I remember the pitch glacier too, and I guess it was undustable (a 100-year-old layer of dust having just sunk into its surface). However there was a different experiment/as well/ - which had thinks like corks and metal weights lying in it. The pitch glacier was (I guess) meant to amuse the students, whereas the other one actually was an experiment.
I'm not sure you'd have seen this one, at the time you'd have been passing through (I checked yer homepage) the Kelvin Museum on the 4th floor was also the lecturer/postgrad coffee room and pretty much out of bounds to undergrads.
When the room was found to be riddled with asbestos:( during the installation of the new floor for the Astronomy dept, most of Kelvins things either went to the Hunterian or into a skip (I kid you not).
As I recall, this is considered the oldest continuously running scientific experiment, with the exception only of a wheat-breeding experiment in England? (I can't find references on that, just remember it from back in the mists of time)
BTW: it is more fun to watch paint dry - its faster...
Boy meets girl. Girl fuses with boy. Girl discovers boy's fusing with best friend Kelly Marie. Girl splits from Boy, and becomes too dangerous to approach for about 30 million years. Sometime later, Girl files claim for fission byproduct support.
The browser stats mentioned are collected by hitbox.com, and come from webbugs. They're used by sites to determine which browsers to market at (at least, thats what hitbox themselves say you should use them for)
If your site gets 80% IE hits, so you decide not to worry about NS compatibility, your site will not get visited by NS users. So your % IE hits will go up.
Doh. The only way to get fair statistics is from a site used by everybody which doesnt discriminate against browsers. The closest thing I know of to this is Google's zeitgeist.
The browser graph doesnt have figures, but relative proportions are obvious: IE 6 gets about 8 notches IE 5, 5.5 get about 5 notches each NS4.x/other seem to have dropped from 2 notches each a couple of months back to 1 notch each; IE 4 gets about 1/2.
Dividing by 20.5 to get market share: IE6 39% IE5.5 19.5% IE5.0 19.0% NS4.x 4.8% Other 4.8% (includes Moz, galeon, etc) IE4.x 2.4%
If you look at this statistics comparison you'll see that the guesstimates up there are not in violent disagreement with reality, with the exception that the 'source1' stats (assumed to be hitbox or a hitbox-a-like) are scoring low for NS and 'other' compared to all other sources now including google, whereas upsdell.com itself sees an excess of Mozilla hits. I reckon this all adds up to a classic case of self-selection.
So the creationists are probably right when they say that all species arose 10,000 years ago... because it was about then that man started to classify animals;)
I'd like to see the algorithm you propose for that.
I know in my own company, some of the automated emails have quite independent html and text versions, because simply downconverting the html would produce gibberish, and, for example, would not present links correctly (a text version of an anchor tag is usually the text, plus the something like 'click on this link', plus the url. Doesnt match the html very well.). Ignoring this problem, any attempt at automated checking of the differences would have to deal with user-agent differences and would be a bit of a mess.
Secondly, theres no problem for a spammer to include the original text, but render it in such a way as to be invisible (eg in the background colour) below the spam image.
I'm inclined to agree with other posters that whitelists are more of an answer.
Here's how: the spam should be written as a 'multipart/alternative' with an html version of the spam as the primary alternate. The text version contains an innocuous message intended to pass the statistical spam filter. The spam message is entirely contained as an/image/ within the html. The text of the spam becomes invisible to the reader but not to the poor schmuck who gets the email.
I'm guessing here that the inclusion of a single image tag in the html is unlikely to trigger the spam filter, and supplying a wealth of evidence that the email is 'not' spam in the unseen alternate text will let the letter through.
Nobody cares if it doesnt turn out to be as good as a human translator, because not everyone can afford to retain a translator on staff. Or a decent butler for that matter.
Secondly, it matters not a jot if the creators are multilingual, since the problem is not that you don't know 'many' languages, but that you and one other person don't know a language in common. doh!
You've not been reading enough of the articles then. See eg this one. The Myna pager is definitely a 'consumer market' device. I'm sure I read Ivan Sutherland say somewhere that there are asynchronous islands on the latest SPARC chips, but I can't find a reference.
However you're right, takeup is minimal, see eg this talk for a description of the state of play.
Another approach that may have gone the way of the dinosaur (havent seen it make headlines on/.) is reversible computing - the notion that by not discarding information within a chip you can run chips cooler (though apparently we won't reach the level where this much thermal loss becomes significant for another few years). E.g. a nand gate loses one bit of information, resulting in an energy dissipation of at least ln(2)kT, about 3x10^-21 joules. These links are 4 years old; I have no idea if reversible computing is now mainstream?
Cartman: Okay, that's does it! Now listen! Why is it that everything today has involved things either going in or coming out of my ass?! [Farts. An anal probe comes out of his butt and expands] I'm sick of it! It's completely immature. Stan: Hey, it's happening again. [the probe is now a large satellite dish] Kyle: Whoa, look at that. Stan: Now, do you believe this, Cartman? Cartman: You guys can't scare me! I know you're making it all up. Stan: Cartman, there's a 80-foot satellite dish sticking out of your ass! Cartman: Sure, you guys, what-ever. [the dish sends a radio signal out to space]
We split environment-dependent configuration (ie db config and addresses) from build-dependent configuration (think 'basic' and 'deluxe' versions). Every env parameter has a default. The defaults and the build parameters are stored with the app and shipped with it.
On the target platforms we store env configuration in such a way that its not overwritten by app upgrades. The app 'pulls' config from its environment as needed (basically, only parameters which have a default can be overridden). This means upgrades never overwrite customer config, so backing out of an upgrade is easy.
Administration of each environment is independent of the build. Altogether this means we don't have many different build variations; as you suggest, a build-per-environment is a pain to maintain; its also prone to failure as the build the testers use isnt the one the customers get.
Environments which are 'common' (eg basic developer setup including locations of common dev db) are stored under configuration management in a separate tree from the application. Actually, once we reach alpha releases we make disk images so eg sales can get a consistent environment. In the normal course of work, developers will just make a copy of these managed environments rather than check them out, edit, and check in.
We're working in java and much of the way we manage our env issues is down to the container/application separation in J2EE, and the clean separation of application assembler/deployer/administrator roles. If you follow the philosophy you dont have much option but to act as we did above.
I was at one of the developers houses last new year, saw the stuff they were working on. Very cool, but er, not exactly Laurence Olivier.
At that time they basically had a box with legs that simulated walking on various surfaces, but it was 'real' physics and 'real' neural net tech letting it walk over obstacles, on hills, on ice; he talked about using it for crowd scenes.
-Baz
Bring back micropayments...
on
Borrowing ROMs
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Back in my day they used to have a scheme where you could play any available videogame for 10p (er, 25c for the yanks?). This whole ROM sharing thing went on too, but was more of a one-way process when the big kids wanted a game.
I downloaded this stuff about a year ago thinking it would be cool to build a GIMP plugin on top of it to make the whole process a little simpler.
However when I downloaded the tarball it already included a plugin contributed by someone else. This was in one of the 1.x releases directly off Steve's site, not from sourceforge. I just did a quick google for 'video orbits gimp plugin' and nothing leaps out.
I don't think I have the older software - I switched machines since and dumped a lot of stuff - but I'll dig around this afternoon. Anyone remember this plugin and know where the hordes can find it?
I think the International Herald Tribune's UI is very purty (and it works ok on lynx too, though it looks worse because the link map hasnt been shoved to the bottom of the page). It does have ads but they're not the huge intrusive kind (yet).
Correct me if I'm wrong - but dont all the arguments about the impossibility of working with GPL'd software on DRM systems also apply to anyone developing *any* code on such systems?
ie - if you want to test the code you just compiled because you are a legitimate developer, you must have some way to do so? (Arguments that it will only run on your own machine are weak. That won't stop distros like gentoo from working, nor is it good enough to work in dev shops where you be compile for a test team). This may suggest that M$ will charge more for developer licenses, on unrestricted platforms?
Secondly - if you can build a VM that runs on a DRM system, but doesnt require signed bytecode, then you can run anything you want anyway? And is Linux not just a big VM when it comes down to it (for everyone except the kernel developers)
My point is, if there is no way to develop code in small cycles, MS will find this a very hard sell to software houses and IT depts of corporates.
It seems to me that the only way this can work is if the system 'can' run untrusted or self-signed code, but will not run signed code unless DRM lets it. None of this prevents GPLd code working.
In the commercial world, patent wars often end with the formation of a consortium that holds the patents and enforces them (where necessary). Is there such an organisation for open source? If not, why not?
It might seem a bit daft in the current case where SCC have GPL'd their code, but consider this:
1. Company A dual license their product - free under the GPL, and non-free under a closed license. The free version could contain community patches, the non-free version could not, but the non-free version could be licensed by a third party without that third party having to open its source. Patent fees would apply in this case.
2. Company R supports GPL'd product L, Company M makes closed-source product W. R patents several of the changes they have made. They are then sued for patent infringement by M - R countersues, via the umbrella group for infringements in W, not for patents they hold directly, but for patents held by the umbrella group on behalf of members.
This assumes you can GPL license and enforce patents on people who are using the patented invention, rather than a copy of the code, in their product (code copying is obviously covered by the GPL directly). I don't know that this is true - and I doubt that Stallman would approve. However it might increase the sense of safety people have with patents like this and the Red Hat ones waiting in the wings; it may also encourage more companies to GPL, since they retain the ability to chase closed-source competitors who steal their ideas.
Our phone system is on an analog copper local loop. It plays on hold music (which we have paid a copyright fee for!!). However, the backbone network it is carried over is likely to be digital these days. People phone us, get put on hold and... BANG!!! the phone goes dead, because the telephone exchange does not know we actually own the rights to this stuff??
You might want to read this article by Jamie Zawinski (of Lucid Emacs/Netscape fame) on his attempts to get a Linux PPOS app for his club, DNA Lounge. Includes source code for his own one - I dont expect it meets your reqs but the article is useful for a review of the state of the art.
for the.ltd.uk and.plc.uk domain names. See here for details.
Names within.ltd and.plc have to match names of companies registered at Companies House in the UK. Apart from the laws against misrepresentation quoted on the page linked to above, companies are bound by law to register the home addresses of directors, and you can get this information from Companies House (not as easy as WHOIS, but its there).
I'd like large chunks of the net to stay anonymous and all that, but equally I'd like it if more of the net was like this - you can actually determine who you're dealing with 'in meatspace' because the registrar has the law on his side.
Technically, SSL certificates are supposed to help with this whole trust issue (which is what it boils down to - businesses have to earn trust to make sales) - but the CAs themselves are not trustworthy. How much for a certificate issued by the Consumer Association or Greenpeace?
I see you've gone back on the post a little later but its worth answering some of your points.
Yunno, I'm really getting sick of Fowler's "worse is better" nonsense trying to win back the day for "cowboy coders" who can't handle any discpline at all and want to treat critical production code as a playground.
Fowler's stuff isnt cowboy at all. It actually takes a lot of discipline to follow what he actually says in his book (writing tests to ensure that each refactoring is safe). His book is a series of recipes for how to introduce changes safely, not a rally call for changing code because you feel like it today. The Refactoring book can help people working in any methodology (except perhaps the 'Personal Software Process' and its variants, which want you to learn to write code right first time, and are less realistic for code maintenance). XP gets a mention but its not an XP book.
Meaninglessly vague. Is javadoc boilerplate?
Meaning 1 on wordnet is "a standard formulation of legal documents or news stories". Now look at this (code from Tomcat). See the boilerplate comment at the top?
Its NOT THE JAVADOC - its the license. There are tools like jalopy which help you maintain this cruft but like I say it helps noone but lawyers.
This guy must have a massively cool source control tool that actually shows him the changelog on a per-function basis, and automatically senses and shows only the changes that are significant, like an interface change.
The 'change history comment' is the old practice of writing in a history of changes at the top of the file (not on a function by function basis as you suggest) duplicating the comment recording in the source code control system, while not necessarily recording all changes because it isnt/driven/ by that system. VSS, CVS, etc can show you the changelog externally, or you can include a $Keyword$ to get the changelog included in the comment and maintained for you. As for knowing which change is significant - developers don't know this either. The change which breaks things is the significant one and they usually don't realise they've done it at the time. Interfaces changes, while high cost, are actually less significant causes of error since they are easily caught by static checks. It is the changes in behaviour that will get you.
We don't always get to write everything from scratch...
This is true. often you'll not get to rename the methods of some dumbly named third party interface. And in this case the comment is inevitable. Note I did say not all comments are bad. I'm asking you to question them.
Another smaller, uncommented method no doubt.
Yes, exactly. If the smaller method is 4 lines long, has a blindingly obvious name, and is in the private interface of the class (often the case for extracted methods like this), the comment is superfluous.
Trenton, N.J. - A New Jersey judge today declared that it would be illegal to expose citizens to gravitational fields greater than 0.2 G . "Every year more people are falling or jumping to their deaths," explained Justice Iverson, " a situation that cannot be allowed to continue. Every day on television I see coyotes cruelly crushed by falling anvils, and its time something was done. I am issuing an extradition writ for a Mr Isaac Newton who I believe is responsible for the problem."
Cynics have suggested that Iverson is merely trying to improve his golf game. Since the ruling, he has been regularly driving the greens at exclusive Rolling Hills Country Club - with his sand wedge. Justice Iverson is aged 92.
In related news, senior mafia officials pledged to 'eradicate chance' from casinos across the USA.
Slashdot Mirror
thats the one! Thanks!
I remember the pitch glacier too, and I guess it was undustable (a 100-year-old layer of dust having just sunk into its surface). However there was a different experiment /as well/ - which had thinks like corks and metal weights lying in it. The pitch glacier was (I guess) meant to amuse the students, whereas the other one actually was an experiment.
:( during the installation of the new floor for the Astronomy dept, most of Kelvins things either went to the Hunterian or into a skip (I kid you not).
I'm not sure you'd have seen this one, at the time you'd have been passing through (I checked yer homepage) the Kelvin Museum on the 4th floor was also the lecturer/postgrad coffee room and pretty much out of bounds to undergrads.
When the room was found to be riddled with asbestos
-Baz (PhD, Nuclear Theory, Glasgow 1990-94)
Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) created an older pitch experiment: one which had a variety of objects lying on a tray of pitch that are slowly sinking in.
Its usually on show in either the Hunterian Museum or the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Glasgow University.
As I recall, this is considered the oldest continuously running scientific experiment, with the exception only of a wheat-breeding experiment in England? (I can't find references on that, just remember it from back in the mists of time)
BTW: it is more fun to watch paint dry - its faster...
Look, radioactive dating is very simple:
Boy meets girl. Girl fuses with boy. Girl discovers boy's fusing with best friend Kelly Marie. Girl splits from Boy, and becomes too dangerous to approach for about 30 million years. Sometime later, Girl files claim for fission byproduct support.
The browser stats mentioned are collected by hitbox.com, and come from webbugs. They're used by sites to determine which browsers to market at (at least, thats what hitbox themselves say you should use them for)
If your site gets 80% IE hits, so you decide not to worry about NS compatibility, your site will not get visited by NS users. So your % IE hits will go up.
Doh. The only way to get fair statistics is from a site used by everybody which doesnt discriminate against browsers. The closest thing I know of to this is Google's zeitgeist.
The browser graph doesnt have figures, but relative proportions are obvious:
IE 6 gets about 8 notches
IE 5, 5.5 get about 5 notches each
NS4.x/other seem to have dropped from 2 notches each a couple of months back to 1 notch each;
IE 4 gets about 1/2.
Dividing by 20.5 to get market share:
IE6 39%
IE5.5 19.5%
IE5.0 19.0%
NS4.x 4.8%
Other 4.8% (includes Moz, galeon, etc)
IE4.x 2.4%
If you look at this statistics comparison you'll see that the guesstimates up there are not in violent disagreement with reality, with the exception that the 'source1' stats (assumed to be hitbox or a hitbox-a-like) are scoring low for NS and 'other' compared to all other sources now including google, whereas upsdell.com itself sees an excess of Mozilla hits. I reckon this all adds up to a classic case of self-selection.
So the creationists are probably right when they say that all species arose 10,000 years ago... because it was about then that man started to classify animals ;)
-Baz
I'd like to see the algorithm you propose for that.
I know in my own company, some of the automated emails have quite independent html and text versions, because simply downconverting the html would produce gibberish, and, for example, would not present links correctly (a text version of an anchor tag is usually the text, plus the something like 'click on this link', plus the url. Doesnt match the html very well.). Ignoring this problem, any attempt at automated checking of the differences would have to deal with user-agent differences and would be a bit of a mess.
Secondly, theres no problem for a spammer to include the original text, but render it in such a way as to be invisible (eg in the background colour) below the spam image.
I'm inclined to agree with other posters that whitelists are more of an answer.
Yes, and you stop getting any mail with html in it?
:)
Some people might consider this a good thing
Here's how: the spam should be written as a 'multipart/alternative' with an html version of the spam as the primary alternate. The text version contains an innocuous message intended to pass the statistical spam filter. The spam message is entirely contained as an /image/ within the html. The text of the spam becomes invisible to the reader but not to the poor schmuck who gets the email.
I'm guessing here that the inclusion of a single image tag in the html is unlikely to trigger the spam filter, and supplying a wealth of evidence that the email is 'not' spam in the unseen alternate text will let the letter through.
Nobody cares if it doesnt turn out to be as good as a human translator, because not everyone can afford to retain a translator on staff. Or a decent butler for that matter.
Secondly, it matters not a jot if the creators are multilingual, since the problem is not that you don't know 'many' languages, but that you and one other person don't know a language in common. doh!
You've not been reading enough of the articles then. See eg this one. The Myna pager is definitely a 'consumer market' device. I'm sure I read Ivan Sutherland say somewhere that there are asynchronous islands on the latest SPARC chips, but I can't find a reference.
/.) is reversible computing - the notion that by not discarding information within a chip you can run chips cooler (though apparently we won't reach the level where this much thermal loss becomes significant for another few years). E.g. a nand gate loses one bit of information, resulting in an energy dissipation of at least ln(2)kT, about 3x10^-21 joules. These links are 4 years old; I have no idea if reversible computing is now mainstream?
However you're right, takeup is minimal, see eg this talk for a description of the state of play.
Another approach that may have gone the way of the dinosaur (havent seen it make headlines on
Cartman: Okay, that's does it! Now listen! Why is it that everything today has involved things either going in or coming out of my ass?! [Farts. An anal probe comes out of his butt and expands] I'm sick of it! It's completely immature.
Stan: Hey, it's happening again. [the probe is now a large satellite dish]
Kyle: Whoa, look at that.
Stan: Now, do you believe this, Cartman?
Cartman: You guys can't scare me! I know you're making it all up.
Stan: Cartman, there's a 80-foot satellite dish sticking out of your ass!
Cartman: Sure, you guys, what-ever. [the dish sends a radio signal out to space]
We split environment-dependent configuration (ie db config and addresses) from build-dependent configuration (think 'basic' and 'deluxe' versions). Every env parameter has a default. The defaults and the build parameters are stored with the app and shipped with it.
On the target platforms we store env configuration in such a way that its not overwritten by app upgrades. The app 'pulls' config from its environment as needed (basically, only parameters which have a default can be overridden). This means upgrades never overwrite customer config, so backing out of an upgrade is easy.
Administration of each environment is independent of the build. Altogether this means we don't have many different build variations; as you suggest, a build-per-environment is a pain to maintain; its also prone to failure as the build the testers use isnt the one the customers get.
Environments which are 'common' (eg basic developer setup including locations of common dev db) are stored under configuration management in a separate tree from the application. Actually, once we reach alpha releases we make disk images so eg sales can get a consistent environment. In the normal course of work, developers will just make a copy of these managed environments rather than check them out, edit, and check in.
We're working in java and much of the way we manage our env issues is down to the container/application separation in J2EE, and the clean separation of application assembler/deployer/administrator roles. If you follow the philosophy you dont have much option but to act as we did above.
The Rock vs GRACE?
Hey I know that guy!
I was at one of the developers houses last new year, saw the stuff they were working on. Very cool, but er, not exactly Laurence Olivier.
At that time they basically had a box with legs that simulated walking on various surfaces, but it was 'real' physics and 'real' neural net tech letting it walk over obstacles, on hills, on ice; he talked about using it for crowd scenes.
-Baz
Back in my day they used to have a scheme where you could play any available videogame for 10p (er, 25c for the yanks?). This whole ROM sharing thing went on too, but was more of a one-way process when the big kids wanted a game.
I downloaded this stuff about a year ago thinking it would be cool to build a GIMP plugin on top of it to make the whole process a little simpler.
However when I downloaded the tarball it already included a plugin contributed by someone else. This was in one of the 1.x releases directly off Steve's site, not from sourceforge. I just did a quick google for 'video orbits gimp plugin' and nothing leaps out.
I don't think I have the older software - I switched machines since and dumped a lot of stuff - but I'll dig around this afternoon. Anyone remember this plugin and know where the hordes can find it?
I think the International Herald Tribune's UI is very purty (and it works ok on lynx too, though it looks worse because the link map hasnt been shoved to the bottom of the page). It does have ads but they're not the huge intrusive kind (yet).
Correct me if I'm wrong - but dont all the arguments about the impossibility of working with GPL'd software on DRM systems also apply to anyone developing *any* code on such systems?
ie - if you want to test the code you just compiled because you are a legitimate developer, you must have some way to do so? (Arguments that it will only run on your own machine are weak. That won't stop distros like gentoo from working, nor is it good enough to work in dev shops where you be compile for a test team). This may suggest that M$ will charge more for developer licenses, on unrestricted platforms?
Secondly - if you can build a VM that runs on a DRM system, but doesnt require signed bytecode, then you can run anything you want anyway? And is Linux not just a big VM when it comes down to it (for everyone except the kernel developers)
My point is, if there is no way to develop code in small cycles, MS will find this a very hard sell to software houses and IT depts of corporates.
It seems to me that the only way this can work is if the system 'can' run untrusted or self-signed code, but will not run signed code unless DRM lets it. None of this prevents GPLd code working.
-Baz
In the commercial world, patent wars often end with the formation of a consortium that holds the patents and enforces them (where necessary). Is there such an organisation for open source? If not, why not?
It might seem a bit daft in the current case where SCC have GPL'd their code, but consider this:
1. Company A dual license their product - free under the GPL, and non-free under a closed license. The free version could contain community patches, the non-free version could not, but the non-free version could be licensed by a third party without that third party having to open its source. Patent fees would apply in this case.
2. Company R supports GPL'd product L, Company M makes closed-source product W. R patents several of the changes they have made. They are then sued for patent infringement by M - R countersues, via the umbrella group for infringements in W, not for patents they hold directly, but for patents held by the umbrella group on behalf of members.
This assumes you can GPL license and enforce patents on people who are using the patented invention, rather than a copy of the code, in their product (code copying is obviously covered by the GPL directly). I don't know that this is true - and I doubt that Stallman would approve. However it might increase the sense of safety people have with patents like this and the Red Hat ones waiting in the wings; it may also encourage more companies to GPL, since they retain the ability to chase closed-source competitors who steal their ideas.
Just a thought.
Our phone system is on an analog copper local loop. It plays on hold music (which we have paid a copyright fee for!!). However, the backbone network it is carried over is likely to be digital these days. People phone us, get put on hold and ... BANG!!! the phone goes dead, because the telephone exchange does not know we actually own the rights to this stuff??
Doh.
You might want to read this article by Jamie Zawinski (of Lucid Emacs/Netscape fame) on his attempts to get a Linux PPOS app for his club, DNA Lounge. Includes source code for his own one - I dont expect it meets your reqs but the article is useful for a review of the state of the art.
Names within .ltd and .plc have to match names of companies registered at Companies House in the UK. Apart from the laws against misrepresentation quoted on the page linked to above, companies are bound by law to register the home addresses of directors, and you can get this information from Companies House (not as easy as WHOIS, but its there).
I'd like large chunks of the net to stay anonymous and all that, but equally I'd like it if more of the net was like this - you can actually determine who you're dealing with 'in meatspace' because the registrar has the law on his side.
Technically, SSL certificates are supposed to help with this whole trust issue (which is what it boils down to - businesses have to earn trust to make sales) - but the CAs themselves are not trustworthy. How much for a certificate issued by the Consumer Association or Greenpeace?
Yunno, I'm really getting sick of Fowler's "worse is better" nonsense trying to win back the day for "cowboy coders" who can't handle any discpline at all and want to treat critical production code as a playground.
Fowler's stuff isnt cowboy at all. It actually takes a lot of discipline to follow what he actually says in his book (writing tests to ensure that each refactoring is safe). His book is a series of recipes for how to introduce changes safely, not a rally call for changing code because you feel like it today. The Refactoring book can help people working in any methodology (except perhaps the 'Personal Software Process' and its variants, which want you to learn to write code right first time, and are less realistic for code maintenance). XP gets a mention but its not an XP book.
Meaninglessly vague. Is javadoc boilerplate?
Meaning 1 on wordnet is "a standard formulation of legal documents or news stories". Now look at this (code from Tomcat). See the boilerplate comment at the top? Its NOT THE JAVADOC - its the license. There are tools like jalopy which help you maintain this cruft but like I say it helps noone but lawyers.
This guy must have a massively cool source control tool that actually shows him the changelog on a per-function basis, and automatically senses and shows only the changes that are significant, like an interface change.
The 'change history comment' is the old practice of writing in a history of changes at the top of the file (not on a function by function basis as you suggest) duplicating the comment recording in the source code control system, while not necessarily recording all changes because it isnt /driven/ by that system. VSS, CVS, etc can show you the changelog externally, or you can include a $Keyword$ to get the changelog included in the comment and maintained for you. As for knowing which change is significant - developers don't know this either. The change which breaks things is the significant one and they usually don't realise they've done it at the time. Interfaces changes, while high cost, are actually less significant causes of error since they are easily caught by static checks. It is the changes in behaviour that will get you.
We don't always get to write everything from scratch...
This is true. often you'll not get to rename the methods of some dumbly named third party interface. And in this case the comment is inevitable. Note I did say not all comments are bad. I'm asking you to question them.
Another smaller, uncommented method no doubt.
Yes, exactly. If the smaller method is 4 lines long, has a blindingly obvious name, and is in the private interface of the class (often the case for extracted methods like this), the comment is superfluous.
Trenton, N.J. - A New Jersey judge today declared that it would be illegal to expose citizens to gravitational fields greater than 0.2 G . "Every year more people are falling or jumping to their deaths," explained Justice Iverson, " a situation that cannot be allowed to continue. Every day on television I see coyotes cruelly crushed by falling anvils, and its time something was done. I am issuing an extradition writ for a Mr Isaac Newton who I believe is responsible for the problem."
Cynics have suggested that Iverson is merely trying to improve his golf game. Since the ruling, he has been regularly driving the greens at exclusive Rolling Hills Country Club - with his sand wedge. Justice Iverson is aged 92.
In related news, senior mafia officials pledged to 'eradicate chance' from casinos across the USA.