Lambda the Ultimate - Admin

When Formal Systems Kill: Computer Ethics and Formal Methods

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:58:47 -0500

While ethics aren't normal LtU fare, it's sometimes interesting to see how our technical discussions fit into a larger picture.

In When Formal Systems Kill: Computer Ethics and Formal Methods February, 2012, Darren Abramson and Lee Pike make the case that the ubiquity of computing in safety critical systems and systems that can create real economic harm means that formal methods should not just be technical and economic discussions but ethical ones as well.

Computers are different from all other artifacts in that they are automatic formal systems. Since computers are automatic formal systems,techniques called formal methods can be used to help ensure their safety. First, we call upon practitioners of computer ethics to deliberate over when the application of formal methods to computing systems is a moral obligation. To support this deliberation, we provide a primer of the subfield of computer science called formal methods for non-specialists. Second, we give a few arguments in favor of bringing discussions of formal methods into the fold of computer ethics.

They also spend a good amount of time giving a lay overview of the practical, economic challenges faced by formal methods.

It's been ten years!

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:26:56 -0400

It has been ten years since LtU was launched. When I launched it I had no idea if anyone will read the site, let alone if people contribute new stories. The result exceeded my wildest hopes.

I got into the habit of writing a few words every year, a kind of "state of lambda" post. Somehow, this feels inappropriate for the ten year anniversary. I will possibly post something about last year later this week, but let's take a moment to celebrate our first ten years.

There are a lot of things that can be said, and a few things that perhaps should be said. I personally will say little. The thread is open.

For my part, I just want to thank all those how contributed to LtU over the years, whether by submitting new stories, by participating in the discussion, or with help with administrative and hosting issues. Some, of course, helped with any and all tasks.

It is great to see that some members that have been with LtU from its early years are still here. Some members that left have come back, and those that decided to move on to other things are still part of the ethos of LtU, as well as the archives, as we move towards the future.

The War on Spam

Mon, 17 May 2010 14:49:54 -0400

In recent weeks the volume of new spammer accounts has grown considerably. These accounts are sometimes used to post spam messages to the discussion group, but more often are simply used to game google by including spam urls in the user profile.

Due to the high volume of new spammer accounts I have implemented a new policy regarding new accounts. Given how things play out, it may become permanent:

1. New accounts are bocked by default, until released by an administrator. The user receives an email explaining this. While blocked, the user profile is invisible to anyone but the site administrators. They are also, of course, unable to sign in.

2. Accounts that seem legitimate, are released, while accounts that are clearly spam (e.g., from know spammers, include spam urls) are either deleted or put in the spammer category.

3. Accounts that we can't be sure about may be put in the "on probation" category. Members of this class can post, but their posts will appear only after being reviewed by an administrator. If the user turns out to be legitimate, it will be moved to the regular category, allowing the member to post directly.

4. Note that the "on probation" category is also used for members who are not spammers, but are considered or tend to post messages that are off topic. The messages posted by users that are on probation are in general reviewed by me before being allowed to appear.

New users are advised that by putting a short sentence or two about their specific interests relating to PL in their user profile, they will help us allow them to post sooner.

Scheduled downtime

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:06:27 -0500

LtU will be taken offline for some time tomorrow (Tuesday 9th) due to a data center move. The downtime could range from a few minutes to a few hours. The exact time this will occur is unknown, but you'll be able to tell because LtU will be unreachable. :-)

LtU turns 9: The year of the lurkers

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:59:15 -0400

Yep, it's that time of the year again: It was nine (!) years ago that LtU was born.

As is my wont, I am going to use this opportunity to say a few things in lieu a real life birthday party speech. Those of you with an historical bent may enjoy browsing the full set of birthday posts. Here they are: year one, year two, year three, year five, year six, year seven and year eight.

First, an apology. I am feeling a little guilty posting this, since I didn't post many substantive posts this year. I am still busy doing many things not directly PL related (such as this), and so have little to contribute. I prefer to lurk a bit and let others carry the burden (on this more, in a minute). I posted less home page items and more the discussion group this year, I think.

I find it hard to post as just one of the guys, a regular member of the community, however. Several times I made non-admin remarks about posts that I felt were not on topic for LtU, or - indeed - posted marginal items to the discussion group myself, only to be rebuked by many for misusing my authority or applying policies heavy handedly... So let me take this opportunity to respond from the pulpit... LtU relies on community moderation of posts. This was the mechanism we arrived when the issue of discussion quality came up. All the discussions about this are in the archives. There is no cabal. The solution was simple: members are expected to raise their concerns about problematic posts publicly, so problems and disagreements can be hashed out. Unless I or Anton post a message clearly marked as an "admin" note, which happens fairly rarely, my posts about policy issues have no more weight than those of any other regular member of the community. However, keep in mind that if I am rebuked, many others may conclude that they should refrain from voicing concerns and simply move to other sites. So instead of rebuking me when I voice my opinion - voice yours when messages are problematic (and when messages are particularly useful as well!). If you don't take care of LtU no one will.

So, the "bad news" is that many old-timers didn't carry their burden of policing, and some discussions may have suffered because of this. The "good news" is that this allowed more people to join the discussion. Not only new members (and people are signing up daily) - many people who have been lurking, sometimes for over a year, started posting regularly. This is great! Not only did this add great content, and move the discussion in new directions, it was really nice to see accounts that I presumed were dead come to life. Bet you know what's coming now, right? People who post regularly to the discussion group and think they can contribute to the home page are urged, as always, to let me know so I can make them contributing editors (that's the LtU parlance for members who post to the home page, nothing more; don't be intimidated by the title - you can post as infrequently as you want).

Another nice thing happened this year in terms of members contributing their efforts to the community. A few people volunteered to help deleting spam and spam accounts. I am not sure they want to be identified, but my thanks goes to them. I think we don't need more help on this front for the moment. Still, members should know that new spam accounts are created (and squashed) daily, and that this happens due to the efforts of several members besides the usual suspects.

The LtU "trademark" spread its wings a bit, from they days when LtU was just this blog. This happened without my involvement. Two things worth mentioning come to mind, but let us know if I forgot something important. There is a CiteULike LtU library (originally proposed here), and the a LtU twitter account (see here).

Indeed, it seems many LtU members have flocked to twitter. I am there (@ehud/@biocomputing), but as a late comer I don't have many LtU followers. Others who are better connected may speak up if they want... I am not sure if this a a good thing or a bad thing for LtU, but I guess it was bound to happen. Contributing editors should remember that LtU expects each man to do his duty and post new stuff here first!

Our tenth anniversary is coming up soon. How are we going to celebrate? LtU is a virtual community so maybe a virtual celebration is in order. Maybe we should think about planning a virtual event of some sort or another (guest bloggers, an online conference, or some other crazy idea). Alternatively, we may try to see if we can do something non-virtual... I've always found unconferences to be an appealing idea. Or maybe just LtU beer sessions around the globe... If anyone wants to pick up the glove and organize something, I am sure many here will be delighted.

Thanks again everyone. Let the nine-year long discussion continue!

P.S
I almost forgot... We had a very successful April Fools prank this year...

LtU: Forum not blog

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:05:00 -0400

Due to recent changes in the community which led to less interest in programming language, and the high quality of design discussions unrelated to programming language semantics, the LtU management team has decided to remove the blog portion of the site, and make LtU into a unmoderated forum about all things related to programming, computing, math, and humor.

The blog will migrate temporarily to the url: www.no-such-thing-as-plt.org, to ease the withdrawal pains of regular readers.

This is a good opportunity to thank all the contributing editors for helping the site survive so long by managing to find actual papers about programming language theory, a field that is rumored not to exist.

Urgent update: This message was an April Fools' Day prank.

Site problems

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 03:03:10 -0400

As many have noticed we had a few problems with the site yesterday. Thanks to everyone who emailed to let me know they were experiencing difficulties.

We think the problem has been solved, and that the site should be stable now.

Admin notes

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 14:49:09 -0500

Several changes in the discussion dynamics on LtU require attention, I think.

First, and most important, is that the core business of LtU - the home page blog items posted by contributing editors - have been dwindling. What is more, the discussion forum, whose goal was to support the blog, have become very active, and often only tangentially on topic for LtU.

I have received complaints from long time members about the declining quality of the discussions, and while I haven't done any serious comparative analysis I do know that I now regularly skip threads, especially highly active threads and threads that are dominated by only a few members. I think I am not alone in this. I encourage long time members to continue publicly pointing out when threads become un-LtU-like, and remind everyone that these notes should not usually serve as opportunity for meta-discussions about policy.

I urge the LtU contributing editors to make an extra effort in the next few months to post quality items to the home page. It seems that without more emphasis on the blog, LtU will lose its relevance. I call on all members to keep in mind the style and policies of LtU (do read the spirit page, if you haven't already), and move inappropriate discussions to other forums.

The second issue is - of course - spam. We are constantly bombarded by spam, most of which you don't see since me and Anton manage usually to block the spam accounts from posting, and when spam does slip through we delete it fairly quickly. Still, in the last few days some spam messages did appear on the site, and took awhile to delete, despite our continued efforts. I apologize for that.

In previous discussions of this issue it was decided not to require approval for all new messages (however, I do moderate posts from suspicious accounts). Spam does not survive a long time on LtU, since the site is active and threads that are posted to automatically appear in the tracker, and is thus not a great concern most of the time.

I don't think the last attack was enough of a problem for us to change our policies, or spend time writing code to support advanced spam handling (there are many more exciting things we can be doing for LtU). If someone wants to help with the process of identifying suspicious accounts, deleting spam, and blocking ips, please volunteer. Help with running LtU is always appreciated.

General admin notes

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:00:05 -0400

We are experiencing a surge of new members, and that's great! We always value new members.

Let me remind everyone to pursue the policies document (available through the FAQ page). I want to emphasize two policy items in particular: We discourage nicknames, and when they are used encourage members to provide a url of a home page or related information in their profile. Second, LtU is in general not intended for detailed design discussions. More relevant forums are listed in the policies document.

Happy Birthday, dear Lambda!

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:27:02 -0400

Eight years ago LtU was born. In terms of internet phenomena that is truly remarkable longevity (heck, even google is hardly ten years old), but even in "real world" terms I think this qualifies LtU as a venerable institution.

Ever since Chris posted the first LtU birtday message back in 2001 it has become somewhat of a tradition to post a birthday message each year, and these have become a good place to reflect on the sate of LtU and the direction it is taking. Looking at the previous birthday posts sure got me reflecting. Here they are: year one, year two, year three, year five, year six, and year seven.

So how did we fare this last year? I think that overall we did pretty well, much better than I expected last year when we were in the middle of what looked like a losing battle with spammers. I think we (and by that I mean Anton, first and foremost) managed to pretty much keep spam under control without imposing unnecessary restrictions on new users. LtU was always welcoming to new users, and we strive hard to keep it that way - which leads to the second issue...

We were worried that with too many new members signing up the quality of discussions will go down, and the atmosphere of the site will change. While this happened to some extent from time to time, I think that in general most discussions remain as informative as ever - in fact, some have become too highbrow even for me... Quite a few new members have become regulars, and even contributing editors. I am very glad to see this happen, for all the obvious reasons. I am especially glad to see that we stopped attracting so many "drive-by members" who sign up only to ask one question and are then gone. LtU is not the best place for such questions, which in the past also proved to be mostly off-topic. New members, on the other hand, always add something new to the community.

Indeed, what is truly phenomenal and inspiring about LtU for me is not the continuity of the site, but the continuity of the community. I've been saying this every year, I think, but it is worth repeating. What gives LtU its unique flavor are the many members that have been part of the community for many years, some from the very early days. While not an online sewing circle, I think LtU does encourage long time members to become contributing editors, to share their interests more explicitly, and even to mention from time to time, if they so wish, their own changing circumstances. This is a professional community, but a community none the less.

The community is what holds LtU together, but it is hidden in the forum. The public face of LtU, and what should be the main focus of the discussion on the site, are the home page news items. From the early days there has been a tension between the forum and the blog aspects of LtU: while ideally all good links should be on the home page, and these should be the focus of discussion, quite often the forum takes on a life of its own. Since some members do not follow the forum discussions closely, and since the home page items are a good way to stir the direction of the site, this may be less the ideal. The solution, as always, is for the contributing editors (who are those members who manage the home page group blog) to be more active, and for more members to become contributing editors. If you are a regular, and think that you can contribute semi-regularly (i.e., as often as you want) to one or more of the LtU departments, you should consider signing up.

Let me conclude this rambling message on a more personal note. This year I moved to Menlo Park, California. Hearing from and meeting local LtU members made the move easier. It was a great experience to encounter people in various places who recognized my name, and asked "Are you the guy from LtU?" (the next question usually being "So what do you say about Scala?", by the way). Being extremely busy I didn't take advantage of all the activities around here this year, but the one time I did manage to go to a BayFP meeting was great fun.

Who knows what the next year will bring? For now, thank you all for your participation. You are LtU!

New Members

Sun, 24 Feb 2008 02:16:25 -0500

I am glad to see many new members joining the LtU daily.

This is a short reminder to all the new users to please read the FAQ and policy documents, and use LtU for the intended purposes of the site (the LtU spirit page may also be of interest). As the community gets larger it becomes more important to keep in mind the shared interests that bring most people to the site.

I also recommend reading the getting start thread (linked from the FAQ), which contains many useful reading suggestions, as well as the various other pages linked to from the navigation bar on the left.

As always old time members are urged to assist the newer members and make them feel welcome to our community.

Leave of absence

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 06:07:08 -0400

I am in the process of relocating to the United States for a couple of years (we'll be stying in the Palo-Alto area), so I will probably be less active around LtU in the next couple of weeks until I settle in. I also expect it will take me more time to respond to emails.

LtU turns 7: The year of spam

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 01:44:05 -0400

Seven years ago today LtU was born. I find it incredible that we have been doing this for so long, that some of the earliest members are still here, and that some of the same topics are still going strong! While the range of topics and general style of LtU remained fairly constant over the years, each year brought with it its own flavour. The main reason for this was that LtU was always open to new members, and each contributing editor influenced the discussion according to his interests.

So how can one summarize year seven?

I think that for Anton and me year seven will be remembered as the year of spam. We have been fighting spam daily, and I fear that we will have to put in place more draconian measures on new users shortly. Some of you probably saw a couple of spam messages that managed to get past us. But let me assure you: this is a tiny fraction. There are hundreds of new users that signed up only to post spam, with at least two or three new spammers signing up daily. Since we try to accommodate new members, I am not deleting users that fail to comply with our request for real names or identifying personal information - and so detecting potential spammers before they begin posting spam is difficult and time consuming. One reason why I posted fewer programming language related posts was that I was simply too busy fighting spam...

This is a good opportunity to thank Anton again for all he does to keep LtU up and running ( his insightful and amusing posts I take for granted, you see). Without his help in putting in place the technical infrastructure required for all the spam monitoring and control we would have drowned in spam long ago. This is one reason (aside from the fact that I was very busy with other things) that year seven is (still) not the Year of the Wiki. We put up a wiki, but decided that the integration of the wiki into LtU would require too much time, time both us couldn't spend this year.

Spam came to LtU for the simple reason that LtU became too well known a site... In fact the second thing that happened to LtU this year is that the number of active members grew considerably. This is, of course, very gratifying. I still remember the early days, when LtU had three members, and we didn't know if between the three of us we can keep finding enough interesting material to keep the site alive.

As one might expect this meant that some topics that were discussed here many times came up for discussion again. It is good to revisit these issues from time to time, but I fear that the rising volume of messages, and the number of new users, some of whom with less decorum than others, kept many old timers from engaging in these discussions, leading to some long threads that were not up to the usual quality of LtU discussions. Since no one was there to object, some may have gotten the impression that these threads (replete with ad hominem attacks, insults and language advocacy) are acceptable on LtU. I am partly to blame for not stepping in, but I just didn't have the time to follow all these discussions. So let me take this opportunity to remind everyone that discussions of this type are not welcome by the LtU community, and suggest more recent members consult the LtU policy as well as the LtU spirit pages. We discussed various forms of moderation and control in the past, and I still think the conclusion we reached - that is that the community should "police" itself - is the right one. If you find the content or style objectionable, post about it (in a separate thread, if needed).

I noticed that several of the LtU contributing editors began to post less and less. While I think the items on the home page are
interesting and exciting, there are fewer new home page items each week than I'd like. One reason for this is that many prefer to post things on their own blogs, and a fair amount of LtU candidate material gets posted to places like programming.reddit.com. While there are LtU members who prefer to keep the site restricted as much as possible to the discussion of published academic papers, my opinion is that if a regular member considers some project, site or presentation to be of interest to the LtU community, he should post about it here. This is even truer when it comes to contributing editors, of course. Contributing editors - don't hesitate, contribute! I remind everyone that we have some departments that are begging for stories, top among them the new departments devoted to Scala and Ruby.

It seems to me that LtU is in a state of transition. We can fight to remain the LtU we all know and love - but this requires effort. Or we can hope for the best, and see LtU turn into comp.lang.misc. To make sure we don't jump the shark, the community has to step up. Both in terms of steering the conversation, and keeping threads from getting long and disorganized, and by posting new and interesting stuff!

This is a good opportunity to ask long time members to mentor new members, not just direct them to the getting started page :-) . I implore old timers that are sitting back to engage in the conversation, and let us know what they are up to. We miss you guys!
And most of all, I pray for spammers to just crawl back to where they came from.

The last wish, I know, is unlikely to happen. The others I think are within our reach!

Happy birthday everyone!

Mutable variables eliminated from .NET

Sun, 01 Apr 2007 12:31:44 -0400

Redmond, WA: At an unusual press conference held this Sunday morning, Bill Taylor, Microsoft's General Manager of Platform Strategy, announced that after much research into the causes of security holes and instabilities, Microsoft will eliminate mutable variables from the .NET platform and its languages, including C# and VB.NET. "One of our top researchers found that mutable variables were the major root cause preventing us from achieving the great user experience we always strive to deliver," said Taylor. "Once we realized that, eliminating them from .NET was a no-brainer."

Given that this announcement was made on a Sunday, reactions have been limited so far, but one prominent VB.NET developer commented that "Compared to the switch from VB6 to VB.NET, this ought to be a breeze." A C# developer was heard to say, "After anonymous delegates, monads shouldn't be a problem."

To ensure wide penetration of this significant update, Microsoft will be issuing updated Windows CDs to all licensed customers, free of charge. The new CDs can be identified by the distinctive holographic "Haskell Inside" logo, featuring a holographic version of this portrait of Simon Peyton-Jones, grinning from ear to ear.

LtU readers are encouraged to share any inside info they may have about this move!

The Future of LtU

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 06:11:24 -0500

Recently the homepage is almost dead, and the discussions about important papers that are mentioned on the home page almost non-existent.

I am sad to say that if this continues LtU will fade away - something I am sure none of us wants.

This is a cry for help. If you are an editor, please try to post news you come across that might interest the LtU community. Take part in the discussions (you don't have to participate in all of them! participating in discussions on "static typing" is optional...) If you are an editor, are reading LtU, but haven't posted in a long time, don't feel you have become an outsider. You are still part of the team, and I for one am interested in what you might want to share. I know some long time editors got discouraged for various reasons -- I think now is a good time to return and reshape things to what they used to be.

If you are a regular reader and participate in the forum regularly, if you think you understand the spirit of LtU, how about signing up to become an editor? The process is simple (basically, you have to email me and that's it).

Many of you have personal blogs, and they are great resources. I still think the LtU community effort had an additional value it'd be a shame to lose. If you agree - post!

Finally, if you are a programming language scholar, and are reading and enjoying LtU - how about signing up to be a guest blogger?