if I or anyone discovers your secrets, that should be your problem, not one for the taxpayer funded courts.
I don't like it, but this is nothing like searching someones house. It is more like taking something from the garbage, which in most (all?) places is okay with the law.
What flakes off is what you are leaving behind anyways.
If the US Constitution has the phrase "and the government must always have free and clear access to wiretaps", a close look will reveal that the ink there is about 220 years newer than all the rest.
Even if I buy that the API is crap (I have no knowlege to agree or disagree with that statement), isnt there alot of game software being developed to that API? How much is being developed using the *not crap* OpenGL api?
As we all know, the better technology does not necessarily win a race. (e.g., VHS and "what is BETA?")
I can't believe implementing any API would require implementing Win32 and COM. I just don't believe that is fully thinking the problem through at all.
What's to stop a smart engineer from taking all 64MB of XBox functionality, placing the whole thing onto a PCI card and calling it a "super hardware accelerated" graphics card? Wouldn't that just be an extreme example of hardware acceleration? Shouldn't all graphics cards in the future handle on-board all the stuff XBox is going to do as a stand alone product? I would pay for one.
Slashdot Mirror
My (a startup with about 15 people) company is completely switching gears from seat of the pants/ad-hoc/pseudo iterative-waterfall analysis and design to completely rigorous OOA and OOD using Rational Rose with Java as the main development tool. (The previous development tool was mostly VB6/COM+.)
I was pushed in this new direction by management and new Gurus that they hired. From the begining I've had my doubts that this will result in better product that is more robust in a reasonable timeframe. I'm still on the learning curve but am starting to think this may work. All the "overhead" of the OOA and OOD process is causing us to understand the system in much deeper fashion that we would have otherwise. This will probably result in better implementation decisions on our part.
Where is it that I even implied JavaScript=Java?
Tivo might be better than webTV because it CAN be hacked.
I do alot of client-side javascript programming for both IE and NetScape. I've always found IE to be MUCH easier and powerful with respect to its implementation of the DOM and what I can do with it. Now I find it is actually more secure too. Why am I using Netscape again? Maybe I don't have any good reasons left.
I agree with you that the biggest strength of SVG is its text/xml format.
The arguments against a textual format, such as XML, are usually performance overhead based. Those arguments melt away as hardware advances. That will be true here.
What ever happened to VRML? Isn't that already a standard and doesn't it's functionality overlap this one?
Regular tape erasing lends itself to recovery by tools like this because the erase process applies an almost "uniform" transform to the tape being erased.
Technology like this may provoke new erase technologies that erase and attempt to obscure the original information. One way to obscure something is to write "similar" information over it so it becomes difficult to tell what is part of what.
A demonstration of this technique is the write something in pen on paper. You cannot erase this easily and if you try to darken the words with more ink, a careful eye can still find the pattern of the letters. To really "erase" the words without destroying the paper, write other letters/numbers over the original letters/numbers. If you do enough of these it becomes impossible to read the original words.
The same technique would work for digital and analog recordings. Until now however, such steps would have seemed pointless.
Could we now recover the erased portion of the watergate tapes? Sure it is analog, but that would only make the task more difficult, not impossible.
With the pace of technological innovation, I think waiting is a very smart idea. I've seen others post the obvious point that through miniturization alone we may be able to do more in the near future with less power than we could hope to accomplish today. It would not surprise me that a better navigation approach comes to light in the near future also.
What's the rush?
Guess its not a good time for me to take advantage of the Dish Network's free satellite dish promotion this week.
Any scientists out there have an opinion on what subscribers can expect this weekend?
Thanks for the reactor link. Very interesting and no, I had not read about that before. However, bear in mind...
1) 1.7 billion years ago there was little appreciable life on this planet and the nasty stuff was way underground. Titan is small and the nasty helicopter would likely spatter all over the ground.
2) Ok, supernovas and the like produce this stuff. But I don't think we are talking about sending plutonium powered toys to moons orbiting supernovas.
You better check your radiation badge before your next shift at the plant. I think your head is getting a little too hot.
The CompSci department when I was at the University of Maryland back in the mid 80's required us to use a campus built Pascal interpretter that worked exactly the same way.
As far as I know, Plutonium does not occur naturally anywhere in the universe. It is sort of man's most toxic contribution to nature.
Do we really want to put that stuff into a helicopter that is going to fly itself using the best technology available today? I think we should do that only if we want to share our hoards of plutonium with the fanciful organisms that may exist there.
A better idea is to wait for a better idea.
I've never used Ebay so I don't know if the registration process already includes these things. If it doesn't IT SHOULD:
1. Credit card number
2. Authorization for credit check
Why? With this information EBay can verify the identity of the person. If it is someone they do not want, they can keep em out.
I'd prefer companies implement necessary security policies before reaching for my tax dollars.
Clearly good arguments can be made for, and I believe, against any patent system. It just seems to me the lesser burden to have none.
[the specific case of pharmaceutical research, I think it is very clear that the patent system has sped up the development of new, useful, drugs]
That cannot be proven either.
Innovation would still happen, people would still invent/discover, courts would be less clogged. More would happen at the university level.
What is clear is that we get more of what we reward. This system rewards bureaucratic law manipulations and thats more of what we are getting
There are tons of these, actually.
I have to disagree.
Answer this question: Would any of these wonderful things not have been developed if they could not be patented?
The argument that they wont do that because all the chips come from the same die is obviously invalid because they are doing something to the hardware to lock the clock. That same process can be leveraged to implement the "AMD xMHz" response.
:)) then we could have utilities that check this out.
If CPUs had a special instruction to identify their "factory speed rating" (like tires
Can anyone point to a patent that makes any compelling sense to issue? I cannot think of one. The RAMBUS episode is just the latest example of what patents are really about.
Show me a patent people are cheering for and I will show you a group of cheering lawyers.
You know how those rubber bands snap if you overwind them and how it hurts your fingers? Wonder what a 100lb rubber band would do to your fingers.
The "DISCLOSURE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED" language at the end of the email makes the following point for those that are still missing it:
The concept that anyone can by law control what you or I do with information we acquire is at best ridiculous and at worst dangerous. The emperor has no clothes; but we have been conditioned to think they are there. Let's all wake up and stop being blinded by the lawyers and the folkes telling us how crazy it is not to have intellectual property laws.
Frankly if I or anyone discovers your secrets, that should be your problem, not one for the taxpayer funded courts.
I don't like it, but this is nothing like searching someones house. It is more like taking something from the garbage, which in most (all?) places is okay with the law.
What flakes off is what you are leaving behind anyways.
Maybe this requires new laws to protect privacy?
Excactly.
If the US Constitution has the phrase "and the government must always have free and clear access to wiretaps", a close look will reveal that the ink there is about 220 years newer than all the rest.
Even if I buy that the API is crap (I have no knowlege to agree or disagree with that statement), isnt there alot of game software being developed to that API? How much is being developed using the *not crap* OpenGL api?
As we all know, the better technology does not necessarily win a race. (e.g., VHS and "what is BETA?")
I can't believe implementing any API would require implementing Win32 and COM. I just don't believe that is fully thinking the problem through at all.
What's to stop a smart engineer from taking all 64MB of XBox functionality, placing the whole thing onto a PCI card and calling it a "super hardware accelerated" graphics card? Wouldn't that just be an extreme example of hardware acceleration? Shouldn't all graphics cards in the future handle on-board all the stuff XBox is going to do as a stand alone product? I would pay for one.