What is software testing? And why is it so hard?

The author sheds some light on why testing today's software products is so challenging, and he identifies several solid approaches that all testers should be able to thoughtfully apply. The effective tester has a rich toolkit of fundamental testing techniques, understands how the product will be used in its operating environment, and has a nose for where subtle bugs might lurk in the product and a bag of tricks for flushing them out. The methods described can help testers provide a sensible answer to the question of what they really mean when they say they have finished testing a software system     

What you train is what you get? Task requirements and training methods in complex problem-solving

The study measured the effect of tested training methods (direct instruction, guided exploration, and a combination of both) on the performance of 497 participants on qualitative and quantitative knowledge tests and control performance task under three complex problem (CP) conditions (easy, medium, difficult). All three methods proved equally suited to meeting the requirements of reproducing qualitative knowledge. For acquisition of quantitative knowledge, the direct-instruction method outperformed a method requiring participants themselves to infer solutions. The greater a CP’s intrinsic load due to parallel effects, the more effective direct instruction was at increasing control performance. The guided-exploration group and the combined-method group scored mixed results. The more difficult the CP, the more overall control performance deteriorated regardless of the training method.     

Intrusion Detection Systems: What is intrusion detection and why do we need it?

In order to answer the opening question, it may help to consider the following scenario. Once upon a time there were isolated villages where everyone trusted everyone else. Little by little, people started to travel from village to village to exchange goods, news and information and life generally got better. A few people used the opportunity to travel from village to village to look inside other people’s houses and take things without permission. As this behaviour became more frequent, villagers began putting locks on their doors. But the criminal element (or in some cases the rabidly curious) was inspired to find ways around these locks. So the villages developed new ways of detecting intruders and monitoring what was taken. These methods included security guards, infra-red motion detectors and security cameras.     

Data administration in the organization: What is it,who does it and why?

Those who work in the field of database are constantly being challenged both by the burgeoning nature of the field and by the rapidity of new developments. One of the new emerging areas is ‘data administration’; this refers to the management, planning and documentation of the data resource of a company.The key concept in the move towards data administration has been that data, like people, money and materials should be treated as a critical resource that any company has to manage. Providing accurate, relevant and timely information entails a significant cost for a company and presents a substantial challenge.     

What can you verify and enforce at runtime?

The underlying property, its definition, and representation play a major role when monitoring a system. Having a suitable and convenient framework to express properties is thus a concern for runtime analysis. It is desirable to delineate in this framework the sets of properties for which runtime analysis approaches can be applied to. This paper presents a unified view of runtime verification and enforcement of properties in the Safety-Progress classification. First, we extend the Safety-Progress classification of properties in a runtime context. Second, we characterize the set of properties which can be verified (monitorable properties) and enforced (enforceable properties) at runtime. We propose in particular an alternative definition of ??property monitoring?? to the one classically used in this context. Finally, for the delineated sets of properties, we define specialized verification and enforcement monitors.     

What is 'heavy'?

One of the work practices frequently taught to employees is to estimate the heaviness of load before it is actually handled. If it is ‘heavy’, then one should ask for help. However, limited information can be found in the ergonomics literature about what a person perceives as a ‘heavy load’. This study was conducted on 20 male and 20 female workers in the package delivery industry to estimate the amounts of load that correspond to various levels of load heaviness (e.g. ‘somewhat heavy’). Experienced employees were used for this purpose. The distribution of loads within each heaviness level was developed using fuzzy sets theory. The maximum load (i.e. 23 kg) defined by the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health represents a ‘somewhat heavy’ load based on the analysis of load distribution (corresponding to a 1.0 certainty factor). Also, the 40 kg considered in the 1981 NIOSH guidelines may be classified as a ‘very heavy’ load. A comparative analysis of the results of this study with norms established in prior research indicates that one should be more careful in the interpretation of statistical norms for human perception of load handling. A ‘moderate’ level of load heaviness (i.e. 14 kg) can be handled by 85% of the worker population.     

What is ERP?

Though enterprise resource planning (ERP) has gained some prominence in the information systems (IS) literature over the past few years and is a significant phenomenon in practice, through (a) historical analysis, (b) meta-analysis of representative IS literature, and (c) a survey of academic experts, we reveal dissenting views on the phenomenon. Given this diversity of perspectives, it is unlikely that at this stage a broadly agreed definition of ERP can be achieved. We thus seek to increase awareness of the issues and stimulate further discussion, with the ultimate aim being to: (1) aid communication amongst researchers and between researchers and practitioners; (2) inform development of teaching materials on ERP and related concepts in university curricula and in commercial education and training; and (3) aid communication amongst clients, consultants and vendors. Increased transparency of the ERP-concept within IS may also benefit other aligned fields of knowledge.     

What is biology?

The following work compares two different ways of fractionating or abstracting from an organism: (a) a Mendelian way, which views the organism as a discrete bundle of phenotypic characters, each controlled by a corresponding genetic "factor", and (b) as a bundle of particulate molecular fractions, as envisaged by molecular biology. It is generally believed that the latter completely subsumes the former, and that it further serves to subsume all of biology into contemporary physics. We argue herein that the first of these assertions, if true at all, does not follow from an initial positing of an identity between the Mendelian gene and DNA sequence, and may well be false in general. In either case, the second assertion becomes false as well. This has profound consequences, not only for biology, but for the physics which is presumed to underlie it; it constitutes a part of the "new physics" which Erwin Schr?dinger, in a famous essay [(1944) What is Life? Cambridge University Press, Cambridge], argued was inherent in biology.     

What is computation?

Three conditions are usually given that must be satisfied by a process in order for it to be called a computation, namely, there must exist a finite length algorithm for the process, the algorithm must terminate in finite time for valid inputs and return a valid output and, finally, the algorithm must never return an output for invalid inputs. These three conditions are advanced as being necessary and sufficient for the process to be computable by a universal model of computation. In fact, these conditions are neither necessary nor sufficient. On the one hand, recently defined paradigms show how certain processes that do not satisfy one or more of the aforementioned properties can indeed be carried out in principle on new, more powerful, types of computers, and hence can be considered as computations. Thus, the conditions are not necessary. On the other hand, contemporary work in unconventional computation has demonstrated the existence of processes that satisfy the three stated conditions, yet contradict the Church–Turing thesis and, more generally, the principle of universality in computer science. Thus, the conditions are not sufficient.     

What is motherboard?

(W)还没有缓过味来,我们已经被一脚踢进了这个知识爆炸的信息时代。这年头,连“文盲”这词的定义都和从前不同了,“会使用电脑吗?”,“@ #＄％ ＆……”,“不会?！”,这样的窘境你遇到过吗? 我曾多次被人讥笑以后,忍无可忍,终于鼓足勇气,硬着头皮一头扎进了电脑圈。不想,在真正接触之后,原来这个恼人的东西并不是想象中那样深不可测,回头看看以前连键盘都不敢摸的那个我,真是胆怯懦弱。     

What do you seek?

~~What do you seek?     

What is knowledge and can it be managed?

Philosophical and linguistic debates about the nature of knowledge, information and data should be of more than academic interest to the practice of knowledge management. Grounds are proposed for showing that not all enterprise-critical knowledge can be captured and transferred by the use of data warehouses or knowledge repositories. A key difference highlighted is that between the natural execution of a task and the ability to talk about a task which is discussed as a distinction between ‘thrown’ and ‘breakdown’ behaviour. It is shown that this contrast renders even that which can be codified an incomplete representation of the knowledge concerned. Knowledge management must therefore concern itself with both tangible issues and artefacts (such as codified representations that can be secured) and intangible features such as the skills which people require to interpret and exploit those representations. Furthermore, as organisational structures and procedures themselves represent codified knowledge, they must be designed to be inherently changeable in order to permit the enterprise continuously to adapt as new knowledge is acquired.     

What is generative art?

There are various forms of what's sometimes called generative art, or computer art. This paper distinguishes the major categories and asks whether the appropriate aesthetic criteria—and the locus of creativity—are the same in each case.     

Ethical Foresight Analysis: What it is and Why it is Needed?

Minds and Machines - An increasing number of technology firms are implementing processes to identify and evaluate the ethical risks of their systems and products. A key part of these review...