Its interesting that Booch talks about an 'executable, testable UML 2.0', given the history of his own methodology. Prior to UML, the Booch, Rumbaugh, and Jacobsen advocated design by elaboration. This meant you continually add artifacts to your design and code until you get to a running system. The 'tools' did nothing but book-keeping for you. They unified their approaches into the UML.
Standing on the other side was the Shlaer-Mellor method, which advocated design by translation (also called recursive design). In this methodology, you diagram different 'domains' and write code generators to eventually produce executable code directly from the model. CASE tools provide assistance in actually producing software (now there's a novel idea).
UML put a lot more emphasis in 'round tripping' in CASE tools, because you edited artifacts that were derived 'in your head' and often failed to match the original model (would you consider editing java bytecode, or asm files?), culminating in the excellent TogetherJ. In Shlaer-Mellor round-tripping didn't matter - you worked on the model and the translators, never on the end code directly (you modify the translator to alter generated code).
I remember back in the day, all the Booch advocates denigrating Shlaer-Mellor, saying it would never work, but here we are, with Booch telling us he's doing executable UML...ah well, at least the methodology wars are over - looks like the tool & book vendors won;)
You do realize they have running code for (for example) an email server (actually a proxy) which uses these principals? NB this was based on proxying sendmail, so they didn't "re-architect/redesign whole systems from ground up". This isn't the only work they've done either.
As for 'will it be worth it', if you'd read the article you'd find their economic justifications. This has a good explanation of the figures. Note in particular that a large proportion of the failure they are concerned about is operator error, hence why they emphasise system rollback as a recovery technique, as opposed to software robustness.
I just got moz-exchange LDAP access to our server working. Dunno if its write access, but generally its the company address book we share, not personal address books.
I downloaded and started up the Softerra LDAP browser, typed in the name of my server and asked it to search for base DNs (I assume this is what the 'find' button is for in the moz setup that is never enabled). I used my normal login name and password for the domain as the User DN and password (no 'DOMAIN\User' nonsense), and took the default for everything else. Bingo! A nice listing of our directory.
Taking this across to Mozilla (1.4b), I used the base DN that softerra had discovered and left the bind DN blank. In Preferences...Adressing I told it to use this LDAP server to complete addresses, and turned off my local addressbook, for testing. I started to compose a mail and was prompted for a password. I typed my password, and hey presto a list of names appeared.
I know this isn't quite what the original poster was asking, but google comes up with lots of unanswered posts asking 'how do I connect my moz addressbook to exchange' when I've searched on this in the past, and this solution actually works.
Er, oh no it isn't. The Register article mentions User Mode Linux, and the Slashdot article mistakenly links to the Unified/Modelling/ Language. The latter has bugger all to do with 'markup' - althought you can express it as markup, (as in SGML, XML), using XMI (XML Metadata Interchange), among other representations, it almost always refers to the diagramming conventions for UML models.
If you knew what you were talking about, or had even bothered to read the page linked to (its right there in the title bar!) you wouldn't have posted the word 'markup' in there twice.
If you can't get unbiased media, you can try to read all sides and make your own mind up. A key part of that is getting at the data the press are filtering for you.
http://www.centcom.mil/ is where the US military distribute their news, eg transcripts of press briefings, images of leaflets they've been dropping on Iraq, that kind of thing. Unfortunately they seem to be running it off a teeny weeny server so its always on the brink of falling over.
The BBC's John Simpson was going to be crossing the border into Iraq from the Kurdish side as soon as possible, and is not travelling with Army units (he says "the army - anybody's army - gets in the way of reporting"). His reports can be interesting if a little self-aggrandizing (if you heard his reports when he arrived in Kabul last year you'll know what I mean). Anyway, unlike most of the press, he won't just be reporting what he's been briefed by the military.
Re:Useful for netbackups too
on
Gzip on a PCI card
·
· Score: 4, Informative
rsync doesnt use gzip, or the deflate algorithm - it uses the Burrows-Wheeler Transform, same as used in bzip2. If you read Tridge's thesis you'll see that he actually proposes an rzip algorithm based on the BWT and his work on rsync that compresses better than gzip or bzip2 on typical files.
I believe that we really need a standard for arbitrary abstract data models, with XML as just one syntactic representation, but I would have to go into long details to justify this.
You mean XMI? (XMI = the XML serialization of the OMG MOF, which is the meta-metamodel for the UML metamodel? The MOF is its own metamodel so you stop there BTW)
Oooh yeah, bring the complexity baby! If you thought working with XML was bad just take a look at that stuff. And weep. Its XML Schema on steroids.
havent been able to get to the site because of you lot bringing it down but... is this related to the technology used in NASA's docking cameras? I remember reading that they developed a camera that worked exactly as the/. story described, in order to combat the problem of losing focus on the target spacecraft during docking manoeuvers. The report I read was in New Scientist, probably 3 years ago?
I'd go and find it but NS archives are subscription only. I really ought to get round to subscribing, I buy it often enough...
Interesting article. The comment about independent labels seems a bit screwy though - "I said that gaming needs an independent label" part of what music indies are about is that there are a plethora of them. Unusual games, like unusual music, will rarely be mainstream, so indies are by nature small. If you want to get independent games, you need to look at how the indie music circuit works.
Bands form, play to local audiences, get some radio time (eg John Peel session over here), get broader sales off the back of that, get signed by an indie, which in turn gets bought out to run as a subsidiary of a major player (think Creation records, for example, bought out by Sony)
The margins at each level are small enough that you need to get bigger backing to support the up-front costs of making sales into the next larger market. Bands don't need a label to do a 1000 pressing release; Independents don't need major backing to do a release in the UK; they do to go global.
If this is really where gaming wants to go, then they need to think about how to make money on a '1000 sales' game; how to make money on a '50,000 sales' game; and how to get backing from a major for a global game (250,000+ sales; figures plucked out of the air, probably unrealistic).
The distribution models for the consoles - with a license fee paid to the mfr, special disk pressing costs, etc, seem to me to put it beyond what can be economically done for '1000 sales'. The games market, unlike the music market, is pretty much a national game at the lowest level anyway, which means there's a huge barrier to entry for indies.
The economics of this are fairly compelling. You can't economically do a few thousand sales to a national market. So, you have to increase your margins. Sell downloads not media, sell direct to the public, produce games in less time (ie less complex games). The media limitation means that it is/extremely unlikely/ there will ever be an indie scene for consoles.
Are you sure they weren't confused a decade ago? Back then, books had titles like The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog, and meant it. There were far fewer people's writing samples sitting on a network for you to read.
We were chatting about this in the office a few weeks ago and came to the conclusion people are getting confused because of "choose" (ie choose rhymes with lose, so they think lose should be spelled "loose"). I'm now waiting for them to start spelling "loss" as "loice".
Its an astoundingly common spelling mistake these days. I thought it was an american thing, but I saw it used in a UK newspaper last week...
I'd be surprised if most people could show you code. If they're working for another company its likely they don't have the/right/ to show you anything.
Its possible to set programming exercises at interview, but only very short ones. Since this was Delphi I guess you could let people use the IDE, but generally it'd just be pen and paper or a simple text editor, to avoid favouring people more familiar with a given IDE.
You might be interested in this article and its followup on how to interview programmers. Some of the panel do talk about asking to see code.
Asking someone to write a bit of code is more something I'd do to a junior programmer, to see if they can cut it at all, because of the small size of the exercise. For senior posts, I'd hope to hear them describe how to solve a problem, being specific about the technologies involved; a demonstration of the breadth of knowledge and problem-solving ability that they'd need to lead on a project.
I know. Most do. But Ward's wiki has never added many of the features that others have gathered; its to some extent an experiment in seeing what kind of usage patterns evolve in the absence of features.
On the subject of wikis which do have versioning, the "golden bars" showing what's changed on clublet based wikis are particularly nice.
I invite everybody reading this article to read and understand the patent abstract, claims, and description. If you're serious about patent reform, you should be able to read and understand patents.
If only the USPTO could reach the high standards you set for/. readers...
Interestingly for people citing CVS and the like as prior art, and that its an obvious application of CVS - they seem to be claiming that this patent covers version control of code too.
"As will be understood by those familiar with the art, the invention may be embodied in other specific forms without departing from the spirit or essential characteristics thereof. Website development is just one of many practical applications for the inventions disclosed herein. Other applications for the inventions disclosed herein include developing source code, media files (e.g., for CD-ROM multimedia), a media engine, and etc. Accordingly, the disclosure of the present invention is intended to be illustrative, but not limiting, of the scope of the invention, which is set forth in the following claims." (emphasis added)
Wow. That's a pretty stunning claim!
(I know this kind of 'it encompasses everything' language is in every patent, but nonetheless, my gob is well and truly smacked).
1995. However, there wasn't versioning in the original Wiki. I'm not even sure it stores more than two versions of a page to this day; the second page appeared around the time of the 'great wiki fire' when one of the contributors excised all of the pages where his name appeared - much to the general annoyance of everyone.
Also, I don't think many, if any, wiki clones have staging areas. Its against the whole concept.
Yeah, can't you write something more original like:
1. ignore you, 2. laugh at you, 3. fight you, 4.... <-- possibly a beowulf cluster of ghandis 5. Profit!
In case you're wondering...
on
A Unified Calculus?
·
· Score: 4, Informative
...what this is all about, after a little digging on Martin's site I found this paper "Basic Calculus on Time Scales and some of its applications"
Its readable enough if you can remember your calculus from first year at Uni.
The gist: normally we do calculus with the set of real numbers, and difference equations with integers. The 'time scales' notion is that instead of having even gaps between numbers like the integers, you can have independently varying gaps, down to infinitesimal ones. Thus, timescales are really just arbitrary subsets of the reals. An example of a time scale might be:
1_2 3_4 5_6
(the underscore indicates a chunk of real numbers, the space a gap of numbers we don't use, and so on)
It's hopefully obvious that the set of integers and the set of reals are special cases of timescales. So, if you derive the fundamental theorems in calculus using timescales, you find the equivalent theorems for reals and integers are special cases.
Slashdot Mirror
Its interesting that Booch talks about an 'executable, testable UML 2.0', given the history of his own methodology. Prior to UML, the Booch, Rumbaugh, and Jacobsen advocated design by elaboration. This meant you continually add artifacts to your design and code until you get to a running system. The 'tools' did nothing but book-keeping for you. They unified their approaches into the UML.
;)
Standing on the other side was the Shlaer-Mellor method, which advocated design by translation (also called recursive design). In this methodology, you diagram different 'domains' and write code generators to eventually produce executable code directly from the model. CASE tools provide assistance in actually producing software (now there's a novel idea).
UML put a lot more emphasis in 'round tripping' in CASE tools, because you edited artifacts that were derived 'in your head' and often failed to match the original model (would you consider editing java bytecode, or asm files?), culminating in the excellent TogetherJ. In Shlaer-Mellor round-tripping didn't matter - you worked on the model and the translators, never on the end code directly (you modify the translator to alter generated code).
I remember back in the day, all the Booch advocates denigrating Shlaer-Mellor, saying it would never work, but here we are, with Booch telling us he's doing executable UML...ah well, at least the methodology wars are over - looks like the tool & book vendors won
- Baz
I haven't read the long and dense article
Yet you feel qualified to comment....
requiring a whole plethora of yet unwritten code
You do realize they have running code for (for example) an email server (actually a proxy) which uses these principals? NB this was based on proxying sendmail, so they didn't "re-architect/redesign whole systems from ground up". This isn't the only work they've done either.
As for 'will it be worth it', if you'd read the article you'd find their economic justifications. This has a good explanation of the figures. Note in particular that a large proportion of the failure they are concerned about is operator error, hence why they emphasise system rollback as a recovery technique, as opposed to software robustness.
I just got moz-exchange LDAP access to our server working. Dunno if its write access, but generally its the company address book we share, not personal address books.
This tip really helped.
I downloaded and started up the Softerra LDAP browser, typed in the name of my server and asked it to search for base DNs (I assume this is what the 'find' button is for in the moz setup that is never enabled). I used my normal login name and password for the domain as the User DN and password (no 'DOMAIN\User' nonsense), and took the default for everything else. Bingo! A nice listing of our directory.
Taking this across to Mozilla (1.4b), I used the base DN that softerra had discovered and left the bind DN blank. In Preferences...Adressing I told it to use this LDAP server to complete addresses, and turned off my local addressbook, for testing. I started to compose a mail and was prompted for a password. I typed my password, and hey presto a list of names appeared.
I know this isn't quite what the original poster was asking, but google comes up with lots of unanswered posts asking 'how do I connect my moz addressbook to exchange' when I've searched on this in the past, and this solution actually works.
-Baz
Er, oh no it isn't. The Register article mentions User Mode Linux, and the Slashdot article mistakenly links to the Unified /Modelling/ Language. The latter has bugger all to do with 'markup' - althought you can express it as markup, (as in SGML, XML), using XMI (XML Metadata Interchange), among other representations, it almost always refers to the diagramming conventions for UML models.
;)
If you knew what you were talking about, or had even bothered to read the page linked to (its right there in the title bar!) you wouldn't have posted the word 'markup' in there twice.
Moderators: please give me '-1: Pedantic'
Maximum transmission unit President? Who does he report to - the Emperor of TCP/IP?
The comparametric project *has* a GIMP plugin. Its there in the download (or it was last time I looked a year and a half ago)
If you can't get unbiased media, you can try to read all sides and make your own mind up. A key part of that is getting at the data the press are filtering for you.
http://www.centcom.mil/ is where the US military distribute their news, eg transcripts of press briefings, images of leaflets they've been dropping on Iraq, that kind of thing. Unfortunately they seem to be running it off a teeny weeny server so its always on the brink of falling over.
The BBC's John Simpson was going to be crossing the border into Iraq from the Kurdish side as soon as possible, and is not travelling with Army units (he says "the army - anybody's army - gets in the way of reporting"). His reports can be interesting if a little self-aggrandizing (if you heard his reports when he arrived in Kabul last year you'll know what I mean). Anyway, unlike most of the press, he won't just be reporting what he's been briefed by the military.
rsync doesnt use gzip, or the deflate algorithm - it uses the Burrows-Wheeler Transform, same as used in bzip2. If you read Tridge's thesis you'll see that he actually proposes an rzip algorithm based on the BWT and his work on rsync that compresses better than gzip or bzip2 on typical files.
-Baz
I believe that we really need a standard for arbitrary abstract data models, with XML as just one syntactic representation, but I would have to go into long details to justify this.
You mean XMI? (XMI = the XML serialization of the OMG MOF, which is the meta-metamodel for the UML metamodel? The MOF is its own metamodel so you stop there BTW)
Oooh yeah, bring the complexity baby! If you thought working with XML was bad just take a look at that stuff. And weep. Its XML Schema on steroids.
havent been able to get to the site because of you lot bringing it down but... is this related to the technology used in NASA's docking cameras? I remember reading that they developed a camera that worked exactly as the /. story described, in order to combat the problem of losing focus on the target spacecraft during docking manoeuvers. The report I read was in New Scientist, probably 3 years ago?
I'd go and find it but NS archives are subscription only. I really ought to get round to subscribing, I buy it often enough...
-Baz
It's not your house, its Microsoft's house. You're just renting it. And no, you can't remove the flock wallpaper.
Yup, in the future we will all have frying cars.
Interesting article. The comment about independent labels seems a bit screwy though - "I said that gaming needs an independent label" part of what music indies are about is that there are a plethora of them. Unusual games, like unusual music, will rarely be mainstream, so indies are by nature small. If you want to get independent games, you need to look at how the indie music circuit works.
/extremely unlikely/ there will ever be an indie scene for consoles.
Bands form, play to local audiences, get some radio time (eg John Peel session over here), get broader sales off the back of that, get signed by an indie, which in turn gets bought out to run as a subsidiary of a major player (think Creation records, for example, bought out by Sony)
The margins at each level are small enough that you need to get bigger backing to support the up-front costs of making sales into the next larger market. Bands don't need a label to do a 1000 pressing release; Independents don't need major backing to do a release in the UK; they do to go global.
If this is really where gaming wants to go, then they need to think about how to make money on a '1000 sales' game; how to make money on a '50,000 sales' game; and how to get backing from a major for a global game (250,000+ sales; figures plucked out of the air, probably unrealistic).
The distribution models for the consoles - with a license fee paid to the mfr, special disk pressing costs, etc, seem to me to put it beyond what can be economically done for '1000 sales'. The games market, unlike the music market, is pretty much a national game at the lowest level anyway, which means there's a huge barrier to entry for indies.
The economics of this are fairly compelling. You can't economically do a few thousand sales to a national market. So, you have to increase your margins. Sell downloads not media, sell direct to the public, produce games in less time (ie less complex games). The media limitation means that it is
-Baz
everybody from outside who came onto their Unreal Tournament server kicked their ass.
7 nodes? What is this - an FBI LAN party?
Are you sure they weren't confused a decade ago? Back then, books had titles like The Whole Internet User's Guide & Catalog, and meant it. There were far fewer people's writing samples sitting on a network for you to read.
But, since its a fair question, I checked. Yes, everyone did it back then too.
We were chatting about this in the office a few weeks ago and came to the conclusion people are getting confused because of "choose" (ie choose rhymes with lose, so they think lose should be spelled "loose"). I'm now waiting for them to start spelling "loss" as "loice".
Its an astoundingly common spelling mistake these days. I thought it was an american thing, but I saw it used in a UK newspaper last week...
-Baz
The surest patching technique is, counterintuitively, to introduce another hole. Using your own choice of weapon.
I'd be surprised if most people could show you code. If they're working for another company its likely they don't have the /right/ to show you anything.
Its possible to set programming exercises at interview, but only very short ones. Since this was Delphi I guess you could let people use the IDE, but generally it'd just be pen and paper or a simple text editor, to avoid favouring people more familiar with a given IDE.
You might be interested in this article and its followup on how to interview programmers. Some of the panel do talk about asking to see code.
Asking someone to write a bit of code is more something I'd do to a junior programmer, to see if they can cut it at all, because of the small size of the exercise. For senior posts, I'd hope to hear them describe how to solve a problem, being specific about the technologies involved; a demonstration of the breadth of knowledge and problem-solving ability that they'd need to lead on a project.
I know. Most do. But Ward's wiki has never added many of the features that others have gathered; its to some extent an experiment in seeing what kind of usage patterns evolve in the absence of features.
On the subject of wikis which do have versioning, the "golden bars" showing what's changed on clublet based wikis are particularly nice.
I invite everybody reading this article to read and understand the patent abstract, claims, and description. If you're serious about patent reform, you should be able to read and understand patents.
/. readers...
If only the USPTO could reach the high standards you set for
Interestingly for people citing CVS and the like as prior art, and that its an obvious application of CVS - they seem to be claiming that this patent covers version control of code too.
Read the text of the patent.
"As will be understood by those familiar with the art, the invention may be embodied in other specific forms without departing from the spirit or essential characteristics thereof. Website development is just one of many practical applications for the inventions disclosed herein. Other applications for the inventions disclosed herein include developing source code, media files (e.g., for CD-ROM multimedia), a media engine, and etc. Accordingly, the disclosure of the present invention is intended to be illustrative, but not limiting, of the scope of the invention, which is set forth in the following claims." (emphasis added)
Wow. That's a pretty stunning claim!
(I know this kind of 'it encompasses everything' language is in every patent, but nonetheless, my gob is well and truly smacked).
1995. However, there wasn't versioning in the original Wiki. I'm not even sure it stores more than two versions of a page to this day; the second page appeared around the time of the 'great wiki fire' when one of the contributors excised all of the pages where his name appeared - much to the general annoyance of everyone.
Also, I don't think many, if any, wiki clones have staging areas. Its against the whole concept.
Nice project. I'd like to see more of the Deep Flight type submersibles though, rather than these ballast-based beasts.
Yeah, can't you write something more original like:
... <-- possibly a beowulf cluster of ghandis
1. ignore you,
2. laugh at you,
3. fight you,
4.
5. Profit!
...what this is all about, after a little digging on Martin's site I found this paper "Basic Calculus on Time Scales and some of its applications"
Its readable enough if you can remember your calculus from first year at Uni.
The gist: normally we do calculus with the set of real numbers, and difference equations with integers. The 'time scales' notion is that instead of having even gaps between numbers like the integers, you can have independently varying gaps, down to infinitesimal ones. Thus, timescales are really just arbitrary subsets of the reals. An example of a time scale might be:
1_2 3_4 5_6
(the underscore indicates a chunk of real numbers, the space a gap of numbers we don't use, and so on)
It's hopefully obvious that the set of integers and the set of reals are special cases of timescales. So, if you derive the fundamental theorems in calculus using timescales, you find the equivalent theorems for reals and integers are special cases.
Cheers,
Baz