OK, I promised this rant earlier so I have to follow thru, for once...
NASA gets into software.
OK, here is the deal since you lazy bastards never actually read the links I post. Come to think of it you lazy bastards hardly ever read the text I post. I think you might just be coming here over and over to laugh at the cute alien. Wait... I'll start over...
It seems that NASA has gotten it into their heads that better software is the way to go. This would seem to be a no-brainer after they smacked a probe into Mars and blew another up in deep space. We won't even bring up the cool things they missed by having to tinker others that refused commands and the time they wasted with the Mars Explorer conning it into a reboot and software upgrade at 30+ million miles away. In space, no one can help you Ctrl-Alt-Del
Anyway, in true government fashion, they have chosen to step up and throughly talk about it with the software industry. They ran to a major university
and conned them into helping them start the High Dependability Computing Consortium. High being the operative word here. The plan is to come up with a way to write better software for things like air-traffic control, power plants, non-exploding space-craft, medical research and of course highway safety. Lord knows that pile up on I64 yesterday never would have happened if that Ford Internet Explorer hadn't 404'ed and plowed into a blue panel truck of death.
Remarkably, many powerful companies have signed up to "help the world produce better software." Companies like SGI (authors of IRIX, the little UNIX that won't), IBM (who wrote the world shattering OS/2), Adobe (Ahh PostScript, now you can crash your printer too!),
Compaq (We wrote our own BIOS, give it 10MB of your harddrive or it will destroy all you own when you least expect it), Novell (Remember us? Before the internet and Windows NT our servers let you delete the entire companies files at a single keystroke!), Sun (Solaris, when it comes to great software, we make slow client machines!), Sybase (We aren't Oracle!), Siebel (It isn't a software platform, it is thousands of software toothpicks all glued together), Marimba (We started a company based on Java and you've never heard from us since), ILOG (no one knows who we are but we saw a chance to be listed in the same paragraph as the big guys and took it), and of course Microsoft (Hi Bob!).
From what I can tell, NASA is taking a sort of "To Catch a Thief" approach to computer science. The haven't just got a fox in the hen house, they set the fox to guarding it. Asking Microsoft and IBM to figure out how to make safer software is like asking John Wayne Gacy to figure out how to make the streets safe at night. Being an expert at writting shitty software doesn't make you an expert in safety, it makes you incompetent. Please, once a guy has shot himself and you in the foot a couple of times each, stop giving him the gun!
The worst thing is I know what they are going to come up with. Some nightmarish cross between Scheme, Haskel or Eiffel, and fucking Ada. You know they are. We are looking at the birth of a programming language so steeped in Bondage and Discipline that you'll have to ask permission twice and instantiate the Thank_You object just to start typing.
Probably the best thing to come from this will be the person at Carnegie-Mellon who gets to spend the $500,000 grant. The university is doing just what you would expect from a partner tasked with finding a better way to write and prove software safe; they are breaking ground on a new building. Remarkably, the building they are planning will have 500,000 square feet of space, one square foot for each dollar I wish NASA had spent more wisely, like blowing up more spacecraft.
I don't know the way to cite these but here are some choice quotes from
The Bush v. Gore case.
Page numbers are per:
this pdf on
CNN
Pg.4 Per Curiam, I (last paragraph)
The petition presents the following questions: whether
the Florida Supreme Court established new standards for
resolving Presidential election contests, thereby violating
Art. II §1, cl. 2, of the United States Constitution and
failing to comply with 3 U. S. C. §5, and whether the use of
standardless manual recounts violates the Equal Protect-
tion and Due Process Clauses. With respect to the equal
protection question, we find a violatio of the Equal Pro-
tection Clause.
Pg.5-6 Per Curiam, II B (first two paragaphs)
The individual citizen has no federal constitutional right
to vote for electors for the President of The United States
unless and until the state legislature chooses a statewide
election as the means to implement its power to appoint
members of the Electoral College. U. S. Const., Art. II, §1.
This is the source for the statement in _McPherson v.
Blacker_, 146 U. S. 1, 35 (1892), that the State legislature's
power to select the manner for appointing electors is ple-
nary; it may, if it so chooses, select the electors itself,
which indeed was the manner used by State legislatures
in several States for many years after the Framing of our
Constitution. _Id._, at 28-33. History has now favored the
voter, and in each of the several States the citizens them-
selves vote for Presidential electors. When the state leg-
islature vests the right to vote for President in its people,
the right to vote as the legislature has prescribed is fun-
damental; and one source of its fundamental nature lies in
the equal weight accorded to each vote and the equal
dignity owed to each voter. The State, of course, after
granting the franchise in the special context of Article II,
can take back the power to appoint electors. See _id._, at 35
("[T]here is no doubt of the right of the legislature to re-
sume the power at any time, for it can neither be taken
away nor abdicated") (quoting S. Rep. No. 395, 43d Cong.,
1st Sess.).
The right to vote is protected in more than the initial
allocation of the franchise. Equal protection applies as
well to the manner of its exercise. Having once granted
the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by
later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one per-
son's vote over that of another. See, _e.g. Harper v. Vir-
ginia's Bd. of Elections_, 383 U. S. 663, 665 (1966) ("[O]nce the
franchise is granted to the electorate, lines may not be
drawn which are inconsistent with the Equal Protection
Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment"). It must be remem-
bered that "the right of suffrage can be denied by a debase-
ment or dilution of the weight of a citizen's vote just as
effectively as by wholly prohibiting the free exercise of the
franchise" _Reynolds v. Sims, 377 U. S. 533, 555 (1964).
Pg.10 Per Curiam, II B (1st whole paragraph)
That brings the analysis to yet a further equal pro-
tection problem. The votes certified by the court included a
partial total from one county, Miami-Dade. The Florida
Supreme Court's decision thus gives no assurance that the
recounts included in a final certification must be complete.
Indeed, it is respondent's submission that it would be
consistent with the rules of the recount procedures to
include whatever partial counts are done by the time of
final certification, and we interpet the Florida Supreme
Court's decision to permit this. See ____ So. 2d. at ___.
n. 21 (slip op., at 37, n. 21) (noting "practical difficulties"
may control coutcome of election, but certifying partial
Miami-Dade total nonetheless). This accomodation no
doubt results from the truncated contest period estab-
lished by the Florida Supreme Court in _Bush I_, at re-
spondent's own urging. The press of time does not dimin-
ish the constitutional concern. A desire for speed is not a
general excuse for ignoring equal protection guarantees.
Pg.11 Per Curiam, II B (1st whole paragraph)
The question before the Court is not whether local enti-
ties, in the exercise of their expertise, may develop differ-
ent systems for implementing elections. Instead, we are
presented with a situation where a state court with the
power to assure uniformity has ordered a statewide re-
count with minimal procedural safeguards. When a court
orders a statewide remedy, there must be at least some
assurance that the rudimentary requirements of equal
treatment and fundamental fairness are satisfied.
Pg.20-21 Rhenquist, C. J. concurring, II (last paragraph, note omitted)
(note that Scalia and Thomas join this concurrance)
In its first decision, _Palm Beach Canvassing Bd. v.
Harris_, ___ So. 2d, ___ (Nov. 21, 2000) (_Harris I_), the
Florida Supreme Court extended the 7-day statutory
certification deadline established by the legislature. This
modification of the code, by lengthening the the protest period,
necessarily shortened the contest period for Presidential
elections. Underlying the extension of the certification
deadline and the shortchanging of the contest period was,
presumably, the clear implication that certification was a
matter of significance: The certified winner would enjoy
presumptive validity, making a contest proceeding by the
losing candidate an uphill battle. In its latest opinion,
however, the court empties certification of virtually
all legal consequence during the contest, and in doing
so departs from the provisions enacted by the Florida
Legislature.
Pg.22 Rhenquist, C. J. concurring (1st paragraph, partial only)
AFTER VOTING, CHECK YOUR BALLOT CARD TO
BE SURE YOUR VOTING SELECTIONS ARE
CLEARLY AND CLEANLY PUNCHED AND THERE
ARE NO CHIPS LEFT HANGING ON THE BACK
OF THE CARD.
Instructions to Voters...
... No reasonable person would call it "an error in the
vote tabulation," Fla. Stat. §102.166(5), or a "rejection of
legal votes," Fla. Stat. §102.168(3)(c), when electronic or
electromechanical equipment performs precisely in the
manner designed, and fails to count those ballots that are
not marked in the manner that these coting instructions
explicitly and prominently specify. The scheme that the
Florida Supreme Courts's opinion atteicutes to the legisla-
ture is one in which machines are _required_ to be "capable
of correctly counting votes," §101.5606(4), but which none-
theless regularly produces elections in which legal votes
are predictably _not_ tabulated, so that in close elections
manual recounts are regularly required. This is of course
absurd. ...
Pg.28 Stevens, J., dissenting (go there and see a note that
fills almost the whole page, woof.)
(note that Ginsburg and Breyer join in this dissent.)
(1st paragraph, partial only)
Nor are the petitioners correct in asserting that the failure
of the Florida Supreme Court to specify in detail the pre-
cise manner in which the "intent of the voter," Fla. Stat.
§101.5614(5) (Supp. 2001), is to be determined rises to the
level of a constitutional violation
Pg.32 Stevens, J., dissenting (last 2 paragraphs)
What must underlie petitioners' entire federal assualt
of the Florida election procedures is an unstated lack of
confidence in the impartiality and capacity of the state
judges who would make the critical decisions of the vote
count were to proceed. Otherwise, their position is wholly
without merit. The endorsment of that position by the
majority of this Court can only lend credence to the most
cynical appraisal of the work of judges thoughout the
land. It is confidence in the men and women who admin-
ister the judicial system that is the true baclcone of the
rule of law. Thine will one day heal the wound to that
confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One
thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know
with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this
year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is
perfectly clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge
as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.
I respectfully dissent.
Pg.33 Souter, J., dissenting (first paragraph)
(note that the Breyer joins this dissent and Stevens and
Ginsburg join all but Part C.)
The Court should not have reviewed either _Bush v.
Plam Beach County Canvassing Bd., ante_, p.___ (_per
curiam_), or this case, and should not have stopped Flor-
ida's attempt to recount all undervote ballots, see _ante_ at
___, by issuing a stay of the Florida Supreme Court's
orders during the period of this review, see _Bush v. Gore,
post_ at ___ (slip op., at 1). If this Court had allowed the
State to follow the course indicated by the opinions of its
own Supreme Court, it is entirely possible that there
would ultimately have been no issue requiring our review,
and political tension could have worked itself out in the
Congress following the procedure provided in 3 U. S. C.
§15. The case being before us, however, its resolution by
the majority is another erroneous decision.
I am afraid that my eyes began to swim at page 36 or so
and I'm unable to find anything else that jumps out at me.
I find it interesting in the extreme that all four
dissenters chose to write opinions most joined each other
with occasional partial objections. It is crazy nit-picking
at its best and tomorrow I'll take another shot at it =)
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