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Presents a reprint from the IEEE Global History Network's STARS articles. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From the inside of a software-intensive system, there are many different styles of implementation, each with its own subtle characteristics. From the outside, it all looks the same: its completely invisible. The Web extra at http://youtu.be/fWJEZ4vEEco is an audio podcast of author Grady Booch reading his On Computing column, in which he discusses how from the inside of a software-intensive system, there are many different styles of implementation, each with its own subtle characteristics. From the outside, it all looks the same: it's completely invisible. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Gerencia Tecnologica Informatica is the property of Universidad Industrial de Santander and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Meibomian gland dysfunction is one of the most common eye disorders observed in clinical practice. It applies to almost 50% of the population, especially people using contact lenses. It is believed that meibomian gland dysfunction is the most common cause of abnormal stability and integrity of the tear film. Despite this, there is no commercially available equipment for the diagnosis. The article proposes the construction of an optical sensor and a computer system for the rapid, non-invasive diagnosis of meibomian gland dysfunction. The designed hardware and software as well as preliminary results of clinical research are also described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examined classifiers in the Hmong language with a particular focus on gaining insights into the underlying cognitive process of categorization. Forty-three Hmong speakers participated in three experiments. In the first experiment, designed to verify the previously postulated configurational (saliently one-dimensional, saliently two-dimensional, and saliently three-dimensional) characteristics of common Hmong classifiers, the participants were presented with pieces of wood in various shapes and were asked to select a classifier for each item. In the second experiment, designed to examine configurational and functional characteristics of two classifiers associated with saliently one-dimensional objects, the participants were asked to rate the acceptability of the two classifiers for different types of zippers. The interaction between the configurational and functional characteristics in the selection of a classifier was further examined in the third experiment, in which two target items-computer software and a computer processor-were respectively presented to the participants in three different manners with varying emphasis on their shapes and functions, and the participants rated the acceptability of different classifiers after each presentation. The results of these experiments indicate limitations of explaining common Hmong classifiers in terms of configurational characteristics and point to a need for greater attention to functional characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper proposes a Software Complexity Code Framework Based on an empirical analysis of Software Cognitive Complexity Metrics using an Improved Merged Weighted Complexity Measure. Software Development Industry in Kenya is dominated by a myriad of Small Software Developers firms. It was observed that majority of the Small Software Developers Organizations have 2 - 20 employees indexed by 62.4%, whereas Large Software Developers Organizations index 30.4%. The increased complexity of modern software applications also increases the difficulty of making the code reliable and maintainable. This research paper measures one internal measure of software products, namely software complexity. I develop a Software Code Complexity Framework using a proposed cognitive complexity metric for evaluating design of object-oriented (OO) code. The proposed metric is based on important features of the Object Oriented Systems: Inheritance, Control Structures, Nesting and Size. The proposed metric is applied on a real project for empirical validation and compared with Chidamber and Kemerer (CK) metrics suite. The practical and empirical validations and the comparative study prove the robustness of the measure. The outcome of this Model leads to a development of Software Code Complexity Framework; a tool-set for static analysis of Java/C/C++ source code: a combination of automatic code review and automatic coding standards enforcement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This history of Informix is told from the founder's point of view and his personal experience. He talks about the Silicon Valley of the late 1970s, the "fire in the valley" days, and the feeling that history was going to be made and that computer scientists would be playing a major role in these changes. The relational database revolution, the flourishing success of the PC packaged software industry, and the Unix server victories are the backdrop for this story. Like all stories about a young company, it is about people and what drives entrepreneurs to take oversized chances and accept the risks involved. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Constraint-based variability modeling is a flexible, declarative approach to managing solution-space variability. Product variants are defined in a top-down manner by successively restricting the admissible combinations of product artifacts until a specific product variant is determined. In this paper, we illustrate the range of constraint-based variability modeling by discussing two of its extreme flavors: constraint-guarded variability modeling and constraint-driven variability modeling. The former applies model checking to establish the global consistency of product variants which are built by manual specification of variations points, whereas the latter uses synthesis technology to fully automatically generate product variants that satisfy all given constraints. Each flavor is illustrated by means of a concrete case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

1952 was the year that Princess Elizabeth inherited the throne and when several innovations fuelled technological leaps for the UK's nascent computer industry. In 1952 there were crucial developments that brought into play small memory devices and printed circuit boards and also made major advances in software. Perhaps as important, given the fact that early computers are expensive at a time of fiscal austerity, is the fact that they were used for commercial applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper, we examine the applicability of lean production to knowledge work by investigating the implementation of a lean production system at an Indian software services firm. We first discuss specific aspects of knowledge work—task uncertainty, process invisibility, and architectural ambiguity—that call into question the relevance of lean production in this setting. Then, combining a detailed case study and empirical analysis, we find that lean software projects perform better than non-lean software projects at the company for most performance outcomes. We document the influence of the lean initiative on internal processes and examine how the techniques affect learning by improving both problem identification and problem resolution. Finally, we extend the lean production framework by highlighting the need to (1) identify problems early in the process and (2) keep problems and solutions together in time, space, and person. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Disk management is an increasingly important aspect of operating systems research and development because it has great effect on system performance. As the gap between processor and disk performance continues to increase in modern systems, access to mass storage is a common bottleneck that ultimately limits overall system performance. In this paper, we propose hardware architecture of a new genetic based real-time disk scheduling method. Also, to have a precise simulation, a neural network is proposed to simulate seek-time of disks. Simulation results showed the hardware implementation of proposed algorithm outperformed software implementation in term of execution time, and other related works in terms of number of tasks that miss deadlines and average seeks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an efficient method for finding horseshoes in dynamical systems by using several simple results on topological horseshoes. In this method, a series of points from an attractor of a map (or a Poincaré map) are firstly computed. By dealing with the series, we can not only find the approximate location of each short unstable periodic orbit (UPO), but also learn the dynamics of almost every small neighborhood of the attractor under the map or the reverse map, which is very helpful for finding a horseshoe. The method is illustrated with the Hénon map and two other examples. Since it can be implemented with a computer software, it becomes easy to study the existence of chaos and topological entropy by virtue of topological horseshoe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the opinions of a major software company's university-relations specialist to prepare for future changes in computing. The studies include collaboration with educators, researchers and deans in many disciplines in looking for breakthrough innovations. It discusses academic and government breakthroughs powered by funding agencies and industry research on robotics, gaming and global issues approaching multidisciplinary areas. It concludes that breakthrough research and innovation appear intertwined with the future of computing.

The article presents the author's insight related to the erroneous information on Apple Inc.'s accessibility solution to the Mac computer in the June 2009 issue of "Braille Monitor." He mentions that the computer company has provided integrated accessibility to accomplish the computing needs. He cites that Apple's development of tutorials such as VoiceOver is very helpful since it provides a number of resources to help users understand its functions in the operating system.

Personally, I strongly believe that it is very difficult to imagine today's civilized world without computers and Information Technology. Within a relative short period of time, computing has been implemented in all the possible domains of activity. Technology has developed rapidly and the notions of information society and knowledge-based society have become familiar. In my view, there is no doubt that the humanity's future goals cannot be accomplished without a solid understanding of how to use a computer properly and of the art of computer usage. In this sense, all of us who aim to be well informed and productive need to understand not only a limited number of specific software applications to work with, but also to have the possibility to access valuable information about software packages of all kinds. Starting from the definition of an encyclopedia as "A book, or set of books, or digital version of such, containing authoritative information about a variety of topics"2, in this paper I will try to show that this Encyclopedia of Software Resources which I envisage will be a collection of information related to all possible software applications, very useful for students, for developing specific lessons/courses, for the research community, the industry, and the general public. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how Six Sigma may be applied to the software development process (SDP). Six Sigma is a strategy that measures the degree by which a business process deviates from its goal (Harry, 1998). So in this paper we investigate the application of the design for Six Sigma approach to the SDP with the intent of minimising software defects and shortening the software development life cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software developed for the global market needs to support multiple languages. If a software is designed for a single language and locale, it becomes very difficult to convert it into other languages and for other locales. It is thus very important to know the specific requirements that need to be followed while designing multilingual Geographical Information System (GIS) portals. One important aspect of these localized portals is the testing strategy and approach that should be followed to ensure that the portal can be used in different languages and locales. These localized portals need to be tested thoroughly before being globalized. This testing activity is called Internationalization (I18N) testing. This I18N testing strategies are different from the conventional testing process. The paper describes the approach to be followed for I18N testing and also presents the procedure for testing such multilingual portals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software systems dealing with distributed applications in changing environments normally require human supervision to continue operation in all conditions. These (re-)configuring, troubleshooting, and in general maintenance tasks lead to costly and time-consuming procedures during the operating phase. These problems are primarily due to the open-loop structure often followed in software development. Therefore, there is a high demand for management complexity reduction, management automation, robustness, and achieving all of the desired quality requirements within a reasonable cost and time range during operation. Self-adaptive software is a response to these demands; it is a closed-loop system with a feedback loop aiming to adjust itself to changes during its operation. These changes may stem from the software system's self (internal causes, e.g., failure) or context (external events, e.g., increasing requests from users). Such a system is required to monitor itself and its context, detect significant changes, decide how to react, and act to execute such decisions. These processes depend on adaptation properties (called self-* properties), domain characteristics (context information or models), and preferences of stakeholders. Noting these requirements, it is widely believed that new models and frameworks are needed to design selfadaptive software. This survey article presents a taxonomy, based on concerns of adaptation, that is, how, what, when and where, towards providing a unified view of this emerging area. Moreover, as adaptive systems are encountered in many disciplines, it is imperative to learn from the theories and models developed in these other areas. This survey article presents a landscape of research in self-adaptive software by highlighting relevant disciplines and some prominent research projects. This landscape helps to identify the underlying research gaps and elaborates on the corresponding challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper contributes to the understanding of the nature of local knowledge spillovers and their importance for innovation in clusters in developing countries. Using detailed primary data about a cluster of software firms in Montevideo, Uruguay, the paper finds plenty of evidence of the existence of pure unintentional knowledge spillovers. In addition, it supports previous theoretical studies that have contended that there are also many knowledge flows that are to some degree produced purposively by local parties—these flows can be placed somewhere in between pure spillovers and pure market transactions. While the respondents themselves place most value on knowledge flows that are more or less purposively co-produced with customer transactions, a more objective statistical analysis shows that good product/service-innovation performance is associated with intensive use of flows with more pronounced spillover characteristics. The respondents possibly underrate the latter because of their invisibility and spontaneous nature. Heavy use of knowledge flows lying close to the market-transaction side of the spectrum is found to be associated with relatively advanced organizational capability, but not with product innovation. Overall, the findings point towards the relevance of cluster-based policies to promote innovation in a less developed country context. Various policy measures to stimulate the local circulation of knowledge are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Software industry development is acknowledged as an important engine of economic growth for many developing countries. The role of national policy has been identified as a catalyst to software industry and software exports development. Academic and practitioner frameworks have emerged to guide policymakers to the factors that are critical to success. This article adopts an institutional theory perspective on the strategy-making and implementation process and examines how historically rooted, taken-for-granted assumptions limit the possible courses of action and may also simultaneously open up new opportunities. Certain complexities and contradictions are highlighted through a longitudinal case study of Costa Rica where there is an ongoing strategic planning effort to increase software exports. Key findings from the research are related to improving our understanding of how software exports policy is influenced by local, emergent institutions that have been shaped by particular historical circumstances. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the problem concerning the Linpack Benchmark 1.0 matrix generator. It examines the ability of the matrix generator in generating matrices with identical columns. It discusses the production of a matrix by the generator with at least two identical columns through defining S as the set of all integers. It explores the establishment of a pseudo-random matrix by Linpack Benchmark. Furthermore, it describes the characteristics of matrix sizes in which the matrix generator has created a matrix with identical columns.