The paper is freely available for everybody to learn from, in fact the Jan-Feb 2008 issue is fully of very interesting article (what month are we in now?).
What is the point of ads visible from Earth orbit? Are there lots of people in orbit to sell to? The ads need to be visible by somebody standing on the Earth. Perhaps they could be on the Moon.
Before tools can check the code (eg, static analysis) we need to know what constructs they need to flag. The formal verification people will claim that checking a program's source against its specification is the solution. However, that is a very expensive and time consuming process. There is an ISO group looking at vulnerabilities in programming languages.
Tools are a cost effective way of checking source for lots of different kinds of problems. I have no direct experience of the Coverity tool, but see that they are certainly good at getting lots of publicity. A List of static analysis tools is available on Wikipedia.
There are some amazing compression programs out there, trouble is they tend to take a while and consume lots of memory. PAQ gives some impressive results, but the latest benchmark figures are regularly improving. Let's not forget that compression is not good unless it is integrated into a usable tool. 7-zip seems to be the new archiver on the block at the moment. A closely related, but different, set of tools are the archivers, of which there are lots with many older formats still not supported by open source tools
Period in the right margin! Thanks for reporting the typo (it should be in the expected place).
The text (available via this page) asks readers to estimate the relative brightness of various squares. Not wanting people to get the answer by simply reading the caption (many people can read upside down writing relatively easily) I mirrored it as well making it upside down (who said modern books were dumbing down for their readers;-).
Source code usage measurements contain many surprises (ie, developers don't always write what people think they do). Some statistics I have collected, on a smaller code base, are available here.
The source of the tools used to exract much of the data (at least for those tables and figure I produced) is available here (C only at the moment).
Being able to search so much source is also very useful. I was involved in a discussion a while back about the frequency of use of bessel functions in programs (I claimed rare). The handful of uses returned from your database helped back up my argument (dare I say prove it).
The importance of coding guidelines (not the ones that specify trivial, cosmetic, issues) is starting to be appreciated. It is a fact of life that much code is written by relatively inexperienced developers. Guidelines, at least well thought out ones, are essentially tips on what to look out for/avoid, based on the know-how of more experienced people. Coding guidelines can operate at a number of levels, the language level (ie, what language constructs to avoid or be careful when using) is now the stubject of an international study group.
I had this problem. It happened when I accidently reversed the mouse/keyboard connectors (plugged them in the wrong holes). Suse seems to have done something clever to try and recover which then broke the 'normal' connections.
Running yast did not fix the problem. It was necessary to edit the/etc/X11/xorg.conf file (in my case there were some escape characters in the descrition of the driver to use).
There are a few tools available. The problem seems to be getting developers to spend lots of time tuning the rules. Here is a page listing English language tools + some raw test data.
If you have any other links to tools please let me know.
I am writing up some stats on the number of downloads that occurred because of the/. story. I cannot find your email anywhere and posting a comment here is the only way I can think of to reach you.
I am interested in knowing how many hits you received on your post of a torrent for my book's pdf file (thanks for creating one).
Requests for a dead tree version of the pdf. I have invested the possibility of self publishing. The problem is that these companies are not set up for high page counts (1,616) and an A4'ish page size (ok, and self-publishers are currently offering a less than stunning deal; the ROI is small).
People could try ordering from
Amazon, the ISBN number is 0201709171. Perhaps Addison Wesley will change their mind if enough order are received.
Information on typos. Please keep sending these to me. I am keeping a log of these so that writers of grammar checkers have some real world data.
My editor left, the financial downturn hit, and my book was big enough (the page count is on the limit of what non-specialist printers can handle) and unusual enough to look like a very risky proposition.
I investigated various ways in which my book could be made available in paper form. The various self publishing companies don't go above 500-700 pages, and then not always in larger page sizes. Ok, I could split the material in two, but at the moment I am not inclined to put the effort in.
I was also surprised at how poor a deal the existing self publishing companies offer. Most want an upfront payment, the author pays for the copyediting and layout, and ends up with a royalty that is not much better than that usually offered by a 'proper' publisher. Who would accept such a deal? The term 'vanity' publishing is very apt.
I don't think they award them on the basis of past work. Perhaps I should buy one via the for-sale ads in the Sunday papers:-)
I did get one reviewer complaining that some of my references were very dated. Obviously a computer scientist who thinks anything over 5 years old no longer applies. Experimental results in psychology (or any other subject) are ageless.
Don't forget that most authors would earn more money spending those book writing hours working at McDonalds than they they are likely to make in royalties from a book (at least that is the rational analysis conclusion, but then who says authors are rational). Many authors want exposure and to have people read what they have to say. Also publishers are waking up to the idea that readers will spend money on a paper copy of what they have read.
I would have prefered my own book (downloadable here, 8M pdf) to be available in paper form (publisher lost their nerve half way through the copyedit process). Thankfully the web offers an alternative delivery medium.
For all you could possibly want to know about C, and more, check out this book (8M pdf). Those who want pure, uncommentaried, standard words can find them here.
The ACCU requests that speakers provide a pdf of their slides which are then made available via the ACCU site (this pdf is not on the conference CD, so I guess Coplein might not have supplied it yet; cutoff was two weeks ago).
Coplein also ran a lunchtime birds of a feather session which was very well attended. I was running a parallel session involving a psychology experiment and only had 11 people show up (last year my 40 question packs ran out).
Herb Sutters talk was also very popular (the pdf of his slides is on the conference CD, as is the pdf of Angelika Langers interesting 60+ slides on wildcards in Java).
I'm impressed that you got to chapter 8. It has the feel of a book that provides a useful summary and personal insights for those who are already familiar with the maths it contains. I have just donated my copy to the local library. It will be interesting to see how many people borrow it over the comming year.
There are two open source grammar checkers available (Language tool and
Queequeg
). Both have strengths and weaknesses and could do with a lot more work to improve on the number strengths they have. Unfortunately people with the necessary expertise rarely have the time needed to get involved on these kinds of projects.
If anybody is interested and has some expertise then send me some email. Perhaps we produce something better.
Loose the money you made on your paper round here
on
Google Files for IPO
·
· Score: 1
Unlike most of the posters to/. I don't see Google as a great investment opportunity. I suspect the shares will peak early and slowly fade away over the coming year.
It will be interesting to see how this 'secretive' company deals with the eyes of Wall Street types on them. The truth is out there;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Where is the news? Android is also available on the commercially available phones running Windows Mobile, eg HTC Kaiser.
The paper is freely available for everybody to learn from, in fact the Jan-Feb 2008 issue is fully of very interesting article (what month are we in now?).
- a poorly presented list.
The Wikipedia article on C lists some tutorial material.That's what I did and it works ok for me.
Here is a well known company whose logo is also visible from space.
Before tools can check the code (eg, static analysis) we need to know what constructs they need to flag. The formal verification people will claim that checking a program's source against its specification is the solution. However, that is a very expensive and time consuming process. There is an ISO group looking at vulnerabilities in programming languages.
Tools are a cost effective way of checking source for lots of different kinds of problems. I have no direct experience of the Coverity tool, but see that they are certainly good at getting lots of publicity. A List of static analysis tools is available on Wikipedia.
There are some amazing compression programs out there, trouble is they tend to take a while and consume lots of memory. PAQ gives some impressive results, but the latest benchmark figures are regularly improving. Let's not forget that compression is not good unless it is integrated into a usable tool. 7-zip seems to be the new archiver on the block at the moment. A closely related, but different, set of tools are the archivers, of which there are lots with many older formats still not supported by open source tools
The text (available via this page) asks readers to estimate the relative brightness of various squares. Not wanting people to get the answer by simply reading the caption (many people can read upside down writing relatively easily) I mirrored it as well making it upside down (who said modern books were dumbing down for their readers ;-).
Being able to search so much source is also very useful. I was involved in a discussion a while back about the frequency of use of bessel functions in programs (I claimed rare). The handful of uses returned from your database helped back up my argument (dare I say prove it).
Keep up the good work!
Do you have a citation for the source of this statement?
It is a severe roadbump to try and read code where the braces are at the end of an if statement instead of vertically alligned.
I agree.
Did you intentionally give a nonexistent web url?
When will /. provide a method of contacting a comment submittor that does not require posting a comment or the author supplying a public address?
The importance of coding guidelines (not the ones that specify trivial, cosmetic, issues) is starting to be appreciated. It is a fact of life that much code is written by relatively inexperienced developers. Guidelines, at least well thought out ones, are essentially tips on what to look out for/avoid, based on the know-how of more experienced people. Coding guidelines can operate at a number of levels, the language level (ie, what language constructs to avoid or be careful when using) is now the stubject of an international study group.
Running yast did not fix the problem. It was necessary to edit the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file (in my case there were some escape characters in the descrition of the driver to use).
If you have any other links to tools please let me know.
I am interested in knowing how many hits you received on your post of a torrent for my book's pdf file (thanks for creating one).
People could try ordering from Amazon, the ISBN number is 0201709171. Perhaps Addison Wesley will change their mind if enough order are received.
There is another mirror of the pdf here thanks to the folk at mirrordot.
I investigated various ways in which my book could be made available in paper form. The various self publishing companies don't go above 500-700 pages, and then not always in larger page sizes. Ok, I could split the material in two, but at the moment I am not inclined to put the effort in.
I was also surprised at how poor a deal the existing self publishing companies offer. Most want an upfront payment, the author pays for the copyediting and layout, and ends up with a royalty that is not much better than that usually offered by a 'proper' publisher. Who would accept such a deal? The term 'vanity' publishing is very apt.
I did get one reviewer complaining that some of my references were very dated. Obviously a computer scientist who thinks anything over 5 years old no longer applies. Experimental results in psychology (or any other subject) are ageless.
I would have prefered my own book (downloadable here, 8M pdf) to be available in paper form (publisher lost their nerve half way through the copyedit process). Thankfully the web offers an alternative delivery medium.
For all you could possibly want to know about C, and more, check out this book (8M pdf). Those who want pure, uncommentaried, standard words can find them here.
Coplein also ran a lunchtime birds of a feather session which was very well attended. I was running a parallel session involving a psychology experiment and only had 11 people show up (last year my 40 question packs ran out).
Herb Sutters talk was also very popular (the pdf of his slides is on the conference CD, as is the pdf of Angelika Langers interesting 60+ slides on wildcards in Java).
I'm impressed that you got to chapter 8. It has the feel of a book that provides a useful summary and personal insights for those who are already familiar with the maths it contains. I have just donated my copy to the local library. It will be interesting to see how many people borrow it over the comming year.
There are two open source grammar checkers available (Language tool and Queequeg ). Both have strengths and weaknesses and could do with a lot more work to improve on the number strengths they have. Unfortunately people with the necessary expertise rarely have the time needed to get involved on these kinds of projects. If anybody is interested and has some expertise then send me some email. Perhaps we produce something better.
Unlike most of the posters to /. I don't see Google as a great investment opportunity. I suspect the shares will peak early and slowly fade away over the coming year.
It will be interesting to see how this 'secretive' company deals with the eyes of Wall Street types on them. The truth is out there ;-)