Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

["Alexander E. Kopilovich" <aek@VB1162.spb.edu>]

Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:

> >Interesting. So you can easily imagine a situation, in which a person who
> >contributes very little (in any way) to the whole nevertheless can define or
> >form that whole. This implies that you think that common definitions and forms
> >are terribly unstable.
>
> Yes. Many prominent figures contributed little or nothing.

So they did not define or form anything - except, perhaps, of their
biographies to which they surely contribute a lot, and the derivates of
those biographies.

> Similarly many great scientists and artists were unknown at their time.

They might be unknown personally but nevertheless their contribution might
have very significant immediate effect. In other cases they did not define or
form anything in their profession *in their time*, but their significant
contribution became relevant and effectuated and appreciated much later.

> Science deals with facts.

Science traditionally deals with observations, theories, notations and
methods of argumentation.

Modern science deals also with budgets, management, conferences, grants,
degrees and citations.

As for facts - yes, they may be observed and/or interpreted scientifically.

> >As for the physical sense of distance, I'd like to assure you that the
> >classical distance still has solid physical sense,
>
> Your example was 1) to get *arbitrary* measures,

Certainly not arbitrary. No one sane adult person (even no eccentric one)
tries to eat arbitrary things (for example - CD-ROMs). But tastes, care for
health and simply curiosity - certainly differs among the people.

> 2) to combine them in
> a vector, and finally 3) to apply (euclidean?) distance to it. I
> assure you that it most cases the result has absolutely no sense, i.e.
> shows nothing.

In physics (well, traditional physics) the result is subject of subsequent
checks, where various theoretical implications of that result are tested in
appropriate experiments. If the whole picture appears consistent then that
result is perceived as probably valid; and if it appears significantly useful
for structuring, refining or extending theories then it is usually declared
as having (physical) sense.

> It is a known problem in pattern recognition.

Always being deeply interested in the theme of pattern recognition, I
nevertheless do not think that there is any real link to it. Well, almost all
cognitive processes may be considered as a pattern recognition at one or
another or several levels. But such a viewpoint becomes fruitful relatively
rarely, because it isn't enough to pronounce magic words "Pattern Recognition".
We should be able to make conclusions ad/or refinements after that - and very
often it appears that we can't do that, because the theories and techniques
(of pattern recognition) at our disposal are too scattered and weak.

> In my view the whole model of selling software is wrong.

Well, it would be too wild for me to discuss models of selling software -
because I feel myself highly incompetent is selling anything. All software
that I sold *on open market* for now consists of several Delphi components,
and my total income (for about 5 years of selling) from that well compares
with my 1-month income from work for a customer.

By the way, just curious, did you sell *anything* *on open market* (shareware
or commercial product) ? I ask you about this because I know too well, that
many very good and skilled programmers never did that, and surprizingly, that
lack of either practical or theoretical experience in the matter do not
detract them proposing radical measures for the software market.

> Because
> effectively you can only sell something, that cannot be copied with so
> little efforts. It does not work.

Well, ACT sells support, and this thing can't be copied with so little efforts.

> I think that software should be
> considered rather as an insurance against its fault. That should be
> sold, not a stream of bits.

But the support - if it is real - is a form of insurance, a soft form, of
course (which sounds appropriate for *soft*ware -:). Actually, it is an
anticipation of possible need of support that sometimes pushes a user to buy 
the product, and not just copy it from elsewhere. But for that the support
must be real, it should not be restricted to the product itself, it should be
present, however informally, for the product's environment and usage also.

> This is why I am promoting the idea of liability.

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.
Yes, there are innocent parties that suffered from this form of liability
(usual argument of "anti-piracy" propaganda), but I think that most of those
innocent parties will be simply killed (as participants of the market) by
introducing an effective legal liability. Do you really want that New Order?

> >> >By the way, I think that a free and open-source emulator of a generic car,
> >> >which, in particular, includes all those devices, would be very good thing.
> >>
> >> Come on. All specifications and all protocols are strict secret.
> >
> >It reminds me a secret military constant Pi. Note, though, that the exact
> >number of digits of Pi used in particular computation may be indeed a secret,
> >which is hard to obtain.
>
> Beware, you could be punished for evaluation of Pi under DCMA law!

Hunters usualy do not pursue poisonous species (if the latter do not attack
them directly). I mean that I would not advice DCMA attack me - it will be
heavily intoxicated in such a case, I think.

> >> The system is absolutely unprotected. If you know the protocol and can
> >> connect to a car field bus (the devices are free to buy), then you can
> >> do everything with it. Starting from resetting your car mileage,
> >> ending with taking control over the brake pedal. In a close future you
> >> will need no device to do that. A cell phone could be sufficient to
> >> break into.
> >
> >You forgot to add that there will be no windows in a car - there will be
> >thin displays instead of them. These displays will show augmented reality -
> >using onboard external cameras, satellite TV and wireless broadband Internet
> >and mixing all that into combined picture (with ads, of course).
>
> What I wrote about is not a joke.

I fully understand that you are not joking, but I think you are too and
prematurely alarmed, and are taking some alarmist attitude. I believe that
being professionally alarmed we should think about what we personally and
realistically can do about the anticipated danger, and not just weep among
the friends and colleagues and not try to substitute professional alarmists.

> 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.

But nevertheless, I think that a free and open-source emulator of generic car
would be a good thing. And that Ada 2005 would be very appropriate programming
language for this purpose.




Alexander Kopilovich                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia