06.25.05
Posted in SAnToS at 12:32 am by Todd
We were very lucky to have Dr. Joseph Kiniry visit our lab yesterday. He was back in the states visiting family and traveling around to visit collaborators and apparently agreed to talk with us. Joe gave us a run-down on ESC/Java II and some of the advancements they are making while doing a complete re-design (see Joel, sometimes smart people do good things when they re-design in a smart way 
). But the best thing about his visit was our opportunity to fill him in on what we are working on. We gave him demos of Indus and Cadena (he had already seen a tutorial on Bogor at PLDI 05) and talked about our common interest, JML. So it looks like we might be able to collaborate with him on a lot of different angles. My favorite thing is that he is a true hacker and is willing to give our tools a try and provide constructive criticism (which we need from smart, hard-working people).
Now, if I could only get Bandera to a state in which I would not be embarrased if he took a look.
Not only is he an intelligent, hard-working researcher that shares common interests, he is quite a fun guy to be around. We had a common interest, OpenBSD. Apparently, he has been working to get them using some “light” formal methods and has been quite successful. He says he spent a lot of time lurky in an effort to understand what angle to take with them. I think he went with the “free beer” approach! On a serious note, he did make me re-evaluate how I want to sell Bandera. I should consider taking a particular group of people, understand their methods, and then get Bandera to solve their problem. I feel like we have been developing this huge hammer and convincing the guy that needs a screw-driver that if he just tries harder, he could use our hammer. Or maybe that is just the burn-out talking!
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06.03.05
Posted in Programming at 8:19 pm by Todd
In my morning search of interesting sites I found a link to a blog entry that details why the vi editor input model is better than others. I found it fascinating to find a well thought out reason why vi is so nice. But then again, I will stick with emacs and it’s children of editors (pico, nano, etc.) and my current environment, Eclipse. Althought I am starting to use vi more often which completely and utterly turns my stomach to admit!
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Posted in Programming at 12:21 am by Todd
Found an interesting article that talks about Java performance. I like this article a great deal because they don’t make bold claims and they are equally critical and realistic about things (they call a spade a spade). They also link to relevant data that is contrary to their point (makes it easier to see both sides of the issue rather quickly).
I tend to think that Java can be slower in some situations but much faster in others. But then again, I am getting too old and tired to have real religious battles over programming languages. Each language (that I have used) has it’s own set of pros and cons. I figure you should pick the tool that helps you get the job done. Sometimes this decision comes down to what the programmer knows and is comfortable with and thus the programmer is more efficient in development. Other times it comes down to memory footprint, libraries, or some obscure language feature. All I know is that we have come along way rather quickly and that pace will likely continue (if not increase).
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06.01.05
Posted in Politics at 4:17 am by Todd
I found an
example of what annoys me about journalism today. First, it says
But as the war in Iraq started taking a steady toll on American lives
which is true, but the term “steady” is more outrageous than accurate. Put into perspective of other conflicts this might be referred to as a “trickle” instead (the all time high for a month in Iraq was 107 according to
this article while the average
KIA/month for other conflicts is 148 for the Gulf War, 526 for Vietnam, 6639 for World War II according to
this article).
Second, it concludes with a blatantly inflammatory comment that is not supported in the body of the article,
The Army, and the nation, would be better served by a return to the draft.
So how is it better served by the draft? Just because the commitment is up quicker in the worst case? Or just because mentioning the draft brings up a difficult time in American history?
Third, while it is hard to cite sources in television broadcasts, how hard would it be to cite sources for online or print articles? I know that journalism is not like writing a research paper but it seems like the general public could trust journalists more if they could provide some evidence for their claims instead of using implication based upon unsupported, or uncited, sources of information.
But then again, I think most journalism is not about telling a story to enlighten people but rather selling an idea that has the highest profit margin possible (notice the inflammatory comment without any envidence).
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