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Comment Re:The profession is in decline (Score 1) 154

I remember during first dot-com bubble programmers were in high demand and many EEs shifted to programing, and ever since... I was EE myself and didn't want to do coding... but I had to eventually, and many of my coworkers are programmers with EE background. There's some work for EEs in engineering firms, but programmers are needed by pretty much everyone.

EEs have became what mechanical engineers were before them: not obsolete, but kind of niche profession.

Comment Good testing takes more than 50% of time and res (Score 1) 95

by postmortem (#49103189) Attached to: Linux Foundation: Bugs Can Be Made Shallow With Proper Funding

There is a way to properly test software. But it is insanely expensive. Real mission critical software (like airborne systems) has standards for code verification that are pretty tough. For example per standard DO-178B, required is complete structural coverage analysis; object code analysis; worst case throughput analysis; stack analysis, etc.

There's no way that volunteer programs can find funding for this or human resources to do this. Although many companies do contribute to various open source programs, the level of testing required to remove most of bugs is extremely costly. Who's going to pay for software to be nearly perfect, if it is not required of it? Truth it, pretty much nobody outside mission critical software does this kind of testing.

Submission + - GCHQ activities were illegal .. (theinquirer.net)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Privacy International said that citizens have been spied on illegally thanks to the US National Security Agency (NSA) and GCHQ, and the PRISM and Upstream systems, and that the whole truth will out thanks to the decision on data gathered before December 2014.

Submission + - 'Distortions' in energy markets hurting FirstEnergy's nuclear fleet, exec says (post-gazette.com)

Submitted by mdsolar
mdsolar writes: In Donald Moul’s view, the competitive energy market in Pennsylvania isn’t broken. But the rules that govern it are distorting FirstEnergy’s ability to compete.

Mr. Moul, vice president of commodity operations for FirstEnergy Solutions, said as much on Tuesday to a room full of nuclear operators, analysts and regulators gathered for the Platts 11th Annual Nuclear Energy Conference in Washington, D.C. He places the blame not on normal market functions, he said, but on policy decisions that have eaten away at the value of its coal and nuclear fleet.

“We don’t really have a completely deregulated market,” he said. “We just have a different kind of market.” ...

FirstEnergy has plenty at stake. About 57 percent of the company’s total generation comes from coal, and another 23 percent comes from nuclear. It operates four nuclear units — two in Ohio, and two at the Beaver Valley Power Station near Shippingport.

Last summer, the company asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to help make their coal and nuclear plants more competitive in regional auctions that set the price for capacity payments, or charges paid to an electric supplier for agreeing to meet a portion of expected demand.

The company is peeved by the auction’s valuation of demand response — the process by which consumers agree to cut back during times of peak demand — by PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator tasked by the federal government with ensuring reliability in 13 states and the District of Columbia.

In PJM’s auction last May, bids of demand response earned the same price per megawatt as any other power generator. Demand response comprised 6.5 percent of committed megawatts — up from 0.1 percent a decade ago — while nuclear made up less than 16 percent of commitments, down from 21 percent a decade ago.

FirstEnergy has argued that demand response is a retail product whose regulation should fall to the states, and its complaint with FERC followed a ruling last May from the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals that generally agreed with that notion. FERC has appealed, and the Supreme Court is expected by this summer to decide whether to hear the case.

Submission + - Sony Offering Smart Glasses At Half The Cost Of Google Glass (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: With Google retooling its Glass offering, Sony appears to have jumped into the breach to offer an Android-compatible wearable face-computer. SmartEyeglass is relative bargain at only $840, although it must be manipulated with a separate, wired controller unit that houses a microphone, speakers and an NFC module.

Submission + - Payments Startup Offering Free Chip-And-PIN Reader In Europe (itworld.com)

Submitted by jfruh
jfruh writes: European credit card processing generally relies on chip-and-PIN readers, which are considered more secure than the card-swiping devices that prevail in the United States. But security comes at a cost, and up to 20 million small European businesses don't accept credit cards because of the expense of a chip-and-PIN reader. Now a European payments startup is offering the readers for free.

Submission + - Apple takes first step to challenge Office 365 and Google Apps (crn.com.au)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Apple has started allowing non-Apple hardware users to use iWork for iCloud, in what may be the first sign of a broader attack on the Microsoft-Google duopoly in productivity suites. A subtle adjustment by Apple has recently allowed anyone to sign up to iWork for iCloud through a browser, effectively turning it into a multi-platform service that can run on devices made by other companies. This article discussed the weaknesses of iWork and the potential.

Submission + - Russian Extradited To US For Cyberattacks (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: A Russian man accused of high-profile cyberattacks on Nasdaq, Dow Jones, Heartland Payment Systems and 7-Eleven has been extradited to the U.S. and appeared in court in Newark, New Jersey, Tuesday. Vladimir Drinkman, 34, of Syktyykar and Moscow, Russia, was charged for his alleged role in a data theft conspiracy that targeted major corporate networks and stole more than 160 million credit card numbers, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a press release. Drinkman appeared Tuesday in U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey and entered a plea of not guilty to 11 counts he faces. His trial is scheduled to begin in April.

Comment Few ideas (Score 4, Informative) 233

by postmortem (#48991271) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Tools To Clean Up a Large C/C++ Project?

1. Modern IDE with good gcc parser: Eclipse, Netbeans, 3rd party paid ones. Not Visual Studio. You want it to build call hierarchy tree for you, so that you can find methods that are unused. It will require some manual steps
1a. if you have $, Understand for C/C++ is proprietary tool that will map a hierarchy of your code.
2. perform structural coverage analysis of code in live action, will help map the dead code. gcov is free if you can use it.

Comment Re:Country that forbids use to internet (Score 2) 236

You missed my point. They may appear that they have a decent cyber unit. But we know from their missile tests that were utter failure that is probably more than a wish than a reality.

In US, NSA hires talented hackers/programmers, as their skills are already established. For that to work, they need all population to have access to the internet.. So how does NK does same when they forbid the internet to the masses? Even if they had prospective talent, they would not be able to recognize them.

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