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31

Java Forum / The most popular IDEs? Visual Studio and Eclipse

« on: October 11, 2017, 08:03:12 PM »

Microsoft’s Visual Studio leads the way in desktop IDE (integrated development environment) popularity, with Eclipse close behind, according to PYPL’s August index of IDE popularity. Android Studio was a distant third.

Visual Studio takes a 22.4 percent share in this month’s index. Eclipse follows with a 20.38 percent share. Much further back was Android Studio, with a 9.87 percent share. “It’s surprising how a couple of IDEs have about half the popularity,” PYPL’s Pierre Carbonelle said.

The index is based on an analysis of how often IDEs are searched on in Google, similar to PYPL’s monthly language popularity index. The more searches for an IDE, the more popular it is presumed to be. The 10 most popular IDEs for August:

    Visual Studio, 22.4 percent
    Eclipse, 20.38
    Android Studio, 9.87
    Vim, 8.02
    NetBeans, 4.75
    JetBrains IntelliJ, 4.69
    Apple Xcode, 4.35
    Komodo, 4.33
    Sublime Text, 3.94
    Xamarin, 3.46

In 11th place was Microsoft’s open source, cross-platform development environment, Visual Studio Code, with a 2.86 percent share. Visual Studio Code reached a 1.0 release only 16 months ago.

PYPL also looked at the popularity of online development environments, using the same ranking criteria as the desktop variety. The top two lead the field by a huge margin. Cloud9 took the top spot with a 35.77 percent share, closely followed by JSFiddle with 31.42 percent. The top 10:

    Cloud9, 35.77 percent
    JSFiddle, 31.42
    Koding, 9.05
    Ideone, 5.93
    Codio, 5.92
    Codeanywhere, 4.99
    Pythonanywhere, 2.53
    Codenvy, 1.67
    Codiad, .58
    Python Fiddle, .43

32

Software Developers Forum / Why Python and C# can’t displace Java, C, or C++

« on: October 11, 2017, 08:00:49 PM »

Although Java, C, and C++ have seen drops in language popularity, they once again remain atop the Tiobe language popularity index, which uses the number of developers, courses, and vendors for each language to calculate its popularity. Their two main contenders—Python and C#—face obstacles that may keep them in the second tier.

Python actually slipped 1.32 points from its rating a year ago, while C# slipped 0.71 points in the same period.

Python and C# have long been poised to become the next big programming languages, but that hasn’t happened so far because of their limitations, notes the Tiobe report’s authors: “C# is not a Top 3 language because its adoption in the non-Windows world is still low. Python on the other hand is dynamically typed, which is a blocker for most large and/or critical software systems to use it.”

“It will be hard for [C# and Python] to become part of the Top 3,” said Paul Jansen, managing director at software quality services vendor Tiobe. “Although I think the days are over for the big three in the long term, it is unclear to me who will replace them. Just name a candidate and I can tell you why it will not reach the top three.”

But one preduction Jansen does make is that Google’s Go language will rise in the rankings. Google hit the No. 10 spot in Tiobe’s July ranking, then fell to No. 16 in the August ranking and then to No. 17 in the September ranking. But Jansen sees this downward trend for Go as a temporary glitch. “I am pretty sure it will be higher again next month.”

One reason for the difficulty in predicting language popularity in the future is that  fewer and fewer applications are being written in a single language. That means more languages have opportunities to grow their usage, and the current leaders are increasingly going to share their market share with other languages.

The  top 10 languages for the September Tiobe index were:

    Java: 12.667 percent
    C: 7.382 percent
    C++: 5.565 percent
    C#: 4.779 percent
    Python: 2.983 percent
    PHP: 2.21 percent
    JavaScript: 2.017 percent
    Visual Basic .Net: 1.982 percent
    Perl: 1.952 percent
    Ruby: 1.933 percent

In the Pypl Popularity of Programming Language index, which looks at how often language tutorials are searched on in Google, the top 10 for this month were:

    Java: 22.4 percent
    Python: 17.0 percent
    PHP: 8.7 percent
    C#: 8.1 percent
    JavaScript: 8.0 percent
    C++: 6.8 percent
    C: 6.1 percent
    R: 3.7 percent
    Objective-C: 3.5 percent
    Swift: 2.9 percent

33

Java Forum / Java debugging comes to Visual Studio Code

« on: October 11, 2017, 07:59:57 PM »

Microsoft has released a Java debugger for its free open source editor, Visual Studio Code. The newly minted extension is intended to work as a companion to the Language Support for Java extension provided by Red Hat. 

Whereas Red Hat’s Language Support for Java extension provides IntelliSense capabilities and Java project support, it does not include debugging capabilities. Microsoft’s Java Debug Extension works with previous Red Hat’s extension to provide them. Still in a preview mode, the Java Debug Extension offers capabilities including launch/attach, breakpoints, control flow, data inspection, and a debug console. The Microsoft and Red Hat extensions are available separately or in the Java Extension Pack, which bundles both together in a single install. Microsoft’s plans call for enabling a modern workflow for Java, with more features and extensions planned going forward.

Visual Studio Code is designed to be a streamlined editor with support for operations such as task running, debugging, and version control. It leaves more complex workflows to fuller-featured IDEs. Leveraging the GitHub Electron framework for building cross-platform desktop applications, Visual Studio Code runs on Windows, MacOS, and Linux.

This story, "Java debugging comes to Visual Studio Code" was originally published by InfoWorld.

34

Java Forum / Java microservices profile gets fault-tolerance capabilities

« on: October 11, 2017, 07:59:18 PM »

The Eclipse Foundation’s MicroProfile project to add microservices to enterprise Java has released MicroProfile 1.2, which adds capabilities for fault tolerance and security.
New features in MicroProfile 1.2

A fault-tolerance API in MicroProfile 1.2 provides a way for applications to deal with the unavailability of a microservice, said IBM Distinguished Engineer Ian Robinson, who has worked on MicroProfile. When old-style monolithic applications fail, they bring down the entire application. But applications composed of microservices continue to operate if a specific microservcie fails, leading to “more interesting failure scenarios,” he said. To deal with service failures, applications need a way of handling the unavailability of a service, such as to resort to a fallback service if a primary service is unavailable. Such fallbacks are what MicroProfile 1.2 allows.

MicroProfile 1.2 also adds Interoperability with JSON web tokens. With JWT, you can provider a security token in a standard format, so it propagates from one microservice to another.

An externalized configuration capability in MicroProfile 1.2 provides a standard way to import an application configuration from outside a Docker container.

MicroProfile 1.2 also features:

    Common annotations.
    Metrics.
    Health checking.

Where to download MicroProfile 1.2

The source code for MicroProfile 1.2 is available for downloads at an Eclipse webpage.

This story, "Java microservices profile gets fault-tolerance capabilities" was originally published by InfoWorld.

35

History & Latest Cyber crime / Major cyber-attack will happen soon, warns UK's security boss

« on: October 11, 2017, 07:57:10 PM »

A “category one” cyber-attack, the most serious tier possible, will happen “sometime in the next few years”, a director of the National Cybersecurity Centre has warned.

According to the agency, which reports to GCHQ and has responsibly for ensuring the UK’s information security, a category one cybersecurity incident requires a national government response.

In the year since the agency was founded, it has covered 500 incidents, according to Ian Levy, the technical director, as well as 470 category three incidents and 30 category two, including the WannaCry ransomworm that took down IT in multiple NHS trusts and bodies.

But speaking at an event about the next decade of information security, Levy warned that “sometime in the next few years we’re going to have our first category one cyber-incident”. The only way to prevent such a breach, he said, was to change the way businesses and governments think about cybersecurity.

Rather than obsessing about buying the right security products, Levy argued, organisations should instead focus on managing risk: understanding the data they hold, the value it has, and how much damage it could do if it was lost, for instance.
Security breaches can lead to identity theft.

His words at the Symantec event come against the background of a major breach at the US data broker Equifax, which lost more than 130 million Americans’ personal information in a hacking attack in May. The data stolen is extremely sensitive, including names, addresses, social security numbers and dates of birth – all the information needed to steal someone’s identity online.

A further 400,000 British residents were affected by the hack, as well as a number of Canadian residents. The information stolen about them was much less personal in nature, however, consisting only of names, dates of birth, email addresses and telephone numbers.

Striking a dour note, Levy warned that it may take the inevitable category one attack to prompt such changes, since only an attack of that scale would result in an independent investigation or government inquiry.

“Then what will really come out is that it was entirely preventable… It will turn out that the organisation that has been breached didn’t really understand what data they had, what value it had or the impact it could have outside that organisation.”

Levy’s advice to organisations who want to prevent such a catastrophic breach from affecting them is to stop putting their faith in off-the-shelf security solutions, and instead work with employees to uncover what is actually possible.

“Cybersecurity professionals have spent the last 25 years saying people are the weakest link. That’s stupid!” he said, “They cannot possibly be the weakest link – they are the people that create the value at these organisations.

“What that tells me is that the systems we’ve built, as technical systems, are not built for people. Techies build systems for techies, they don’t build technical systems for normal people.”

36

History & Latest Cyber crime / Personal details of almost 700,000 Britons hacked in cyber-attack

« on: October 11, 2017, 07:56:19 PM »

Equifax has admitted that almost 700,000 UK consumers have had their personal details accessed following a cyber-attack, a figure far higher than previously thought.

As well as affecting more Britons, the hack also resulted in significantly more damaging data being leaked on those who were affected. The information lost by the US credit monitoring firm included partial credit card details, phone numbers and driving licence numbers.

The Information Commissioner’s Office said that it was still investigating the company, which had initially claimed just 400,000 British residents had been affected.

“We continue to investigate what happened at Equifax and how UK citizen’s information came to be compromised,” an ICO spokesperson confirmed. “It is a complex and fast-moving case and we are working closely with other UK regulators and our counterparts in Canada and the US.

“We have been pressing Equifax to confirm the scale and any impact on UK citizens and, from the outset, we advised the firm to alert and support victims.”

Equifax – based in Atlanta, Georgia – discovered the hack in July but only informed consumers last month, leading the information commissioner to order the company to inform British residents “at the earliest opportunity” if their personal information had been put at risk.

The move came after Equifax said a hack had exposed the social security numbers and other data of about 143 million Americans.
Equifax hack: two executives to leave company after breach
Read more

Lenders rely on the information collected by credit bureaux such as Equifax to help them decide whether to approve financing for homes, cars and credit cards.

Equifax said a file containing 15.2m UK records, dated between 2011 and 2016, was hacked and included data from “actual” consumers, as well as test and duplicate data.

The company said its investigation found that it would need to contact 693,665 British consumers by post to tell them how to protect against any potential risk.

Almost 13,000 consumers had an email address associated with their Equifax.co.uk account accessed in 2014, while just under 15,000 consumers had portions of their Equifax membership details – such as username, password, secret questions and answers and partial credit card details – accessed.

It said nearly 30,000 had their driving licence number accessed, while the phone numbers of a further 637,430 consumers were accessed.
'No law can fix stupid': Congress slams former Equifax CEO for data hack
Read more

Patricio Remon, Equifax’s Europe chief, again apologised to anyone affected by the hacking.

“It has been regrettable that we have not been able to contact consumers who may have been impacted until now, but it would not have been appropriate for us to do so until the full facts of this complex attack were known, and the full forensics investigation was completed,” he said.

Anyone who is sent a letter by Equifax should take advantage of the help offered to guard against potential risks.

Cyber-attacks have become an increasing problem for big firms that hold large amounts of customer data.

HSBC and TalkTalk are among the most high-profile British firms to be hit in recent years.

37

Software Engineering / Industry Watch: The liquification of software

« on: October 11, 2017, 07:54:41 PM »

The days of software packages are coming to an end. Say hello to what JFrog co-founder and chief architect Fred Simon calls “liquid software.”

“Once the number of applications and libraries and pieces of the software that needed to be managed reached a certain point, we started to see an exponential increase in the amount of software modules, and the frequency of updates and versions, all the way to the end user,” he began.

“What we used to consider as software packages to manage with tagging and versioning, and a destination, address number, type, barcode and then you ship it away in any kind of format – all these concepts of actually creating a package and delivering software in the form of a package, little by little has disappeared due to the fact that we are making more and more of those and releasing them more and more frequently.

“We shifted our approach to software updates, not out of packages, but out of the concept of continuous flow of software. You start to think in terms of piping, and then you start to connect the different software factories and the different departments and the different vendors and the different teams by connecting them with pipes, not by connecting them by physically delivering or on the cloud delivering the files from one place to another, but continuously providing the latest version of whatever software is available to the next destination.”

This is what Simon says (couldn’t help it!) is the liquification of software systems. “Little by little, we are seeing any kind of software in any kind of environment moving to this liquid delivery mechanism, where you plug yourself to a client that you trust to deliver clear water which is unpolluted and secure, and by the way you’ll get all security updates and the latest versions of whatever you want,” he explained.

If this sounds like the DevOps revolution, it’s because Simon said it is. “There is another catch phrase we use quite a bit to reflect this; it’s release fast or die. The ones that are not even trying to do that are probably companies we won’t see in the next decade.

At JFrog, Simon said they want to make sure the tools they are creating can be used by the “plumber, who creates the piping and lets the liquid software flow. “The replication and the pipes that are created between the different repositories, which can be located all over the world, need to continuously deliver the right things to the right destination,” he said. “All the synchronization is a critical piece of our tooling. So of course the ability to see and to transparently view the actual flow of the software. Before, when it was actual trucks, the way to control it was to control the timing of the delivery of the package. When you go to liquid software, you need visibility and transparency, but need to change the control mechanism for frequency, quality and flow of delivery.”

Liquification is a strong force in the market, but for organizations with existing processes, the move to a continuous flow of software has many challenges. “To be frank, the full liquification of software is contradicting a lot of the processes many companies set in place. There are a lot of companies who have a six-month block time before the vendor has a new version and the new version gets inside the company. It’s not rare to have such a strong mechanism of compliance and any kind of test that companies and processes set in place, where they only accept a very few releases per year. Those processes are the ones that are suffering today.

“When you have a monolith, you start with a version in your version control system and you build everything and test everything and deliver everything,” he continued. “It’s a very sequential process that for really big software could actually take weeks. Once you start in microservices, each of the microservices has its own lifecycle, so you can make your own single build and test locally and have a new version automatically created. The ability to aggregate all those microservices and to tag a specific version at a specific time and create another application out of those microservices and those different versions rapidly and efficiently is critical for the next step.”

38

Software Engineering / For high-performing engineering teams, disagreement is healthy

« on: October 11, 2017, 07:53:25 PM »

You’ve probably heard the conventional wisdom that teams should be aligned around a common goal. But while it’s important to have a shared business objective, the idea that everyone needs to have the same goal is selling your engineering team short.

Productive tension is beneficial for organizations. In my engineering group, I have at least five teams with five different goals:

    Product managers want to ship features as fast as possible
    QA wants to ship features with zero bugs
    Developers want to ship features with no technical debt
    Operations never wants to ship new features
    User Experience wants to ship features that users understand intuitively

These teams should have different goals. Each brings a unique perspective and different aspects of a project to the table, and while all of their goals are important, they are not singular. If one team is winning out over the others, you quickly learn that a single goal never creates the best product for customers. Having different goals drives teams to have critical conversations. And the necessities of business force a compromise that creates the best outcome.

People sometimes ask me if I favor a product-led or developer-led culture. When you’re running a business, you always need to be customer-led. Product managers can’t run the show on their own. Neither can developers. If one team wins out, the goal of creating the best product falls by the wayside.

For instance, if product dominates, you ship features more quickly. But you accrue more technical debt, so developers can’t achieve their goal. You also ship more bugs, so QA can’t succeed. And your UX team doesn’t have time to test new designs with end users, so they miss their goal, too.

On the flip side, if developers are in charge, any semblance of a timeline disappears, as developers work at their own pace. Product managers get derailed because they have no idea when things will ship. QA gets too much to test at once, making it hard to eliminate bugs. UX still has to fight for the time to iterate and test. And Ops isn’t ready for the onslaught when features are finally released.

The ultimate goal of satisfying customers causes different teams to dominate at different times. We’ve held a product for months if our beta users found it confusing, and spent more time in UX and development to get it right. We’ve also shipped features early, with pieces missing, to gain a quick hit in customer recognition, and then added to the product over time.

To mitigate these extremes, all teams need to have a voice and be heard. They also need to be sympathetic to each other’s goals and able to compromise. There needs to be understanding and tension.

A healthy tension leads to creative solutions. If you’ve organized your teams in the right way, taking into account personalities and opinions, each faction will be advocating for something unique rather than toeing the line of the dominant party.   

One solution our team has come up with to balance these tensions is with an internal beta program. The rest of the company acts as the voice of the customer and helps us figure out when we’re ready to ship. This allows us to ship as early as possible and still please our customers. By not setting arbitrary ship dates, we can focus on speed and quality and leave our customers out of it until the product is ready.

Of course, internal betas aren’t the only solution. If your teams keep pushing to do their best work, advocating from their particular perspectives, and being sympathetic to each others’ goals, they’ll be well-positioned to get the best product out in a reasonable time.

39

Software Engineering / Amazon releases new compiler for AI frameworks

« on: October 11, 2017, 07:38:12 PM »

Amazon is addressing artificial intelligence development challenges with a new end-to-end compiler solution. The NNVM compiler, developed by AWS and a team of researchers from the University of Washington’s Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, is designed for deploying deep learning frameworks across a number of platforms and devices.

“You can choose among multiple artificial intelligence (AI) frameworks to develop AI algorithms. You also have a choice of a wide range of hardware to train and deploy AI models. The diversity of frameworks and hardware is crucial to maintaining the health of the AI ecosystem. This diversity, however, also introduces several challenges to AI developers,” Mu Li, a principal scientist for AWS AI, wrote in a post.

According to Amazon, there are three main challenges AI developers come across today: switching between AI frameworks, maintaining multiple backends, and supporting multiple AI frameworks. The NNVM compiler addresses this by compiling front-end workloads directly into hardware back-ends. “Today, AWS is excited to announce, together with the research team from UW, an end-to-end compiler based on the TVM stack that compiles workloads directly from various deep learning frontends into optimized machine codes,” Li wrote. The TVM stack, also developed by the team, is an intermediate representation stack designed to close the gap between deep learning frameworks and hardware backends.

“While deep learning is becoming indispensable for a range of platforms — from mobile phones and datacenter GPUs, to the Internet of Things and specialized accelerators — considerable engineering challenges remain in the deployment of those frameworks,” said Allen School Ph.D. student Tianqi Chen. “Our TVM framework made it possible for developers to quickly and easily deploy deep learning on a range of systems. With NNVM, we offer a solution that works across all frameworks, including MXNet and model exchange formats such as ONNX and CoreML, with significant performance improvements.”

The NNVM compiler is made up of two components from the TVM stack: NNVM for computation graphs and TVM for tensor operators, according to Amazon.

“NNVM provides a specification of the computation graph and operator with graph optimization routines, and operators are implemented and optimized for target hardware by using TVM. We demonstrated that with minimal effort this compiler can match and even outperform state-of-the-art performance on two radically different hardware: ARM CPU and Nvidia GPUs,” Li wrote. “We hope the NNVM compiler can greatly simplify the design of new AI frontend frameworks and backend hardware, and help provide consistent results across various frontends and backends to users.”

40

Software Industry in Bangladesh / Job opportunity at Samgsung

« on: August 03, 2017, 02:02:27 PM »

There are some paid and full time internship opportunities in a renowned company.
Fresh Graduates or last semester students can apply.
Qualification:
-Candidate must have to stay 6 months
-Interested in Software Testing
-Basic knowledge in shell scripting
Please contact with Ssh Shamma mam through email by today or mail her your CV.
syeda.swe@diu.edu.bd

41

Travel / Visit / Tour / 31 Best Travel Sites to Save You Money

« on: August 02, 2017, 07:43:43 PM »

Find the best deals online for plane tickets, hotel rooms, vacation packages and car rentals, domestic or abroad.

Feeling too pinched by the ever-troubled economy to travel? You can still find good deals to get away — if you know where to go online first. Here are the best travel sites we've found to help you bag the best bargains on airfares, lodging, car rentals and all your other travel needs. Note: All but two of the following sites are free to use.

Airfares

1) Kayak.com scours hundreds of online sources for the cheapest fare available. The more flexible you are on time and destination, the better your chances of finding a great deal. Search for dates up to three days before and after your ideal travel dates or on any weekends in the next year. And with the site's Explore tool, you can scan a world map for all the places you can reach within a specified per-ticket price range. It also lets you specify your preferred flight time, vacation activities (beach, gamble, golf or ski?) and weather (based on temperatures).

Kayak can also help you bite the bullet and buy your ticket, or not, with its "price predictor," which forecasts whether fares will go up or down. Enter your desired itinerary and the site will return a list of flight options, along with a recommendation to either buy now or wait for a fare drop. But the tool is not omniscient. Predictions appear with confidence rates and are limited to certain cities, round-trip, coach flights and specific time frames depending on your departure and arrival cities.
SEE ALSO:
Are You Tipping Enough When You Travel?

2) AirfareWatchdog works best for travelers ready to take off at the drop of a deal. The site has actual people lurking on airline Web sites in anticipation of fare sales. They sign up for rewards programs to snag promotional codes and discount offers that can be passed on to AirfareWatchdog users. Plus, the site includes fares from Southwest, Allegiant and other small airlines that may not appear on bigger search sites such as Kayak. (Also check out Hotelwatchdog, which fetches hotel listings that offer great values, meaning they have prices lower than similar nearby hotels, good locations and favorable TripAdvisor reviews.)

3) The Flight Deal works similarly to Airfarewatchdog. Follow for a curated roundup of cheap fares out of major U.S. cities. You can find commentary about the deals (including tip-offs if the fares drop or disappear) and step-by-step instructions on how to find dates with the lowest prices.

4) Google Flights is great for comparing multiple airfares. It spotlights itineraries with the best combination of price, duration, stops and more, while map, calendar and bar-graph tools help you explore cheaper destinations and dates.

5) WhichBudget.com will help you build an inexpensive, overseas flight plan by using local, budget airlines — a great way to save on international travel. Select your overseas starting point, end point or both, and the site will list airlines you've probably never heard of that service each route. For example, if you search for flights from Bangkok to Beijing, you'll get options from China Eastern and Hainan Airlines.

6) Several major airlines, such as American, AirTran and Jetblue, will refund you the difference, usually in the form of travel credits or vouchers, if the fare falls below what you paid for your ticket. Enter your flight information at Yapta.com, and the site tracks the fares for you. If the price dips below the threshold your specify, Yapta will shoot you an e-mail or Tweet and walk you through how to collect your refund.
Lodging

7-9) Hotels.com lets you search just one site for accommodations at hundreds of thousands of properties. You can find particularly good last-minute deals, which are updated daily. But even advance-travel planners can score big bargains with the site's seasonal sales, destination-specific deals and other special offers. Frequent travelers will appreciate the simplicity of the site's rewards program — for every ten nights you spend at any combination of the program's 100,000 member properties, you'll earn a free night's stay worth up to the average daily rate of your ten nights.
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Similarly, HotelTonight is an app that also lets users book hotels at low last-minute rates, while SnapTravel allows reduced-rate, last-minute bookings via text message and Facebook Messenger.

10) Priceline offers standard online travel agent services. But its Negotiator is uniquely suited to help you haggle for the best bargains on hotels. Select a minimum star class, your dates of stay and preferred neighborhood, and then name your price. You can save up to 60% off published rates, and bids less than $100 a night on luxury lodgings often win — particularly for last-minute bookings.

But here's the catch: Priceline doesn't tell you which hotel you're booking until after you pay, so you won't be sure exactly where you'll end up. Blind booking like this can be particularly risky when you're visiting an unfamiliar area, especially overseas. Note: The site also allows you to Name Your Own Price for flights and car rentals.

11-12) If you find yourself faced with a pricey fee after cancelling a hotel room, you may be able to recoup some of your losses by posting your reservation for sale on a site such as Roomer or Cancelon. You’ll set your own price, at least 20% below what you originally paid, and the sites will take a 10% to 15% cut of your sale price. Roomer will take care of transferring the reservations from your name to the buyer’s, but Cancelon requires you to make the switch.
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13) TripAdvisor is the most popular hotel-review site, offering millions of professional and amateur reviews of hotels in the U.S. and overseas. Search for your destination, and the site will return a detailed list of hotels, bed and breakfasts, vacation rentals and other lodging options. You can filter the results to find which hotels are best for value, families, business, romance or luxury.

Watch out for possibly fake reviews from cronies trying to push up their own hotel's ratings or flame their competitors (the site flags some suspicious postings). Ignore reviews on either extreme and focus on those with midrange ratings — they're more likely to be the most helpful. TripAdvisor doesn't sell rooms or offer any actual deals, but it links you to partner sites, such as Expedia, Travelocity and Hotels.com. Click on the "check rates" button and select the site or sites you'd like to try — a new window with results will open for each partner.

14) To focus on smaller inns or B&Bs, try searching BedandBreakfast.com. It lists extensive details on even the tiniest inns and, after you provide your e-mail address, sends you promotional codes and "hot deals" in your desired location. You can also search for specific amenities, such as a hot tub and fireplace, or find out whether a place is pet-friendly.

15-16) Vacation rentals are an especially good value for groups because they generally offer more space and amenities for prices similar to or less than hotel rates. HomeAway offers more than two million rental lodgings in 190 countries, with more than a million worldwide listings across its family of sites (including VRBO and VacationRentals.com). There's also Airbnb with more than three million vacation rental listings in 191 countries.
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Fabulous Travel Freebies

17) If you're traveling alone, or with a buddy or two, you can score a great deal staying at a hostel — without necessarily having to join the backpacker and bunk-bed lifestyle you might associate with this budget-lodging option. Many hostels offer more private, hotel-like accommodations these days. Hostelz.com offers nearly 50,000 listings in about 9,000 cities, and includes reviews from professional and real travelers.

18) For a really great deal, try trading places with other travelers. HomeExchange.com provides the largest network of home swappers, with more than 55,000 listings — about 26% in the U.S. and most of the rest spread throughout the major tourist areas of Australia, Britain, Canada, France and Italy. An annual membership costs $119 and gets you as many swaps as you can manage in a year.

19) JetSetter is our favorite private-sale site for luxury-hotel deals. In general, these kinds of sites offer invited members exclusive access to deep discounts for a limited time, and they work best if you're flexible about where you want to travel. JetSetter can have 15 to 30 of these "flash sales" available at once – more than similar sites, which usually offer just a handful at a time — and can save you up to 50% off published rates. The sales typically last seven to ten days, or until they sell out.

20) More adventurous types can arrange to sleep on a local’s couch (or guest bed) for free through Couchsurfing.com. Just create an online profile, and look for available crash pads in your destination.
Vacation Packages

21) At CruiseCompete.com, more than 300 travel agencies vie to give you the lowest prices for dates, ports and ships you specify, whether you're booking well in advance or at the eleventh hour. You set up a CruiseCompete account, and they send you their best offers without ever seeing your personal information. Plus, the site has live agents available to guide you through the process through a live chat or by phone.
Rental Cars

22) Hotwire often offers the best published deals on cars by collecting rates from its eight rental car company partners, including Alamo, Enterprise and Hertz.

The site also offers "hot rates" from rental companies that won't be identified until after you've paid. With rental cars, the risk in taking the blind-booking approach is minimal: A minivan is a minivan, no matter which company provides it. (You can also head back to Priceline.com to try bidding for a better bargain on your rental car.)

23) Hotwire does offer some good prepaid rental car deals in certain international cities, but such bargains are AutoEurope's specialty. Auto Europe offers rentals at more than 20,000 locations worldwide. And if you have any problems with the rental-car provider you're hooked up with, Auto Europe will help you resolve them.

24) What Yapta does for airlines, Autoslash does for rental cars. It will apply the best coupons and discount codes to your rental, and it will re-book your reservation if the system finds a better deal.
Other Travel Resources
Currency Conversion

25) Check XE.com for reliable, mid-market exchange rates. Along with an easy-to-read grid of conversion rates on the homepage and a host of other tools, this site offers calculators for travel expenses, credit-card charges and, obviously, currency conversions.
Eurail

26) Trains are often the fastest and cheapest way to travel within and between European countries. Our favorite American Web site for checking timetables and booking tickets on European train lines is RailEurope. But you might be able to catch better deals directly from European railways' sites, if you don't get lost in translation.
Flight Information

27) FlightStats.com can help you plan a smooth trip by advising you on the best time of day to fly from a specific airport and which terminals to avoid for connecting flights. You can also view live updates of flight delays, and sign up for free e-mail and phone alerts.

28) If you’re delayed by weather or some unforeseen event, it pays to act quickly. The TripIt Pro smartphone app ($49/year) will send you alerts about cancellations, delays or gate changes on the fly, sometimes even ahead of an airline announcement. Use it to locate alternate flights, find out when better seats are available, get fare refund notifications, track your rewards program points, and more.
Frequent-Flier Miles

29) At WebFlyer.com, you can see how your miles convert between programs, learn about changes to your frequent-flier program and discover how to maximize the value of your mileage awards when you redeem them for merchandise or services.
Passport Photos

30) To get a professional passport photo you’ll pay about $15, which can add up for a family. Instead, take your photo with your own digital camera, then upload it to ePassportPhoto.com, which will help you size it properly before printing on your home printer. The best part: You can redo your picture as many times as you like.
Travel Insurance

31) You never know when an emergency situation will spoil your travel plans. Buying travel insurance from agencies and travel providers, such as cruise lines, is usually a crummy deal because of price markups and restrictions on filing claims. At InsureMyTrip.com, you can compare plans and prices from multiple insurance providers with just one search and narrow your search results by specifying the kind of coverage you need.

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Travel / Visit / Tour / গ্যাথ্রুন: পৃথিবীর বুকে এক কল্পরাজ্য

« on: August 02, 2017, 07:36:22 PM »

আধুনিকতার এই যুগে দুরন্ত সব যানবাহন ছাড়া চলাচলের কথা চিন্তাও করা যায় না! তবে যদি বলা হয় যে, এমনটি সম্ভব এবং হচ্ছেও, তাহলে কি বিষয়টি বিশ্বাসযোগ্য হবে? হতেই হবে! কারণ ঠিক এমনই এক অদ্ভুত জায়গা বাস্তবেই রয়েছে যেখানে চলে না কোনো গাড়ি-ঘোড়া! জায়গাটির নাম গ্যাথ্রুন। নেদারল্যান্ডের দৃষ্টিনন্দন ছোট্ট এই গ্রামটি অ্যামস্টারডাম থেকে ১০০ কি.মি. দূরে অবস্থিত।

শান্ত পরিবেশ, আঁকাবাঁকা খাল, কাঠ দিয়ে বানানো ছোট ছোট সেতু আর রঙ-বেরঙের নানান ফুলের সমারোহ এই গ্রামটিতে। আর এখানকার বাড়ি-ঘরগুলোর কথা তো না বললেই নয়। ২০০ বছরের পুরনো এই বাড়িগুলো একটুও বদলায়নি, ঠিক একই রকম আছে। আকার আকৃতিতে দেখতে অনেকটা খামার বাড়ির মতোই সেখানকার ঘরগুলো।

গ্যাথ্রুনে যেকোনো ধরনের যানবাহন ব্যবহারের উপর কঠোর নিষেধাজ্ঞা জারি করা আছে। যদিও পর্যটকরা এই সুন্দর জায়গা দেখতে এসে ভিড় জমানোর কারণে এই নিয়মের খানিকটা পরিবর্তন হয়েছে। তাই এখন সেখানে সাইকেল চালানোর অনুমতি আছে। তবে বেশিরভাগ সময়ে জলপথেই যাতায়াত হয়ে থাকে সেখানে। গ্রামের সনাতন দিকটিতে কোনো অলিগলিও নেই। গ্যাথ্রুনে ১৮০টিরও বেশি সেতু রয়েছে।

বহু আগে থেকেই পর্যটকদের মূল আকর্ষণ হলো সেখানকার নৌকা। পর্যটকেরা সেখানে গিয়ে মোটর বাইক, ডোঙ্গা (ছোট নৌকা) ভাড়া করতে পারে যেগুলো চলে ইলেকট্রিক মোটরে। আরামদায়ক ডাবল সিট থাকার কারণে এই ইলেকট্রিক মোটরে চালানো নৌকাগুলোই পর্যটকদের কাছে অধিক জনপ্রিয়।

গ্যাথ্রুনের ইলেকট্রিক বোট বেশ পরিবেশবান্ধব এবং শব্দ নেই বললেই চলে; Image Source: Punterwerf Wildboer

রুপকথার মতো সুন্দর এই জায়গাটিকে জনপ্রিয় করে তোলার জন্য একজনকে ধন্যবাদ না দিলেই নয়। আর তিনি হলেন বার্ট হ্যান্সট্রা। এই ডাচ চলচ্চিত্র নির্মাতা ১৯৫৮ সালে তার নির্মিত বিখ্যাত কমেডি মুভি ফানফেয়ার এর শুটিং করেছিলেন গ্যাথ্রুনে। মূলত তখন থেকেই আলোচনায় আসে ও জনপ্রিয় হয়ে ওঠে এই সুন্দর জায়গাটি। ধীরে ধীরে পর্যটকেরা ভিড় জমাতে থাকে নয়নাভিরাম এই গ্রামটি দেখতে। গ্যাথ্রুনের অর্থনীতিতে তাই এখন পর্যটন শিল্পেরই বেশি অবদান আছে বলা যায়।

এই গ্রামের কাঁচা বাজার, মালামাল এমনকি রেস্টুরেন্টের ডেলিভারিও হয় নৌকায় যাতায়াতের মাধ্যমে। তিনটি কারণে গ্যাথ্রুন পৃথিবীর অন্য যেকোনো জায়গা থেকে একেবারেই আলাদা। প্রথমত, এখানে সবকিছুই ছোটখাটো। যেমন- ঘর-বাড়ি, খাল, সেখানে জনসংখ্যা কম, নৌকাগুলো ছোট, এমনকি সেখানকার সুপারমার্কেটগুলোও আয়তনে ছোট। দ্বিতীয়ত, সেখানে যে ১৮০টি সেতু রয়েছে, তার সবগুলোই কাঠের তৈরি। তৃতীয়ত, গ্যাথ্রুন নেদারল্যান্ডের ঠিক মাঝামাঝি হওয়ার কারণে পৃথিবীর যেকোনো প্রান্ত থেকে যাওয়াটা বেশ সহজসাধ্য।
গ্যাথ্রুনের ইতিহাস

সর্বপ্রথম ১২৩০ খ্রিস্টাব্দে ভূমধ্যসাগরীয় কয়েকজন পলাতক এই গ্রামটি প্রতিষ্ঠা করে। তারা পিট নির্যাস (ত্রয়োদশ শতাব্দীর দিকে শক্তির উল্লেখযোগ্য উৎস ছিলো) বহন করার সুবিধার্থে গ্রামের দুটি প্রান্তের সংযোগস্থলস্বরূপ কয়েকটি খাল কাটে। প্রথম প্রথম তারা এই শক্তির উৎসের খোঁজে বিভিন্ন জায়গায় খনন করতে থাকে। আর এভাবেই পুরো গ্যাথ্রুন জুড়ে তারা চালাতে থাকে খনন কাজ।

খনন কাজের পরের ধাপটি ছিলো সেগুলো বহন করে নিয়ে যাওয়া। এক প্রান্ত থেকে থেকে অন্য প্রান্তে যাওয়ার জন্য খাদ ও খাল কাটা। এর ফলস্বরূপ পুরো গ্যাথ্রুন সেজে ওঠে একেবারে ভিন্ন এক আঙ্গিকে।
গ্যাথ্রুনের নামকরণ

‘গ্যাথ্রুন’ শব্দটির আক্ষরিক অর্থ হলো ‘ছাগলের শিং’। এই নামকরণ করেন সেখানকার প্রথম অধিবাসীরা, যারা জলাভূমিতে পেয়েছিলো শত শত ছাগলের শিং! এই শিংগুলো ছিলো দশম শতাব্দীর বন্যার অবশিষ্টাংশ। তবে এখন সেখানে ঐ শিংগুলো আর নেই এবং গাছপালাগুলোও একেবারেই ভিন্ন। ১৯৭৩ সাল পর্যন্ত গ্রামটি একটি ভিন্ন পৌরসভা ছিলো। সরল, শান্ত ও মনোরম এই গ্রামটিকে বলা হয় ‘উত্তরের ভেনিস শহর’ বা ‘ছোট ভেনিস’। ইতালির শহরটির সাথে অবকাঠামোর মিল থাকায় এমন নাম দেয়া হয়েছে। এই গ্রামে কোনো রাস্তা না থাকলেও আছে সাইকেল চালানোর মতো সরু কিছু অলিগলি আর অসংখ্য সেতু।

গ্যাথ্রুন নিয়ে কিছু তথ্য

    গ্রামটি সমুদ্রসীমা থেকে কয়েক মিটার নিচে অবস্থিত। সেখানকার মাটি এতটাই নরম যে, সেখানে রাস্তা-ঘাট বানানো অসম্ভব। তাই এই গ্রামটি কোনো ধরনের গাড়ি-ঘোড়াও চলাচল করে না। রাস্তা-ঘাট বলতে সেখানে শুধুমাত্র সাইকেল চালানোর মতো সরু পথগুলোই আছে।
    সাইকেল ছাড়া নৌকাই গ্যাথ্রুনের একমাত্র যানবাহন। স্থানীয় নৌকাগুলোকে পান্টারস্‌ বলে এবং এগুলো নিয়মিত যাতায়াত ও মালামাল বহনের জন্য ব্যবহার করা হয়।
    যেহেতু সেখানে খাল আর নৌকারই সমারোহ, সেহেতু সেখানকার বাচ্চারাও বেশ ভালো নৌকা চালাতে পারে। বলা হয়ে থাকে যে, সেখানে বাচ্চারা হাঁটার আগেই নৌকা চালানো শিখে যায়।
    পুরো গ্যাথ্রুন আঠারো শতকের সব খামারবাড়ি দিয়ে ভরপুর। খড়ের এই বাড়িগুলোতে ২-৩টি করে রুম থাকে। প্রতিটি বাড়ির সাথে সিঁড়ি থাকে যা দিয়ে খালে নামা যায়।
    সেখানে ৪ মাইলেরও বেশি খাল রয়েছে যেগুলোর উপরে রয়েছে কাঠের ব্রিজ।
    এই গ্রামটির ইতিহাস ৮০০ বছর পুরনো।
    গ্যাথ্রুনের জনসংখ্যা খুবই কম। মাত্র ২,৬০০ লোকের বসবাস সেখানে।
    নৌকা ব্যবসায় বেশ সমৃদ্ধিশালী এই গ্রামটি। পুরো গ্রামের যাতায়াত ব্যবস্থা নৌকার উপর নির্ভর করায় নৌকার রমরমা ব্যবসা চলে সেখানে। একেকটি নৌকা বানাতে মোট সময় লাগে ৩-৪ সপ্তাহ।
    গ্যাথ্রুনে রয়েছে বেশ কয়েকটি রেঁস্তোরা। আর সেই রেঁস্তোরাগুলোর প্যানকেক বেশ জনপ্রিয়।
    বেশিরভাগ ক্ষেত্রেই সেখানকার নাগরিকেরা ‘হুইস্পার বোট’ নামের নৌকা ব্যবহার করে থাকে। কারণ এটি ইঞ্জিনবিহীন নৌকা হওয়ায় শান্ত পরিবেশ বজায় থাকে ও ধোঁয়ায় পরিবেশ দূষিতও হয় না।
    গ্রীষ্মকাল আর শীতকালের গ্যাথ্রুনের চেহারা একেবারেই আলাদা। গ্রীষ্মকালে খালগুলো পানি দিয়ে পূর্ণ থাকে। আবার শীতকালে সেই খালের পানিই জমে বরফ হয়ে যায়। বরফে ঢাকা গ্যাথ্রুন দেখে চেনার কোনো উপায় থাকে না। এই বরফের উপর শীতকালে সেখানকার নাগরিকেরা আইস স্কেটিং করে।
    সেখানে জলপথে চলাচলের জন্য বিভিন্ন ধরনের নৌকাগুলো হলো- কায়াক, রো-বোট, সেইল-বোট, হুইস্পার বোট, পান্ট, স্লোয়েপ (অভিজাত ইলেকট্রিক বোট) ইত্যাদি।
    ১০০ বছরের পুরাতন কিছু খবরের কাগজের আর্টিকেলের মাধ্যমে জানা যায় যে, শুরুর দিকে এই খালগুলো মানুষের যাতায়াতের সাথে সাথে পশুদের এক জায়গা থেকে আরেক জায়গায় নিয়ে যাওয়ার কাজেও ব্যবহার করা হতো।
    ‘টি ওল্ডে ম্যাট আস’ নামে একটি জাদুঘর আছে যেখানে গ্যাথ্রুনের ঐতিহ্য ও সংস্কৃতি সম্পর্কে জানা যায়। এই জাদুঘরটি তৈরি করা হয়েছিলো ১৯৮৮ সালে।
    গ্যাথ্রুনের ঐতিহ্যবাহী নৌকার নাম ‘পান্টার’। লম্বা ও সরু গড়নের এই নৌকাটির সাথে ভেনিসের জনপ্রিয় নৌকা ‘গন্ডোলা’-এর অনেক মিল রয়েছে। জাদুঘরে রাখা বিভিন্ন ছবি দেখে বোঝা যায় যে, দৈনন্দিন কাজের পাশাপাশি বাণিজ্যিক কাজেও ব্যাপকভাবে ব্যবহার করা হতো এই নৌকাটি। এখনও গ্যাথ্রুনের নাগরিকদের কাছে দৈনন্দিন ব্যবহারের কাজে ‘পান্টার’ই বেশ জনপ্রিয়।
    গ্যাথ্রুনে ঘুরতে যাওয়ার সবচাইতে ভালো সময় হলো এপ্রিলের মাঝামাঝি থেকে অক্টোবরের মাঝামাঝি সময়টা।

মাত্র ২,৬০০ মানুষের এই জায়গাটি শহরের কোলাহল থেকে হারিয়ে যাওয়ার মতো শান্ত একটি জায়গা। সেখানকার মানুষদের মতে, মাঝে মাঝে সবচাইতে জোরে যদি কোনো আওয়াজ শোনা যায়, তা হলো হাঁসের ডাক! এখন নিশ্চয়ই আপনার হারিয়ে যেতে ইচ্ছে করছে এই প্রশান্ত ও নিবিড়  গ্রামে, তাই না?

43

Travel / Visit / Tour / The truth about emergencies on planes

« on: August 01, 2017, 12:17:32 PM »

The trill is familiar: “Please listen to the following safety instructions...” But, particularly for frequent fliers, it's tempting not to tune in to the spiel that precedes every flight you will ever take.

Because flying is safe. According to figures from the Civil Aviation Authority, there is an average of one fatality for every 287 million passengers carried to or from British airports. In the past 40 years, survival rates in the event of a crash have increased: between 1971 and 1980, 48 per cent of passengers survived major incidents; that rose to 67 per cent in the decade 2001-2010. Last year, meanwhile, was the second safest year in aviation history – second only to 2013. 

But since emergencies on planes do occur, as passengers on board a Thomas Cook aircraft in Hurghada discovered this week, cabin crew need to know how to handle them.
 

I attended a cabin crew training day at British Airways, and found out a thing or two about emergency situations on board. How do the staff get everyone off as quickly as possible? Should they even be directing people off the plane? And what happens if there's a fire?
Must you listed to the in-flight briefing?

There is no legal requirement for staff to make passengers listen to the in-flight safety announcements that take place at the beginning of every flight. Those who do not follow the instructions are responsible for their own fate. However, cabin crew can intervene if rowdy passengers are preventing others from listening.
Watch: BA's star-studded new safety video
06:08
Is your life jacket actually there?

Staff learn emergency procedures inside-out, but as a passenger, do you check your life jacket is actually there? Although spares are available on board, it is not a routine BA cabin crew requirement to make sure each seat has its inflatable. If you want to be able to don it immediately in the case of an emergency, it's up to you to check it's stowed where it should be. And perhaps you should. George Hobica, airline expert and the founder of airfarewatchdog.com, once told the Huffington Post: “People take those life jackets, located under or between your seat, as souvenirs. It's a vile and punishable offense, and while some airlines do check each seat at the start of every day, a plane could make several trips in a day, during any one of which a passenger could steal a life vest. So, I learned, it's a good idea to check if the life jacket is indeed there.”

And no, First Class passengers do not have their own parachutes.
The paradox of a 'planned' emergency

In terminology that perhaps sounds paradoxical, emergency landings can be “planned” or “unplanned”. The former is when cabin crew know something bad is going to happen - you are going to have to make an emergency landing because of fire or engine failure, for example. The latter is when it just does, without warning - in the event of a terrorist attack, for instance.
Evacuation slides can kill

The emergency slides that you hope you never have to use can be “lethal weapons”, according to James Austin, a British Airways training executive.

If members of cabin crew haven’t made sure the door is in manual mode on landing, when they open it the slide will inflate in less than 10 seconds, and ground staff on the other side of the door “won’t be there much longer”, he adds.
Passengers that refuse to jump can expect a kick

In an emergency, if passengers are refusing to get out, staff need to be prepared to do anything to get them onto the slide, including pushing, kicking, and shouting. It is their responsibility to get people out, and there is no time to accommodate those with vertigo. At full pelt, 150 people can be off in 60 seconds. The crew would also check the flight deck before leaping for the slide themselves. Austin explains: “If the pilots got us down, it might be nice to make sure they are alive.” For security reasons, staff are not allowed to reveal other emergency circumstances in which crew would be allowed onto the flight deck.
Landing on water - and building a raft

“Ditchings”, as landings on water are sometimes known, should only be attempted if there is no other emergency landing option, like, for example, when fuel runs out or becomes contaminated.

To prepare the cabin for this type of evacuation, crew would need to instruct them to put on any available clothes, to improve chances of survival in the water, and secure loose items: once water enters the fuselage, any floating objects could impede evacutation. A reminder of the step we hear so often - “in the event of an emergency, do not inflate your lifejacket until outside the aircraft” - would be given.

The emergency slide then becomes a raft, and cabin crew would have to attempt to link the inflatables together, to make as large a mass as possible, so it is as visible as possible to search parties.

One ditching with fatal consequences was the emergency landing into the Bengawan Solo River, on the island of Java, by Garuda Indonesia Flight 421. The Boeing 737-300 experienced a dual engine failure on January 16, 2002. According to a report from the American National Transportation Safety Board, of the 60 occupants on board, one flight attendant was killed, 12 passengers received serious injuries, and 10 received minor injuries.

More recently, in 2009, a US Airways Airbus A320 was forced to ditch in the Hudson river after a flock of birds reportedly disabled both its engines. All 155 passengers and crew survived, earning the event the name of “Miracle on the Hudson”.

But what if you don't want to get people off the plane? Austin continues: “If you start an evacuation too soon and someone gets sucked into an engine, that’s not a good day, is it?” If the surrounding environment is too dangerous (on fire, stormy sea, a hostile terrain, say), it might be safer to stay in the plane.
The US Airways plane involved in the Miracle on the Hudson
The US Airways plane involved in the Miracle on the Hudson Credit: 2009 Getty Images/Mario Tama
The on-board fires you didn't even know about

Next up, fire. British Airways trainees have a full day on this, since they must be prepared to fight everything from a wisp of smoke escaping from an in-flight entertainment screen, to a potential explosion.

British Airways staff admit that “due to the associated electricals”, plane seats can and do catch fire, although are cagey about how often this actually happens. If there was a serious combustion on board, however, the smoke could be so toxic that two, three or four breaths could kill; if all flammable materials on board ignited, temperatures would reach 1,000C, and passengers would be unlikely to survive.

So would staff tell passengers if there was a fire on board? It would depend on size and location. If the fire was near them, in a door panel or in their seat, then obviously yes, but if it was in the galley, then they needn’t be any the wiser…

British Airways cabin crew trainees learn the ropes in a smoke-filled chamber, and are taught how to don the gas masks staff are equipped with for fire-related emergencies.

In Telegraph Travel's guide to surviving a plane crash, passengers are advised to count the number of rows from their seat to the nearest exit. After joining trainees in the smoke chamber, it was easy to see why - I was completely disorientated. The smoke was not toxic, but my eyes still stung as we clambered to the exit.
 

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Why don't passengers get gas masks?

Putting on the staff gas mask, I felt like Darth Vader. Why don’t passengers get them? I asked. Apparently they are reserved for those actually fighting the fire.

Statistics on how often there is a serious fire on a plane are hard to come by. A 2002 report from the CAA, however, suggested that, from the time of the first indication that there is a fire on board, crew have an average of 17 minutes to get a plane to the ground. Whether the fire is in the engine, the cabin, or is hidden (the most dangerous type of fire, as the delay in confirming its existence may allow it to spread), pilots are advised to land the plane as soon as possible.

Passengers might not have a gas mask in the event of a fire, but cabin crew come up against nastier on-board challenges when they are least well prepared – including exploding coffee machines.

The UK Flight Safety Committee, an association of professionals who seek to improve commercial aviation safety, reported a note from the Aviation Safety Reporting System, a Nasa body that reports safety incidents, which detailed an accident with an exploding coffee machine that took place in January 2014. The flight had to be diverted and a member of cabin crew received second degree burns to face and chest when they “lifted the handle of the coffee maker and hot coffee grounds exploded out onto [their] chest and face.”
This scenario is extremely unlikely
This scenario is extremely unlikely Credit: Credit: AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo/AF archive / Alamy Stock Photo
And what about pilot sickness?

Finally, what would happen if the pilot was taken ill during the flight, and couldn’t land the plane? Late in 2013, Mike Gongol, an off-duty American Air Force pilot responded to the tannoy announcement: “'Are there any non-revenue pilots on board?”, and landed United Airlines flight 1637 on its way from Des Moines, in Iowa, to Denver, in Colorado. The pilot had suffered a cardiac event and Mr Gongol was going to have to land the plane.

British Airways said that for long-haul flights they have up to four people able to fly the plane on board, so should a similar emergency occur, passengers shouldn’t have to take to the flight deck.

Even if, heaven forbid, every pilot on board is incapacitated, all may not be lost. According to Bruno Gilissen, a pilot and contributor to the online forum Quora, landing a plane really isn't impossible. To read his idiot's guide, follow this link.

44

Travel / Visit / Tour / A green skiing revolution? US's biggest ski resorts aim to cut carbon footprint

« on: August 01, 2017, 12:15:48 PM »

Back in June, when President Donald Trump announced that the United States would be withdrawing from the Paris Climate Change Agreement, a number of American ski resorts signed an open letter condemning the decision. With the title We Are Still In, the letter, from a broad swathe of US businesses and organisations, included a pledge to cut carbon emissions and find ways of safeguarding the natural environment.

One of the signatories was Vail Resorts, a giant of the skiing world – the company owns a dozen resorts across the USA, as well as Perisher in Australia and the massive Whistler Blackcomb ski area in Canada. It has now published details of how it plans to follow up that pledge.

The company's new sustainability initiative, Epic Promise for a Zero Footprint (using the “Epic” tagline it also gives its far-reaching lift passes) is on a suitably grand scale. A three-part plan, it involves a complete overhaul of the company’s operations, with the aim of eliminating its carbon emissions, waste production and environmental impact by 2030.

45

Evening Program (FSIT) / How the Tesla Model 3 compares to the Model S and Chevy Bolt

« on: August 01, 2017, 12:13:44 PM »

The Tesla Model 3 is finally (kind of) here. The first 30 Model 3s to roll off the production line were handed over to Tesla employees with reservations at an event this past weekend, and the company now begins the uphill climb of filling the 500,000 other preorders. The introduction of the production version of the Model 3 also meant we finally learned exactly what this car will be capable of. So how does it stack up against the competition?

There are certainly more electric vehicles, plug-in hybrids, and even hydrogen fuel cell cars available than there were when Tesla got started, but there are just four cars with more than 200 miles of range: the Tesla Model 3, the Model S, the Model X, and the Chevy Bolt. Let’s leave the extremely pricey Model X out of the equation here and focus on the other three to get the best sense of how the Model 3 measures up.
Tesla Model 3 vs. Tesla Model S vs. Chevy Bolt
Specification    Tesla Model 3    Tesla Model S    Chevy Bolt
Base price    $35,000    $69,500    $37,495
Battery    ~50–55kWh, reportedly    75kWh    60kWh
Range    220 miles    249 miles    238 miles
Fast charging    130 miles / 30 minutes at Supercharger    170 miles / 30 minutes at Supercharger    Optional (90 miles / 30 minutes)
Home charging (240 volt)    30 miles / hour    52 miles / hour    25 miles / hour
Top speed    130 mph    140 mph    93 mph
0–60 mph time    5.6 seconds    4.3 seconds    6.5 seconds
Horsepower    N/A    382 hp    200 hp
Drive    Rear-wheel drive (AWD optional in 2018)    Rear-wheel drive (AWD optional)    Front-wheel drive
Wheels    18 inches (19 inches optional)    19 inches (21 inches optional)    17 inches
Displays    One 15-inch, center-mounted horizontal touchscreen    One 17-inch, center-mounted vertical touchscreen, one 12.3-inch digital instrument cluster    One 10.2-inch, center-mounted touchscreen display, one 8-inch digital instrument cluster
Connectivity    Wi-Fi / LTE / Bluetooth    Wi-Fi / LTE / Bluetooth    Wi-Fi / LTE / Bluetooth
Warranty    4 years / 50,000 miles    4 years / 50,000 miles    3 years / 36,000 miles
Battery warranty    8 years / 100,000 miles    8 years / infinite miles    8 years / 100,000 miles
Apple CarPlay    No    No    Yes
Android Auto    No    No    Yes
Over-the-air software updates    Yes    Yes    Yes
Keyless entry    Yes    Yes    Yes
Remote start    Yes    Yes    Yes
Lane keep assist    Optional (part of $5,000 Enhanced Autopilot package)    Optional (part of $5,000 Enhanced Autopilot package)    Optional
Adaptive cruise control    Optional (part of $5,000 Enhanced Autopilot package)    Optional (part of $5,000 Enhanced Autopilot package)    No
Collision avoidance / automatic emergency braking    Yes    Yes    Optional
Legroom (front)    42.7 inches    42.7 inches    41.6 inches
Legroom (rear)    35.2 inches    35.4 inches    36.5 inches
Headroom (front)    39.6 inches    38.8 inches    39.7 inches
Headroom (rear)    37.7 inches    35.3 inches    37.9 inches
Shoulder room (front)    56.3 inches    57.7 inches    54.6 inches
Shoulder room (rear)    54.0 inches    55.0 inches    52.8 inches
Hip room (front)    53.4 inches    55.0 inches    51.6 inches
Hip room (rear)    52.4 inches    54.7 inches    50.8 inches
Cargo volume    15.0 cubic feet    31.6 cubic feet    16.9 cubic feet
New order delivery date    12–18 months    1 month    Immediate (based on dealer availability)

This chart tells a big part of the story here, but certainly not all of it. For one thing, Tesla’s not selling the $35,000 base model right away. The company claims that in order to quickly ramp up production, it needs to focus on the longer range (310-mile) battery first. It’s also requiring people who want those first deliveries to add on the premium trim package. So if you are one of the early Model 3 reservation holders and you want your car as soon as possible, you’re going to have to pay at least $49,000. And even when the base-level Model 3 becomes available, you’ll only be able to order it in black. Otherwise the price goes up at least $1,000 before you add on any other options.
Here’s how the Model 3 stacks up against similarly-priced luxury sedans
Photo: Tesla

Of course, not everyone who’s considering buying a Model 3 is dead set on transitioning to an electric car. Some people are looking at the Model 3 as a competitor to cars like BMW’s 3 Series, or the Volvo S90. Does the Model 3 hold up against any of those, even with all the options?

The Chevy Bolt has a higher base price than the Model 3, and it’s also missing some desirable safety features like lane keep assist and collision avoidance, as well as the option for fast charging. In order to get those more advanced safety features, you have to buy the “Premier” trim version of the Bolt, which brings the price up to $42,760. Adding the option for DC fast charging will bump the price to $43,510.

Of course, all of these prices can change depending on whether you can get help from a federal or state tax credit. The US government has been partially subsidizing the cost of clean vehicles like EVs and plug-in hybrids in order to help grow the market, and they can take a significant chunk out of the price of these cars.

A $7,500 federal tax credit is available for each of these cars, but the state credit changes based on where you live. In California, for example, you could receive up to $2,500 in addition to the federal tax credit, bringing something like the Model 3’s base price down to $25,000. The state credits scale depending on which tax bracket you’re in, though, and there are other factors that could change the total amount. It’s worth investigating how your own state handles these clean vehicle rebates. (This post from Edmunds is a good place to start, as is this interactive map from Plug-in America.)
"That’s a nice federal tax credit. Shame if something were to happen to it..."

There’s a bigger catch here, though: the full $7,500 federal tax credit only applies for the first 200,000 eligible vehicles that a manufacturer sells. After that, the rebate decreases by 50 percent every six months until it’s retired. Tesla has sold over 100,000 vehicles and will likely hit the 200,000 mark sometime in early 2018. With such a vast backlog of preorders, it’s hard to say how much of the federal rebate will be available to new reservations, or whether it will be available at all by the time they complete their orders.

The Bolt might be in safer territory here. Chevrolet has much more manufacturing capacity than Tesla, but sales of the Bolt have been slow since the car became available at the very end of 2016. Chevy makes other rebate-eligible cars, like the Volt, which has sold fairly well and been around for longer. But its parent company GM isn’t expected to reach the 200,000-car mark until 2018 or 2019 at the earliest.

All this aside though, there are pluses and minuses to each of these three EVs. The Model S is the most capable, but the most expensive. The Model 3 is potentially the cheapest, but also the least available. The Bolt is a great middle ground, and is available now, though it doesn’t come with the same kind of luxury touch that Tesla is known for. What’s certain is that the competition is only going to increase. We’re likely to see a handful of EVs with 200 or more miles of range hit the market in the next year or so, with the 2018 Nissan Leaf leading the charge.