I was working on a radar project. The spec for the tracker had an error in one of the equations used for converting from doppler shift to actual velocity. The programmer coded it as it was in the spec. We didn't discover the error until testing showed some simulated tracks zooming off at mach 10. First thought was that the programmer made a typo. Programmer showed that the implementation matched the spec. No doubt about the spec until the test results showed a problem.
Programmer scew ups are usually met with an "Oh shit. I can't believe I did that." Other bugs usually take significant effort to uncover what's wrong. It remains an open question as to who is responsible when something like an API is part of the problem. My take is that if the programmer chose to use a particular library to solve the problem at hand then the programmer has a responsibility to confirm that the code plus the library actually solves the problem (e.g., unit test). If the API is inflicted on the developer by management then management has a responsibility to ensure that the API does what is claimed.
Bugs are rarely just he result of a programmer screwing up.
That's rather kind. Bugs happen all the time just because programmers screwed up.
The difficulty with the software industry is that we have not yet developed good objective criteria for saying which bugs are really down to a specific programmer's error as the root cause and which could instead be attributed significantly or entirely to other causes. What's more, we have even less ability to set criteria that are still useful if you're a lawyer or manager or client rather than a technical expert who understands how things actually work.
Having spent about one-third of my career in software QA, it's really not that hard to tell which bugs are programmer screw-ups and which ones have a deeper cause. Although there is that grey area where the programmer didn't understand the underlying system or some interfacing system because the documentaion sucked.
or the design of the foundation is incorrect, or the client wanted a wooden wall instead of brick, or the brick manufacturer changed how the bricks are made becuase of a change in the brick standard, or the bricks had to be changed because they were found to be vulnerable to attacks by clay termites, or....
Bugs are rarely just he result of a programmer screwing up.
Inexpensive ear plugs work reasonably well. I've actually been glared at by the parent(s) who seemed to think entertaining their spawn was a public requirement as I stuck my ear plugs in my ears. Personal music works, too, but may harm your hearing if loud enough to drown out the kid. Back when you had to turn off such things during climb out and descent was also a problem.
Up until about 5 years ago, it was common to see phones on certain long haul planes in the backs of seats. Hell, a subplot of Die Hard 2 revolves around the fact that this existed. Why is this a problem now and not then?
Cost. The phone in the back of the seat cost about a dollar a minute (or more) to use. Great for making a quick call to someone to say your flight changed, was late, is early, whatever. Not good for chatting inanely. Self-limits people wanting to just yak continuously.
I soloed in 1988 but didn't go on to get my license. I loved flying. It was an absolute blast. In getting that far I learned the one thing about flying that meant it made no sense for me to continue on: sport flying is an expensive, time consuming hobby. I also observed that when I have time (e.g., unemployed), I don't have money. Likewise, when I have money (e.g., working), I don't have time.
At some point a Microsoft update bricked my wife's laptop (HP Pavillion). Don't know how updating files could mess up the partition table but it did. We'd had enough of 8 so I used a spare license for 7 to upgrade it to 7 Pro. It's still Windoze but at least it's stable and doesn't have the sucky "Metro" (or whatever Microsoft is calling it now) UI.
Not a clinical trial or a valid sample size but our elderly cat was making a noise that seemed to indicate she was having some discomfort whenever she jumped down from wherever she'd gotten to. Our vet suggested glucoamine so we gave it a try. Seemed to help. Cat no longer makes what sounds like a pain noise as she does her normal cat things. We've had her on glucosamine for a couple of years now. Ditto for the neighbors and their rottweiller with hip problems. Seemed to help her, too.
Now, after 30+ years in technology jobs, I'm pretty jaded. About the only time I get passionate about programming anymore is when I'm doing something for either myself or a friend or coworker. The saddest part is that the stuff I program for coworkers usually isn't part of my official job. S-I-G-H.
Is it just me or do the people who want you to work in open offices sound like the nobility in Downton Abbey?
No, the nobility in Downton Abbey seem to genuinely care about their help. I think some of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn books more sucinctly capture how management views and treats employees.
"They're going to get the guns anyway".... so we should allow them to do it easily and legally from law abiding citizens/dealers??!! Get real.
They're going to get guns anyway and we shouldn't delude ourselves that the "universal background check" does anything more than add a tiny speed bump to keeping guns away from the bad guys. You apparently read right past my reference to Evan Ebel getting the gun he used to commit two murders even though he was a recently released, paroled felon. Why didn't universal background checks stop that transaction?
That a majority of the population supports a law doesn't mean it's a good law or does anything to prevent whatever it was supposed to stop. You will also see a huge majority call for blocking a variety of internet content (porn, scams, illegal file sharing, etc.) but/. seems to recognize that laws, filters and such aren't the answer there. The same can be said for the ban on so-called "high capacity" magazines. Besides being readily available in other states the simple solution is to tape two 15 round magazines together so that a reloading only requires releasing the magazine, flipping it and inserting the "other end". My father used that solution during WWII so it's not like it's new.
So we now have several meaningless laws on the books that the politicians can point to and say, "We tried." Back at you, "Get real."
Handguns are typically legitimately used for self defense. Rifles and shotguns are typically used for hunting. People in Alaska and similar parts of Canada will frequently carry a handgun due to the danger from bears or various types. On the other hand, I don't know of any duck hunters who also carry a pistol while hunting. It all depends on what perils you're worried about. Around here (Colorado) deer hunters will frequently also carry a pistol since a mountain lion may think you're just being helpful by carving up you're deer when you thought you were field dressing him.
.. It seems like a trade off between more deadly (gun related) accidents and less crime, versus no such deadly accidents and more crime.
I think you answered your own question. Also, we'll never know how many of the dead or wounded intruders would have done the same to the people living there if they had had the chance.
There have been a few oopses where someone drunk (as an example) tried to "go home" to the wrong house and got shot for attempting to break in. The common attitude seems to be that Darwinian selection still exists and don't get so drunk that you can't find your own home.
Hasn't seemed to work that way is all I can say. Don't recall any reports of preemptive shootings by people breaking into houses since the law went into effect. Quite a few dead or wounded wanna be thieves, rapists, etc. though. Could be that the people breaking don't want to escalate by default.
What scares me most about the movement to have some sort of mental health check required for gun ownership is that I fear it will lead to a Catch-22 world. One where you can only own a gun if you're not crazy but you are assumed to be crazy if you want to own a gun.
Recently Iceland recorded it's *FIRST* police shooting resulting in death, ever. An Icelander could say the same thing about Canada (or most other countries). And, in case you're interested, the rate of gun ownership in Iceland is HIGHER than in the U.S. Link to BBC if you don't believe me:
Banning the sale of a legal product that is protected by the constitution will be almost impossible. When a higher court refuses to hear the case the politicians can say "At least we tried". This is a PR stunt as they just want to look like they are doing something even when they know it will not work. What a waste of time and money that could be better used elsewhere.
Tell me about it. I live in Colorado where the politicians pandered to a vocal constituency and passed a bunch of unenforceable laws in response to the Aurora theater shootings. In spite of these laws and laws already on the books a paroled felon was able to acquire a gun and use it to kill two people. The only difference the new laws made was to make it more difficult for law abiding citizens to buy or sell guns. And, as you predicted, all we heard from the politicians was, "At least we tried". Sadly, this will probably be followed by calls for even more controls that also won't work.
I live in Colorado where the law explicitly states that people have the right to use deadly force to protect themselves if someone breaks into their home. Seems like most years there are three to five justified shootings of intruders that make the news. That number seems to be going down over time as people learn that breaking into homes can be very unhealthy.
So both individual crimes are being prevented and potential crimes are being deterred.
I removed NetworkMangler from all my systems except my laptop. It does come in handy when connecting to WiFi hotspots when I'm not at home. Keeping it on a server with a static network connection is just inviting trouble.
Used to be that military actions took place at the nation vs. nation level and the individual citizens were just along for the ride (whether they wanted to be or not). So, one country would spy on another COUNTRY, intercept the other country's communications, etc. Other than stuff that was military related, commercial and private communications weren't really of interest to national intelligence.
Fast forward to now and you have private citizens taking violent action against countries they disagree with. As 9/11 demonstrated, this sort of action can result in mass casualties and huge material losses. Like it or not, governments have good reason for snooping on the communications of individuals.
I still don't like it. By my reading of the 4th Amendment, the NSA is not allowed to listen in on my (or any other U.S. citizen's) communications. Unfortunately, about all I can do about it is threaten to hold my breath, stomp my feet or, now, appeal to the UN. Appealing to the UN probably won't do any more than my other "threats.".
Slashdot Mirror
Real example:
I was working on a radar project. The spec for the tracker had an error in one of the equations used for converting from doppler shift to actual velocity. The programmer coded it as it was in the spec. We didn't discover the error until testing showed some simulated tracks zooming off at mach 10. First thought was that the programmer made a typo. Programmer showed that the implementation matched the spec. No doubt about the spec until the test results showed a problem.
Programmer scew ups are usually met with an "Oh shit. I can't believe I did that." Other bugs usually take significant effort to uncover what's wrong. It remains an open question as to who is responsible when something like an API is part of the problem. My take is that if the programmer chose to use a particular library to solve the problem at hand then the programmer has a responsibility to confirm that the code plus the library actually solves the problem (e.g., unit test). If the API is inflicted on the developer by management then management has a responsibility to ensure that the API does what is claimed.
Cheers,
Dave
Bugs are rarely just he result of a programmer screwing up.
That's rather kind. Bugs happen all the time just because programmers screwed up.
The difficulty with the software industry is that we have not yet developed good objective criteria for saying which bugs are really down to a specific programmer's error as the root cause and which could instead be attributed significantly or entirely to other causes. What's more, we have even less ability to set criteria that are still useful if you're a lawyer or manager or client rather than a technical expert who understands how things actually work.
Having spent about one-third of my career in software QA, it's really not that hard to tell which bugs are programmer screw-ups and which ones have a deeper cause. Although there is that grey area where the programmer didn't understand the underlying system or some interfacing system because the documentaion sucked.
Cheers,
Dave
or the design of the foundation is incorrect, or the client wanted a wooden wall instead of brick, or the brick manufacturer changed how the bricks are made becuase of a change in the brick standard, or the bricks had to be changed because they were found to be vulnerable to attacks by clay termites, or ....
Bugs are rarely just he result of a programmer screwing up.
Cheers,
Dave
Inexpensive ear plugs work reasonably well. I've actually been glared at by the parent(s) who seemed to think entertaining their spawn was a public requirement as I stuck my ear plugs in my ears. Personal music works, too, but may harm your hearing if loud enough to drown out the kid. Back when you had to turn off such things during climb out and descent was also a problem.
Cheers,
Dave
Up until about 5 years ago, it was common to see phones on certain long haul planes in the backs of seats. Hell, a subplot of Die Hard 2 revolves around the fact that this existed. Why is this a problem now and not then?
Cost. The phone in the back of the seat cost about a dollar a minute (or more) to use. Great for making a quick call to someone to say your flight changed, was late, is early, whatever. Not good for chatting inanely. Self-limits people wanting to just yak continuously.
Cheers,
Dave
I soloed in 1988 but didn't go on to get my license. I loved flying. It was an absolute blast. In getting that far I learned the one thing about flying that meant it made no sense for me to continue on: sport flying is an expensive, time consuming hobby. I also observed that when I have time (e.g., unemployed), I don't have money. Likewise, when I have money (e.g., working), I don't have time.
If I hit lotto, I might go back to flying.
Cheers,
Dave
At some point a Microsoft update bricked my wife's laptop (HP Pavillion). Don't know how updating files could mess up the partition table but it did. We'd had enough of 8 so I used a spare license for 7 to upgrade it to 7 Pro. It's still Windoze but at least it's stable and doesn't have the sucky "Metro" (or whatever Microsoft is calling it now) UI.
Cheers,
Dave
Not a clinical trial or a valid sample size but our elderly cat was making a noise that seemed to indicate she was having some discomfort whenever she jumped down from wherever she'd gotten to. Our vet suggested glucoamine so we gave it a try. Seemed to help. Cat no longer makes what sounds like a pain noise as she does her normal cat things. We've had her on glucosamine for a couple of years now. Ditto for the neighbors and their rottweiller with hip problems. Seemed to help her, too.
Cheers,
Dave
Now, after 30+ years in technology jobs, I'm pretty jaded. About the only time I get passionate about programming anymore is when I'm doing something for either myself or a friend or coworker. The saddest part is that the stuff I program for coworkers usually isn't part of my official job. S-I-G-H.
Cheers,
Dave
How well did the database connectivity work with datbases other than MS SQL Server?
Cheers,
Dave
Is it just me or do the people who want you to work in open offices sound like the nobility in Downton Abbey?
No, the nobility in Downton Abbey seem to genuinely care about their help. I think some of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn books more sucinctly capture how management views and treats employees.
Cheers,
Dave
Just Michael Valentine Smith throwing rocks at the rover.
Cheers,
Dave
...
"They're going to get the guns anyway" .... so we should allow them to do it easily and legally from law abiding citizens/dealers??!! Get real.
They're going to get guns anyway and we shouldn't delude ourselves that the "universal background check" does anything more than add a tiny speed bump to keeping guns away from the bad guys. You apparently read right past my reference to Evan Ebel getting the gun he used to commit two murders even though he was a recently released, paroled felon. Why didn't universal background checks stop that transaction?
That a majority of the population supports a law doesn't mean it's a good law or does anything to prevent whatever it was supposed to stop. You will also see a huge majority call for blocking a variety of internet content (porn, scams, illegal file sharing, etc.) but /. seems to recognize that laws, filters and such aren't the answer there. The same can be said for the ban on so-called "high capacity" magazines. Besides being readily available in other states the simple solution is to tape two 15 round magazines together so that a reloading only requires releasing the magazine, flipping it and inserting the "other end". My father used that solution during WWII so it's not like it's new.
So we now have several meaningless laws on the books that the politicians can point to and say, "We tried." Back at you, "Get real."
Cheers,
Dave
Handguns are typically legitimately used for self defense. Rifles and shotguns are typically used for hunting. People in Alaska and similar parts of Canada will frequently carry a handgun due to the danger from bears or various types. On the other hand, I don't know of any duck hunters who also carry a pistol while hunting. It all depends on what perils you're worried about. Around here (Colorado) deer hunters will frequently also carry a pistol since a mountain lion may think you're just being helpful by carving up you're deer when you thought you were field dressing him.
Cheers,
Dave
.. It seems like a trade off between more deadly (gun related) accidents and less crime, versus no such deadly accidents and more crime.
I think you answered your own question. Also, we'll never know how many of the dead or wounded intruders would have done the same to the people living there if they had had the chance.
There have been a few oopses where someone drunk (as an example) tried to "go home" to the wrong house and got shot for attempting to break in. The common attitude seems to be that Darwinian selection still exists and don't get so drunk that you can't find your own home.
Cheers,
Dave
Hasn't seemed to work that way is all I can say. Don't recall any reports of preemptive shootings by people breaking into houses since the law went into effect. Quite a few dead or wounded wanna be thieves, rapists, etc. though. Could be that the people breaking don't want to escalate by default.
Cheers,
Dave
What scares me most about the movement to have some sort of mental health check required for gun ownership is that I fear it will lead to a Catch-22 world. One where you can only own a gun if you're not crazy but you are assumed to be crazy if you want to own a gun.
Cheers,
Dave
Recently Iceland recorded it's *FIRST* police shooting resulting in death, ever. An Icelander could say the same thing about Canada (or most other countries). And, in case you're interested, the rate of gun ownership in Iceland is HIGHER than in the U.S. Link to BBC if you don't believe me:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25201471
Hint: guns and gun ownership aren't the problem.
Cheers,
Dave
...
Banning the sale of a legal product that is protected by the constitution will be almost impossible. When a higher court refuses to hear the case the politicians can say "At least we tried". This is a PR stunt as they just want to look like they are doing something even when they know it will not work. What a waste of time and money that could be better used elsewhere.
Tell me about it. I live in Colorado where the politicians pandered to a vocal constituency and passed a bunch of unenforceable laws in response to the Aurora theater shootings. In spite of these laws and laws already on the books a paroled felon was able to acquire a gun and use it to kill two people. The only difference the new laws made was to make it more difficult for law abiding citizens to buy or sell guns. And, as you predicted, all we heard from the politicians was, "At least we tried". Sadly, this will probably be followed by calls for even more controls that also won't work.
Cheers,
Dave
I live in Colorado where the law explicitly states that people have the right to use deadly force to protect themselves if someone breaks into their home. Seems like most years there are three to five justified shootings of intruders that make the news. That number seems to be going down over time as people learn that breaking into homes can be very unhealthy.
So both individual crimes are being prevented and potential crimes are being deterred.
Cheers,
Dave
teco (PDP-11 and earlier)
Cheers,
Dave
I'm surprised that emacs didn't already have a version control system built into. It has everything else.
Cheers,
Dave
I removed NetworkMangler from all my systems except my laptop. It does come in handy when connecting to WiFi hotspots when I'm not at home. Keeping it on a server with a static network connection is just inviting trouble.
Cheers,
Dave
Odd that the FAA didn't put a test area near Deer Trail, Colorado. I wonder what they're afraid of.....
Cheers,
Dave
Used to be that military actions took place at the nation vs. nation level and the individual citizens were just along for the ride (whether they wanted to be or not). So, one country would spy on another COUNTRY, intercept the other country's communications, etc. Other than stuff that was military related, commercial and private communications weren't really of interest to national intelligence.
Fast forward to now and you have private citizens taking violent action against countries they disagree with. As 9/11 demonstrated, this sort of action can result in mass casualties and huge material losses. Like it or not, governments have good reason for snooping on the communications of individuals.
I still don't like it. By my reading of the 4th Amendment, the NSA is not allowed to listen in on my (or any other U.S. citizen's) communications. Unfortunately, about all I can do about it is threaten to hold my breath, stomp my feet or, now, appeal to the UN. Appealing to the UN probably won't do any more than my other "threats.".
Cheers,
Dave