Goodbye To Faulty Software?

The program that performs the computation is equivalent to the proof of the theorem. By proving the theorem the program is guaranteed to be correct.
It is not that simple, of course, but so promising is type theory that since 1989 the EU has been funding a string of projects to develop it under the Future and Emerging Technologies programme.
That style of working is going to change so that we spend more effort on actually writing programs than testing them.

clipped from www.sciencedaily.com Will it ever be possible to buy software guaranteed to be free from bugs? A team of European researchers think so. Their work on the mathematical foundations of programming could one day revolutionise the software industry. We have become used to the idea that software will not work properly. While we would take a faulty car back to the dealer and demand they put it right, we are remarkably tolerant of software that goes wrong. Nordström believes that the whole approach to software design needs to be rethought. The usual approach is to validate a program via a lengthy testing process. Instead, he would like to see a design philosophy that guarantees from first principles that a program will do what it says on the box. The key lies in an esoteric reformulation of mathematics called ‘type theory’ based on the notion of computation. In this approach, the specification for a computational task is stated as a mathematical theorem.

New Scifi Story About How Google Achieves Consciousness

rom the story:

When Ed examined the traffic, he realized that Google was doing more than mapping the digital universe. Google doesn’t merely link or point to data. It moves data around. Data that are associated frequently by search requests are locally replicated—establishing physical proximity, in the real universe, that is manifested computationally as proximity in time. Google was more than a map. Google was becoming something else.

clipped from io9.com If you’re looking for some seriously mind-blowing hard science fiction online this afternoon, look no further than a new (free online) short story, “Engineers’ Dreams,” by science historian George Dyson. George is known for his meticulous, entertaining historical investigations into secret government science projects of the twentieth century. Now he’s turned his eyes to the twenty-first century, and has written a highly-informed and brainy tale of how Google could become the first true artificial intelligence I’ve heard many webbish futurists speculate that A.I. is going to come from search algorithms and user-generated content, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen anybody explain it in a plausible way. Excellent read. Engineers’ Dreams [Edge via BoingBoing]

How to move TEMPDB

Sometimes you need to move TEMPDB in SQL Server. Either because you need more space, or if you just don’t like where it is located. To do that, you need to run the following statements replacing “G:\” with the drive and directory location where you want the TEMPDB files. Once you run these statements, you must stop and restart the SQL Server service and it will create the new files. You should manually remove the old fields after you verify that the change took place.

USE master
GO
ALTER DATABASE TempDB MODIFY FILE
(NAME = tempdev, FILENAME = ‘G:\TEMPDB.MDF’)
GO
ALTER DATABASE TempDB MODIFY FILE
(NAME = templog, FILENAME = ‘G:\TEMPLOG.LDF’)

links for 2008-07-15

• GIANTmicrobes
  (tags: toys shopping science humor biology fun funny gifts)
• Star Trek, watch full episodes on CBS.com
  (tags: tv startrek video online cbs streaming star trek kirk spock)
• FreedomFilerâ„¢ Filing Systems For Home And Business
  (tags: organization clutter gtd freedom filer filing system)

How to Remove FOLDER LOCK with lost password

This worked for me.

clipped from creafilgo.blogspot.com Well, I’m one of those people out there who accidentally forgot my Folder Lock password b’coz I haven’t used the software I installed for quite a month. It’s sort of my short memory loss syndrome. I was struggling for 5 days trying to remember that brilliant password I created that was somewhat stuck on whichever part of my miniature size brain. Just download any full version copy of folder lock with similar version of the one your using, example Folder lock v5.7.5 or something like that. Then just Install it. Then let it run automatically after the installation. You will be prompt to login using a new folder lock user id and folder lock registration key. You can use this FolderLock User ID: NewSoft15805 FolderLock Registration Key: 221281703 After you have entered the information above, follow the programs procedures until registration is finish. Start folder lock and when the program ask for the password, use the folder Registration Key stated above.

links for 2008-07-10

• Goodreads | The Blade: Shellville High School Yearbook
  (tags: funny father guido sarducci shellville blade book)

links for 2008-07-09

• You’ve Been Left Behind
  It’s not too late!
  (tags: religion christianity rapture email funny humor crazy stupid web)
• CERN - The Large Hadron Collider
  (tags: science physics lhc technology cern)

Computer program and Net are catching on with golf leagues

clipped from www.thespec.com Men’s and women’s golf leagues are becoming increasingly popular. Golf courses everywhere are starting them up as a way to fill tee times and to increase food and beverage income. The problem, until recently, was that whomever was running the league probably did the scoring in the evening and it was difficult to find out how you or year team did until the next day at the earliest. Pat Alpaugh knew there had to be a better way. So the Hamilton resident created golfscoring.net. “I came up with the concept of creating a computer program so we could enter the results right away and everyone would know the results of the day,” he said. “A friend of mine suggested we take this one step further and take the computer program and run it through the TV in the bar at the golf club so we could broadcast the scores of the day.”

SQL Server / Using BCP to create a format file

So you have a database table and you want to make a format file, but who wants to go through and make one by hand?  You can get a head start by using the BCP (Bulk Copy Program) utility to create one for you.

You can use any existing table to do this.  Open up a command window (DOS) and use the following syntax:

BCP database.dbo.tablename format nul -f FORMATNAME.FMT -c -SServerName -UUserName -PPassword

Substituting database, tablename, FORMATNAME.FMT, ServerName, UserName, and Password with your information.

This will generate a format file for use with a tab delimited file.  You can then alter the delimiters if necessary from tab to something else.

The Google Lunar X Prize

clipped from www.popularmechanics.com The year is 2012. A quarter-million miles from Earth, a small spacecraft is nearing the surface of the moon. When the unmanned craft touches down in a cloud of rocket-blown dust, it becomes the first man-made object to arrive intact on the lunar surface in 32 years. But the logo on the side of the spacecraft doesn’t belong to NASA or any other government space agency. Instead, the images beamed back to Earth by the small rover that emerges from the spacecraft reveal a familiar multicolored corporate logo: Google’s. Not a single dollar of public money has been expended, or a scrap of governmental red tape encountered, during the mission. To win the prize, the rover must do more than arrive in one piece. It must ­travel at least 500 meters, or about a third of a mile, and send a “mooncast” of high-definition video, photos and text to Earth.