Slashdot Mirror
20 Freescale Semiconductor Employees On Missing Malaysia Airlines Flight
NeverVotedBush writes with news reported by CNN that a passenger manifest for the flight that went missing on its way from Malaysia to China indicates that "Twenty of the passengers aboard the flight work with Freescale Semiconductor, a company based in Austin, Texas. The company said that 12 of the employees are from Malaysia and eight are from China," and writes "Apparently, at least two passengers used stolen passports to board."
The plane was carrying a cargo of 400 million dollars in Bitcoin. nuff said.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
I watched a documentary about Flight 447 (the Airbus flight that was lost off Brazil) and they mentioned that modern planes send tons of position and other data per flight. Seems the current system is called ACARS.
Anyway, from a probability perspective it seems highly unlikely that a plane would disappear from radar precisely at the time that a data transponder stopped sending position fixes, unless, you know, the plane crashed right there.
I mean, the media makes it sound like the search radius is "flight speed * remaining potential flight time at current fuel burn rate".
Except of course you are conflating "fear of or the risk of terrorism are overstated" with "there is no such thing as terrorism." I could get shot by some nut in public tomorrow, but I'm not going to structure my life or society around the fear of that possibility.
Freescale Semiconductor did not write that blurb about the stolen passports and the way it is displayed here makes it seem that there is a connection between the passports and the company's employees.
Granted, it has been a while since I worked for the part of Motorola that became Freescale, but I am fairly certain there were rules against the maximum number of employees that could take any one flight. I think it was 2 for executives and 6 or 8 for regular employees. Situations like this, rare as they are, was the reason. I wonder if Freescale still has those rules and ignored them, or didn't copy them over. Any current employees have insight?
I hope the families receive meaningful information as to what and why this happened, and don't have to spend a year or longer wondering (at least for the what, why usually takes a lot longer with airline crashes).
The 777 is one of the safest commercial planes in the aviation history, with only one accident with fatalities prior to this. Having just flown on a 777 (Cathay Pacific) out of Kuala Lumpur less than 30 days ago, however, I will say that their airport security was very lax. When I set off the metal detector and was wanded, the security person stopped at the first thing that might have set it off (I had left a metal-bodied pen in my shirt pocket) and didn't go on to find I also forgot to take out my cell phone and earphones from a different pocket (cargo pants). That was just for entry to the main concourse, though. To actually get on the plane, Cathay Pacific required a secondary screening that was much more rigorous from what I observed of how they dealt with other people (I remembered to put away my pen and phone that time). Malaysia Air did not do a secondary screening for a domestic flight when I boarded in Sandakan a few days earlier, but the concourse screening was also more intensive.
As there is no American aboard that plane, move along, there is nothing to see here ...
Not so. There were three Americans in the group of 239 that died on that flight.
The premise of your comment is ignorant.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
... from a probability perspective it seems highly unlikely that a plane would disappear from radar precisely at the time that a data transponder stopped sending position fixes, unless, you know, the plane crashed right there ...
You are talking from a perspective of a Western folk who has no idea what is going on in other parts of the world.
The airplane belongs to the Malaysian Airline System (MAS). The plane took off from the KLIA airport, again, of Malaysia. That radar which did the tracking (actually there were 4 radars doing the tracking) were all operated by ... Malaysians.
Furthermore, the pilot and first officer of that plane were from Malaysia.
Everything points to the same thing - Malaysia - a country whereby RACE means everything.
That pilot is a Malay. The first officer is also a Malay. Both of them graduated from MARA college, a college which has produced the kind of graduates that the private sectors of Malaysia do not want to hire.
The reason is simple:
Graduates from the MARA college (now promoted to become a "university") are all from the Malay race (you need to be a Malay before you can enroll into that college, btw) - which essentially means ... MARA takes in people who are NOT qualified to go to college any where else, and award them college degrees even if they can't do anything right.
In such context - your "probability perspective" will never work as the whole thing is so skewed out of whack.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Hold on a sec we don't know if they're dead yet. I mean they could have been abducted by aliens you know.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
No, alien abductions only seem to happen to the most stupid people you ever meet. There were way too many smart people on the plane to have the alien encounter (cause aliens are scared of smart people).
I dunno. I realize things around here have somewhat changed; hell, I'm pretty new here, anyway. I would rather not be the "is this really news for nerds?" guy. Actually I haven't noticed that slogan printed on this site since certain changes were implemented.
Actually, the mandatory on-topicness for tech news on Slashdot died on 11 Sep 2001. That topic got thousands of posts from "the audience" (*cough*), and tech relevance forever after took a back seat to potential ad impressions for proposed content.
I know, I know, people always point to the "...stuff that matters" part of the slogan. However, that's a retcon construction, as proven by the fact that the content was on-topic for years before they chose to digress. It's like how the U.S. Constitution is basically now encompassed by the "General welfare means the federal government has an unlimited mandate to do whatever they want" and "everything is interstate commerce" retcons while practically everything else in the document is considered optional.
I guess it's refreshing that Dice ditched the slogan, since it hasn't been applicable in years.
Fuck Beta.
No, alien abductions only seem to happen to the most stupid people you ever meet. There were way too many smart people on the plane to have the alien encounter (cause aliens are scared of smart people).
Also, all alien encounters seems to be limited to what US government can cover up, the aliens doesn't seem to be interested in the rest of the world.
"Malaysia - a country whereby RACE means everything."
Thats in 3 weeks time, and since everything in Formula 1 is different this year who knows whats going to happen
Nice try, but the captain has been flying commercial jets since the early 1980s, according to the BBC.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
He's got 1 whole digit more than you. You've 2 more than someone else I know.
You can put the e-peen away now.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Hey, look! Slashdot mods as informative racist rants against Malaysians!
I know we're a bit of a groupthink crowd, but seriously. Stop. Just stop.