AlexDomo - Slashdot User

Submission + - SpaceX Grasshopper launch filmed from drone helicopter. (suasnews.com)

Submitted by garymortimer on Saturday July 06, 2013 @12:49AM

garymortimer writes: Instantly in at number one as my favourite drone footage, this filming does not show bits of leg or propeller is not GoPro bent out of shape and pans up beautifully and holds the desired shot. For once I am glad they left the sound recording running to catch the noise of the blast off. Top banana. Make sure you watch it in hi res.

SpaceX’s Grasshopper flew 325 m (1066 feet)–higher than Manhattan’s Chrysler Building–before smoothly landing back on the pad. For the first time in this test, Grasshopper made use of its full navigation sensor suite with the F9-R closed loop control flight algorithms to accomplish a precision landing. Most rockets are equipped with sensors to determine position, but these sensors are generally not accurate enough to accomplish the type of precision landing necessary with Grasshopper.

Submission + - Why Do So Many College Science Majors Drop Out?

Submitted by

Hugh Pickens writes

on Sunday November 06, 2011 @03:05AM

Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Christopher Drew writes that President Obama and industry groups have called on colleges to graduate 10,000 more engineers a year and 100,000 new teachers with majors in science, technology, engineering and math but studies find that roughly 40 percent of students planning engineering and science majors end up switching to other subjects or failing to get any degree — 60 percent when pre-medical students are included. Middle and high school students are having most of the fun, building their erector sets and dropping eggs into water to test the first law of motion but the excitement quickly fades as students brush up against the reality of what David E. Goldberg calls “the math-science death march" as freshmen in college wade through a blizzard of calculus, physics and chemistry in lecture halls with hundreds of other students where many wash out. “Treating the freshman year as a ‘sink or swim’ experience and accepting attrition as inevitable,” says a report by the National Academy of Engineering, “is both unfair to students and wasteful of resources and faculty time.” But help is on the way. In September, the Association of American Universities announced a five-year initiative to encourage faculty members in the STEM fields to use more interactive teaching techniques (PDF). “There is a long way to go,” says Hunter R. Rawlings, the association’s president, “and there is an urgent need to accelerate the process of reform.”"

Submission + - StackOverflow's Programming Language Bias (dodgycoder.net)

Submitted by AlexDomo on Sunday November 06, 2011 @02:37AM

AlexDomo writes: Suprisingly, JavaScript came out to be the most "over-represented" language on StackOverflow, by quite a long way at 294%. Could this also be because programming JavaScript is generally quite difficult and will result in people seeking help more often? Following this was C# (which I had expected to be number 1), at 153%. After this, PHP, Ruby and Python were basically fairly balanced at around 100%. The most "under-represented" major language would definitely be C at 11%. Three other major languages which seemed to be a bit under-represented, below 50%, were C++, Java and Objective-C.

For details of the method used and the full results, refer to the original article here.

Comment When do we see child health warnings on games? (Score 1) 401

by AlexDomo on Sunday October 16, 2011 @12:01AM (#37728172) Attached to: Who Killed Videogames?

Because games such as OG Planet's Lost Saga are using techniques to make them addictive to children and teenagers. There is no way to pause/suspend the game when playing - kids end up hungry and dehydrated if left to their own devices for any extended period of time... it totally disgusts me.

Comment Re:Pleasantly Free of Trendy Process Related Title (Score 1) 624

by AlexDomo on Wednesday September 14, 2011 @08:18AM (#37397342) Attached to: What Is the Most Influential Programming Book?

Yeah agree with your view on Design Patterns ... there was a stage several years ago when if you went to an interview you were almost guaranteed to get a question on design patterns ... and if you didn't know anything about them, then sorry, better luck next time ... it was as if to be considered a good developer you must able to memorize a few design patterns, which may or not be of any use in real projects you encountered anyway.

Comment Which books finished outside the top 10? (Score 1) 624

by AlexDomo on Saturday September 10, 2011 @08:59AM (#37361728) Attached to: What Is the Most Influential Programming Book?

There was a number of books outside the top 10 that have been mentioned in the comments here, note that the original article has been updated to include the books placed in spots 11 through to 30... http://www.internetsecuritydb.com/2011/09/top-ten-most-influential-programming.html

Submission + - Top Ten Most Influential Programming Books (internetsecuritydb.com)

Submitted by AlexDomo on Sunday September 04, 2011 @05:30AM

AlexDomo writes: If you could go back in time and tell yourself to read a specific book at the beginning of your career as a developer, which book would it be?

Since it was first posed back in 2008, this question has now become the second most popular question of all time on StackOverflow.

Top 5 results: "Code Complete (2nd Edition)", "The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master", "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", "The C Programming Language", "Introduction to Algorithms".

Full Details Here

Slashdot Top Deals