First, I like writing test cases in a text editor, programmatically. It's tedious enough writing them in the first place, at least I can cut-and-paste and modify them quickly in an editor. Going through a web GUI does not seem like it's very efficient.
This was also one of my concerns. Though I haven't yet successfully downloaded the source from this rather slow site, I do note that it also supports a command line interface.
I'm currently wrestling with
dejagnu. Although the documentation of this tool seems to assume a familiarity with autoconf that I do not yet have, it is simple enough to use once you have set up the project test suite. I'd say it's probably pretty hard to beat. Expect is a pretty good tool upon which to base a test suite.
There is nothing amiss, other than new linux users insisting that everything be like windows. This would be solved if people would learn how to setup their linux systems and run them like linux systems rather than complaining that it's not windows.
Good point, but I work in an environment where all the development work is done in Linux and BSD, all the developers (about 25% of this small company) use Linux on the desktop, the BOFHs use Linux and Solaris, the designers use Mac/Windows, everybody else uses Windows. And why shouldn't they? When MS makes it physically or financially difficult for a small company to use Windows, out people will move to MacOS, or Linux, or whatever works. But they will need to be able to read DOC and XLS.
We really do need the courts to make MS publicise these formats.
I had always assumed that Sun's Solaris OS had been named in honor of this great SF movie, which was world-famous in the 70s and 80s, but I could be wrong.
I'm not quite sure if you're saying that the book Solaris is Russian or just the movie but I'm currently reading Solaris and it claims to be translated from French.
I've read Lem's Cyberiad, Futurological Congress, and Star Diaries. I read them in English translations by Michael Kandel.
Amazon lists two translators for the American edition of Solaris, and whilst I can assure you that Mr Lem is Polish, I would not presume that he wrote all of his novels in his native language.
Mr Lem is Polish. Mr Tarkovsky, when he was alive, was Russian.
The Tarkovsky movie is probably still widely available, but only for as long as people like me can persuade people like you to hunt down a copy, watch it, and pass on the word.
About twenty years ago, I recall picking up a thin paperback of translations of Soviet (mainly Russian, I expect) science fiction compiled by Mirra Ginsberg. They were surprisingly good.
One writer who has always strongly influenced western writers and readers is Polish SF writer Stanislaw Lem, whose Solaris was made by Russian movie director Andrei Tarkovsky into perhaps the best science fiction movie I have seen.
When users of an open source operating system are all but forced to rely on commercial products just to install a simple printer driver, there's something amiss. Does anybody know of an open source project to provide similar support?
"In the *absence* of a clear consensus, I will follow best practices. Best practice in editing a technical or standards document is to (a) avoid ambiguous usages, seek clarity and precision; and (b) to use, follow and reference international standards."
It's difficult to argue with that. It remains to be seen whether this usage will catch on, though.
Why would any admin put their database server out on the open internet, exposed to this anyway? Databases should be kept behind firewalls, where it's safe.
Databases are in common use on internet-facing applications, that need to deliver stateful behavior. Think of 9IAS as an Apache server with an Oracle backend. No matter where you put it, there will have to be a tunnel to port 80. If it's a public application, such as an ecommerce website, that tunnel will lead to the internet. As others have pointed out, in larger enterprises this server's vulnerability to internal attack may also be a problem.
Needless to say, any dbms that carries useful information must be secure.
It's lovely stuff, but who wants to write free software for OSX when Jobs flatly refuses to fill the other part of the deal by porting the MacOS layer to other kit? Just about anything written for Linux in userspace can be ported to xBSD and/or OSX, so OSX only represents a nice way of running open source software on some classy kit, which is neither here nor there while the cheap beige stuff in every office cannot run MacOS.
why does the Slashdot crowd get so excited when some random gadget runs Linux? do people think it has the same features as the i386 version?
There is no reason why an embedded system should not boot a Linux kernel. That's exciting for exactly the same reason that a 16MHz 386 desktop with 4MB RAM booting Linux 0.99 was exciting. There may be more appopriate systems for PDAs, but I believe that Linux is currently the only free kernel to run on PDAs.
I'm puzzled by your reference to shareware with respect to Amiga. In the late eighties, when I was programming the Amiga, it was famed for its huge collections of free software that had been placed, source and all, into the public domain by its programmers.
In fact, the AmigaDOS Replacement Project (ARP) started by Charlie Heath to create C replacements for the BCPL CLI commands of AmigaDOS 1.2, was probably the first open source project undertaken on a consumer-oriented computer.
Fred Fish and others produced hundreds of compilation disks of mainly freeware applications that were distributed worldwide by snailmail long before USENET and BBS access were common.
Whilst the Drake Equation is important, it's certainly not "the underlying force [behind] the entire aim of SETI", and not as important as Drake's other work, from Ozma onwards.
The Drake Equation was simply an effort to provide a standard focus for discussion of the probabilities of receiving a signal from extraterrestrial civilisation.
The same government who failed to protect us from terrorists? The same government who was kinda responsible of what happened?
Yes, it's the only government you've got over there, and the only entity (besides the courts) capable of taking on your monopolies.
Kneejerk nihilism won't solve your problems.
Yes, how about they start with Bind?
Bind is probably already as open as possible, and it is fairly easy to produce a drop-in replacement.
If you re-read my posting you will see that I do not advocate any government sanctions on what individual consumers can purchase--rather the reverse, I advocate that the government and the courts use their powers to increase the diversity of installed software, and by perhaps by making key network components open source, to improve the prospects of spotting and fixing security problems.
This discovery highlights the dangers of the monoculture that comes with the de facto systems monopoly. The danger is not so much in abuse of monopoly (though that assuredly is a danger) as the serious security implications of having a monopoly in the first place.
I hope that the government and the courts will combine to force Microsoft to implement more interoperability in its systems (for instance, publish its file formats) and perhaps even make some key outward-facing components of its operating systems open source. These steps would give the consumer more choice and ensure that system vulnerabilities could be spotted more easily.
If you really have decided that you _must_ rewrite your code (and I presume that you have examined all the alternatives and found none of them viable) then my advice is to write test suites for your code _first_. To perform a functional rewrite, you need a way of automatically testing that the function is performed effectively and faultlessly by the rewritten code.
Get a copy of Expect, or even better, DejaGnu, and start scripting your tests.
This all has the air of an attempt to lock the stable door after the horse has bolted. General purpose computers simply cannot be outlawed--you can build a perfectly workable computer in a garage, as Wozniak and many others did. And programmers cannot be forcibly prevented from doing what they want to do--lock us up, and we'll still be programmers.
I suppose I could get a little angry when I consider that now you can be locked up for publishing a computer program, but mostly it just makes me laugh. Because it's funny.
if else [etc] are all a whole lot more obvious if you know what the words mean in everyday (English) usage
Sure, and it helps to understand what how the Greek sigma symbol is pronounced if you want to do math. This doesn't mean you need to learn Greek, or to understand a word of the language. The observation that programming is an activity performed in English is simply incorrect. One might as well claim that reverse polish calculators are programmed in German or Japanese, because the verb comes after the subject and the object in those languages.
Today, 99% of all programming is still done in English which ends up giving a definite bias towards English as the language of the web.
I don't know about you, but most of _my_ programming is in C or SQL, both of which owe far more to calculus and algebra than to any natural language. The idea that these are comparable to variants or dialects of English is absurd.
Slashdot Mirror
This was also one of my concerns. Though I haven't yet successfully downloaded the source from this rather slow site, I do note that it also supports a command line interface.
I'm currently wrestling with dejagnu. Although the documentation of this tool seems to assume a familiarity with autoconf that I do not yet have, it is simple enough to use once you have set up the project test suite. I'd say it's probably pretty hard to beat. Expect is a pretty good tool upon which to base a test suite.
Ihre ganze Kaffeemaschine sind gehören uns
I like it!
Good point, but I work in an environment where all the development work is done in Linux and BSD, all the developers (about 25% of this small company) use Linux on the desktop, the BOFHs use Linux and Solaris, the designers use Mac/Windows, everybody else uses Windows. And why shouldn't they? When MS makes it physically or financially difficult for a small company to use Windows, out people will move to MacOS, or Linux, or whatever works. But they will need to be able to read DOC and XLS.
We really do need the courts to make MS publicise these formats.
John Brunner would have loved this.
It's about first contact with alien intelligence.
Where can I get a copy? Any chance I can get it on DVD? :)
Read this DVD Review
I had always assumed that Sun's Solaris OS had been named in honor of this great SF movie, which was world-famous in the 70s and 80s, but I could be wrong.
A review might help to introduce the movie. Pointers to better SF movies will be received with gratitude.
I've read Lem's Cyberiad, Futurological Congress, and Star Diaries. I read them in English translations by Michael Kandel.
Amazon lists two translators for the American edition of Solaris, and whilst I can assure you that Mr Lem is Polish, I would not presume that he wrote all of his novels in his native language.
Mr Lem is Polish. Mr Tarkovsky, when he was alive, was Russian.
The Tarkovsky movie is probably still widely available, but only for as long as people like me can persuade people like you to hunt down a copy, watch it, and pass on the word.
One writer who has always strongly influenced western writers and readers is Polish SF writer Stanislaw Lem, whose Solaris was made by Russian movie director Andrei Tarkovsky into perhaps the best science fiction movie I have seen.
When users of an open source operating system are all but forced to rely on commercial products just to install a simple printer driver, there's something amiss. Does anybody know of an open source project to provide similar support?
Bill, Larry, everybody knows you guys don't like each other. Now why don't you just take this little spat to email.
Gibbers?
It's difficult to argue with that. It remains to be seen whether this usage will catch on, though.
Databases are in common use on internet-facing applications, that need to deliver stateful behavior. Think of 9IAS as an Apache server with an Oracle backend. No matter where you put it, there will have to be a tunnel to port 80. If it's a public application, such as an ecommerce website, that tunnel will lead to the internet. As others have pointed out, in larger enterprises this server's vulnerability to internal attack may also be a problem.
Needless to say, any dbms that carries useful information must be secure.
It's lovely stuff, but who wants to write free software for OSX when Jobs flatly refuses to fill the other part of the deal by porting the MacOS layer to other kit? Just about anything written for Linux in userspace can be ported to xBSD and/or OSX, so OSX only represents a nice way of running open source software on some classy kit, which is neither here nor there while the cheap beige stuff in every office cannot run MacOS.
There is no reason why an embedded system should not boot a Linux kernel. That's exciting for exactly the same reason that a 16MHz 386 desktop with 4MB RAM booting Linux 0.99 was exciting. There may be more appopriate systems for PDAs, but I believe that Linux is currently the only free kernel to run on PDAs.
In fact, the AmigaDOS Replacement Project (ARP) started by Charlie Heath to create C replacements for the BCPL CLI commands of AmigaDOS 1.2, was probably the first open source project undertaken on a consumer-oriented computer.
Fred Fish and others produced hundreds of compilation disks of mainly freeware applications that were distributed worldwide by snailmail long before USENET and BBS access were common.
The Drake Equation was simply an effort to provide a standard focus for discussion of the probabilities of receiving a signal from extraterrestrial civilisation.
Yes, it's the only government you've got over there, and the only entity (besides the courts) capable of taking on your monopolies. Kneejerk nihilism won't solve your problems.
Yes, how about they start with Bind?
Bind is probably already as open as possible, and it is fairly easy to produce a drop-in replacement.
Thanks for that. After all the rumors, I think we deserved to be told officially.
If you re-read my posting you will see that I do not advocate any government sanctions on what individual consumers can purchase--rather the reverse, I advocate that the government and the courts use their powers to increase the diversity of installed software, and by perhaps by making key network components open source, to improve the prospects of spotting and fixing security problems.
I hope that the government and the courts will combine to force Microsoft to implement more interoperability in its systems (for instance, publish its file formats) and perhaps even make some key outward-facing components of its operating systems open source. These steps would give the consumer more choice and ensure that system vulnerabilities could be spotted more easily.
Get a copy of Expect, or even better, DejaGnu, and start scripting your tests.
I suppose I could get a little angry when I consider that now you can be locked up for publishing a computer program, but mostly it just makes me laugh. Because it's funny.
Sure, and it helps to understand what how the Greek sigma symbol is pronounced if you want to do math. This doesn't mean you need to learn Greek, or to understand a word of the language. The observation that programming is an activity performed in English is simply incorrect. One might as well claim that reverse polish calculators are programmed in German or Japanese, because the verb comes after the subject and the object in those languages.
I don't know about you, but most of _my_ programming is in C or SQL, both of which owe far more to calculus and algebra than to any natural language. The idea that these are comparable to variants or dialects of English is absurd.