HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: richieb@bony1.bony.com (Richard Bielak)
Subject: Re: Do Software Engineers Actualy Do So Badly?
Organization: multi-cellular
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 92 13:15:38 GMT


To see how well or badly engineers in other fields are doing I
highly recomend this book:

   "To Engineer is Human: The role of failure in succesful design"
       by Henry Pietrowski 

One of the many examples he mentions is building of iron railway
bridges. In the late 19th century iron was first used to build
bridges. A lot of the bridges failed, often killing people.

During a certain period, one of every four bridges built in US failed.


...richie



-- 
* Richie Bielak   (212)-815-3072   |                                          *
* Internet:       richieb@bony.com | Rule #1: Don't sweat the small stuff.    *
* Bang {uupsi,uunet}!bony1!richieb | Rule #2: It's all small stuff.           *
*    - Strictly my opinions -      |                                          *
From: wahl@dickh.enet.dec.com (David Wahl)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Finding memory-related defects (was: Re: SUMMARY Re: Purify vs dbmalloc)
Date: 8 Oct 92 16:46:47 GMT
Reply-To: wahl@dickh.enet.dec.com (David Wahl)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation


--
In article <BvstCF.L55@virtech.uucp>, cpcahil@virtech.uucp (Conor P. Cahill) writes:
|>
|>Of course, I may think this because I am selling such a product, but 
|>after you spend a couple of yours trying to track down an allocation
|>problem, you will eventually come to see my point of view.
|>

Actually, I've spent quite a few years tracking down such problems through
inspection and preventing them through judicious application of design and
coding standards.  I asked the question to see if there were similar 
experiences and attitudes among the participants of the newsgroup.  I'm not
out to slam your product; just asking some questions from an SE perspective.

While I agree that the use of such tools is valuable during development, 
I'm not convinced that they are worth the cost of licensing the run-time 
for volume shipments of a product.  I'm also concerned about the fact that 
the system services I depend on (such as certain well-known window systems) 
are using the basic OS memory allocation routines and not a special library 
which traps such defects.  Also, I want to know that a library which is 
shipped with my product to do something so basic as memory allocation is 
ABSOLUTELY free of defects and won't collide with all the other unexpected
products operating on the system my customer will use.

Regards,
Dave Wahl
===================================================================
Digital Equipment Corporation
DIDDLY Development Team (CX02-1/7D)
301 Rockrimmon Blvd. S.
Colorado Springs, CO 80920-2080

Tel 719-548-2351
Email: wahl@hootus.enet.dec.com
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
% The opinions expressed are my own, not Digital's.               %
% "I suppose you would have to be very well educated to get that  %
%  kind of job."                                                  %
% "Extremely well educated.  Typing, everything."                 %
% -- Donald Barthelme, "The Emerald"                              %
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
From: johnw@johnwuu.canb.auug.org.au (John Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Do Software Engineers Actualy Do So Badly?
Distribution: world
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 92 12:01:38 GMT
Organization: Computer Sciences of Australia
Reply-To: johnw@canb.auug.org.au


In article <dnsurber.718999326@node_26400> dnsurber@lescsse.jsc.nasa.gov writes:

 > 
 > I believe (but don't know) that it would be cheaper to do it right the
 > first time, but nobody seems to be willing pay the price up front.  The
 > customers all seem to be looking for a free lunch.  And there is always
 > another contractor out there who'll tell the big lie just to get the
 > contract.
 > 
 > I'm sick to death of it, but I don't know what to do about it.
 > 
Rob Thomsett, a local software development consultant, presented a paper in
1989, to I think the Australian Computer Society, in which he quoted the
cost of defect removal increasing by roughly an order of magnitude for each
subsequent phase the defect remains undetected.  He also did a rough
experiment several years back when managing a project, where over a period
of a few weeks he got all members of the team to record how long it took to
fix an error, in either their own work, or an error they had discovered in
someone else's work.  This time to fix errors (or oversights) was
rsponsible for about 40% percent of their time.

Rob also distinguishes betwwen small, medium, large and super large
projects.  Capers Jones has shown that defects per LOC is 200% higher for
large project than for small projects and up to 400% higher for super-large
projects.

Rob's criteria for a successful project is to achieve the following:
.  have a satisfied user professional/client
.  meet the project's objectives/requirements
.  meet an agreed budget - money, resources
.  deliver the product on time
.  get a sense of professional satisfaction

On a super-large project, ie. a project so large no single person has
a full grasp of what the project is, Rob's criteria for a successful
project reduces to the meeting of *just* one of these five criteria.

references:
Rob Thomsett, "Managing Super-Large Projects: A Contingency Approach", 1989
Capers Jones, "Programming Productivity: Issues for the Eighties", IEEE EHO
186-7, 1981.

+========================================================================+
| John Wright                    |   Standard   | Voice : +61 6 249-1871 |
| Computer Sciences of Australia |  Disclaimer  | Fax   : +61 6 253-1259 |
| johnw@canb.auug.org.au         |    Notice    | Locn  : Canberra       |
| 100032.553@compuserve.com      |   Applies    |         Australia      |
+========================================================================+
| Expand your horizons, don't take the easy way out.  W. Blaike.         |
+========================================================================+
From: martinc@grover.cs.unc.edu (Charles R. Martin)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: The Goal of Software Engineering
Date: 13 Oct 92 14:12:26 GMT
	<1992Oct13.060652.10180@tcsi.com> <1992Oct13.122727.10076@afit.af.mil>
Organization: UNC Department of Computer Science
In-reply-to: jcardow@afit.af.mil's message of 13 Oct 92 12:27:27 GMT

Jim Cardow asks "What is the goal of software engineering"?

I don't think it's all that obscure or occult a thing.  The goal of
software engineering is building software to a stated purpose.  As with
other forms of engineering, we have to consider effects of scale: it's
mechanical engineering of a sort if I design a hinge for my garden gate,
but a lot more difficult job to design a garden gate that can be
mass-produced economically.

The goal of those of us who research software engineering is --- or
ought to be --- the application of computer science (and other
techniques such as operations research and industrial engineering) to
develop methods for building software to a stated purpose.
--
		Charles R. Martin/(Charlie)/martinc@cs.unc.edu
     Dept. of Computer Science/CB #3175 UNC-CH/Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3175
	    3611 University Dr #13M/Durham, NC 27707/(919) 419 1754
		 Remember what the little cake said to Alice.
From: drake@Autodesk.COM (Dan Drake)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Software Factory (was: Re: Do Software Engineers Actualy Do So Badly?)
Date: 15 Oct 92 17:51:50 GMT
Organization: Autodesk Inc., Sausalito CA, USA

wicklund@intellistor.com (Tom Wicklund) writes:
> ...
> On the other hand, how many programmers decide they need to be more
> efficient than the component so bypass it.  This was done with the
> original IBM PC.  Direct screen writes were used for text I/O rather
> than BIOS calls.  I don't think any extra functionality was available,
> but it ran faster.  
I'm not sure just how we are supposed to interpret this.

>Too many programmers try to optimize everything
> rather than just places where performance suffers.

Very true, but not applicable to the guys at Lotus, etc., who wrote
directly to the screen for good reasons.  Writing a program that did big
spreadsheets on a 5-MHz 8088, they needed things fast Fast FAST if they
were to sell the product.  I assure you that direct writes to the screen
made an exceedingly noticeable difference in practically any text-based
application.

BTW, even for a graphics program, BIOS had the needed functionality:
write dots on a graphics screen.  One at a time.  The results can well
be imagined, or maybe they're too bad too imagine.  Virtually the first
work done on AutoCAD in 1982 was to reverse engineer the undocumented
graphics system of the Victor 9000 (vastly superior to the IBM PC) so
that a screen could be drawn in finite time.

> ... [samples of Not Invented Here syndrome]
> I agree with the software factory concepts as described here.  I
> suppose I'm a bit cynical having fought against the various fears of
> sharing code between products too many times.

Whatever one thinks of the inflammatory word "factory", re-use has to be
increased by orders of magnitude.  It's discouraging, though, to
contemplate the many cases in which there are real justifications for
NIH, even today, ten years after that feeble little file system for the
PC was released.  We've got a long way to go.

--
Dan Drake
drake@Autodesk.com
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
From: elaine@ce.hp.com (Elaine May)
Subject: Re: Testing (Was: Do Software Engineers Actualy Do So Badly?)
Reply-To: may@hpcesma.ce.hp.com
Organization: HP Corporate Engineering - Palo Alto, CA
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1.4 PL6]
Date: Thu, 15 Oct 1992 03:06:11 GMT

> Matthew Atterbury (matt@bacchus.esa.OZ.AU) wrote:
:     But isn't this the point? A TTL component _could_ have any
:     conceivable values on its output (not just 0/+5V or whatever it
:     is), but it _doesn't_ - it is considered a TTL component because
:     it follows the standard. 

Actually, ICs can return a variety of values.  That's why digital designers
tear their hair out over slew rates and overshoot and so on.  EEs that design
their boards as though they assumed ICs were software components returning 
boolean values find that their (non-trivial) designs don't work too well.
And, of course, some ICs work and some don't (for instance, one IC could have
a manufacturing defect).

IMHO, hardware designs are far more trivial than software designs because
of all these real world considerations.  [What's the equivalent of a ground
plane in software?  Transmission lines?  Ever look at a backplane?]  Digital 
hardware seems to have less restrictions than analog hardware although as the 
clock speed gets higher, the EE has to consider more and more of the analog 
characteristics of their design.

Used to design software for use by hardware types,
Elaine May                               Hewlett-Packard Corporate Engineering
may@hpcesma.ce.hp.com		         Palo Alto, California
From: kjones@luke.eecs.wsu.edu (Kent Jones - EECS)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: PROPOSAL ***PLANNING TOOLS SURVEY*** PROPOSAL
Keywords: Gantt, Pert, Project Planning etc...
Date: 9 Oct 92 18:07:56 GMT
Article-I.D.: serval.1992Oct9.180756.18195
Organization: Washington State University!

In article <1992Oct9.175707.18028@serval.net.wsu.edu> kjones@luke.eecs.wsu.edu (Kent Jones - EECS) writes:
>
>PROPOSAL:
>email me with the information on how to access any public domain/commercial
>software project planning tools for any machine. 

NOTE: Just wanted to clarify that if the software is commercial, please 
specify where it may be purchased... i am *not* advocating trading 
commercial software over the net in any way shape or form!!!!
So, modify the submission form as follows:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
TOOL NAME:	
PUBLIC DOMAIN/COMMERCIAL:
MACHINE IT RUNS ON:
ADVANTAGES/DISADVANTAGES:
OPERATING SYSTEM:
(IF PUBLIC DOMAIN) WHERE ON INTERNET ITS LOCATED:
(IF COMMERCIAL) WHERE CAN IT BE PURCHASED:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kent Jones
kjones@eecs.wsu.edu
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Washington State University
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
From: anton@cc.gatech.edu (Annie I. Anton)
Subject: Structured Analysis & OO Techniques
Reply-To: anton@cc.gatech.edu (Annie I. Anton)
Organization: Georgia Tech Software Research Center
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 19:00:52 GMT

I'm interested in knowing if structured analysis is ever used 
(successfully) as a front-end analysis activity leading into an 
object oriented design.  Does anyone have any experience with this?
Can someone recommend some relevant papers/books?

It seems that using the products of a structured analysis as a
front-end to object oriented design is possible but certainly not
desirable.  Any comments?

-Annie Anton
 
-- 
 _   /|          Annie I. Anton
 \'o.O'   ACK!   Georgia Tech Software Research Center
 =(___)=         Ga Tech  --  1990 National Champions!!!!
    U    PTHFT!  Internet: anton@cc.gatech.edu
From: rdippold@qualcom.qualcomm.com (Ron Dippold)
Subject: Re: Moving back the system clock
Organization: Qualcomm, Inc., San Diego, CA
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 1992 02:49:07 GMT

gibian@talent.ljo.dec.com (Marc S. Gibian) writes:
>I do not agree this would insure the best software licensing
>system.  I DO agree this would make life for those building
>software licensing systems, and those who rely on them, much
>more relaxed.

It should make it much easier for those of us who like to deprotect
our software, as well.  A CPU serial number check is just another
trivial software check to remove, and with this kind of false
security, makers might neglect other, harder mechanisms, such as
semi-intelligent dongles or disk-based protection.  

Just watch for the access to the serial number and see what it does to
it. 
-- 
Whatever it is, I fear Greeks even when they bring gifts.
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
From: jgeniec@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Joseph A Geniec)
Subject: The best way to copyright?
Organization: The Ohio State University
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 18:22:41 GMT

     I am a new shareware developer, and I intend to upload my
software to BBS's. What is the best way I can go about
copyrighting shareware?

                                             J.G.
From: larry@celia.UUCP (Larry Weinberg)
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
Subject: Softw. Puplishing Question
Keywords: market research publishing
Date: 15 Oct 92 11:11:16 GMT
Reply-To: lampy!larry@usc.edu (Larry Weinberg)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Rhythm & Hues, Inc., Hollywood


Hope someone can steer me somewhere --

 I have written a Macintosh application that I am trying to 
 have published.  

 To aid in my endeavor, I need to try to estimate the market
 potential for my program.  Does anyone know of services which
 provide market data (number of users/software packages, etc)
 in fairly specific areas of the computer graphics world?

 Or are their publishers, distributers, or publications which would
 be particularly helpful to me?

 Or has someone else been through this and has some good ideas to
 share?

 Thanks for any help.

 Larry
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
From: mob@apollo.HP.COM (Mary Bennett)
Subject: Re: Small Developer, Public Domain LM
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 19:07:49 GMT
Organization: Hewlett-Packard Company, Chelmsford, MA

In article <1b1to1INN9nj@darkstar.UCSC.EDU>, haynes@cats.ucsc.edu (Jim Haynes) writes:
|> 
|> In article <138@eiffel.eiffel.com> ram@eiffel.com (Raphael Manfredi) writes:
|> >Is there a "standard" for licence managers, something describing a formal
|> >specification of the protocol, the way keys are represented, how the client
|> >communicates with the licence manager daemon, etc...? I don't think there is,
|> >given the variety of licence managers offered by companies.
|> 
|> And I'm cynical enough to believe there isn't likely to be any standard, at
|> least for a while.  The market at present seems to consist of a several
|> license manager developers, each pushing his own proprietary product;
|> they don't want standards because their only competitive advantage is
|> in being different from all the rest.  Seems to me this isn't likely to
|> change unless some Really Big Player (e.g. Microsoft or IBM) adopts
|> a license manager protocol and makes it more affordable for software
|> developers (and end users) than any of the competing alternatives.

Well, if you believe that OSF is a standards company, then through the
Distributed Management Environment (DME), a standard license management
system will soon be available.  This is the same license management
system that has been selected by Unix International (UI) and an ever
growing number of large OEM's like: IBM, Silicon Graphics, Intergraph, 
and Hewlett-Packard.  Other large companies will soon be announcing plans 
to use this same license management system.  This technology is available
now.

The license management system used by all of the above is NetLS, the product
developed and marketed by HP/Gradient Technologies.  A number of years back
a group called the Network Computing Forum (NCF) came up with a specification
of what a "standard" license management system should look like.  The NCF
license manager spec is what the 1.1 version of the NetLS product was based
on.  The NetLS 2.0 product contains many improvements on this specification,
but still maintains an NCF compatability library for anyone who is interested
in maintaining a standard. 

Regards,

Mary
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    Mary Bennett                                250 Apollo Drive
    OSSD/Distributed Object Computing Program   Chelmsford, MA  01824
    Mail Stop chd-02-co                         Telnet: 436-4266
    mob@apollo.hp.com                           mary_bennett@hpj600.hp.com
    (508) 436-4266                              FAX: (508) 256-3941
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: jrbd@craycos.com (James Davies)
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
Subject: Re: Moving back the system clock
Date: 9 Oct 92 20:37:58 GMT
Article-I.D.: craycos.1992Oct9.203758.16525
Organization: Cray Computer Corporation

In article <1992Oct6.162735.7140@ampex.com> leepeng@ampex.com (Peng Lee) writes:
>
>  The best software license is for someone (Bill Gate) to convince 
>  the CPU maker (intel) to have one register contains a unique ID for 
>  each CPU.  (32 bits PROM programmed at the end of CPU testing cycle.) 

Of course, then AMD will make a clone of the CPU with a program-writable
ID register, then Intel will sue AMD, Microsoft will refuse to sell software
for AMD clones, the Justice Department will sue Intel and Microsoft
collectively for antitrust violations, and everyone will blame everyone
else for the mess.

Besides, hackers will just dummy out the "fetch-ID" instruction in their copy of
the program and give it to their friends (after infecting it with a virus ;-).

Simple solutions are simple to circumvent.
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
From: todd@fred.dfrf.nasa.gov (Todd Vernon)
Subject: Re: Small Developer, Public Domain LM
Reply-To: todd@fred.dfrf.nasa.gov (Todd Vernon)
Organization: NASA Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards CA
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 17:45:01 GMT



deram@eiffel.com (Raphael Manfredi) writes....

> I've heard the MIT is working on a licence manager, which I hope will be made
> publicly available and become a 'defacto' standard. If every company which is
> in need for a licence manager but cannot afford the ones provided by
dedicated
> companies start developing their own, soon there will be lots of
"licence
> manager daemons" running on a single network node, all with different
> configuration schemes, with different logging convention, as Chuck
Royalty
> pointed out.

I agree, however I am left no choice.  A worse problem is small independent
developers don't want to write for the platform because there is no
way to protect there investment.   

Todd
From: jrbd@craycos.com (James Davies)
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
Subject: Re: The best way to copyright?
Date: 14 Oct 92 17:14:26 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Cray Computer Corporation

In article <1992Oct13.063649.2027@RedBrick.COM> jfr@RedBrick.COM writes:
>In article <1992Oct12.182241.11112@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu> jgeniec@magnus.acs.ohio-state.edu (Joseph A Geniec) writes:
>>     I am a new shareware developer, and I intend to upload my
>>software to BBS's. What is the best way I can go about
>>copyrighting shareware?
>>
>>                                             J.G.
>
>  Simple inclusion of a copyright notice:
>
>        Copyright (c) MeMyself AndI, 1992
>        All rights reserved
>
>  is totally sufficient to secure copyright *protection*.

I have a tangential question here;  what is the current status of
c-in-parentheses as a substitute for c-in-a-circle as a copyright symbol?
It's widely used, but does it have any effect on the validity of the
copyright notice (for good or bad)?
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
From: jvp@vlsi2.ee.iastate.edu (Jim Van Peursem)
Subject: How to join SPA?
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames IA
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 14:39:55 GMT

  Can anyone give me information on the SPA?  How helpful is it?  How do
I join?  How much does it cost?  etc etc etc....

+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| Jim Van Peursem - Ph.D. Student - Ham Radio -> KE0PH          |
| System Administrator - Digital Systems Design Lab             |
| Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering |
| Iowa State University - Ames, IA 50011                        |
| internet - jvp@cpre1.ee.iastate.edu                           |
|          - jvp@iastate.edu                                    |
+---------------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing
From: ken@visix.com (Ken Mayer)
Subject: Re: Moving back the system clock
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 17:36:58 GMT
Reply-To: ken@visix.com
	<1992Sep19.121214.23215@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> <davison.716941195@sfu.ca>
	<1992Oct1.112019.15266@Cadence.COM>
Organization: Visix Software Inc., Reston, VA

-->On Thu, 1 Oct 1992 11:20:19 GMT, deej@cadence.com (Jim Howard) said:

 Jim> In article <davison.716941195@sfu.ca> davison@selkirk.sfu.ca (R. Davison) writes:
>marra@samuel.enet.dec.com (Dave Marra) writes:
>
>>re: talk about moving the system clock back.
>
>>Why can't the license system keep an internal timestamp inside it's license
>>database somewhere, and then, when it detects that time has taken a step
>>backwards, simply disable all licenses?  
>
>The clock on our systems needs to adjusted occassionally.  If I had
>to reinstall all licenced systems every time, I'd be wishing for a
>better scheme.  Licencing, should not inconvenience legitimate users.
>
>>At that point it would take a complete re-installation of the entire license
>>system, including the licenses to get everything back online.  I would think
>>that would deter folks from setting the clock back.
>
>Rod  Davison.
>

Changing the system clock on networked systems is getting harder and
hadrder to do without seriously impacting users. (I suppose if NTP or
some other protocol and internetwork connectivity kepp going, you
system could just check (trusted) NTP time servers for the real time.)
E-mail gets confused, developement operations with make and rcs are
similarly obfuscated.  It's hard for me to change the clock on my
little stand-alone Mac, much less in a workgroup situation. We ship
time based demo keys all the time and if the user wants to change the
system clock to squeeze a little more time out of the key, there's not
much that we want to do to stop him. It just not a big issue for us.


Ken
--

Ken Mayer (ken@visix.com)
Visix Software Inc./703.758.8230
  Bene Vivere Ultio Optima --- Living Well is the Best Revenge
Newsgroups: comp.software.licensing