From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,5cb36983754f64da X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2004-04-26 20:36:09 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!news.agarik.com!news.agarik.com!213.56.31.76.MISMATCH!nnx.oleane.net!oleane!freenix!enst.fr!melchior!cuivre.fr.eu.org!melchior.frmug.org!not-for-mail From: "Alexander E. Kopilovich" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language) Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 07:26:01 +0400 (MSD) Organization: Cuivre, Argent, Or Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: lovelace.ada-france.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: melchior.cuivre.fr.eu.org 1083036805 78453 212.85.156.195 (27 Apr 2004 03:33:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@melchior.cuivre.fr.eu.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 03:33:25 +0000 (UTC) To: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org Return-Path: In-Reply-To: ; from "Dmitry A. Kazakov" at Mon, 26 Apr 2004 10:06:16 +0200 X-Mailer: Mail/@ [v2.44 MSDOS] X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new-20030616-p7 (Debian) at ada-france.org X-BeenThere: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.4 Precedence: list List-Id: "Gateway to the comp.lang.ada Usenet newsgroup" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:7522 Date: 2004-04-27T07:26:01+04:00 Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote: > >Modern science deals also with budgets, management, conferences, grants, > >degrees and citations. > > that's scientific bureaucracy Call it what you wish, but take into account that vast majority of scientists do not oppose it anymore, but participate in all that stuff rather actively. It is important that all those things influence significantly and sometimes even effectively determine directions of scientific research. As a consequence some paradigms take over others in scientific views just because some scientific directions/fields were more supported recently and thus are better developed than others. > >By the way, just curious, did you sell *anything* *on open market* (shareware > >or commercial product)? > > The firm I am working in, sells several commercial products. There is a huge and principal difference between selling your products on open market and working for a firm that do that. When you are an individual seller you take decisions and see immediate results. You choose the price for your product, and you income depends on whether your guess is right. But when you work for a firm (not as a top manager, but as a software developer), you do not take such decisions, and your salary does not immediately depend on the particular results. Yes, it is possible that you may somehow influence your firm's decisions regarding product prices and marketing policies in general, but this is very far from taking decision yourself. If you try that once then you'll see this acute difference. > >lack of either practical or theoretical experience in the matter do not > >detract them proposing radical measures for the software market. > >You need not to have any experience to see what is going on. You may need not much experience to see that something is going wrong, but you certainly need some experience to propose particular measures - because without that experience your propositions probably will make things even worse. > Though it > is not clear what sort of experience you meant, I meant practical experience - just create at least one software product and sell it yourself - either as a invidividual or as a top manager of a firm, regardless of the firm's size. After that you most probably will not be so sure that liability for software products is a good thing. I understand, though, that surrounding environment probably influences you. Let me tell you briefly a real story. Several years ago I received a proposition for a contract and it appeared that for that contract I must sign NDA for 25 years (!) with huge fines in a case of violation. It was from Germany. I think that any sane American will never propose such an unrealistic NDA; but a perfectly sane man from Germany (nationality means little here) will and indeed was. Naturally, I refused to sign that NDA. After that the NDA was rewritten, it was made for 3 or 5 years and fines were reduced drastically (after that they still were much higher that the amount of payment for the work). Then I signed that NDA and the contract was succesfully completed. This story shows one thing: in Germany the difference between 25-year NDA and 5-year NDA is not perceived as significant. And in this specific atmosphere you may think that user of a software product will sue the vendor for a good reason only, that is, when s/he discovers a defect in the product, and moreover, a defect that actually harmed or annoyed the user. In short words, you suppose that a user will be, as a rule, perfectly honest and reasonably literate. > because there is no > true science dealing with market economy. Well, there are many people, > who count themselves as scientists. Unfortunately all their theories > lack any prediction power. I don't know whether there is true science dealing with market economy or not, but certainly there can't be a science that will reliably predict where you will find a bag of money waiting for you. There may be an art, which uses some scientific theories and methods as some of its tools, but no more. Science always is external to its subject, and money is practically omnipresent in a market economy. But it does not mean that a science can't predict anything significant in market economy; the limitation is simple: science can't predict anything that will permit you to device a guaranteed (and legal!) way to wealth -;) . Recall quantum mechanics - it is a science, and there are things, which it can predict, but there are also severe limitations to its prediction power. > I meant only the law, which should treat sold software as an insurance > contract rather than a "right to use". At least contract parties > should have equal rights. I don't quite understand that: do you mean that some insurance company must be always involved as a mandatory third party between a vendor and a user? That is, every software product to be legally sold must be insured by some insurance firm? Then who will be really (and legally) insured - vendor or user? > >I think that liability is actually in effect - not legal liability, but market > >liability - not in the form of fines, but in the form of losses of income. > > This does not work. Software market chooses the worst. I don't think so. I don't think that millions of people must have the same needs and tastes as I and my friends and colleagues have - regarding computers and software. Even majority of software developers may have other needs, tastes and priorities. Note that market never chooses immediately and/or forever. It is a big and substantially stochasic system, and moreover, it is a multi-dimensional system. Sometimes we can see some clear and relatively stable preference and we call it a choice (done by the market). I can't see what can it mean really that "software market chooses the worst". > >Do you really want that New Order? > > I don't. So I don't want DCMA and Microsoft. There is a big difference between the Brave New World and the New Order. Perhaps you are trying to escape from the road to the first one, but effectively you are calling for the second - at least if you are proposing direct liability. > >> The navigation system, radio, CD > >> player etc, all that will be connected to the field bus. They will > >> also have Bluetooth and Internet connections. This will open wide > >> possibilities for attacks of all sorts. > > > >All that is quite obvious, and car vendors personnel (including their > >software engineers) are neither preschool kids nor full idiots. After all, > >probably they all have cars. > > There is a overwhelming force of market overriding everything you have > mentioned. How do you know the direction of this force, and whether that direction will be stable in near future? You just said that there is no science that can predict market economy. How do you think, if some car vendors will produce fully computerized cars that will be obviously unreliable, and at the same time some other car vendors decided to wait and continue production of not-so-computerized cars, what will the market choose? > After all we have examples at hand - how reliable is PC software? Well, I think that for all reasonable definitions of reliability it is quite reliable these times = for its diversity, purposes and prices. For example, I think that in last year Windows 2000 on my PC crashed less times than electricity in my flat (actually in the whole 14-storey building) failed. At least I'm sure that these numbers are near each other. So, the perception of reliability may depend on your country of residence. > >But nevertheless, I think that a free and open-source emulator of generic car > >would be a good thing. > > What are you going to simulate? Spaces. Physical spaces - geometry, electricity etc. etc.; informational spaces; driver spaces and passenger spaces; external spaces - local external circumstances space, local traffic space etc. Then came real-world objects, which are collections of their representatives in various spaces and sets of logical/computational connections between those their representatives. > And, well, who will serve 25 years in jail for cracking > proprietary protocols? There is absolutely no need to crack anything. First, there probably will not be anything interesting enough to crack. Second, all those protocols can be easily imagined - well, they certainly will not be the same as in real cars, but so what? Those parties who will think that the difference is significant for them will point on it and provide an information, which will be sufficient for adjustment or generalization. We simply should not care about the distant sources of that information, it will be sufficient that information is provided publicly, and it need not be exact information - it may be just a hint. Although certainly it would be better if the sources of actual car software were published, as I said some time ago. > >And that Ada 2005 would be very appropriate programming > >language for this purpose. > > Ada 95 + SPARK (for some components) would be ideal. Yes, I think that SPARK may be quite useful for some components. > But I doubt it will be even considered. Why not? We (or someone else) can consider it. Perhaps you mean car vendors here, but why should we bother ourselves with *their* problems? Alexander Kopilovich aek@vib.usr.pu.ru Saint-Petersburg Russia