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Comment Re:Bugzilla and Wiki (Score 1) 428

I work in a small team of developers with exactly this problem. we have tried, used and moved on from RT, Trac, Bugzilla, MediaWiki, Mothra, Mantis and many others. Most of the bug trackers have difficult/ugly interfaces. Bugzilla is good, but is designed for projects with thousands of users / bugs and does not handle small groups of isolated projects well. The other problem with a bug-tracker/wiki is that it is difficult to "hard-link" wiki articles with bug-ids. Eventually we have settled on Jira/Confluence. We also use the "green-hopper" plugin for agile development with is something we do a lot around here. Jira keeps everything in one place and give its workflow based approach fits well with our team practices. I would recommend organizing a trial with Atlassian. They will come in, train you and your team up, and supply a trail license to get you going.

Comment RE: if the specification is in haskell (Score 1) 2

They did, on a simulator to prove the concept. But haskell is a hopeless system programming language. Just to run it needs a whole OS beneath it. The haskell was "translated" into C which formed the basis of the OS and verification attempt. IIRC there was also some benefit in having two implementations for the formal side of things. Bugs in the translators or compilers could be picked up.
Security

Submission + - World's first fully formally proven OS (theengineer.co.uk) 2

An anonymous reader writes: Operating systems usually have bugs — the `blue screen of death', the amiga Hand, etc., are known by almost everyone. NICTA's team of researchers has managed to produce an OS kernel that can NEVER crash, and is guaranteed to meet its specification. It is fully formally verified — as such it exceeds the Common Criteria's highest level of assurance.

The researchers used an executable specification written in Haskell, C code that mapped to the Haskell, and the Isabelle theorem prover to generate a machine-checked proof that the C code in the kernel matches the executable and the formal specification of the system.

Comment Re:Why are you proud of not protecting yourselves? (Score 1) 300

> That all being said nobody has given one single reason
> why they don't run virus protection or spyware scanners.
> Is there something wrong with being a little paranoid?

Why? I have nothing against spyware scanners, I use one occasionally when I suspect that there is something wrong. However, virus scanners are another story altogether (And as an IT Professional I have seen, used and worked with almost every major variation on the virus scanners theme in last 5 years). Here is the 4 point summary of my pet hates:

1. They are needlessly intrusive:
Just yesterday, I spent over an hour trying to disentangle McAfee from a machine which, because my network does not have unfettered internet access, completely ground it to a halt. Any slight variation from 'normal' usage and these packages become more problems than they solve. (Interesting, antivirus software makes ordinary tasks difficult or impossible ... symptomatic of having a virus)

2. They are system intensive
Probably half of my time spent yesterday waiting for the machine to do simple things like open a web browser.And, before you even ask, once I spat the dummy and removed McAfee altogether, the machine suddenly became responsive. (Interesting, antivirus software makes the system slow and unresponsive .. also symptomatic of having a virus)

3. They are difficult to use and configure
As a person who configures and runs my own internet domain from the Linux command line, I COULD NOT drive a "consumer product", what on earth is the average Jo supposed to do! (Interesting, antivirus software is hard to operate and remove ... also symptomatic of having a virus)

4. THEY ARE TOTALLY POINTLESS!
Think about it, lets say a new virus get released today. Now presumably not one of the major antivirus corporations will know about it (unless the wrote it ...) and assuming that we are running Window$ (which most people are) Microsoft will not have made patch available for the flaw. So, at the end of the day, if a new virus is released,YOU ARE TOTALLY UNPROTECTED regardless of whether you have a virus scanner or not! Now, when people do finally realize that the virus exists, a patch will be made available and a quick google will provide you with ample instructions on how to remove it. SO at the end of the day, the virus scanning software has been no use in detecting, removing or patching and in which case it is TOTALLY POINTLESS! Am I really to sacrifice my system resources so that these expensive, invasive, problematic and pointless pieces of malware (eg the Norton (anti)Virus) in the vain hope that it might be useful once???? I think not.

MG

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