It's not just the COBOL aspect. It is the legacy PDP-11 that is running it, or the VAX-VMS, or whatever... The language is easy, but figuring out how to login, setup the build environment, decode the weird legacy build script, and then transfer the program load to the target computer can be a tall order for a noob.
And what hot young smart kid wants to learn all this for next to nothing pay and the prospect of never using the skills again?
It can be done, however, and whoever has these systems should make it a priority to start finding a good maintainer either by trade or self-taught or make a replacement system.
All kidding aside, war-whatever has gotten people's attention. I live in a cubicle-style neighborhood, you know, houses built on top of each other. I have a powerful Wi-Fi antennae and can "see" a dozen Wi-Fi points. When I first moved in, more than half were unsecured, default SSID, default password. Now only 2 are unsecured. Even the layperson has caught on and I believe this is in part of the war driving/flying/carting craze that went on.
Cuil has only just opened. Already, it is pretty decent.
I disagree. Basic one word searches return no results. I have to change my oil in my car and wanted to search out the best brand to use. Typing in "oil", let alone my original search term, yields nothing.
While I agree it would be great to have a nice alternative to Google, Cuil had better step it up a notch...
So a UPS is needed, really. Working on a long block of code haven't hit save in a while and no autosave is on... Bam, power is out and you just lost 100 lines of code you spent hours on. Go get a UPS.
I tend not to update my browser, or anything else that isn't broken, on my stable machine. No matter how many beta tests or how reliable or how improved a new version is touted to be I am always finding things that used to work and now don't. At some point you just want things to work and do not want to have to spend time reconfiguring or working around something that worked. Unless there is a new feature that I am excited about, or a huge security hole plugged, I stick with what works and it is no surprise to me that others do the same.
With so many layers, I wonder if the useful lifespan of the disk is shorter than a conventional DVD. The obvious application for these discs is backing up servers and home storage drives.
I had not considered working out the details of the design generation in the SDP.
Many people don't! They write a SDP that is generic and simply regurgitate DO-178B, i.e. use DO178B as a plan rather than guidance for coming up with a plan.
You should check out the Yahoo group on DO178B. I started that a few years back when I was toiling with DO178b and seeking ways to do things "faster, better, cheaper" while still meeting the objectives. The group never took off as much as I wanted, but there is still hope.
It is worth noting that the Tomahawk missile is equipped with a precision INS and Terrain Contour Matching systems. By the time a Tomahawk nears its target GPS is not really being used. The GPS is used heavily right after launch to correct errors in the INS, once within 30 minutes TOT the weapon doesn't need GPS to hit its target with precision. Jamming of GPS usually is going to occur within a limited range of targets, so jamming is basically useless at that point
Also, don't forget that SEALs usually are the first on the scene to paint targets with a laser so LGBs can be deployed from high altitude aircraft to take things like jamming equipment out.
There is a definite threat, but rest assured, our ability to blow stuff up is not greatly hindered by GPS jamming.
First I will say that my current situation does not embrace all the Agile techniques I suggest. I have been party to organizations that have.
Without going into all the dirty details here are some general answers.
With respect to independence the only area where independence is required is for verification activities. Independence can be achieved by using a different person OR tool. Nothing prevents one from calling out a process in an SDP that uses a throw away prototype lifecycle model for an architecture followed by a reverse engineering lifecycle model for generating the final "for credit" architecture. Doing this actually has an advantage in that by definition, several verification objectives for architecture are satisfied, e.g. A4-10, A5-2
I think I covered the concern about needing independent generation of a software architecture, as no software development objective has a requirement for independence. The only requirement is that you work the details out in a good SDP, IMHO.
With respect to needing design documentation for the longevity of a project, I don't disagree, but I do disagree with generating and maintaining design documentation. In my process, the code represents the design once an iteration or two of on paper designs have taken place. The new design document will come from the code and is simply there to aid in the understanding of the code in order to maintain it, but was generated from it. This also helps analyze the design of the code better since it is a more accurate reflection of the code and makes it easier to satisfy objective A4-9.
I maintain a lot of large legacy systems and we NEVER use the design documentation. In fact we don't even maintain it. The process for the most part calls the design a snapshot of what was at one time. Very useless and wasteful.
The systems I work on now are Level B/C, but I have worked on Level A. I believe some of the techniques I describe are perfectly valid for any Level, so long as the SDP clearly calls out what is being done so the DER and FAA can review and agree to it.
Yes, I know, another fanboy touting how great Agile/Lean is... But seriously, I am an embedded developer for Flight Management Systems. I have been doing a lot of soul searching in this area. I have to tell everyone that the principle of Lean and Agile really do make sense, in particular for design documents. For the development we do, we are bound by DO-178B so we have to have some design "documentation" because there are objectives defined that require proof of compliance. The rub is that out of the 60+ objectives defined only 3 pertain to "design" (40 are for verification).
If you take the primary principle of Lean, which is "if work does not contribute to the final product it is muda {waste}", the exception to that "if work is required by an authority and does not contribute to the final product, do the minimum".
Now, take the Agile Manifesto into account which states "working software OVER comprehensive documentation" and to me, design documentation is a waste. We generate tons of useless design documents. We have tribal diagrams that supposedly tell me something about the system, but get out of date and require me to go to the tribal elder to decipher them. No, here is what I say (sorry it took so long to get to the point)
Design diagrams and documentation is needed, but only when you are crafting a new architecture and most importantly should only be used to get a code class/package architecture or development plan (which set of design patterns are going to be used, interfaces, etc.) Once the software takes form THROW OUT THE DOCUMENTATION and use a good tool to auto generated documentation from your software. Be vigilant about refactoring. If something breaks the design don't bolt on a fix. Refactor it, then regenerate the design.
Whenever possible, use self-documenting code or something that can auto generate code. We have a lot of interfaces and we get a little "ICD" happy (that's Interface Control Document). We have yet to realize ICDs can take any form and we should be using a form that can be used to generate a code module that represents the interfaces.
So in short (yeah right), design diagrams and documentation is a good place to start, but it is a means to an end. The end is good quality, well architected code. Oh, and spend your time doing some form of unit testing or something rather than creating useless design documents.
Everybody agreed that semantically ++C would have been even better, but I thought that would create too many problems for non-geeks. Um, how many non-geeks know anything about programming languages... Why worry about them.
YES!
I did miss that one. Lets have government certified car pool groups. Get your car pool stamp card and have your employer stamp it. Submit with your taxes and get a tax credit
More tax credits for geothermal home heating/cooling systems, solar panels, water usage credits (use X gallons of H20 a year and get a credit).
Seriously, we need to get creative. And instead of spending a trillion dollars waging various wars lets spend some of that encouraging people to go green.
I don't understand why people can not get it through their heads that no one single item is the answer.
Look, we (US) have enjoyed our luxury of cheap single source energy. Now it is time to get with the program. We need ALL options for energy started now. Think of it as a diversified portfolio. So, I say the following:
YES! Drill for more oil and make some more darn refineries
YES! Build some nuclear power plants.
YES! Explore better ways to use coal in existing power plants.
YES! Build huge solar arrays and start larger solar power plants
YES! Build wave generated power plants
YES! Build wind generated power plants
YES! Build electric-based "commuter" vehicles
YES! Explore better ways to make bio-fuel
The government needs to subsidize some of the projects and needs to throw some money at these problems. If we deploy all of these strategies we may not get cheaper energy but we will get stable energy and maybe, just maybe avert major crisis as population and demand increases exponentially over the next 10 years.
Don't most contracts have a 10 day clause in them, or some time frame? Also, what is the termination fee? For Verizon, it is $175. I believe once the contract is signed I have like 10 days to cancel it without paying the fee. What is to stop people who want the iPhone from doing the same thing?
I do not think MS is going to completely spare XP, more likely it is just delaying it's execution. As time goes on, the hardware will be caught up enough to run Vista and MS will have had time to "fine tune" it enough to make people get along with it, then they will kill XP.
I personally think the real security risk is not necessarily in the data on the PDA but rather the PDA itself. In the cases where an exec has put a password on his/her PDA there is a good chance the passoword used is the same as the office and home PC. Steal the PDA, crack the password, and then use it to get at the real data on the home and work computer. Good passwords aren't enough; enforcing the unique password per account is critical if you are worried about data theft.
NASA will bring information from the Phoenix Mars lander to the internet in the coming days.
That is, if the thing survives the landing. NASA even admits the probability of success is low. WTF?
Lets send a 400 million dollar space craft to a planet that will in all likelyhood crash into it. THEN, if it does make it, we will most likely lose it to the harsh polar winter that will take place in the upcoming months.
Reading this article is encouraging, but I have to wonder, why oh why isn't more being done to find alternative ways to make ethanol. At this point $200.00 barrels of oil is not that far off. We should be doing a full court press on ethanol and ways to produce it without endangering food supplies. I am curious as to how much water it takes to produce the ethanol in the bacterial slurry, as water resources aren't so plentiful either.... Now, if the bacteria becomes scalable and able to salt water as its source, now we are talking.
Not to mention what insurance companies and other government agencies could do with DNA.
For example, screening people for known trouble genes that would ultimately cause them to pay higher insurance premiums or be put on a terrorist watch list or be recruited by the CIA.
DNA is NOT as benign as a fingerprint.
This is a perfect example of why we should not have blindly given our rights up. To all those people that say, "Hey, I am not doing anything wrong so why should I care if the government taps my phone", I say THIS is the reason. The "government" may have "good" intentions, but the people in government will use the power they are given for other reasons. Next thing you know it wire taps are looking for tax evasion tips, or drug deals. Heaven forbid a mistake is made and your phone is recorded because you said "bomb", as in "last night's concert was the bomb. hey did you score that sack?". Next thing you know your door is kicked in because the police got a "tip" you were buying drugs.
Forget terabit ethernet. I will settle for full, actual 1Mbps (10,100, 1000, etc.) speed for both transmit and receive. Even on my home network, I rarely get full %100 utilization on my LAN. Some PC's are linux, some are Windows. Neither machine ever really reaches its full potential. I looked at other networks as well, even my work LAN, and they have similar issues. I am not a network guru and don't want to spend the time tweaking and configuring. The damn Gbps NIC and network drive I bought should just plug and go and I expect to see speeds reasonably close to 1Gbps, but nope. I see like 1% utilization. Seriously, lets make current technology work as advertised before we start claiming super-fast speeds on other vapor-ware technology. Please?
I wonder what would happen if you printed a blank sheet of paper, would the dots come out, or if you wanted to confuse the code, maybe print the same item twice on two different printers... Hmmmm, I wonder if that would work.
What the 'real' reason for shooting the satellite down is. It could be the risk of the toxic thruster fuel "hydrazine" not burning up an injuring someone, or, maybe because the "sophisticated and secret imaging sensor" might not burn up totally, or, maybe the U.S. just wants China to know they aren't the only ones who can shoot down a satellite. My vote is for the 3rd guess.
I wonder how much money Microsoft spends on this WGA crap, versus how much is actually lost in pirated software, versus, the monetary benefits of having people using a non-legitimate OS copy. Seriously, maybe spend that money on bettering the compatibility of Vista with it's own brothers (XP, 2000, etc.) and sisters (Samba network shares, etc.).
Slashdot Mirror
It's not just the COBOL aspect. It is the legacy PDP-11 that is running it, or the VAX-VMS, or whatever... The language is easy, but figuring out how to login, setup the build environment, decode the weird legacy build script, and then transfer the program load to the target computer can be a tall order for a noob.
And what hot young smart kid wants to learn all this for next to nothing pay and the prospect of never using the skills again?
It can be done, however, and whoever has these systems should make it a priority to start finding a good maintainer either by trade or self-taught or make a replacement system.
All kidding aside, war-whatever has gotten people's attention. I live in a cubicle-style neighborhood, you know, houses built on top of each other. I have a powerful Wi-Fi antennae and can "see" a dozen Wi-Fi points. When I first moved in, more than half were unsecured, default SSID, default password. Now only 2 are unsecured. Even the layperson has caught on and I believe this is in part of the war driving/flying/carting craze that went on.
Cuil has only just opened. Already, it is pretty decent.
I disagree. Basic one word searches return no results. I have to change my oil in my car and wanted to search out the best brand to use. Typing in "oil", let alone my original search term, yields nothing.
While I agree it would be great to have a nice alternative to Google, Cuil had better step it up a notch...
So a UPS is needed, really. Working on a long block of code haven't hit save in a while and no autosave is on... Bam, power is out and you just lost 100 lines of code you spent hours on. Go get a UPS.
I tend not to update my browser, or anything else that isn't broken, on my stable machine. No matter how many beta tests or how reliable or how improved a new version is touted to be I am always finding things that used to work and now don't. At some point you just want things to work and do not want to have to spend time reconfiguring or working around something that worked. Unless there is a new feature that I am excited about, or a huge security hole plugged, I stick with what works and it is no surprise to me that others do the same.
With so many layers, I wonder if the useful lifespan of the disk is shorter than a conventional DVD. The obvious application for these discs is backing up servers and home storage drives.
I had not considered working out the details of the design generation in the SDP.
Many people don't! They write a SDP that is generic and simply regurgitate DO-178B, i.e. use DO178B as a plan rather than guidance for coming up with a plan.
You should check out the Yahoo group on DO178B. I started that a few years back when I was toiling with DO178b and seeking ways to do things "faster, better, cheaper" while still meeting the objectives. The group never took off as much as I wanted, but there is still hope.
It is worth noting that the Tomahawk missile is equipped with a precision INS and Terrain Contour Matching systems. By the time a Tomahawk nears its target GPS is not really being used. The GPS is used heavily right after launch to correct errors in the INS, once within 30 minutes TOT the weapon doesn't need GPS to hit its target with precision. Jamming of GPS usually is going to occur within a limited range of targets, so jamming is basically useless at that point
Also, don't forget that SEALs usually are the first on the scene to paint targets with a laser so LGBs can be deployed from high altitude aircraft to take things like jamming equipment out.
There is a definite threat, but rest assured, our ability to blow stuff up is not greatly hindered by GPS jamming.
First I will say that my current situation does not embrace all the Agile techniques I suggest. I have been party to organizations that have.
Without going into all the dirty details here are some general answers.
With respect to independence the only area where independence is required is for verification activities. Independence can be achieved by using a different person OR tool. Nothing prevents one from calling out a process in an SDP that uses a throw away prototype lifecycle model for an architecture followed by a reverse engineering lifecycle model for generating the final "for credit" architecture. Doing this actually has an advantage in that by definition, several verification objectives for architecture are satisfied, e.g. A4-10, A5-2
I think I covered the concern about needing independent generation of a software architecture, as no software development objective has a requirement for independence. The only requirement is that you work the details out in a good SDP, IMHO.
With respect to needing design documentation for the longevity of a project, I don't disagree, but I do disagree with generating and maintaining design documentation. In my process, the code represents the design once an iteration or two of on paper designs have taken place. The new design document will come from the code and is simply there to aid in the understanding of the code in order to maintain it, but was generated from it. This also helps analyze the design of the code better since it is a more accurate reflection of the code and makes it easier to satisfy objective A4-9.
I maintain a lot of large legacy systems and we NEVER use the design documentation. In fact we don't even maintain it. The process for the most part calls the design a snapshot of what was at one time. Very useless and wasteful.
The systems I work on now are Level B/C, but I have worked on Level A. I believe some of the techniques I describe are perfectly valid for any Level, so long as the SDP clearly calls out what is being done so the DER and FAA can review and agree to it.
Yes, I know, another fanboy touting how great Agile/Lean is... But seriously, I am an embedded developer for Flight Management Systems. I have been doing a lot of soul searching in this area. I have to tell everyone that the principle of Lean and Agile really do make sense, in particular for design documents. For the development we do, we are bound by DO-178B so we have to have some design "documentation" because there are objectives defined that require proof of compliance. The rub is that out of the 60+ objectives defined only 3 pertain to "design" (40 are for verification).
If you take the primary principle of Lean, which is "if work does not contribute to the final product it is muda {waste}", the exception to that "if work is required by an authority and does not contribute to the final product, do the minimum".
Now, take the Agile Manifesto into account which states "working software OVER comprehensive documentation" and to me, design documentation is a waste. We generate tons of useless design documents. We have tribal diagrams that supposedly tell me something about the system, but get out of date and require me to go to the tribal elder to decipher them. No, here is what I say (sorry it took so long to get to the point)
Design diagrams and documentation is needed, but only when you are crafting a new architecture and most importantly should only be used to get a code class/package architecture or development plan (which set of design patterns are going to be used, interfaces, etc.) Once the software takes form THROW OUT THE DOCUMENTATION and use a good tool to auto generated documentation from your software. Be vigilant about refactoring. If something breaks the design don't bolt on a fix. Refactor it, then regenerate the design.
Whenever possible, use self-documenting code or something that can auto generate code. We have a lot of interfaces and we get a little "ICD" happy (that's Interface Control Document). We have yet to realize ICDs can take any form and we should be using a form that can be used to generate a code module that represents the interfaces.
So in short (yeah right), design diagrams and documentation is a good place to start, but it is a means to an end. The end is good quality, well architected code. Oh, and spend your time doing some form of unit testing or something rather than creating useless design documents.
YES!
I did miss that one. Lets have government certified car pool groups. Get your car pool stamp card and have your employer stamp it. Submit with your taxes and get a tax credit
More tax credits for geothermal home heating/cooling systems, solar panels, water usage credits (use X gallons of H20 a year and get a credit).
Seriously, we need to get creative. And instead of spending a trillion dollars waging various wars lets spend some of that encouraging people to go green.
I don't understand why people can not get it through their heads that no one single item is the answer.
Look, we (US) have enjoyed our luxury of cheap single source energy. Now it is time to get with the program. We need ALL options for energy started now. Think of it as a diversified portfolio. So, I say the following:
YES! Drill for more oil and make some more darn refineries
YES! Build some nuclear power plants.
YES! Explore better ways to use coal in existing power plants.
YES! Build huge solar arrays and start larger solar power plants
YES! Build wave generated power plants
YES! Build wind generated power plants
YES! Build electric-based "commuter" vehicles
YES! Explore better ways to make bio-fuel
The government needs to subsidize some of the projects and needs to throw some money at these problems. If we deploy all of these strategies we may not get cheaper energy but we will get stable energy and maybe, just maybe avert major crisis as population and demand increases exponentially over the next 10 years.
Don't most contracts have a 10 day clause in them, or some time frame? Also, what is the termination fee? For Verizon, it is $175. I believe once the contract is signed I have like 10 days to cancel it without paying the fee. What is to stop people who want the iPhone from doing the same thing?
Which will be an XP box with a black marker 'X' through it and "Vista Lite" written underneath it!
I do not think MS is going to completely spare XP, more likely it is just delaying it's execution. As time goes on, the hardware will be caught up enough to run Vista and MS will have had time to "fine tune" it enough to make people get along with it, then they will kill XP.
I personally think the real security risk is not necessarily in the data on the PDA but rather the PDA itself. In the cases where an exec has put a password on his/her PDA there is a good chance the passoword used is the same as the office and home PC. Steal the PDA, crack the password, and then use it to get at the real data on the home and work computer. Good passwords aren't enough; enforcing the unique password per account is critical if you are worried about data theft.
That is, if the thing survives the landing. NASA even admits the probability of success is low. WTF?
Lets send a 400 million dollar space craft to a planet that will in all likelyhood crash into it. THEN, if it does make it, we will most likely lose it to the harsh polar winter that will take place in the upcoming months.
Wow, that is great.
Reading this article is encouraging, but I have to wonder, why oh why isn't more being done to find alternative ways to make ethanol. At this point $200.00 barrels of oil is not that far off. We should be doing a full court press on ethanol and ways to produce it without endangering food supplies. I am curious as to how much water it takes to produce the ethanol in the bacterial slurry, as water resources aren't so plentiful either.... Now, if the bacteria becomes scalable and able to salt water as its source, now we are talking.
Not to mention what insurance companies and other government agencies could do with DNA. For example, screening people for known trouble genes that would ultimately cause them to pay higher insurance premiums or be put on a terrorist watch list or be recruited by the CIA. DNA is NOT as benign as a fingerprint.
This is a perfect example of why we should not have blindly given our rights up. To all those people that say, "Hey, I am not doing anything wrong so why should I care if the government taps my phone", I say THIS is the reason. The "government" may have "good" intentions, but the people in government will use the power they are given for other reasons. Next thing you know it wire taps are looking for tax evasion tips, or drug deals. Heaven forbid a mistake is made and your phone is recorded because you said "bomb", as in "last night's concert was the bomb. hey did you score that sack?". Next thing you know your door is kicked in because the police got a "tip" you were buying drugs.
Forget terabit ethernet. I will settle for full, actual 1Mbps (10,100, 1000, etc.) speed for both transmit and receive. Even on my home network, I rarely get full %100 utilization on my LAN. Some PC's are linux, some are Windows. Neither machine ever really reaches its full potential. I looked at other networks as well, even my work LAN, and they have similar issues. I am not a network guru and don't want to spend the time tweaking and configuring. The damn Gbps NIC and network drive I bought should just plug and go and I expect to see speeds reasonably close to 1Gbps, but nope. I see like 1% utilization. Seriously, lets make current technology work as advertised before we start claiming super-fast speeds on other vapor-ware technology. Please?
I wonder what would happen if you printed a blank sheet of paper, would the dots come out, or if you wanted to confuse the code, maybe print the same item twice on two different printers... Hmmmm, I wonder if that would work.
What the 'real' reason for shooting the satellite down is. It could be the risk of the toxic thruster fuel "hydrazine" not burning up an injuring someone, or, maybe because the "sophisticated and secret imaging sensor" might not burn up totally, or, maybe the U.S. just wants China to know they aren't the only ones who can shoot down a satellite. My vote is for the 3rd guess.
I wonder how much money Microsoft spends on this WGA crap, versus how much is actually lost in pirated software, versus, the monetary benefits of having people using a non-legitimate OS copy. Seriously, maybe spend that money on bettering the compatibility of Vista with it's own brothers (XP, 2000, etc.) and sisters (Samba network shares, etc.).