Today's most commercially significant microprocessors remain firmly wedded to legacy instruction set architectures, some of which are now over a decade old. Despite the admitted shortcomings of these ISAs, manufac...
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Today's most commercially significant microprocessors remain firmly wedded to legacy instruction set architectures, some of which are now over a decade old. Despite the admitted shortcomings of these ISAs, manufacturers are reluctant to develop radically new ones because they risk losing the commercial advantage of their product's existing software *** the other side of the coin, software developers find porting code to a new architecture difficult and time-consuming. If the architecture fails to gain enough market share, they-like the hardware developers-also risk losing a significant investment.
Focusing on the user early in the process goes a long way toward achieving two of the holy grails of development: improved product quality and elimination of rework. No product will ever be perfect. And although elimi...
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Focusing on the user early in the process goes a long way toward achieving two of the holy grails of development: improved product quality and elimination of rework. No product will ever be perfect. And although eliminating rework completely will never be possible, we can still measure several benefits in very tangible terms: user satisfaction. Injecting the user's voice early in the process is the authors' main objective.
Controlling software quality is a major challenge in modern softwaredevelopment projects. This article looks at softwaredevelopment practices at the two largest producers of software, IBM and Microsoft, and compares...
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Controlling software quality is a major challenge in modern softwaredevelopment projects. This article looks at softwaredevelopment practices at the two largest producers of software, IBM and Microsoft, and compares them against the software Engineering Institute's (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM), It concludes that rigorous quality controls and the CMM's basic premise for reaching higher maturity are still the best ways to produce quality software.
An interesting usability study of a prototype development environment for the Dylan programming language is presented here. This study's purpose is to determine just how close the prototype is to developers. New a...
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An interesting usability study of a prototype development environment for the Dylan programming language is presented here. This study's purpose is to determine just how close the prototype is to developers. New approaches to source code organization and to the relationship between the environment and the application being developed are introduced. An assessment of how effectively the prototype conveys these innovations to Dylan developers is also given, followed by some proposed improvements.
The ID21 beamline (European Synchrotron Radiation facility, France) is a multi micro-analytical platform combining X-ray and infrared micro-probes, for characterization of elements, species, molecular groups and cryst...
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The ID21 beamline (European Synchrotron Radiation facility, France) is a multi micro-analytical platform combining X-ray and infrared micro-probes, for characterization of elements, species, molecular groups and crystalline structures in complex materials. Applications are mainly in the fields of cultural heritage, life science, environmental and earth sciences, materials sciences. Here, we first present the status of instruments: (i) the scanning micro-spectroscopy end-station, operating from 2.0 to 9.2 keV, under vacuum and offering cryo conditions, for the acquisition of 2D micro X-ray fluorescence (mu XRF) maps, single point micro X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (mu XANES) spectra and speciation maps with sub-micrometric resolution;(ii) the XANES full-field end-station, operating in the same vacuum and energy conditions, for the acquisition of hyper-spectral radiographs of thin concentrated samples, resulting in speciation maps with micrometric resolution and millimetric field of view;(iii) the scanning micro-X-ray diffraction (mu XRD)/mu XRF end-station, operating at 8.5 keV, in air, for the acquisition of 2D crystalline phase maps, with micrometric resolution;and (iv) the scanning infrared microscope, operating in the mid-infrared range for the acquisition of molecular maps and some structural maps with micrometric resolution. Recent hardware and softwaredevelopments are presented, as well as new protocols for improved sample preparation of thin sections. Secondly, a review of recent applications for the study of cultural heritage is presented, illustrated by various examples: determination of the origin of the color in blue Chinese porcelains and in brown Sevres porcelains;detection of lead in ink on Herculaneum papyri;identification and degradation of modeling materials used by Auguste Rodin and of chrome yellow pigments used by Vincent van Gogh. Cryo capabilities are illustrated by the analysis of plants exposed to chromate solutions. These examples s
Quantitative participatory exploration of the many complex issues surrounding cross-sectoral climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation under uncertain futures is dependent on the provision, in some form, of...
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Quantitative participatory exploration of the many complex issues surrounding cross-sectoral climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation under uncertain futures is dependent on the provision, in some form, of scenarios and scenario outputs. However, the normal provision by the research community of pre-defined scenario outputs results in a lack of flexibility for stakeholders regarding choice of climate models, scenarios, scenario quantification and output indicators which in turn can lead to a lack of trust. This Special Issue describes the development and application of a web-based interactive simulation and display environment, called the CLIMSAVE Integrated Assessment (IA) Platform, which provides a holistic (cross-sectoral, climate and socio-economic change) modelling framework. The IA Platform guides the user through simulation of (1) potential impacts under scenarios of climate and/or socio-economic change, (2) identification of sectoral and multi-sectoral vulnerability 'hotspots' either before or after adaptation, (3) the potential for adaptation to reduce impacts within the capital constraints of the selected scenario(s), and (4) the cost-effectiveness of adaptation measures. The Special Issue explores how the IA Platform has been: (i) designed to provide a user-friendly, intuitive and facilitating, rather than predictive or prescriptive, environment for users;and (ii) utilised to quantitatively explore a diverse range of uncertain futures across Europe.
Though there have been advances in end-user programming, complex applicatons still need professional developers. This inspired look at the future of creating complex software explores the shift from programming enviro...
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Though there have been advances in end-user programming, complex applicatons still need professional developers. This inspired look at the future of creating complex software explores the shift from programming environments to design environments, discussing environemtns that help developers satisfy end-users' cognitive needs and help deal with contextual issues such as the aesthetic, practical, and social properties of the application and the users. A strong case is made that design environments will need to provide robust support for communication between developers and end users.
The article discusses issues related to Internet access controls. The Platform for Internet Content Selection establishes Internet conventions for label formats and distribution methods while dictating neither a label...
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The article discusses issues related to Internet access controls. The Platform for Internet Content Selection establishes Internet conventions for label formats and distribution methods while dictating neither a labeling vocabulary nor who should pay attention to which labels. It is analogous to specifying where on a package a label should appear and in what font size it should be printed without specifying what it should say. Not everyone needs to block reception of the same materials. Parents may not wish to expose their children to sexual or violent images. Businesses may want to prevent their employees from visiting recreational sites during hours of peak network usage. There should be some way to block only the inappropriate material. Appropriateness however, is neither an objective nor a universal measure. computersoftware can implement access controls that take all these factors into account. Selection software can meet diverse needs by blocking reception, and labels are raw materials for implementing context specific selection criteria.
Participatory design (PD) and task analysis (TA) have each been widely promoted as amelioratives to the problems of developing systems that meet users' requirements. However, PD methods have tended to focus on des...
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Participatory design (PD) and task analysis (TA) have each been widely promoted as amelioratives to the problems of developing systems that meet users' requirements. However, PD methods have tended to focus on design per se, rather than also promoting user-developer cooperation in upstream analysis activities. TA methods have promoted these upstream activities but largely failed to involve users directly in the analysis and modeling work. Hence, there is a need for a broader approach that encourages user-developer cooperation throughout systems analysis and design activities. This article examines the support for user-developer interaction provided by representations of users' tasks and software designs in 2 real-world softwaredevelopment projects that followed a task-based cooperative development approach. In the course of the system development work, the representations were called on to serve a number of different purposes. Task model and paper prototype representations facilitated the development of common ground among the members of the development team through the provision of an external shared model of the object of the development activity and helped to delimit an interaction space in which the cooperative activity was conducted. Weaknesses of the representations as supports for cooperative development included users' reluctance physically to amend the representations and the very strength of common ground developed between the participants that was not explicitly represented in the external models.
software requirements describe a problem in the real world that a software system is intended to solve. Describing requirements is challenging because usually too much attention is given to the final software product ...
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software requirements describe a problem in the real world that a software system is intended to solve. Describing requirements is challenging because usually too much attention is given to the final software product instead of concentrating on the problem itself and the real world. The area of geographic applications is no exception. Existing approaches to softwaredevelopment that are specific to the geographic area, for example, GIS tools, spatial databases, geographic query languages, and spatial data structures, are suitable for designing and implementing geographic applications and are, therefore, solution-oriented. We present a problem-oriented approach for requirements description of geographic applications. Most geographic applications are composed of well-known geographic subproblems. The proposed approach provides classes of common geographic subproblems that can be used to promote analysis and description of real-world problems. Each class of problems is presented as a problem frame showing domain properties, requirements and specifications. The problem frames discussed in this work are based on Jackson's general purpose problem frames and are tailored here for the geographic area. The approach is validated through a case study.
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