Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
Software

Ask Slashdot: To Publish Change Logs Or Not? 162

Linnerd writes "A software company I work for has decided to no longer publish change logs when updated versions of the software are made available. A change log consists of sections pulled directly from the issue management system that is automatically processed into a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet can be sorted/viewed by many criteria, such as date of the fix, component affected, severity and more. There usually are a fair number of entries (sometimes more than 1000), because each update published contains all the accumulated changes made since some base release in the past and the change log has entries for everything from major bugs to minor improvements to documentation changes and spelling errors fixed. The main reasons for pulling the change logs was the fear of putting the software in a bad light and risking ridicule, especially from the competition. Although I can follow these arguments up to a point, I've personally always been more comfortable with software that had explicit and detailed change logs: Errors and bugs happen, whether they are communicated or not, and I'd rather know what was changed than blindly install some patch without knowing if it's relevant for the issues I'm trying to solve. What is your opinion? Should change logs / errors / bugs be communicated openly? How is this handled in the companies you work for? Can you provide publicly available references on the pros and cons of open and honest communication of changes and bug fixes, especially in commercial environments?"

Comment Cloudformation (Score 2) 80

Amazons http://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/ can get you 95% of the way there (add a few small scripts via Boto, or some integration with http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-resource-cfn-customresource.html)

A little elbow grease will get you the rest of the way without additional costs.

Transportation

Ford Showcases Self-Parking Car Technology 233

MojoKid writes "Although the dream of roads full of driverless cars is a ways off, several companies such as Tesla and Google are taking steps toward that goal by developing self-driving car technology. Ford is now also demonstrating self-parking technology called Fully Assisted Parking Aid that will actually help a driver locate a spot and then make the car automatically park itself--without the driver inside. Indeed, you'll be able to hop out of the car and use a smartphone app to tell your car to park itself. This is ideal for both parking in tight spaces (i.e., you don't have to squeeze your way out of your vehicle while trying not to bang the next car's door) and for those who are just terrible at parking to begin with."

Comment Re:CDW, Newegg, etc (Score 1) 420

Disagree -- with video, it becomes cheaper, because you handle more at volume; At a video service provider I worked at, our cost per (unreplicated) GB was usually ~18c to acquire and 12c to maintain. Even with large scale replication, we didn't come near 30$/GB. At another company, Netapp was the name of the game, and there 30$ (replicated) gig was about right. Obviously those aren't directly comparable, but it's more about how you use your storage (and how it handles failure) than how much storage you use.

Businesses

Amazon Opposes Plan To End Saturday Mail Delivery 504

theodp writes "Online retailer giant Amazon.com has come out against a US Postal Service proposal to end Saturday service, part of efforts to address the USPS budget deficit. 'Amazon's customers have come to appreciate and expect Saturday delivery,' explained Amazon VP Paul Misener. 'If the five-day delivery proposal is not withdrawn,' he added, 'we ask that Congress ensure that Saturday delivery be maintained.' In the past, Amazon has argued that it should not have to help support public services in states in which it has no physical presence." The article adds, "Interestingly, online DVD service Netflix is backing the plan to end Saturday mail delivery, arguing that a 'well functioning' Postal Service is more important than 'maintaining current delivery frequency.'"
Hardware Hacking

DIY 80GB iPod Touch 110

An anonymous reader writes "Having recently acquired an iPod Touch, DeviceGuru blogger Rick Lehrbaum soon found himself with an 80GB iPod paperweight knocking around and collecting dust. Then it hit him: why not use a Pogoplug as an iPod server, effectively filling his nifty new iPod Touch with 80GB of music whenever he has WiFi access? The how-to article at DeviceGuru.com explains how a Pogoplug and iPod Touch combined with free web services at pogoplug.com combine to form the 'PogoPod System.' It also introduces the Pogoplug's new UPnP support, and briefly reviews a couple of UPnP media-rendering iPhone and iPod Touch apps."

Comment On a large lot.. (Score 2, Informative) 239

On a lot of 60, a random subsample of 10:
  - 7 have been nothing but blissful
  - 2 throw random errors enough to stall a raid array
  - 1 just hangs the controller after some amount of time.

Not saying the percentages bear out over the long haul, but people saying "WFM" are probably telling the truth, as are those complaining of errors.

Education

Submission + - Graduate with bad grades or repeat an year? 16

An anonymous reader writes: I'm a CS Student within one year of graduation.
Because of financial reasons I've been working on a full time basis for the past 2 years + worked on an open source project.
This has brought me from B+ & A in my first two years of college to somewhere in the mists of C and lower.
I now have enough money to sustain myself for two years of schooling.
I've got two choices:
  • a) repeat one year, repair all my bad grades and graduate with better grades but with a mark that I repeated one school year
  • b) graduate with lower grades but with no repeated year.
I'd like to know the opinion of recruiters out there: if you had two candidates which ranked similarly during the interviews but one is of type a) the other of type b), which would you favour?
Communications

Does SPF Really Help Curtail Forged Email Headers? 90

Intelopment asks: "My Domain name has recently been used a lot in the 'Reply' field by some inconsiderate spammer, and my ISP has suggested that I consider using the Open SPF service as a way to stop spammers from using my domain name for in their mail headers field. From what I can tell, it requires the receiving mail server to actually participate in the SPF service, which is where I have my doubts. Does anyone have any experience with this service? Does it work? Are many ISPs using Open SFP?"
The Internet

UK Teachers Say Censor The Internet 463

Marlow the Irelander writes "The BBC is reporting that in response to a YouTube video of a schoolboy breaking his teacher's window (yes, this is a video), NASUWT, one of the teaching unions in the UK, is calling for legislation to control the internet. Could Britain, rather than the US, be the main front of the battle against censorship in 2007?" From the article: "Unfortunately, any yob or vandal can now have their 15 minutes of fame, aided and abetted by readily accessible technology and irresponsible internet sites which enable such behaviour to be glorified. [The general secretary of the union] said the union supported a zero tolerance approach in schools to pupils who used technology to abuse and undermine teachers, and called for more rigorous legislative control of internet sites which gave them license."

Slashdot Top Deals

grep me no patterns and I'll tell you no lines.

Working...