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Comment: Re:Population is not a real issue here (Score 1) 625

by TheCount22 (#44590063) Attached to: Aging Is a Disease; Treat It Like One

I noticed that everyone quickly jumped to the population problem. In fact this is not an issue at all.

Everything that grows exponentially has a doubling rate. One could easily argue that the real problem is in the newer generations since they will always represent significantly bigger population than the previous one. So the issue is not people not dying quickly, the problem is people being born. If everyone stopped having kids and would magically become biologically immortal the growth rate would be negative or 0% (due to the fact that people die in accidents).

Oh and by the way the only sustainable growth rate is exactly 0% not more. Anything more would mean it has a doubling rate. It's basic math.

It's true that population is not a big issue. But I am afraid the corrupt would use it to maintain their status indefinitely.

+ - Java concurrency is orders of magnitude harder than people think->

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes "A user on StackOverflow claims to have lost $12 million of equipment due to a seemingly obscure behavior with concurrency in Java. A commenter on Hacker News writes

How can anyone program sanely in the presence of this: currentPos = new Point(currentPos.x+1, currentPos.y+1); does a few things, including writing default values to x and y (0) and then writing their initial values in the constructor. Since your object is not safely published those 4 write operations can be freely reordered by the compiler / JVM. [...] I'm not anywhere near smart or careful enough for that... I think I'll stick with Haskell.


Link to Original Source

+ - Syrian Electronic Army has proven one thing about the cybersecurity community

Submitted by Jeff Peters
Jeff Peters writes "From an editorial at HackSurfer describing the problem with cybersecurity that has emerged following the SEA hacks:

The state of the cybersecurity profession today, as well as the software industry it drives, is best described by using a religion analogy. Our business leaders are dependent on a largely crowded, confused, splintered, factious, self-righteous community of “holier than thou” experts and engineers convinced of the supremacy of their 10 billion differing points of view. If you've worked in the information technology industry as I have for 20 years (recovering software engineer), you may not admit it openly, but you know exactly what I’m talking about. One of my closest friends, a name most of you would recognize in the IT industry, once described most system administrators by saying:

“They’re either completely terrible or they’re self-righteous dicks. I always choose the dicks because at least I’ll be a little safer.”

Kinda captures it for me. “Sharing” and “plays well with others” not anywhere in the definition. I won’t even repeat his sentiments on most CISSPs."

+ - Media Campaign Against Snowden?->

Submitted by sl4shd0rk
sl4shd0rk writes "With Snowden living somewhere in Russia, and the US having very little course of action in way of damage control, it would seem the best US option would be to attack Snowden's credibility. Perhaps muddy the waters with something germane to System administration, yet somehow easily construed into a criminal act. According to Reuters, Snowden "began downloading documents" related to illegal US spying programs perhaps as early as April of 2012. Of course, the sources of this claim are "U.S. officials and other sources familiar with the matter" which roughly narrows it down from Gen. Michael Hayden to just about anyone who blogged on it. Fact of the matter is, without more details, Snowden could have accessed documents simply by performing backup routines or investigating file system issues. Things which happen quite regularly during the daily course of system adminstration. Without more specificity on the method in question, one is left with an impression from the headline, one of a nefarious circumstance."
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+ - FISC Secret Court Chief Judge: We can't effectively oversee the NSA-> 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward

President Obama: "We also have federal judges that we’ve put in place who are not subject to political pressure,” Obama said at a news conference in June. “They’ve got lifetime tenure as federal judges, and they’re empowered to look over our shoulder at the executive branch to make sure that these programs aren’t being abused.”

Not so much, Mr. President."

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Submitted by Dialecticus

+ - Happy birthday, Debian!->

Submitted by stderr_dk



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+ - Incredible Footage Shows a Perseid Meteor Exploding->

Submitted by Nancy_A


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+ - Ubuntu Edge Now Most-Backed Crowdfunding Campaign Ever

Submitted by Volanin

+ - Aging Is a Disease. Treat It Like One. 1

Submitted by theodp


Submitted by NettiWelho

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+ - New GMail compose inspires user backlash 1

Submitted by s13g3

+ - "451" Error Will Tell Users When Governments Are Blocking Websites->

Submitted by Daniel_Stuckey
Link to Original Source

+ - Rare 388-Year-Old Bonsai Tree Survived Hiroshima Atomic Blast-> 1

Submitted by Rebecka
Rebecka writes "According to a report from TwistedSifter.com, one in particular, a rare Japanese White Pine from Miyajima is not only 388-years-old, but also reportedly survived the Hiroshima blast in Japan on Aug. 6, 1945. The bonsai, currently on display at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum at the United State National Arboretum in Washington, D.C., has been deemed a “Hiroshima Survivor.”

The bonsai which was originally created in 1625 and owned by the late Masaru Yamaki, a bonsai master and longtime member of the Japanese bonsai community, was reportedly caring for the specific tree among others the day of the Hiroshima bombing. According to the National Bonsai Foundation the tree survived even after the bomb exploding less than two miles from their family hom"

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Comment: It does matter (Score 2) 479

by TheCount22 (#41791423) Attached to: Does Coding Style Matter?

When writing code everything matters.

Forcing people to follow a style I think is counter productive. It prevents the styles from evolving. In recent years for example people have been moving towards using better naming rather than commenting.

Strict rules prevent creativity and for that reason I disagree with the conclusions of the article to require one. Requiring anything more than just to follow a style no matter what that style may be and to try to maintain the existing code in the style that it was in is about as much as you can do.

