It may not come in our lifetime, or not before we retire, but software creation and maintenance will be fully automated.
Of course they will be. The jobs will be in creating and maintaining the machines or programs which automate the creation of software.
From the viewpoint of a mid-20th-century programmer entering machine code instructions with a toggle panel or punched cards, this has already happened. What is a compiler?
IBM's PS/2 series were designed so that no screwdriver was needed for any user-fittable upgrade (which means most upgrades, in case you're wondering). Some of the server models did have screws to open the case but chunky ones where you could use a coin, AFAIK.
It needs to get back to its roots. Let the characters have flaws, let them make mistakes.
Isn't this what we were promised with ST:Enterprise? As opposed to the '100% good guys' of earlier Treks (as Roddenberry said, no lying, no cheating etc).
While this explanation doesn't really belong in this document, we are
asked it often enough that we have decided to put it here. While the
POV-Ray[tm] source code is freely available, it isn't 'open' according
to the currently popular definition of the term (meaning that it isn't
available to create derivative works). The reasons for this are
historical. Primarily, at the time that POV-Ray[tm] was originally
developed (starting in about 1990), on Compuserve, it was a different
environment than today. Virtually none of the developers had internet
access and there wasn't a great awareness of things like the GPL. The
team at that time rolled their own license - one that allowed free use
of the software but attempted to prevent people taking unfair
advantage of it.
As people contributed code to POV-Ray[tm] over the years - and there
have been many instances of this - they contributed it to us on the
understanding that it would be covered by the POV-Ray[tm] license, as
it stood at the time. Now, in 2001, we find that in many cases we
don't know who wrote what part of the code, or that the author is
uncontactable. We simply don't have the right to arbitrarily change
the terms under which their source code is distributed. Even though
it was contributed to us, we feel that we must honor the terms under
which it was given. Therefore, POV- Ray[tm] will remain on this
existing license until we do a full re-write (which is intended for
v4), at which time a new license will be instituted that is far more
liberal in terms of reuse.
In fact, that is from the copying conditions for 3.5; the end user licence agreement for 3.6 seems to be more restrictive, and their distribution licence does not permit any modification at all.
I liked the Filer on RISC OS: it was a spatial file manager much like the new Nautilus (but much faster), where double-clicking a directory would open a new window with that directory's contents. However, if you used the _right_ mouse button to double-click then the new window would replace the old. (The same principle of right-clicking instead of left-clicking to do the same thing but change whether the old thing is kept open was applied in other places, eg right-clicking a menu item chose that action and left the menu open to choose another.) But this requires a three-buttong mouse since with two buttons right-click is needed for a context menu.
Can anyone give the true form of this Simpsons quotation? Burns: Any questions? Skinner: Which is more important, ___ or stickatititude? Burns: Any _real_ questions?
If you find a security hole then the mistake has already been made. Fix the hole, but also make sure the same bug doesn't exist in any other program. Finding the same exploits again and again (buffer overruns, format string vulnerabilities, tempfile symlink vulnerabilities) reflects very badly on free software and programmers' ability to learn from bugs found in other software. (Not that proprietary software is necessarily any better - I am just not discussing it here.)
The OpenBSD people have built up a good track record on security by finding holes and fixing them everywhere possible. I am sure they would disagree with your assertion that finding holes does not help to improve security. Finding the bugs is an important first step towards not putting them back in next time you write code.
If a user does not change the password, that is not a design problem of the firmware.
I'd say the design problem is in having a default password to start with. Surely there is a better way to do it, like printing the password on a removable label stuck to the router?
I wouldn't need to register a particular spam-only address; I get huge amounts of spam to made-up usernames at my domain. I used to get mail sent to any local-part @membled.com, but that became unmanageable about a year ago.
For computer programs, 'policy' is meaningless unless it is reflected in the behaviour of the program. If your mail server is happily accepting and delivering spam messages then clearly the policy you have configured is to allow spam.
Otherwise, I could put up some obscure document on my website saying that downloading images is forbidden and then claim that anyone visiting the site is stealing bandwidth. This is nonsense of course - if I had a policy that images were not to be downloaded then I would configure the httpd not to serve them.
Essentially, just be careful about using the word 'stealing'. It's a strong word and you can't use it to label any behaviour you don't like. I do not particularly wish to see advertising; this does not mean that advertisers are stealing my time and attention. Anonymous cowards are not stealing CPU resources from Slashdot by posting lame comments. And so on.
Switching the programming staff from Solaris to Linux is no big deal. I'd be much more interested to hear what Oracle is doing with the PHBs, secretaries, marketers and other non-technical staff. I bet they're still on Windows.
Why? Surely you can just use normal photographic processes to produce prints - albeit jumbo-sized ones on high-quality paper.
Has scanning technology now reached the point where you get better resolution by scanning a negative than by making a good-quality large print from it using traditional means?
Sorry - what exactly is the problem with putting, say, an OpenVMS system on the Internet? If it has known security holes which can be exploited by some random attacker, can't these be exploited just the same by someone within your organization, who is more likely to have a motive for doing so?
I thought that most current mainframe systems had a good record on security, but perhaps that is because they've never been properly put to the test.
I wonder if they do SMP, or can be made to do SMP by cutting a couple of pins? With six watt power consumption you could build a big SMP box and use less power than a single Xeon.
Yes I can send text messages to the phone by email, although this is done by a third-party service. I never thought about attachments. I'll look at Freshmeat to find some program to convert the ringtone into the right format.
So how does one load a ringtone? I was disappointed to find that my new Nokia phone didn't include a ringtone composer. The various ringtone services must download them by text message or something. If I have a computer with a modem can I send ringtones to myself?
Gosh, how can they possibly manage to render a *web page* on an embedded device with *only* 64 megabytes of memory? Good luck to the project developers, but I think they face an impossible task.
BTW, for a lightweight graphical web browser I like dillo, it's what I am using to post this comment. The main downside is that it doesn't do SSL very well.
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Of course they will be. The jobs will be in creating and maintaining the machines or programs which automate the creation of software.
From the viewpoint of a mid-20th-century programmer entering machine code instructions with a toggle panel or punched cards, this has already happened. What is a compiler?
IBM's PS/2 series were designed so that no screwdriver was needed for any user-fittable upgrade (which means most upgrades, in case you're wondering). Some of the server models did have screws to open the case but chunky ones where you could use a coin, AFAIK.
With a question like that what sort of answer do you expect?
No, uCLinux doesn't support the 8086, but try ELKS. (reference)
I'm a fan of one-dimensional Go myself... makes the game a bit simpler...
Heh, well if the source code is not available at all that rather proves the point that it's not open source :-(.
I liked the Filer on RISC OS: it was a spatial file manager much like the new Nautilus (but much faster), where double-clicking a directory would open a new window with that directory's contents. However, if you used the _right_ mouse button to double-click then the new window would replace the old. (The same principle of right-clicking instead of left-clicking to do the same thing but change whether the old thing is kept open was applied in other places, eg right-clicking a menu item chose that action and left the menu open to choose another.) But this requires a three-buttong mouse since with two buttons right-click is needed for a context menu.
Can anyone give the true form of this Simpsons quotation? Burns: Any questions? Skinner: Which is more important, ___ or stickatititude? Burns: Any _real_ questions?
If you find a security hole then the mistake has already been made. Fix the hole, but also make sure the same bug doesn't exist in any other program. Finding the same exploits again and again (buffer overruns, format string vulnerabilities, tempfile symlink vulnerabilities) reflects very badly on free software and programmers' ability to learn from bugs found in other software. (Not that proprietary software is necessarily any better - I am just not discussing it here.)
The OpenBSD people have built up a good track record on security by finding holes and fixing them everywhere possible. I am sure they would disagree with your assertion that finding holes does not help to improve security. Finding the bugs is an important first step towards not putting them back in next time you write code.
Have you looked at pytvgrab?
I wouldn't need to register a particular spam-only address; I get huge amounts of spam to made-up usernames at my domain. I used to get mail sent to any local-part @membled.com, but that became unmanageable about a year ago.
Otherwise, I could put up some obscure document on my website saying that downloading images is forbidden and then claim that anyone visiting the site is stealing bandwidth. This is nonsense of course - if I had a policy that images were not to be downloaded then I would configure the httpd not to serve them.
Essentially, just be careful about using the word 'stealing'. It's a strong word and you can't use it to label any behaviour you don't like. I do not particularly wish to see advertising; this does not mean that advertisers are stealing my time and attention. Anonymous cowards are not stealing CPU resources from Slashdot by posting lame comments. And so on.
Switching the programming staff from Solaris to Linux is no big deal. I'd be much more interested to hear what Oracle is doing with the PHBs, secretaries, marketers and other non-technical staff. I bet they're still on Windows.
Why? Surely you can just use normal photographic processes to produce prints - albeit jumbo-sized ones on high-quality paper.
Has scanning technology now reached the point where you get better resolution by scanning a negative than by making a good-quality large print from it using traditional means?
'One thousandth of an inch'? What's that, a milli-inch?
Sorry - what exactly is the problem with putting, say, an OpenVMS system on the Internet? If it has known security holes which can be exploited by some random attacker, can't these be exploited just the same by someone within your organization, who is more likely to have a motive for doing so?
I thought that most current mainframe systems had a good record on security, but perhaps that is because they've never been properly put to the test.
I wonder if they do SMP, or can be made to do SMP by cutting a couple of pins? With six watt power consumption you could build a big SMP box and use less power than a single Xeon.
For scanned documents, tic98 compresses even better than DjVu. It's free software and you can even read the author's PhD thesis about it.
Yes I can send text messages to the phone by email, although this is done by a third-party service. I never thought about attachments. I'll look at Freshmeat to find some program to convert the ringtone into the right format.
So how does one load a ringtone? I was disappointed to find that my new Nokia phone didn't include a ringtone composer. The various ringtone services must download them by text message or something. If I have a computer with a modem can I send ringtones to myself?
Gosh, how can they possibly manage to render a *web page* on an embedded device with *only* 64 megabytes of memory? Good luck to the project developers, but I think they face an impossible task.
BTW, for a lightweight graphical web browser I like dillo, it's what I am using to post this comment. The main downside is that it doesn't do SSL very well.