Even if terrorists were able to pull off one attack per year on the scale of the 9/11 atrocity, that would mean your one-year risk would be one in 100,000 and your lifetime risk would be about one in 1300. (300,000,000 ÷ 3,000 = 100,000 ÷ 78 years = 1282) In other words, your risk of dying in a plausible terrorist attack is much lower than your risk of dying in a car accident, by walking across the street, by drowning, in a fire, by falling, or by being murdered.

So do these numbers comfort you? If not, that's a problem. Already, security measures—pervasive ID checkpoints, metal detectors, and phalanxes of security guards—increasingly clot the pathways of our public lives. It's easy to overreact when an atrocity takes place—to heed those who promise safety if only we will give the authorities the "tools" they want by surrendering to them some of our liberty.

It seems to me getting good at writing comments is an under-appreciated part of a Programmer's development. However, I feel that this is a part of programming that's almost as important as writing code itself. So, here are some of the biggest misconception about comments:

Over time, though, my initially rosy feelings towards ORMs have begun to sour. I gradually realised I was spending a disproportionate amount of time trying to coax the ORM into doing my bidding - and when I succeeded, the results were often ugly, slow and needlessly opaque. Analysing the performance of some of the more complicated portions of my data access layer was often painful, and I spent cumulative hours poring over generated SQL, trying to figure out what the ORM was doing and why. Usually, improving performance involved side-stepping the ORM altogether. Recently, a particularly gnarly performance issue prompted me to ditch the ORM from a project altogether, with surprisingly pleasant results.

The move of SWIFT the data server to Switzerland would be an excellent opportunity to stop the nearly unlimited access of US authorities on EU bank transactions. But EU justice and interior minister are apparently keen agree a deal as soon as possible, on 30 November. Why 30 November? Because one day later, on 1 December 2009, the EU’s Lisbon Treaty will be in force and would allow the European Parliament to play a major role in the negotiations of the deal with the USA. A deal one day before will be a slap in the face of democracy in the EU.

Complaining about poor internal documentation is an old practice, but there's a reason that doing it right is important. Your comments are the only way you have to speak to the next person looking at this software (that may be you) about the larger scope of the software, not just this line-or-two. What were you thinking when you wrote this code? Yes, "self-documenting code" is a goal, but it's arrogant to assume that you've achieved it, any more than it's arrogant of me to assume that my words need no editing. (They do. I'm happiest when I have an editor.)

Another common problem in comment ugliness is developers who update the code and don't update the comments; as one consultant pointed out, comments aren't tested. But doesn't that show a lack of attention to detail, too? Anytime you aren't paying full attention, you're apt to drop a logic bit.

1. CRUD is crud. The fundamental activities of Create, Read, Update and Delete are fundamentally wrong-headed. Updates to data should never be allowed, because they destroy information and Deletes should never be allowed for the same reason. When data changes the database should just add another record and note (by any mechanism that works) the previous value for that record. If the database gets too large then data should be archived from it. The right set of activities is thus CRA, Create, Read, Archive.

So if intelligence in itself is not a factor in popularity, why are smart kids so consistently unpopular? The answer, I think, is that they don't really want to be popular.

"A lot of people worry about having SUVs but they don't worry about having Alsatians and what we are saying is, well, maybe you should be because the environmental impact ... is comparable."

Anhängarna av mer engelska menar, naturligtvis, att det inte är någon fara för svenskan. Jag menar att vi genom vissa politiker, företagsledare och myndighetschefer är på väg att försättas i en kolonial situation där svenskan förpassas till att vara ett fritidsspråk. Hur kan läget vara lugnt för svenskan och hur kan det vara en ”utveckling” att hela tiden ersätta svenskspråkiga företeelser med engelskspråkiga dito? Det är istället tal om en avveckling där svenskan försvinner med nuvarande hållning. Inga andra än vi svenskspråkiga kan eller kommer att försvara vårt språk. Min uppmaning lyder: Låt inte hycklande företrädare schabbla bort rätten till svenskan utan agera för att språkfrågan på allvar kommer upp på den politiska dagordningen inför valet 2010. Se svenskan som en tillgång, inte som en belastning.

Guess what? Almost all capacity changes are foreseeable. If you had done proper capacity planning, you would have had two key advantages:

* You would have added the capacity before it was needed, guaranteeing that the proper capacity is always in place.

* You would have discovered any operational issues with Amazon S3 before they impacted your operations (and thus allow you to take alternative steps to deal with the situation).