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Swift Justice? Mobile Justice In Brazil 253

Posted by timothy from the M-M-M-M-Máximo-Headroom-meets-Juiz-Dredd dept.
tech_imp writes: "Yikes! Talk about swift justice. The BBC is reporting that Judges 'roaming' the streets in Brazil will be using laptops and an app written in VB to help dispense justice. I'm not sure that I would not want to trust my judgement to a VB app ... couldn't they have at least written it something more robust ... like Perl? I can see it now ... your sentence is GPF :')" Three words that spring to mind: "General Protection Fault."
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Swift Justice? Mobile Justice In Brazil More

Swift Justice? Mobile Justice In Brazil

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  • ...like gunning down street kids [time.com] for fun and profit.

  • Re:VB not as robust as Perl? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Just because VB isn't open source doesn't mean it is not robust.

    That's right. The real reason it isn't stable is that it FUCKING SUCKS MY ASS SO HARD MY TONSILS ARE HURTING.

  • I *have* coded in VB. For an employer (reason: the boss only knew VB). And guess what: it sucks. In fact, that suckiness goes right down to the textbooks about it; I have read several and they are unanimously inaccurate, inarticulate, full of spelling errors(!) and poor programming style.

    As for readability, you're just being foolish. Who are we talking about reading it here, a coder who should understand the language in which they program, or a 14 year old being instructed in the first principles of programming?!

    To those of you who think VB is a decent language, good for you. I hope you're my competition in a job interview. Do you know what BASIC was originally designed as? I'll tell you. It was the original programming language MS packaged with DOS for the Altair. It's primary purpose was to fit in like half a kilobyte of memory (I forget the actual figure, but it was small). Talk about legacy hmm? C++ has memory issues, but f'ing A!! The only thing Visual Basic should EVER be used for is INSTRUCTION. PERIOD.

    >>VB is easily maintainable and readable, whereas Perl resembles abstract art...

    First, (s)he said Perl was more *robust*, not readable. Second, name one product written in VB that has any kind of market visibility. Third, VB programs tend to be much longer than *decent* programs; which reduces maintanability. Fourth, Larry Wall's brain could whoop your brain with one lobe tied behind its' back.

    VB isn't evil because it's made by the Great Satan of software (M$), it's evil because it's a stupid, clunky piece of inelegant 5hit. If you like VB, use it. I'll use Perl and C++ and Fortran and we'll see whose programs live into the next decade and whose languish on obsolete storage devices.

  • Re:Puh-leeze (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    1) It is slow 5) Did I mention that it is so slooooooooow
    So is perl.
    4) It isn't a real programming language
    How do you define that except by being turing-complete? Which, I believe, VB is.
    In a real language you can write a compiler for your language in that language and have the compiler compile itself. (This can be done with gcc) VB can't do this.
    I don't see why it couldnt be done in VB. Do you have any arguments for this?
    I truly, TRULY, despise the MS-bashing around Slashdot, when VB is perfectly okay for a lot of purposes. I would really love to see someone who wrote a Windows GUI program that prints out documents from a MS SQL database that use a weird metalanguage in half an hour - which is an example of where the money in the real world comes from.

  • Ugg! VB is not slow! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you code C++ safely, ie:
    1) use STL strings
    2) boundary check every array access
    3) validate floating point operations
    4) assert every pointer operation
    ...then hey, guess what? The C++ code runs at the same speed as VB. Give me reliability over speed.
  • Could a 12 cluster beowolf be the jury here? :)

    (no, I don't know if jurys are required down there, but it was too easy. Far too easy to think of this one. :)

    bash: ispell: command not found
  • From the article:

    It could be some time before a similar system takes the place of an English court. "It would have to satisfy the authorities that it was absolutely foolproof first," says a spokesman for the Lord Chancellor's office, which oversees courts in England and Wales.

    Does that mean that English judges are fools?

  • Personally, I think this would be a lot more fun
    of a place to live if *everyone* ... well,
    everyone who isn't grossly unattractive... had
    colorful lycra outfits :)
  • It's probable that the reason for the program is
    that judges often need to dig through books and
    such to find the needed info. This might make
    that unneccesary...
  • I wrote a timekeeping application for the engineering department of the company at which I co-op'ed. The project codes changed regularly, but once used, they were generally used for a few months. I used a combo box to allow the user to select from the list of previously entered project numbers, or add a new one when appropriate.
    That is an effective use of a combo box, once the user knows what it does, which would not be overly obvious at first. It sounds like your widget is primarily used as a drop down list, with the added ability to add to the list, so why not do that: A plain drop down with an additional small button that adds a new item to the list. That way, you can take advantage of the speed of the drop down, and still allow an easy and intuitive method of adding to the list.

    That's the problem with combo boxes; they all don't work that way. Some will add to their list, some don't. Additionally, if the user mis-types something, they've suddenly got a whole new problem to deal with.

    Sure, it's a little thing, but it's the little things make your GUI a pleasurable experience for your user.

  • What do you not like about combo boxes?
    One of the few original GUI elements to be created by MS, rather than be ripped off. You won't find on the Mac (or at least used to) or NeXTStep, but you will find it in Gnome and KDE because they don't know any better

    Hmm, let's see...

    The difference between drop down lists and combo boxes are indistinguishable. You have to use it to know what it is, by which time the advantage of using a drop down list is lost. Plus, most users don't know the difference between the two, which, again, defeats the advantage of using a drop down list.

    Most two-bit GUI programmers (see VB programmers) don't know the difference either, and use the two interchangeably.

    The function of most combo boxes is unclear. Do I type my own string? Do I have to pick one from the list? Can I leave it blank? Have you ever typed a string into a combo box just to find out that the string must match from the list? After a while, it makes me want to throw my PC out the window.

    The combo box by far the worst GUI element to ever come out of MS school of GUI design and infect our lives. It is the most classic reason why the Win32 GUI, and the GUIs that blindly copy it, suck.

  • So, is this bad design or bad programming?
    One leads to the other...
    ...I DAMN WELL see the point in having combo boxes around.
    Oh Really? Give me some examples. There are really very few *effective* uses for combo boxes. One example that does work well is the location bar on a web browser, because it doesn't look anything like a drop down (it's so big). MS realized a few years ago the the combo box was horribly broken, but their attempt to fix it via AutoComplete(tm) doesn't solve any real problems.

    Give me an example of a combo box, and I'll tell a more intuitive way to do it. Sure, there are times when you want to give the user the choice of Edit or List, but there are much better ways to do it. I don't use combo boxes in any of my software (or native drop downs, because they look like combo boxes). You can accomplish the same with Buttons, Menus, and Edit boxes, and your intent is much more clear to the user.

    The advantage of an effective GUI is to allow the user to manipulate it instictivly, without the need to stop and think about what's going on.

  • go to www.m-w.com and look up the word "irony"
    If you still don't get it... oh well. There are 2 types of people: the ones with a sence of humour and the ones without.

    ___
  • Don't we already have drive-through church? Try to beat that!
    ___
  • Sounds like a General Prosecution Fault to me...

  • What is with the VB bigotry?

    Haven't used VB in several years (same for Windows! :), have they dumped that pathetic text editor they used to lock you into using? I remember the awful gyrations I had to go through bouncing between a DOS version of vi and their GUI design tool.

  • Anyone recall the episode when Bender went to the Robot planet and the rest of the crew followed, and were tried by a robot judge? The progress bar labelled "Judging..." hit about 50% and the judge crashed.

    "Reboot it!" "No, jiggle the cable!"

  • I've been programming in VB for over 3 years now.. and it is a very good language if you want to create an application with a good gui fast. I know most of the MS bashers on here will never like it.. will never use it.. I don't care. Just don't force your opinions on me.

    perl has it's faults too.. Can you create a GUI with perl and ONLY perl? non one this Tk/Perl stuff.. you can't. Don't get me wrong... Perl is all I use when I'm programming on a linux machine (when I'm at home), at work I use VB. They are have their string points and weak points.

    Honestly I don't know what I respond to MS bashing.. its not like your minds are as open as the source you love...
  • Looks right to me.
    I Like Judge Dredd in Spanish. I am the law!

    Too bad I failed high school Spanish.

    This comment is © _xeno_ and may not be used without prior permission.

    Hey, _xeno_ ... I'm using your comment without prior permission. Whatcha gonna do about it?

    :P

    --
    A host is a host from coast to coast...

  • HAHAHAHAH! Thanks for the good laugh. :)

    (I had to re-read it a few times to get it...)

    --

  • Just a observation here, but first off..., the judge in question would have to be armor proofed to the max, preferably in a M1 tank. Automatic weapons fire tends to ruin ones day. I'd be more concerned with that vs what the damn program was written with! ;) Oh, and the laptop better be bullet proof also.
  • Uh..umm..duh..lauwh
  • While VB is easily maintainable, it is also a weak language.
    Or rather it was.
    VB is about to grow up [microsoft.com].
  • "But it could be put to use in the US, where Judge Feu Rosa says he is in discussion with insurance companies to set up a mobile system to resolve disputes over traffic accidents."

    Something tells me the ambulence chasers won't let this happen.

  • Microsoft proclamed basic dead quite some time ago.
    I can't say I have any disagreement on this..

    Microsoft keeps making visual basic becouse people want it.. no biggy.. bend to the might of market demand..

    However it is very unprofesional...
    Visual basic is a toy...

    Not the sort of thing you put your trust into...
  • It's that visual basic is well.. a run time compiler basic.
    Basic still strikes up images of the old days of Commodore Vic20s and Apple ][ computers..
    Basic just isn't that welcomed anymore...

    Your right about how often the best solution is still stuck in proprietary world (for now) however Basic isn't one of those things...

    Also Visual Basic.. or any basic.. is very close to open source.
    Sence the program must be run from the programming environment (usually) this means any given user has access to the source code.

    As such it is an open only programming environment.

    Last basic I used was Qbasic and it was rather robust for a basic I can only expect that Visual basic is even more robust...

    It is still worrysom... nearly all programmers can code in basic but most don't...
    It leaves me to wonder... did he code in it becouse he likes vb or becouse thats all he knows?
  • Your right...
    Why use something some collage student hacked together for free when you could pay for something some collage drop out hacked together...
  • Did you ever consider that the fault did not lie with the tool, but with the person using it?

    Antoine de Saint-Exupéry said it well:
    "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away."

    Your app probably could have been written better, even in VB. (I know because that is what I do for a living.)

    Jim In Tokyo

  • Of course, you realize that all INTERCAL needs is a good preprocessor?

    I mean, hell, with a half-decent preprocessor, you could write INTERCAL code that would be quite easily readable (and therefore maintainable). Yes, it's blasphemy, but it's also the truth. Just something that could handle something like:
    #define iRecordLength .1234
    Or, something that allows you to define how to substitute:
    declare function MyFunction( iParameter )
    declare iLocalVar1
    declare iLocalVar2
    with
    (MyFunction) PLEASE STASH iLocalVar1
    PLEASE STASH iLocalVar2
    and
    end MyFunction
    with
    PLEASE RETRIEVE iLocalVar1
    PLEASE RETRIEVE iLocalVar2
    PLEASE FORGET #1
    ...of course realizing that calling it requires something like substituting
    call MyFunction( iArgument )
    with
    PLEASE DO (MyFunction) NEXT
    all this assuming, of course, that something akin to the following had been properly set up beforehand:
    #define iArgument iParameter
    #define iParameter :999
    #define iLocalVar1 .123
    #define iLocalVar2 .456
    #define MyFunction 789
    Of course, this preprocessor would also expose a way to include "proper" comments, but who comments their code anyway?

    Last but not least, it would absolutely neccesarily have to have an
    #include
    ability, to allow for standard libraries to do messy things like IO and character/string handling.

    So you see... you can write readable code in pretty much any language, as long as you have a half decent preprocessor. Even assembly can't hide :-)

    --
    It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
    - Sean
  • > When the verdict (package) clocked in at around 10 meg -- I quickly dismissed ever using VB again.

    I'd say one of about 5 things is happening here:
    • You are exaggerating the size of the program
    • You are understating the magnitude of the project
    • Your programmer is incompetent
    • Said database is huge
    • You are using an unusual database format, for which the driver is huge

    I say this because I am just currently finishing up a seemingly similar application, also in VB. It reads and writes records to/from a MUMPS (medical) database over a TCP/IP connection, with verification. It can handle 4 different types of record, each of which has roughly 50 different business rules they must be read against, embeds the capability for the user to connect to the host the database is on via a telnet screen, and correlates these records against code tables stored locally in an MS-ACCESS database (not a format known for file size efficiency). This local database contains 17 tables with a total of about 60,000 records (between 5 and 20 fields per record).

    The install files, executable and data files altogether come in at only about 6.5 MB. And the MS-ACCESS code table is over half of that. I'd give you the source code to show you except it's kinda proprietary. But it is nevertheless the truth.

    I repeat again, something is wrong with the scenario you described. And it's not all VB that's wrong unless you are doing something VERY strange..

    --
    It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
    - Sean
  • I agree with you on the blatant Microsoft bashing that goes on here (par for the course really), but to maintain that one language is easier to maintain or read than any other is just plain wrong. I can write lousy code in Perl just as easily as I can in Visual Basic, C, Java, FORTRAN, or any of the myriad other computer programming languages out there. To claim otherwise is ignorant.

    The code is only as good as the programmer who wrote it, but has little to do with the language it's written in.

    - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • Whoops. Time to invoke Godwin's Law. [tuxedo.org]


    ...phil
  • Can you say "I ... am ... the ... law", Stallone?
    © Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp
  • Those are all inappropriate to the crime. Instead, they
    should be subjected to the blue screen of death :)
  • "THIS LANGUAGE HAS AN OPERATOR TO TALK TO ODBC DATABASES!!! "

    This is a good thing. Once you agree that there is a place for big languages (Perl, ADA, etc) it makes alot of sense to start putting core stuff like this into operators. Look at Perl with its regexp operator and filetest operators. These would be abhorrent in a 'clean' language like Java or C, but the Perl people said "Hey, other languages consider only logic to be a core part of the language. We realise that nowdays things like regexps and handling files are core parts of what a language needs to do".

    Likewise, VB is above all a quick and easy way to create database front-ends. ODBC is core to the whole VB thing. It makes sense to make it an operator.
  • Pardon me for living, but wouldn't a PDA be much more convenient for this app than a laptop? Especially the Palm VII with the nifty wireless network. Why do people always assume that they need a full-blown desktop compatible system for everything?

    --

  • I wouldn't mind judges being more efficient and getting more done. I don't mind that they use software. As it said in the article, if a lot of cases are just logic calls, then why not let a computer do that? That's what they're for.

    The PROBLEM would come if judges start using this damn thing like people use a calculator. The reason most math profs hate calculators is because people blindly punch in the numbers, and write the answer down as if it had fallen from Jesus' lips, and never question why it is what it is, or how the answer was arrived at. The problem is with errnoeous input. I'm in a statistics class right now, and the professor will ask "What is the probability of event A and B and C happening?" and people come up with answers like "5.7" which is TOTALLY impossible, since 0 = probabilities = 1. Other math problems are similar, where people spit out impossible answers because their calculator told them that.

    If the judge still uses his brain, and uses his power to "overrule" the computer extremely liberally, I don't see anything wrong with this. If they start using them like calculators, then I'm moving to Cuba, because at least I'll know that my rights will be violated by a human and with purpose, rather than just getting the shaft electronically.

    These could be a tool. This could also massively suck. It's how you use it that makes the difference.

  • Yo Quiero Juiz Dredd en Espanol! Soy la ley!

    (I can't believe I just said that.)
    (And I really can't believe I trusted Babelfish to translate it for me...)
  • that truly excellent Joey Skaggs prank from the OJ Simpson trial, where he masqueraded as a Columbia Law professor and demoed (for several major TV networks) his own verdict-rendering program. Of course, it had the obligatory flashing red "GUILTY" displayed over the defendant's face. It was awesome.
  • Scary thing is, they ARE working on it in the United States...as a way to resolve traffic accidents and the like quickly.


    The Second Amendment Sisters [sas-aim.org]
  • It's a good thing that Judge Pedro Valls Feu Rosa isn't french, because he would be dead...

    ("Feu xyz") means ("The late xyz")...

    --
    Here's my mirror [respublica.fr]

  • "This criminal has performed an illegal operation and will be terminated immediately. If the problem persists, appeal to a higher court."
  • I'm not sure that I would not want to trust my judgement to a VB app

    I'm not sure I would trust the judgment of your spell checker.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • It would be interesting if it only blew up in IE.(further proof of MS not adhering to standards.)

    Actually, it would be much more interesting if you went and learned XML, rather than spout off half-baked Microsoft conspiracy theories. :) I suggest the nice recommendation spec over at www.w3.org [w3.org].

    Your link is spitting out bad XML, most likely due to Slashdot using tools which don't grok UTF-8 encoding. If they want to use ASCII characters in the 128-255 range, like the "á" that IE's parser flags as an error, and don't have any tools which will output UTF-8 characters, then they should be using the appropriate entity in their text instead, i.e. á. Failing that, a less effective solution would be for them to specify a character encoding for their xml file, like ISO-8859-1, since their document doesn't match the default UTF-8.

    Oh yeah, and if Netscape 6 allowed that xml to go through without reporting an error, then it has a broken parser.

    Now see, learning isn't so hard, is it? And besides, it's so much more original around here than senseless Microsoft-bashing.

    Cheers,
    ZicoKnows@hotmail.com

  • Where does Sun say this?
    ----------
  • Only stupid lawbreakers will get sentenced by this program. Those of us that have seen "Logan's Run" 30 times will have no problem. Simply tell the computer "this statement is a lie" and watch it start blinking and saying "does not compute" over and over again until it explodes in a shower of sparks. I can't wait till they get these stateside. I'll get liquored up, smash my taillights and drive around chanting "there is no spoon" -- and get away with it too.
    --Shoeboy
    (former microserf)
  • Expert systems generally don't replace experts but only make their work easier. A judge is fully qualified to judge the output of an expertsystem. By using it he can save time by letting the expersystem figure out all the details.

    Probably the expertsystem isn't coded in VB but only the userinterface. Probably the expertsystem is a COM component used in the system. Which is exactly the reason why perl is not very suitable since A) it is a pain to code GUIs in perl B) it is a pain to use com components in perl. The only two alternatives that come to mind for creating this app are delphi and Java (though com support is not optimal).

  • Lawman (Score:2)

    by mjg ( 21046 )
    I wonder if they have some sort of colourful lycra outfit to wear (the rapid justice team, that is). "Quick lawboy, to the law-mobile!" Lawman and lawboy, dispensing rapid justice from Wintel boxes in an effort to save the world from petty crime!

  • The person who wrote the program was not a professional programmer. Her was a professional judge. I quote from the New Scientist's [newscientist.com] piece on it:

    A keen programmer, Feu Rosa wrote the E-Judge program in the Visual Basic language. It presents the judge with multiple choice questions, such as "Did the driver stop at the red light?" or "Had the driver been drinking alcohol above the acceptable limit of the law?"

    So, why didn't this amateur programmer use prolog? Because prolog is a crap language. Unless you are an expert system specialist. The VB program looks nice, and does no logic more than a traffic light control program.

    In short, despite the fact the media report it as an AI program, it's not. That's why an AI language wasn't used. This is plainly evident from the New Scientist web page.

    [Aside: Why do people trust the BBC's Sci-Tech web pages? They are, without exception, the worst reporting mechanism for science and technology news. The BBC generally is poor in that area, and litters articles with inaccuracies and bad reporting]
  • In Brazil, they speak Portuguese, not Spanish. Maybe you meant to say "Eu quero o juiz Dredd no português! Eu sou a lei!"
  • Here is Joey Skaggs's website [joeyskaggs.com]. And here is the Soloman Project [joeyskaggs.com], the hoax in question.
  • "Eu sou a lei!"

    -- iCEBaLM
  • Yeah okay - maybe if you just hurl some more insults it will make your argument stronger. The point still remains. People love to cite "robust"-ness (or lack thereof) as a weakness of a language, and then turn around and call it flexibility when it suits them. Am I wrong here? Would you call C robust?

    Or am I missing the point because I'm so ignorant, and - if so - why don't you englighten me Mr I'm-Not-An-Ignorant-Programmer-But-Everyone-Else-H ere-Is.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • MS did not design BASIC. BASIC was invented at Dartmouth college well before Gates got into the biz. And what the hell does "robust" mean, when you're talking about a programming language? Is it a thick, creamy soup or something? People throw the word "robust" around as much as "intuitive" and "open source". I guess VB doesn't do as good a job of protecting coders from themselves as languages like Java and Perl do... Big deal -- C is easily less "robust" than VB in this sense, but you don't hear people on Slashdot complaining about C... Hell, just about every OSS application is written in C! C should obviously be used for nothing but instruction, since it's clearly inferior to Java.

    I'll keep VB around thanks. It may not be the greatest language for large-scale applications, but it beats the pants off any other language (maybe not Object Pascal in Delphi) for quick GUI-programs. I will recant those words only when I see VisualPerl or PerlBuilder or something of similar quality.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • Pfffffft. Some languages ARE easier to read and maintain than others. The obvious proof would be assembly, but I'll assume you're talking about high level languages. Languages with single, well-defined, ways to do things are easier to read and maintain. Perl is lauded for the fact that the same thing can be written in many ways. That means ten programmers could possibly write the same thing ten different ways...the potential differences in "identical" programs can mushroom. Readability and maintainability sure has a whole lot more than a "little" to do with the language it's written in.
  • My major gripe with VB is that it is so loosely typed as to appear incredibly sloppy. Whenever I look at VB code, even "good" VB code, it just seems so utterly sloppy to me. Instead of adding structure, as a high level language, it appears to toss it out the window. That just rubs me the wrong way with coarse sandpaper.

    But in it's defense, stuff like Perl and writing of large and/or GUI apps with Python or Tcl (for heaven's sake) glue also rubs me the wrong way.

    You can probably tell that I'm a strict-typing OO bigot, if the sig hasn't given it away already ;)
  • let alone the fines and/or sentences for a given case. This is probably where a thing like this would be most useful. The judge rules guilty, and looks up the punishment. Red Light? that'll be 150 GMU (generic monetary units). drunk driving? 1 driver's licence please.

    //rdj
  • This really brings home some of the commentary in the recent article thread concerning the consequences of poor interface design. Just the site of that nine-tabbed-panel-hell window makes my brain want to turn off, and I'm only reading a BBC article, not trying to decide issues of law and order in the heat of the situation. It's hard enough for judges to interpret and apply the law on sober courtroom consideration; asking them to fight with a typical VB interface in order to do their (difficult) job is just plain cruel. And not just to them, but to the people whose fates they're deciding. I know that poor Windows and X interfaces impede my judgement, and I'm usually judging the computer itself. It seems to me that this sort of application really begs a custom Palm-style or Mac-ish simplified interface, and Brazilians would probably be better off if they'd waited to develop one.

    The stability issues are so obvious they don't really bear further mentioning (beyond the rather redundant two times in two sentences for "GPF" in the article capsule).

  • Obviously written by someone who has never been exposed to APL, Snobol, 90% of Forth code or any of these languages [bc.edu].

    Believe me, there are bad languages. VB probably isn't one of them, though I'm not qualified to offer an opinion (having never used it).
  • "Well, we've feed all the evidence into the computer, and we'll see what comes out...

    Well, Mr. Gates, it seems you've done nothing wrong, but we have all been sentenced to death...."
  • "I Don't Know"

    Uhmm.. then let the people that know give their opinions without being chastised by the people that don't know. VB does in fact suck. It's power and usefulness do not compare to languages like Java or C++ or even perl. And thats the point: it is a language written for managers and PHB's, not hackers, as most slashdotters are.

    A negative informed opinion about something is not bigotry.

    "Signing off for good"
    Promise?


    --
    "And is the Tao in the DOS for a personal computer?"
  • VB is okay. Best thing ever for throwing together a working proof-of-concept in a couple of hours or for throwing a pretty wrapper around that cryptic little bastard you've had hanging around. It's generally NOT the best thing, but you can do just about anything in VB.

    Now that I've said that, I'm back to finish this plain 'ol C++ program in joe, skim 'Perl Cookbook' for some inspiration, and then I'm going to contemplate a gcc port to AS/400..

  • What do you not like about combo boxes?
  • Man, you are WAY off on your VB knowledge. For one thing, there is already a way to get to non-relational data. OLEDB bypasses ODBC (although you can still use the OLEDB/ODBC bridge). Also, unless I'm way off, the "!" is for VBA and doesn't work in VB (at least, I've never SEEN anyone use it.)
    ---
  • Good point. You can even turn off those "safety" features in the VB compiler if speed is premium (remove array bounds checks, remove FP checks, ect.)
    ---
  • This blew me away when I first saw it: in Perl you can have a function such as selectSQL() that you can pass an optional number of values to it and it reads them in as an array!
    from MSDN [microsoft.com]ParamArray Optional. Used only as the last argument in arglist to indicate that the final argument is an Optional array of Variant elements. The ParamArray keyword allows you to provide an arbitrary number of arguments. It may not be used with ByVal, ByRef, or Optional.
    ---
  • well, I agree with you, that's not very neat OR mantainable. I didn't even know you could do it in VB. I've seen it in access. One of the things with Vb is it is such a HUGE language. It has tons of commands that are holdovers/whatever that you never use. I guess it is fairly impressive that you can almost always open a Vb 4 or 5 app in 6 and recompile and you're fine, but I wish they'd sacrifice a LITTLE backward compatiblity and get rid of some crud.
    ---
  • Police and Judges are payed to generally protect and serve the public. By denying a trial by jury, their justice is at fault.

    So, in short, this form of mobile justice really is a general protection fault.
    :)
    ___

  • Tastes differ regarding to what's funny, but at least some basic facts should be checked before posting something like this...

    RIO DE JANIERO
    It's "Rio de Janeiro". Brazilians speak Portuguese, not Spanish, although a recent poll showed that 60% of Americans are unaware of this.

    Luis Sanchez, overlord of a drug cartel that stretches from the Cape Horn to the Bering Strait...
    "Sanchez" is a Spanish name - see above. And, aren't you thinking of Bolivia...?

    ...by a federal judge. Judge Roberto Gonzalez carried out the sentence at a Starbuck's coffee house...
    "Gonzalez" is again Spanish. You'll find "federal judges" in Brasília, the capital, not in Rio... they moved decades ago. Then again, 30% of Americans still think the capital is Buenos Aires :-)
    And, Starbucks in Brazil...? Now that is hilarious!

    I suppose the rest of the names and statements might make sense to an American...

  • I wrote:
    at least some basic facts should be checked before posting something like this...
    And you asked:
    Why?

    For two reasons:
    1) the joke's easier to understand if not cluttered up by factually wrong details, and
    2) the point's less dependent of secondary jokes like the "running Onion" thing.

    Here's some advice: It's a joke. Lighten up. :-)

    Hey, I said "NITS", didn't I...? ;-)

  • If we're going to talk about VB, then we'd better talk about Slashdot. I don't know what Slashdot runs on, but it certainly isn't very reliable. According to some e-mail responses, "it's my ISP." Yeah, right...that's why I get returns on pings, but no HTTP. :) Perhaps Slashdot should upgrade to VB for higher availability. After all, it is the single most-used programming language on the planet.
  • Hi!

    Um, actually, the "!" isn't an operator for ODBC. It is a shorthand way of referring to a default property of a referenced object. You can use it in all sorts of places, in much the same way that you can use default values.

    When you assign a value from a recordset, for instance, you might use this snippet:

    ' Assume lValue is already declared as a long
    lValue = rsData!CustomerID

    It is syntactically identical to this:

    lValue = rsData.Fields("CustomerID").Value

    The "!" operator retrieves the default property (Value) of a referenced object (the Field object, a member of the Fields collection).

    This has nothing to do with ODBC--it is related to the COM object model. This works with any COM object, not just a database component.

  • This is a nice idea... If your court system is overloaded, put the most common 100 or 200 things in a simple database. You hit a few buttons, the software figures out what specific violation it is (if you say, have 10 levels of reckless driving, etc), and prints out a reasonable judgement.

    As long as the appeals process is unchanged, this is helpful. Instead of needing the judge to lookup the difference between the different laws and write up a whole judgement, a simple mail-merge type deal prints out a judgement.

    This won't be used on major crimes, but it a good way to determine what should happen with traffic type crimes.

  • At least it is if you don't ask it to do anything too complicated. However, for a simple branched logic program such as might be implemented for this judiciary system, it would be perfectly adequate, and easily implemented. There won't be that many possible paths that they wouldn't be quickly debugged as problems are reported from the field.

    For that matter, a program written in Perl, or C, or Java isn't necessarily going to do the job any better than one written in VB. It might be more robust, but if the logic is wrong, its wrong.


    Gonzo
  • What your father showed you were guidelines for sentencing, which are applied after the person has been convicted in a real trial by a real jury.

    This is different, this isn't just the sentencing of an already guilty person. This software is the replacement of a trial. Fortunately they are allegedly only using it for "straightforward" cases, but it is still a little scary to an American. The US constitution guarantees the accused a fair trial with a jury of their peers.

    Furthermore, many people, some of whom are federal judges, believe the Federal Mandatory Minimum Sentencing Guidelines are a travesty of justice. They do not allow the judge much discretion, if any, because the sentence is determined by the charges. Prosecutors determine the charges, not the judges. Mandatory minimus effectively remove sentencing descions from judges, where they should be, and place them in the hands of the Proscutors.

    Please see Families Against Mandatory Minimums [famm.org]

    Burris

  • One of my hmmn.. what was being thought posts.

    How can Perl and Visual Basic even REALLY be compared as programming tools? I thought to myself. Oh wait im sure there is a CPAN Module for a GUI Drawing Interface.. or Perl+GTK or Perl/TK. Basically in Perl for a quick and easy GUI that you can distribute to 95% of the business world oh wait.. you cant do that can you?... VB Is the way to go there.

    You guys are kind of deluded doing an outright comparison of VB and Perl, crawl out of the command line and remember where Perl/Linux/Open Source are. :)

    c 'fireproof' 'Hmmn?'

    Jeremy
  • These puny judges and their weak "justice" program will be no match for my Army of Robotic Brazilian Mecha-Criminals...

    They'll coordinate their cyber-thuggery with the help of a Linux-based distributed supercomputer, the GNU Robot-Enhancing Network Doing Evil with Linux, or G.R.E.N.D.E.L. (Some pundits say that "Beowulf" slaughters G.R.E.N.D.E.L., but that's just a myth!)

    Ultimately, the Brazilian rent-a-judges will be overwhelmed by this evil, mechanized horde. The robots will win the war. Soon Rio de Janeiro will lose its status as the world's safest city!!

    Mwa ha ha ha ha ha! Victory is mine!

  • http://msdn.microsoft.c om/library/periodic/period00/vb7.htm [microsoft.com]

    Go to section named "Language Improvements"
    Check this out:
    "For what seems like forever, there's been a natural tension between developers who are partial to Visual Basic and those who prefer a more "comprehensive" language like C++ or Java. More than once, I've had to defend my favorite programming language from charges that it was somehow a toy language because it lacked certain OOP features. Well, guess what? The next version of Visual Basic should finally put those complaints to rest. Microsoft plans to introduce the big three of object-oriented programming: inheritance, polymorphism, and overloading. And that's not all! Other new constructs, including structured error handling and freethreading, will be introduced to the language."

    Steve Balmer's discussion on new VB:
    http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstu dio/nextgen/keynote.asp [microsoft.com]

    etc. etc. etc.
    As for you statement about my experiences with VB shush, I was coding ASP over 3 years ago when you haven't even heard about it yet.
  • Visual Basic is a functional language from the very beginning with OO added on top of it.

    C++ is a multidimensional successor of C. C++ is in itself a language that supports multiple paradigms, which I consider to be the crown jewel of programming world (especially the STL http://www.stlport.org/resources/ StepanovUSA.html [stlport.org] - here is a god, kneel.)
    However I don't consider C++ to be purely object oriented either, it is as I say multidimentional and supports multiple paradigms. Don't switch, I have to use all of them due to our clients' demands. VB or Java is mostly Money Oriented Programing (MOP). Actually the value of C++ is only increased because it is not completely OO. Templates allow you to write functions independent of objects and that is great. - but that was the idea from the beginning. Idea of VB was QBasic.


    If you really don't think what I am telling you about VB is correct, just look at this: http://msdn.microsoft.c om/library/periodic/period00/vb7.htm [microsoft.com]
    better yet look at my post #220.


  • This is just as stupid as you can possibly get. Of-course any, even the most simplistic compiler/translator/virtual machine that can implement finite automaton will work BUT! There are actually languages the whole and sole purpose of which is to interpret logic.

    for those of you who never did any AI, they are:

    Prolog - Programming Logic (the language is a database that defines atomic truths and their relations, the Prolog engine is a 4-cylinder processor that works completely recursively to find out your question, so if you ask to: contcatenate X and Y you will get Z by doing the following concat(X, Y, Z), on the other hand the same line will return the necessary Y, if X and Z are known, and if X and Y are not known, then all possible concatenation sequences will be returned by simply recursing over Z.

    LISP - orgasmic (otherwise known as lots of silly parentesis)
    SCHEME - variation on Lisp (virtually orgasmic)
    ML - strongly typed Meta Language (tough language but fair)

    Just don't, Don't tell me there is no way to use these languages because they are lacking something, in fact they are not lacking anything. There is even visual prolog today (if it wasn't in my wet dream)

    Some of these languages are successfully used to even write HTTP servers and Device Drivers without mentioning their actual use for AI.

    So WTF? I ask you, WTF!!!???!!!
  • Well, I've used VB to write COM for BellMobility (bellmobility.ca) website, they use MTS and IIS4 for their invoice on line stuff, well, it's not object oriented. It's not and was never ment to be. It is a functional language, dual in nature. There will be a real object oriented version of VB coming soon.

    They are basically ripping off Java in this case

    I wouldn't be surprised if it was all Java underneath VB [Basically Java(tm)].
    Still, VB is not cross platform. I don't think that after using Java anyone would want to use a language that has keywords "Function" or "Sub" and where functions do not have to declair their return types and are named with first capital letters! "Dim" and "Set" it just blows into your face, doesn't it?

    Class1
    Function GetCustomer()
    ...
    End Function
    Class2
    Inherits Class1
    Function GetOrders()
    ...
    End Function
    ---
    Sub CreateMyThread()
    Dim b As BackGroundWork
    Set t = New Thread(New ThreadStart
    ...
    End Sub
    > ---
  • Some possible sentences:
    • Fatal Error
    • BSOD
    • ReBoot

  • For the last 5+ years, I've coded in VB, C, C++, Java, perl, php, assembler, and others that I can't remember ( or don't want to ).

    Each language has it's strengths and weaknesses, without exception. Yes, VB does have some drawbacks. It is not portable. It doesn't have certain OOP features *yet* ( See VB7 ). It does offer rapid development, native 32-bit _compiled_ code ( VB hasn't been interpreted for a couple years now ) that, when _well-written_, can run just as well as an application written in MSVC++.

    ** Note ** I'm not making any comment in regards to the stability of the OS, which can play devils advocate for _any_ application.

    I'm not claiming that VB is as robust as other languages ( perl, c++, java ) but _in my experience_ I have found that if VB isn't capable of performing a task, it will easily use a component written in to the COM specification. That's a strong features of VB. It can use any COM component, and you can write COM objects in many languages, including Delphi and C++. You can even access CORBA objects!

    Applications can be written poorly in _any_ language.

    IMHO,
    http://www.battleaxe.net
  • I agree - Fuck this site. Used to be cool.

    Does VB suck? I don't know, since I never really used it. Am I prejudiced against it? No.

    I've had enough of SlashDot bigotry... Signing off for good.

    -hotaine

  • Amen. For the love of god.

    Visual Basic does what it is supposed to do and, over the years, has come to do it damn well. True, earlier revisions of the language were really weak, but it has evolved into an excellent language for rapid application development. It is quick to write, easy to debug, and, with a bit of creativity, can be used to do a bloody lot. For someone who has to do a lot of quick, turnkey Windows application development, I can vouch for the legitimacy of the language. I can write 98% of the code I need in VB, debug it, package it, and deploy it very quickly, and not have to worry about killer alloc problems, whatnot. Other people may not like it, but there is certainly a sizable chunk of people who do.

    VB is criticized for being a "Basic." So the English-centric language is more accessable to the novice programmer than C. This results in a greater number of novices using VB than using C, thus meaning that there are going to be a larger concentration of novices in the VB world than in the C world. It is easier to turn out compilable code in VB than C. But given a good programmer, you will get good code out of either language. It's the programmer that really matters, remember? A good programmer can pick a convenient tool and turn good stuff out of it. Not all of us live in a non-Microsoft world.

    But, if we're really going to talk smack about languages, then, for the love of god, don't hold C or Javascript up as some kind of "perfect" creation. The principals of something like Squeak [squeak.org] make for much better argument.

    ----
    I am not a Microsoft groupie, but I'm not going to break my neck avoiding them when there are more productive and convenient ways for me to get my job done.
  • VB has its place, but I think when they started trying to make "enterprise edition" for building middle tiers and so forth, things just kind of got of hand. I'm not a fan of VB, but I have, with (at the time) minimal knowledge of it, used it to create quick GUIs with very little pain, and have been impressed by this capability.

    But, like so many other technologies that are "good in their niche", Microsoft is building up VB to handle things that it was never ever intended for. This language has no solid foundation. It has no standard, no specification. MS will throw any feature necessary into this thing to make it EASY at all expense.

    This language has five different ways to say "NULL." This language has so many keywords its sickening. THIS LANGUAGE HAS AN OPERATOR TO TALK TO ODBC DATABASES!!! (its the excalamtion point ("!")) Yes, sure it makes it easy, but how long 'til all these features come back to bite you on the ass.

    What do we do with the ODBC OPERATOR if/when RDBMS technology goes away in favor of object databases? What we have here is a case of lack of forward thinking. These are the people who brought you 8.3, GUI-in-the-kernel, the (corruptable) binary registry, and WINNT/SYSTEM32! They are thinking only of getting the product out the door with the most features first... at the price of not thinking about the long-term effect. Once you can't stand it anymore they'll tell you everythings going to be alright by coming out with kludges like Windows File Protection (fixes WinNT/system32) and Windows 95's hack for long file names... (everythings really still 8.3!) And you'll buy into it. ENJOY!

  • On the flip side, if you got a judgment you did not like, you could blame:

    1) a hacker
    2) a virus
    3) Y2K

  • While VB is easily maintainable, it is also a weak language. On the other hand, the great languages, C/C++, Perl, Java (although it's a real bitch), they may be complex, but you can make an honest to god rocket control system with any of them. Anyways, we dont want missiles that GPF on us, do we? {=


    When the pack animals stampede, it's time to soak the ground with blood to save the world. We fight, we die, we break our cursed bonds.

  • Re:Puh-leeze (Score:3)

    by Cally ( 10873 ) on Thursday April 27, 2000 @12:09AM (#1108159) Homepage
    Guess who said :
    "I've always thought that Visual Basic is a good product."

    Was it

    • Bill Gates ?
    • Linux Torvalds ?
    • Zaphod Beeblebrox ?
    • Hemos ?

    Answer : Linux Torvalds. Source : Linux Journal.
    http://www2.linuxjourn al.com/articles/conversations/006.html [linuxjournal.com]

    Personally, I prefer Perl, but there ya go ...
    Camaron de la Isla [flamenco-world.com] 'When I sing with pleasure, my

  • Re:I'm not worried (Score:3)

    by Shoeboy ( 16224 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @03:37PM (#1108160) Homepage
    While I'm on the subject of beating Visual-Dredd 4.0, did anyone notice that it has limited input options?

    Computer: Was the suspect intoxicated?
    Cop: No.
    Comp: Was the suspect driving in a suspiscious manner?
    Cop: No.
    Comp: I am ready to give my verdict. Please close all windows and click "OK"
    Cop: Click... Click... Damn hourglass.
    Comp: (5 minutes later) Not guilty.
    Cop: Well Mr. Shoeboy, the computer says I have to let you go - but for the love of god either put some pants on or get tinted windows.

    I really can't wait.

    --Shoeboy
    (former microserf)

  • If VB were Open Source (Score:3)

    by hey! ( 33014 ) on Thursday April 27, 2000 @03:22AM (#1108161) Homepage Journal
    People would be pretty proud of it, or at least the IDE.

    Of course, no open source project would contain a language as ugly and inconsistent as VB's Basic; but the IDE is very nice for bolting together ActiveXs and UI widgets in a quick and dirty way. A lot of MIS type projects fall into this category.

    One of the best things about VB is the ability of the IDE editor to understand and catalog ActiveX methods, which can only be discovered dynamically (sorry, no static IDL). That said, this also leads to the worst thing about VB, which is that its popularity encourages ActiveX developers to be lazy. Really, the only test of an ActiveX seems to be does it work in VB. This leads to broken function prototypes that only work in VB, not in Delphi, PowerBuilder or C++. Another wonderful case of interproduct synergy brought to us from the Microsoft monopoly. it's great for people whose application fits in the VB solution space, it sucks for everyone else.

  • VB not as robust as Perl? (Score:3)

    by aeiler ( 37342 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @03:40PM (#1108162)
    Just because VB isn't open source doesn't mean it is not robust. I think open source software is the way of the FUTURE. The reality is that the best solution for many (not all) things today is still stuck in a proprietary world.
  • Umm, I'd argue that this is arse. While it is possible to write bad code in any language it is without doubt easier to read _average_ code in one language over another. As always with these things lets take the example to an extreme.

    In the blue corner we have PentiumIII assembler, in the red corner the beast of all languages Ada, your task is to write a Multi Radar Processing system. We estimate it will take 3 years with 10 people to write. It is classified as being mission and safety critical (cat 1).

    Do you think that the assembler app will be as maintainable or as manageable as the Ada app ?

    Of course not. Certain languages are tailored towards certain things, FFT in FORTRAN is a breeze, I'd image its slightly harder in VB.

    I've seen systems (as in had to interface to) written in many different languages (including all those written above, + Ada, COBOL, Perl, Assembler et al) assuming that most were written by a team and thus the ability is around the average I can safely say that certain languages lend theirselves to extendability and comprehension. Other can produce good and readable code but their normal standard is lower than the normal standard of other languages.

    VB isn't one of the best mind. In fact that honour goes to Ada IMO. There have been many studies done on development times/maintainance times in different languages and it DOES make a difference what you code in.

    Otherwise we'd all be using Turing Machine Instruction sets.

  • Why do they even need a computer?? (Score:3)

    by canny ( 146634 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @03:44PM (#1108164) Homepage
    OK, so the computer asks you "did he run the red light?".... ok the computer isn't exactly running some fuzzy-logic artificial intellegence program to determine wether the person is guilty or not, now is it? what kind of computation goes on behind the scene when you reply "yes, the driver did run the red light"? it must be microsoft bloatware... maybe a little dancing paperclip will pop up and say "this program has automatically sentenced the offender to death, would you like to know how to turn this feature off in the future?"

  • Why not? (Score:3)

    by Bigboote66 ( 166717 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @03:38PM (#1108165)
    My father (a district judge here in the US) has shown me the tables that judges use to ensure that their verdicts fall within the guidelines set by the various laws that have been passed madating minimum & maximum sentences. So the system already exists here.

    As for all the obvious jokes about the stability of VB apps: we're not talking about Quake here - it's just a very basic database & the rest of it is UI. VB does cheesy database UI better than anyone out there. If I have no idea who the programmer is, I'd trust a cheesy UI written in VB to a cheesy UI written in C/C++ any day. There are a lot more programmers out there able to write stable VB apps than there are those that can write stable C apps, given that the app is simple in the first place.
  • I agree with you on the blatant Microsoft bashing that goes on here (par for the course really), but to maintain that one language is easier to maintain or read than any other is just plain wrong. I can write lousy code in Perl just as easily as I can in Visual Basic, C, Java, FORTRAN, or any of the myriad other computer programming languages out there. To claim otherwise is ignorant. The code is only as good as the programmer who wrote it, but has little to do with the language it's written in. - A.P.
    --


    "One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad

  • NEWS: Brazilian Drug Kingpin Sentenced (Score:5)

    by cje ( 33931 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @03:49PM (#1108167) Homepage
    BRAZILIAN DRUG KINGPIN SENTENCED TO BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH
    Harsh Sentence From Judge Raises Some Eyebrows

    RIO DE JANIERO (UPI) - Luis Sanchez, overlord of a drug cartel that stretches from the Cape Horn to the Bering Strait, was sentenced to the blue screen of death this afternoon by a federal judge. Judge Roberto Gonzalez carried out the sentence at a Starbuck's coffee house in downtown Rio after he was spotted by undercover agents. The agents called in Gonzalez and restrained Sanchez until he arrived with his laptop computer, running the Automatic Brazilian Justice Service Pack (ABJSP) of the Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system. The ABJSP is part of the default installation.

    Opponents of the blue screen of death penalty were quick to criticize Gonzalez's actions. "The blue screen of death penalty is never justified," explained Mary Madalyn Murray Coughlin O'Laughlin, a representative of the National Council of Churches. "What sort of message do we send when we carry out a penalty like this? It puts us in the same boat with countries like China, Iran, and Afghanistan. It's brutal, it's barbaric, and it's an idea that is about a thousand years too old."

    Famous programmer Linus Torvalds agreed with Coughlin O'Laughlin. "I'm from Finland," explained Torvalds, "and I can tell you that I have never, ever seen a blue screen of death penalty carried out. Ever. It's just something that doesn't happen in a sufficiently evolved society."

    Ed Muth, newly-appointed Brazilian Minister of Justice, had a slightly different take.

    "We need the blue screen of death penalty," explained Muth. "Studies have shown that it acts as a deterrent, that it gives criminals something to think about, that it stops them from committing violent crimes. Also, we cannot forget about the closure factor. While it might seem barbaric, I've had family members of murder victims come up to me and thank me for blue-screening a criminal. They'll tell me that they're finally able to get a good night's sleep, now that their long nightmare is over."

    Texas governor and United States presidential candidate George W. Bush agrees. "The blue screen of death penalty remains a necessary evil," Bush explained during a campaign stopover at Berkeley. "It sends a compassionate, yet conservative message to the criminal population of the world." Over the past thirty years, Bush's home state of Texas has blue-screened more inmates than the rest of the Western world combined.

    The big black guy from "The Green Mile" contributed to this report.

  • Puh-leeze (Score:5)

    by konstant ( 63560 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @03:32PM (#1108168)
    I'm not sure that I would not want to trust my judgement to a VB app ... couldn't they have at least written it something more robust ... like Perl?

    What is with the VB bigotry? In your review of competing products, do you dismiss out of hand the fact that VB is easily maintainable and readable, whereas Perl resembles abstract art drawn from the inner, inarticulate recesses of the mind that coded it?

    I like VB, and I'm not alone in liking it. Lay off.

    -konstant
    Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!

  • Judge, not Computer, is Interpreter of Law (Score:5)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Wednesday April 26, 2000 @03:59PM (#1108169) Homepage Journal

    Give me a break. This is just a stupid story to fill space and generate a lot of banal arguments about nothing.

    If the Judge wore sneakers with holes through them, it would say nothing of the judgements he made.

    If the Judge drove a Fiat, it would not suggest bias or improper legal process.

    If the Judge wired her decision to the clerk's office using Handspring or Linux or BeOS, it would not aid nor hinder the quality of justice.

    And if the laptop in question burned up because it wasn't using a low-heat Transmeta chip, but was instead slogging away at slashdot-impoverished microsoft-laden Dell/Intel circuitry instead, the criminals would just have to wait for a handwritten slip to meet their legal fates.

    (Judge, not Computer, is Interpreter of Law =anagram>
    Mature projection upsetting free world.)

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