Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×

Submission + - Final Moments Inside Cockpit Are Heard But Not Seen

Submitted by jones_supa
jones_supa writes: There's no video footage from inside the cockpit of the Germanwings flight that left 150 people dead — nor is such footage recorded from any other commercial airline crash in recent years. Unlike many other vehicles operating with heightened safety concerns, airline cockpits don't come with video surveillance. The reason, in part, is that airline pilots and their unions have argued vigorously against what they see as an invasion of privacy that would not improve aviation safety. The long debate on whether airplane cockpits in the U.S. should be equipped with cameras dates back at least 15 years, when the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) first pushed regulators require video monitoring following what the agency called "several accidents involving a lack of information regarding crewmember actions and the flight deck environment". The latest NTSB recommendation for a cockpit image system came in January 2015. Should video streams captured inside the plane become a standard part of aviation safety measures?

Submission + - Intel wants to buy Altera (wsj.com)

Submitted by itzly
itzly writes: Intel Corp. is in advanced talks to buy chip partner Altera Corp., according to people familiar with the matter, a move that would represent the semiconductor giant’s biggest-ever acquisition.

Comment PHP is fine (Score 5, Insightful) 182

by bsdasym (#49322839) Attached to: Modern PHP: New Features and Good Practices
Blaming the language for bad code is asinine. Blame bad (or inexperienced, or just plain lazy) programmers. I write PHP stuff. I also write Perl, C, C++, C#, Pascal, JS, and recently VHDL. I have written Java and Ruby code as well, but no longer do. Overall PHP is only as bad as the developer makes it. If I could change one thing about it, it would be getting the built in functions more consistent in return types and argument order for similar functions. I'm constantly referring to the documentation because for some particular functions I can't remember if haystack or needle comes first, for example.

It gets the job done quickly and easily, and if you find or write a good foundation of libraries and classes, the code is elegant and easy to understand as well. Just like every other language.

Comment Re:if that were true (Score 1) 348

by bsdasym (#49226233) Attached to: Obama Administration Claims There Are 545,000 IT Job Openings
A) Your labor is "worth" exactly what someone is willing to pay for it.
B) See this quite often. It's never been a barrier to getting the interview or the job, but it does weed out the overly pedantic types.
C) All too often today "crappy environment" is just a euphemism for "productive environment."
D) Translated, states "Frankly, I hope they won't be in business very long, because they don't believe me a genius."

Disclaimer: This list is only as accurate and inflammatory as the one it is responding to. Intentionally.

Submission + - Verizon Posts Message in Morse Code to Mock FCC's Net Neutrality Ruling

Submitted by HughPickens.com
HughPickens.com writes: Chris Matyszczyk reports at Cnet that Verizon has posted a message to the FCC titled: FCC’s ‘Throwback Thursday’ Move Imposes 1930s Rules on the Internet” written in Morse code. The first line of the release dated February 26, 1934 in old typewriter type reads: "Today (Feb.26) the Federal Communications Commission approved an order urged by President Obama that imposes rules on broadband Internet services that were written in the era of the steam locomotive and the telegraph." The Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 along party lines in favor of new Internet service rules that prohibit blocking, slowing or prioritizing traffic. The rules, which have not yet been released, are opposed by cable and telephone companies that fear it will curb Internet growth and stifle payback on network investment. "It isn't a surprise that Verizon is a touch against Thursday's order. In 2012, it insisted that the very idea of Net neutrality squished its First and Fifth Amendment right," writes Matyszczyk. "I wonder, though, who will be attracted by this open mockery. Might this be a sign that Verizon doesn't think the fight is over at all?"

Submission + - Vintage Nasa photographs for sale (bbc.co.uk)

Submitted by Art Challenor
Art Challenor writes: Vintage Nasa photographs for sale

A collection of vintage photographs by Nasa's pioneering astronauts goes under the hammer at Bloomsbury Auctions in London on 26 February 2015.

It includes images not published before, some taken on the surface of the Moon during the early days of space exploration.

Submission + - Exelon-backed bill seeks $2 more a month for nuclear power plants (chicagotribune.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: Electricity users would have to dip into their pockets a little more to help cover costs of Exelon's nuclear power plants under legislation unveiled Thursday that the influential corporation maintained would save jobs and keep service steady and reliable.

Exelon is backing the proposal because it could prop up what it says are three money-losing nuclear plants that produce relatively clean energy compared to other sources of power. Opponents question whether Exelon would get an unnecessary bailout when a trio of its other nuclear plants are in the black, and supporters of a separate bill prefer a broader approach that would build up renewable resources.

Submission + - Fake Komodia root SSL certs in use by over +100 companies (forbes.com)

Submitted by Billly Gates
Billly Gates writes: Lenovo and Superfish are not the only companies who used the fake root SSL certificates by Komodia to spy and decrypt network traffic. Komodia advertises its products including a SSL-digestor to rid the obtrusive thing we call encryption and security. So far game accelerators are mentioned as some have seen these certs installed with Asus lan accelerator drivers.

Submission + - Recursion - Love it or Hate It?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "Yet another example of how AP exams are loaded with poor coding practices," quipped Alfred Thompson, referring to a recursive code example that prints the numbers 0 to 6, which was posted to the (closed) AP Computer Science Facebook group. "We are often forced to use code examples that are not ideal coding practice," Thompson notes. "We do that to make things clear and to demonstrate specific concepts in a sort of isolation that we might not normally use. We seem to do that a lot with recursion because the examples that require recursion tend to be fairly complex." So, while asking students to use recursion instead of a loop to print '0123456' serves the purpose of teaching recursion, Thompson opines that it's also a poor example of code practice. "Someone raised on functional programming where recursion is a pretty standard way of doing looping might disagree of course," he adds. "There is a saying that when all you have is a hammer all your problems look like nails. This seems, in a way, to be the case with recursion and loops. If your first tool of choice (or what you have learned first) for iteration is loops you tend not to think of recursion as a solution. Similarly if you start with recursion (as is common with functional programming) you are a lot more likely to look at recursion as a tool for iteration." So, do you tend to embrace or eschew recursion in your programming?

Slashdot Top Deals

This file will self-destruct in five minutes.

Close