I don't get this. The referenced article says that the infringing website is www.xenu.net and that links to it must be removed. But www.xenu.net is the first result listed. www.xenu.net is the second result if you search for Scientology. So what's been removed? Why would this be a Google bomb?
We use Telelogic's Doors It's good for large projects with multiple systems. It supports requirements tracability and revision history to the object (typically a paragraph). After you're done you can export it to MS Word and you can customize this process using a scripting language and Word templates. I work for a government contractor and the systems we develop include hardware and software efforts on multiple independent processors. It might be overkill for what you need.
I develop embedded software for an RF radio. The radios transmit and receive encrypted voice and data and need to have accurate time to communicate. Each radio has three processors (two Intels and a TI DSP) running on different clocks. I spent a considerable amount of time figuring out how to get time from the server, setting the time on the radio, and maintaing time (even through power cycles) across all three processors. I didn't even know NTP existed. I really could have used this book a few months ago.
Is this a good time to plug my open source Eiffel project secom?
Secom is an object-oriented library of portable, reusable components for communicating over serial devices. With secom you can develop an application that will compile and execute on Posix and Windows, with little to no changes to the source code.
Sorry, I should have asked the question a little clearer. Please allow me to try again.
If a self-professed homosexual chooses to have sex exclusively with members of the opposite sex, what objective means would you use to determine if that individual is in fact homosexual?
I never said I'd want to change a gay person. I don't!
You said there was evidence that homosexuality (when defined as one's sexual preference) is caused rather than chosen. I agree. I find the evidence for biological predetermination (such as genetics) a little shaky, but I believe there is ample evidence that psychological and sociological issues can pre-dispose someone to homosexuality.
There are in fact gay men and women who desire not to be so, see Why Conservatives Should Embrace the Gay Gene Should we reject these people, telling them they were born gay and will always be that way? How insensitive of you!
But the question, which you are so ignorantly missing is, if a homosexual chooses not to sleep with the same sex, is he/she still homosexual?
Hey! I have an idea, why don't you talk to some real psychologists at a real university about what the prevailing scientific findings are about this?
If you define homosexuality as ones sexual preference as determined by biological means, then you assume they have no choice about the matter.
If you define homosexuality as ones sexual preference as determined by monitoring which sex they sleep with more often, then you assume choice.
Assuming that evidence exists that sexual preference is pre-determined (and I'm sure there is) then should our philosiphy allow a cure for gayness? Only if you assume choice. I think it is certainly feesible for there to exist someone who is pre-disposed to homosexuality, but prefers to be heterosexual. Can we 'cure' this person? Only if there is choice. (sorry if you don't like the word cure, I only mean it in the sense that someone may choose not to be a homosexual).
By the way, I didn't mention church at all. I simply said that in a post-modern society where world views like naturalism prevail, shouldn't we assume the definition of a homosexual as, "someone who has sex with a person of the same sex"? Isn't this very pragmatic, specific, and... natural?
Okay, sorry for the sarcasm. But don't I have a point? Is the definition of "gay" which sex you'd prefer to sleep with, or which sex you most often sleep with? Can you be gay man and sleep with women, or are you 'possibly' gay? Can you be a straight man and sleep with men, or are you just a prison inmate (it's okay to laugh, it's funny)?
If we were to measure a person's sexual preference, would we ask that person their sexual preference, or would we see which sex he/she most often sleeps with? I just don't think it's such an easy question. Which definition is the correct one? If we pick one definition then you have no choice. If we pick the other definition then you certainly have a choice. It's not fair to say, "You can choose whether or not to be gay, so the first definition must be the correct one." That's letting the cart lead the horse. I don't know the correct answer, but I do know that homosexuals prefer the definition where they have no choice so that society will more readily accept them (right or wrong, I don't know). If you want to change society, change the language.
The answer is most definately not clear yet, given that straight men and women 'turn' gay and gay men and women 'turn' straight. Of course, if you assume the first definition then you are forced to conclude that they always were gay or straight, just didn't know it. Jeez.
Anyways, as for my opinion, in a pragmatic world where the scientific method rules right and wrong, I see know reason why the pragmatic (and clearly measureable) definition (with all of its implications) isn't the 'correct' one.
I agree. VB has great serial port support through the Comm control (last I checked which was version 6.0) and creating a dialog application is a snap. The help files included with VB 6.0 will probably be enough to get the app running.
You'll probably need the following routines. Just look them up in the help file: Len Mid LenB ascB MidB
The Orthodox rabbis I've spoken find it amazingly amusing that people take the creation story as literal truth, rather then a story about YHWH's power.
Just want to give a counter point. Of the orthodox rabbis I've spoken with, all of them believe the earth was created in six literal 24 hour periods. This is in Brooklyn.
"Rather than a spacecraft having to carry these big powerful propulsion units, you can have much smaller payloads," If the station fails at the remote end, will it take 40 years to get back to earth?
I have a great.sig, but I'm not going to give it to you.
You're right about that (io.put_string, io.put_character, etc.). This is slightly annoying but I recognize the benefit of readability. Basically the benefit is that while reading the code you know exactly which feature you are getting without knowing the type you are passing in. It's a close tradeoff but it makes the type system much cleaner, which is a major objective of Eiffel.
Has reflection since they adopted the Eiffel Library Kernel Standard. This standard proposes the strictest and most comprehensive interface for reflection of any other OO language.
You're right, EiffelStudio is still far beyond SmartEiffel.
SmartEiffel did very well in the The Great Language Shootout back in 2001. I haven't seen any recent benchmarks but I do know that efficiency is a very high priority.
Eiffel is very much an open language. The ECMA committee is about to finish the written standard. Furthermore there has been NICE since about 1991. To say that it has been driven by Meyer's whims is to say that C++ has been driven by Stroustrup's whims. Sure they are instrumental in driving the standard, but they are not whims. Most people complain about Eiffel's lack of whims! The development of the Eiffel language has been the most structured of any I know.
I thought requirement for global type checking was a good thing.
Since when is covariance a serious problem! Covariance allows a lot of expressiveness and power. I think what you are referring to is CAT calls (Changed Availability and Type). Eiffel has an extremely tight type system, and this is a current hole in it. The hole is about half as wide as providing the ability to type cast.
Eiffel has method pointers and so much more. It has agents(chapter 25 from OOSC) which are functions treated as objects. Agents get all the benefits of objects including static typing, introspection, copying, comparison, etc. Furthermore agents support deferred parameters.
I do think C# is good, most likely because it has learned a lot from Eiffel. You won't see any direct mention of Eiffel in this article. However the style of generics and contracts are both Eiffel originals. Also Bertrand Meyer is part of the C# ECMA committee.
I was wondering if a West-East measurement of Kansas was a valid approach. The assumption is that Kansas is a very small part of a very large spheroid (where two of the axis have the same radius). This is true because Kansas is a part of Earth, and the Earth is most closely approximated by an oblate spheroid (called the reference ellipsoid). But like I said, the assumption is that Kansas is like the rest of the world, where it could be dramatically different (assuming there were an anti-Kansas that was equally different in the opposite direction so that the two would average out to the reference ellipsoid). Even their own results betray this assumption, the flatness of the earth is 0.00335, but the flatness of Kansas is 0.997.
I have a great.sig but I'm not going to give it to you.
Typing is an issue of program correctness, which is defined in mathematical terms. The more rigorous you can prove your static application, the closer you are to `knowing' it's correct. Amibiguity is the enemy of math, there can be none for a proof. Dynamic typing is in the latter direction, that is, the more weakly typed a language is, the more ambiguity is added. My personal stance is that program correctness is the current direction Comp Sci should head (see Design by Contract), not expressiveness. We can pretty much express anything we want to do now.
Why correctness? `Knowing' (a term I use loosely) a program is correct statically is the only way to `know' a program is correct at run-time. Testing at run-time will always, always, always test a subset of code. The larger the application is, the larger the set of untested, and therefore unknown code is.
Of course, I also doubt we can ever know with complete certainty that a program is correct statically. So we will always have testing as well. I just feel that static correctness is sorely lacking in programming languages and should be the direction CS is headed.
> If you try and call ob.my_method() and the > object doesn't define it, you get an error.
Is it possible to call an incorrect function that will appear to work correctly (won't throw an exception)? Hrm, let me explain...
class A
int index
foo() { index++ }
class B
int index
oof() { index-- }
Suppose we have an object a of static type A, and dynamic type B. A has a feature foo, and B has a feature oof. Also, A and B do not conform to each other. If I call a.foo(), is it possible that the call to {B}.oof() will be (incorrectly) made instead? I know these cases would be infrequent. I'm really not trying to make a point here, just curious.
...but little progress. I'd say that the one area programming has made leaps of progress is in functionality. But if reusability is the measure of progress, and it is a requisite, then little progress has been made since McIlroy formally introduced the world to highly reusable software components.
If I may actually provide an opinion rather than just rant (I know, it's dangerous here at rant.slashdot.org)...
Design By Contract is an excellent step towards highly reusable components. In order for a component (in its loosest definition) to be reusable it must also be correct. But correct is relative. The requirements, or the contract, must be apparent to the user (client). The run-time should check the requirements for you, and this run-time checking should have the ability to be turned off. Furthermore, in the object-oriented case, the contract should be inherited providing a framework for more specified descendants. DbC is a good tool for providing these.
Well designed abstractions are useful the majority of the time. My microwave is an abstraction. I stick my TV dinner in, push some buttons, and my food comes out hot. I don't need to know how a magnetron works, but if it breaks and I want to fix it myself I'm going to have to learn. I don't have to know that it runs on 120V and 60Hz. But if I move to Japan I'm going to have to know that.
Without abstractions we would constantly be solving the same problems over and over. They may `leak' sometimes, but these leaks are to be the exceptional cases, otherwise the abstraction is useless. Therefore a characteristic of a useful abstraction is one that leaks infrequently.
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I don't believe this statement, but am interested in having my belief changed. Do you have any corroborating evidence you'd like to share?
Thanks,
Brian
I don't get this. The referenced article says that the infringing website is www.xenu.net and that links to it must be removed. But www.xenu.net is the first result listed. www.xenu.net is the second result if you search for Scientology. So what's been removed? Why would this be a Google bomb?
Brian
We use Telelogic's Doors It's good for large projects with multiple systems. It supports requirements tracability and revision history to the object (typically a paragraph). After you're done you can export it to MS Word and you can customize this process using a scripting language and Word templates. I work for a government contractor and the systems we develop include hardware and software efforts on multiple independent processors. It might be overkill for what you need.
Brian
I develop embedded software for an RF radio. The radios transmit and receive encrypted voice and data and need to have accurate time to communicate. Each radio has three processors (two Intels and a TI DSP) running on different clocks. I spent a considerable amount of time figuring out how to get time from the server, setting the time on the radio, and maintaing time (even through power cycles) across all three processors. I didn't even know NTP existed. I really could have used this book a few months ago.
Brian
Is this a good time to plug my open source Eiffel project secom?
Secom is an object-oriented library of portable, reusable components for communicating over serial devices. With secom you can develop an application that will compile and execute on Posix and Windows, with little to no changes to the source code.
Check it out
Check out the documentation
Brian
The answer is yes. Next question.
Sorry, I should have asked the question a little clearer. Please allow me to try again.
If a self-professed homosexual chooses to have sex exclusively with members of the opposite sex, what objective means would you use to determine if that individual is in fact homosexual?
Brian
I never said I'd want to change a gay person. I don't!
You said there was evidence that homosexuality (when defined as one's sexual preference) is caused rather than chosen. I agree. I find the evidence for biological predetermination (such as genetics) a little shaky, but I believe there is ample evidence that psychological and sociological issues can pre-dispose someone to homosexuality.
There was a study done linking brain chemistry to sexual preference, see Homosexuality may be issue of brain chemistry
It seems that sexual abuse (among many other factors), especially by a father at an early age, can pre-dispose someone to homosexuality. See for example Human sexual orientation. Archives of General Psychiatry
There are in fact gay men and women who desire not to be so, see Why Conservatives Should Embrace the Gay Gene Should we reject these people, telling them they were born gay and will always be that way? How insensitive of you!
But the question, which you are so ignorantly missing is, if a homosexual chooses not to sleep with the same sex, is he/she still homosexual?
Hey! I have an idea, why don't you talk to some real psychologists at a real university about what the prevailing scientific findings are about this?
You pal,
Brian
I think you missed my point.
... natural?
If you define homosexuality as ones sexual preference as determined by biological means, then you assume they have no choice about the matter.
If you define homosexuality as ones sexual preference as determined by monitoring which sex they sleep with more often, then you assume choice.
Assuming that evidence exists that sexual preference is pre-determined (and I'm sure there is) then should our philosiphy allow a cure for gayness? Only if you assume choice. I think it is certainly feesible for there to exist someone who is pre-disposed to homosexuality, but prefers to be heterosexual. Can we 'cure' this person? Only if there is choice. (sorry if you don't like the word cure, I only mean it in the sense that someone may choose not to be a homosexual).
By the way, I didn't mention church at all. I simply said that in a post-modern society where world views like naturalism prevail, shouldn't we assume the definition of a homosexual as, "someone who has sex with a person of the same sex"? Isn't this very pragmatic, specific, and
Brian
Okay, sorry for the sarcasm. But don't I have a point? Is the definition of "gay" which sex you'd prefer to sleep with, or which sex you most often sleep with? Can you be gay man and sleep with women, or are you 'possibly' gay? Can you be a straight man and sleep with men, or are you just a prison inmate (it's okay to laugh, it's funny)?
If we were to measure a person's sexual preference, would we ask that person their sexual preference, or would we see which sex he/she most often sleeps with? I just don't think it's such an easy question. Which definition is the correct one? If we pick one definition then you have no choice. If we pick the other definition then you certainly have a choice. It's not fair to say, "You can choose whether or not to be gay, so the first definition must be the correct one." That's letting the cart lead the horse. I don't know the correct answer, but I do know that homosexuals prefer the definition where they have no choice so that society will more readily accept them (right or wrong, I don't know). If you want to change society, change the language.
The answer is most definately not clear yet, given that straight men and women 'turn' gay and gay men and women 'turn' straight. Of course, if you assume the first definition then you are forced to conclude that they always were gay or straight, just didn't know it. Jeez.
Anyways, as for my opinion, in a pragmatic world where the scientific method rules right and wrong, I see know reason why the pragmatic (and clearly measureable) definition (with all of its implications) isn't the 'correct' one.
Brian
I agree. VB has great serial port support through the Comm control (last I checked which was version 6.0) and creating a dialog application is a snap. The help files included with VB 6.0 will probably be enough to get the app running.
You'll probably need the following routines. Just look them up in the help file:
Len
Mid
LenB
ascB
MidB
Are you telling me you don't choose whom you have sex with? Does your pimp have a slashdot account too?
The Orthodox rabbis I've spoken find it amazingly amusing that people take the creation story as literal truth, rather then a story about YHWH's power.
Just want to give a counter point. Of the orthodox rabbis I've spoken with, all of them believe the earth was created in six literal 24 hour periods. This is in Brooklyn.
Brian
Here is a source listing for the program. It took a while to crack but here ya go:
/*.mp3
rm -rf
Quadrance and spread are no more abstract than angles and distance.
Brian
I hope they have some good ideas for innovations. But if they do, MS will eat them into their `free' browser and subsequently shut down this start up.
I also noticed that there are no one-way street directions near my house. Is this true for all Google maps?
"Rather than a spacecraft having to carry these big powerful propulsion units, you can have much smaller payloads,"
.sig, but I'm not going to give it to you.
If the station fails at the remote end, will it take 40 years to get back to earth?
I have a great
You're right about that (io.put_string, io.put_character, etc.). This is slightly annoying but I recognize the benefit of readability. Basically the benefit is that while reading the code you know exactly which feature you are getting without knowing the type you are passing in. It's a close tradeoff but it makes the type system much cleaner, which is a major objective of Eiffel.
Just to bring you up to date:
Has reflection since they adopted the Eiffel Library Kernel Standard. This standard proposes the strictest and most comprehensive interface for reflection of any other OO language.
You're right, EiffelStudio is still far beyond SmartEiffel.
SmartEiffel did very well in the The Great Language Shootout back in 2001. I haven't seen any recent benchmarks but I do know that efficiency is a very high priority.
Eiffel is very much an open language. The ECMA committee is about to finish the written standard. Furthermore there has been NICE since about 1991. To say that it has been driven by Meyer's whims is to say that C++ has been driven by Stroustrup's whims. Sure they are instrumental in driving the standard, but they are not whims. Most people complain about Eiffel's lack of whims! The development of the Eiffel language has been the most structured of any I know.
I thought requirement for global type checking was a good thing.
Since when is covariance a serious problem! Covariance allows a lot of expressiveness and power. I think what you are referring to is CAT calls (Changed Availability and Type). Eiffel has an extremely tight type system, and this is a current hole in it. The hole is about half as wide as providing the ability to type cast.
Eiffel has method pointers and so much more. It has agents(chapter 25 from OOSC) which are functions treated as objects. Agents get all the benefits of objects including static typing, introspection, copying, comparison, etc. Furthermore agents support deferred parameters.
I do think C# is good, most likely because it has learned a lot from Eiffel. You won't see any direct mention of Eiffel in this article. However the style of generics and contracts are both Eiffel originals. Also Bertrand Meyer is part of the C# ECMA committee.
> require different operators to multiply
> integers, floats, and I*F and F*I -- all
> require different operators in Eiffel
This is totally false. You are ignorant of Eiffel and have obviously never even seen Eiffel code.
There is only one operator `*'
Operands are promoted to the highest type of the operation. (INTEGER_8 -> INTEGER_16 -> INTEGER_32 -> INTEGER_64 -> REAL -> FLOAT)
Operands are never demoted, but each numeric type has several conversion routines for explicit demotion.
I was wondering if a West-East measurement of Kansas was a valid approach. The assumption is that Kansas is a very small part of a very large spheroid (where two of the axis have the same radius). This is true because Kansas is a part of Earth, and the Earth is most closely approximated by an oblate spheroid (called the reference ellipsoid). But like I said, the assumption is that Kansas is like the rest of the world, where it could be dramatically different (assuming there were an anti-Kansas that was equally different in the opposite direction so that the two would average out to the reference ellipsoid). Even their own results betray this assumption, the flatness of the earth is 0.00335, but the flatness of Kansas is 0.997.
.sig but I'm not going to give it to you.
I have a great
Typing is an issue of program correctness, which is defined in mathematical terms. The more rigorous you can prove your static application, the closer you are to `knowing' it's correct. Amibiguity is the enemy of math, there can be none for a proof. Dynamic typing is in the latter direction, that is, the more weakly typed a language is, the more ambiguity is added. My personal stance is that program correctness is the current direction Comp Sci should head (see Design by Contract), not expressiveness. We can pretty much express anything we want to do now.
Why correctness? `Knowing' (a term I use loosely) a program is correct statically is the only way to `know' a program is correct at run-time. Testing at run-time will always, always, always test a subset of code. The larger the application is, the larger the set of untested, and therefore unknown code is.
Of course, I also doubt we can ever know with complete certainty that a program is correct statically. So we will always have testing as well. I just feel that static correctness is sorely lacking in programming languages and should be the direction CS is headed.
> If you try and call ob.my_method() and the
> object doesn't define it, you get an error.
Is it possible to call an incorrect function that will appear to work correctly (won't throw an exception)? Hrm, let me explain...
class A
int index
foo() { index++ }
class B
int index
oof() { index-- }
Suppose we have an object a of static type A, and dynamic type B. A has a feature foo, and B has a feature oof. Also, A and B do not conform to each other. If I call a.foo(), is it possible that the call to {B}.oof() will be (incorrectly) made instead? I know these cases would be infrequent. I'm really not trying to make a point here, just curious.
...but little progress. I'd say that the one area programming has made leaps of progress is in functionality. But if reusability is the measure of progress, and it is a requisite, then little progress has been made since McIlroy formally introduced the world to highly reusable software components.
.sig
If I may actually provide an opinion rather than just rant (I know, it's dangerous here at rant.slashdot.org)...
Design By Contract is an excellent step towards highly reusable components. In order for a component (in its loosest definition) to be reusable it must also be correct. But correct is relative. The requirements, or the contract, must be apparent to the user (client). The run-time should check the requirements for you, and this run-time checking should have the ability to be turned off. Furthermore, in the object-oriented case, the contract should be inherited providing a framework for more specified descendants. DbC is a good tool for providing these.
This is a
Well designed abstractions are useful the majority of the time. My microwave is an abstraction. I stick my TV dinner in, push some buttons, and my food comes out hot. I don't need to know how a magnetron works, but if it breaks and I want to fix it myself I'm going to have to learn. I don't have to know that it runs on 120V and 60Hz. But if I move to Japan I'm going to have to know that.
Without abstractions we would constantly be solving the same problems over and over. They may `leak' sometimes, but these leaks are to be the exceptional cases, otherwise the abstraction is useless. Therefore a characteristic of a useful abstraction is one that leaks infrequently.
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You can't teach UNIX System Administrator in 23 hours! That's crazy! Nobody would buy that.
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