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: 2004-04-16 19:43:09 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!news.glorb.com!news.tele.dk!news.tele.dk!small.news.tele.dk!proxad.net!usenet-fr.net!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: Sat, 17 Apr 2004 06:34:56 +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 1082169680 85577 212.85.156.195 (17 Apr 2004 02:41:20 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@melchior.cuivre.fr.eu.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2004 02:41:20 +0000 (UTC) To: comp.lang.ada@ada-france.org Return-Path: In-Reply-To: ; from "Dmitry A. Kazakov" at Fri, 16 Apr 2004 13:36:38 +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:7240 Date: 2004-04-17T06:34:56+04:00 Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote: > >> shoe makes are liable, why software produces should not be? > > > > Because the public did not want (so far) to triple (at best) software > > prices by involving lawyers in the detailed specification of every > > software product. > > 1. Where these figures come from? >>From a finger, of course (as most other public figures). Try your own finger, I hope it will tell you something alike. > 2. Who wants to ask public? They had been asked before, they shown absolute > inability to make reasonable choice. There is no need to ask public for this matter. There is a perception that public simply will not buy software at those prices in comparable quantities - and this is enough. There is a big difference between continental Europe and America that matters here, and as America formed current software usage attitudes, the things are as they are. > You need no experts to analyze the software. Here should be a smile also? Or a grin? > Requirements and terms of >liability are pretty easy to set and check. Are you a lawyer? I think that a person who is not a lawyer should not make statements of this kind anyway. By the way, I remind you that Robert Dewar (who, although not being a lawyer himself, nevertheless have some real experience with these matters regarding software) warned many times (both here and in GCC mailing list) against making law-related statements about software without consulting a professional lawyer. > > significant part of software is a cutting edge in one or another > > dimension, and therefore it naturally can't guarantee its performance in > > every particular circumstances. So, general liability will severely impede > > progress, and this for many applications overweights eventual losses. Note > > that it may be true even for software that may directly endanger life of a > > human person. > > The only edge MS-Office cuts is consuming as much memory as any new > generation of computers might have. Well, it is easy to show you at least one dimension in which MS Word is at the cutting edge: it is the number of users (with all their diversity in needs, habits and preferences). > Who needs *this* progress? Perhaps, people. Those people who want to prepare a document and print it - and then go to other, perhaps more attractive things. > Concede, you get this argument from Bill Gates, You understimate my own creativity. And anyway, there still aren't patents for arguments, so I'm not worried. > > For a change, you may think also why so many advertisments (not > > necessarily related to sofware) aren't liable -;) > > Because they are for free! No pay, no play. What? This is simply beautiful. Well, good, advertisments do not directly take money from those who do not believe them; but they take enough money from those who do believe them - these people really pay for all advertisments (the cost of adverstisments is naturally added to the cost of the products themselves). > > when you appeal to the government for such purposes, you just try to > > exploit another market - a narrow one, for privileged parties only. > > and more competent ones. You are very loyal. Good for you. Yes, certainly, they are most competent, most responsible, and even most handsome/beautiful. How can it be otherwise, as they are chosen either by free general elections or, recursively, by those who was chosen by free general election, etc. ? > Again, there are issues essential to the existence of our civilization. You are so focusing on our civilization... don't you think that civilization is quite a complex thing, and it is not easy to determine what is essential for it? But at least you don't refer to the God's will, and this is good. > Software development becomes one of them. Ada is just an indicator of how > things are going on. Don't you see that these two your sentences contradict each other? Ada essentially defies the general notion of "software", Ada expects you to analyze each your problem deeply, with all its specifics, not relying upon some general "software" fashions and solutions. It does not mean that you should forget all your previous experience and it doesn not preclude any general computer science - you can use all that if it helps you, but you can't rely upon that, you can't get excuses from that. > > post-release stage, where > > development is completed, but investigations by external parties must be > > possible. > > That will not happen. Perhaps. But let's see. > But, again, it would be rather useless. You can't know. You never been an investigator, I'm sure - from your words. > I need not study the laws of Newzeland, because I know the > "procedure", and I expect it to be democratic and respecting human rights. Well, it may be enough if you'll not deal with New Zealand in any way other than visiting her as a tourist. > > You dream to prevent all errors (without magic -:) , while I do not > > believe that this dream may come true - at all levels at the same time. > > If that will not become true, we as humankind, will simply commit suicide. Not at all. We as humankind were making countless errors all the history, and still are alive, and even are observing some progress. Well, maybe you don't know, but in dark years of the Cold War, a substantial part of the hope was that there are enough errors in missile systems (that is, missiles themselves, navigation etc.) on both sides; so that if they will be really launched then most of them either will not takeoff or will not explode or will explode somewhere in ocean. And some of us also hoped that the goverments are also somehow aware of that possibility of those massive errors, and neither side can be sure whether it has much less errors or much more errors than the opponent. > >> As an example, I know a > >> car vendor, which for years is unable to find a bug in its *one* engine > >> controller, running *one* task, causing sporadic stop. > > > > Poor vendor, he can't reach me -:) Did he try to create a simulator? > > Of what? Motor simulator? Roller dynamometer? Climatic chamber? Autopilot? You said - "a bug in its engine controller", so I mean a simulator of that engine controller. > Consider code using no subprograms. People believed that they are > inefficient. (:-)) So anything to be repeated was cut and pasted. For the > same reason (I suppose), they used only global variables! Do you really > think that *this* kind of code should be analyzed at all? Well, I saw such progams enough. They were in COBOL (even operator "perform" was rarely used by those poor programmers) and in Assembler - all for IBM/360. Those users (called programmers -;) showed me their long listings and claimed that there is a computer fault (usually: "this program ran fine yesterday, I changed absolutely nothing, and today it crashes"). Alexander Kopilovitch aek@vib.usr.pu.ru Saint-Petersburg Russia