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

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:Do pilots still need licenses? (Score 2) 362

Do pilots still need licenses in the age of autopilot? Well yes because machines aren't infallible.

Not quite. It's "yes" because most people would be unable to get over their fear of flying in an entirely autonomous plane, not because we need heroic pilots to override the computer when things go wrong.

Consider that about half of all aviation accidents are traced to pilot error. The percentage of crashes caused by autopilot error is zero.

Submission + - NASA scientists reproduce uracil, cytosine, and thymine non-biologically in lab (techienews.co.uk)

hypnosec writes: Scientists over at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California have reproduced non-biologically the three basic components of life found in both DNA and RAN — uracil, cytosine, and thymine — in lab. For their experiment scientists deposited an ice sample containing pyrimidine — a ring-shaped molecule made up of carbon and nitrogen — on a cold substrate in a chamber with space-like conditions such as very high vacuum, extremely low temperatures, and harsh radiation and irradiated the sample with high-energy ultraviolet (UV) photons from a hydrogen lamp. Researchers discovered that such an arrangement produces these essential ingredients of life including uracil, cytosine, and thymine.

Submission + - Are Google and Wikipedia in a mutually-destructive relationship? (newslines.org)

metasonix writes: Who benefits from Google's increasing of Wikipedia data to support its search results? Mark Devlin, CEO of Newslines, a new crowdsourced news search engine, says the increasing co-dependency between the multi-billion dollar search corporation and its built-for-free partner hurts users experience, devalues web results and has turned unwitting Wikipedia editors into Google's slaves." And he offers evidence, unlike most WMF press releases.

Previously by Devlin: Stop Giving Wikipedia Money

Comment Don't really see a downside (Score 1) 230

I use chip-and-pin today, do I really care if the "chip" ends up being a smart watch or cell phone? Not really. I just wouldn't allow it to pay without confirmation. On my own device I wouldn't mind using a fingerprint scanner instead of PIN either, just swipe my watch and push the "pay" button/scanner and I'm done. I have two debit cards today, I'm honestly not sure what the code on the second one is because I never use it.

Submission + - FTC targets group that made billions of robocalls (networkworld.com)

coondoggie writes: Given the amount of time the FTC and others have put into curing the robocall problem, it is disheartening to hear that a group of companies for almost a year have been making billions of illegal robocalls. The Federal Trade Commission and 10 state attorneys general today said they have settled charges against a Florida-based cruise line company and seven other companies that averaged 12 million to 15 million illegal sales calls a day between October 2011 through July 2012, according to the joint complaint filed by the FTC and the states

Comment Totally meaningless paper (Score 2) 247

Sorry, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the real world. They're giving twenty people - ten in experiment group and ten in the control group 30 minutes to do a bit of analysis. And they measure minutes to apply a few changes, without any qualitative measure on how the code is growing. There's very little proof that the refactoring they did made any sense, the sample size is so low you'd never get reliable results and pretty much what you can conclude is that refactoring doesn't make hackjobs easier. Never thought so, that just involves finding the place something's happening and hack it. If it's a good idea, well... it works there and then.

Comment Re:Hmmm .... (Score 1) 127

Well somebody has to be the first at discovering something before somebody else can confirm it. And yes, in human years it might take a while to build another billion dollar project to do that. Science works on incomplete information, otherwise there wouldn't be anything to do science on. Has anybody independently verified the Higgs boson yet? All the exoplanets discovered recently? Probably not. That's always how it will be at the leading edge of science.

Comment Re:"North Korean rebel movement" (Score 1) 62

Once the country tips though, there will be a short and intense period of violence that I hope stays contained within the country, but I fear will spill out to the south. Once that is over, North Korea will be split into two parts, one unified with the south and a portion annexed into China. I have no idea where the split will be.

Somehow I find that implausible, I expect China to take the whole country or not at all. South Korea would be to worried about a conventional or nuclear counter-attack on Seoul to do much of anything while China could probably swoop in and install a new authoritarian regime that by NK standards would seem like heaven, all they need to do is bring them into the 21th century. After that I'll think it'll be a bit like Life of Brian:

Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Attendee: Brought peace?
Reg: Oh, peace - shut up!
Reg: There is not one of us who would not gladly suffer death to rid this country of the Romans once and for all.
Dissenter: Uh, well, one.
Reg: Oh, yeah, yeah, there's one. But otherwise, we're solid.

Slashdot Top Deals

So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of money? -- Ayn Rand

Working...