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Comment Negative SLOC (Score 1) 391

by lanced (#37039976) Attached to: Lines of code I've written in the last 24 hours:
You ever had a day when you refactor and your weekly SLOC count goes down? The code comes out so concise and so much redundancy has been removed that you technically wrote negative lines of code, but the system feels better. Also, I've had days when I ripped apart other peoples code and YANKED out HUNDREDS of LINES of code, without reducing a single feature. Dead code is a such a waste. Again that's a negative SLOC count, but worth every minute. However, that's not today. They don't let me touch code anymore; they got tired of me killing the metrics, so they just put me on the test team and told me to break stuff until it works.
Power

Submission + - Top Home Energy Hogs Are DVRs and Cable Boxes 1

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Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Elisabeth Rosenthal writes that cable setup boxes and DVRs have become the single largest electricity drain in many American homes, causing an increase of over $10 for a home with many devices with some typical home entertainment configurations eating more power than a new refrigerator. The set-top boxes are energy hogs mostly because their drives, tuners and other components are running full tilt, 24 hours a day, even when not in active use consuming $3 billion in electricity in the US with 66 percent of that power wasted when no one is watching and shows are not being recorded. “People in the energy efficiency community worry a lot about these boxes, since they will make it more difficult to lower home energy use,” says John Wilson, a former member of the California Energy Commission. “Companies say it can’t be done or it’s too expensive. But in my experience, neither one is true. It can be done, and it often doesn’t cost much, if anything.” The perpetually “powered on” state is largely a function of design and programming choices made by electronics companies and cable and Internet providers, which are related to the way cable networks function in the United States. Similar devices in some European countries can automatically go into standby mode when not in use, cutting power drawn by half and go into an optional “deep sleep,” which can reduce energy consumption by about 95 percent (PDF) compared with when the machine is active but cable companies say US customers will not tolerate the time it takes to reboot the system once the system has been shut down or put to sleep. Although the EPA has established Energy Star standards for set-top boxes and has plans to tighten them significantly by 2013 cable providers and box manufacturers like Cisco Systems, Samsung and Motorola currently do not feel consumer pressure to improve box efficiency. When Wilson asked box makers why the hard drives were on all the time, using so much power. The answer was: “Nobody asked us to use less.”"

Comment I have played for both teams (Score 1) 583

by lanced (#35465222) Attached to: CS Profs Debate Role of Math In CS Education
It bugged me when I was in school that there wasn't an option for Applied CS in my undergrad program. Then I got into industry and found that the majority of my useful skills were derived from subjects that I taught myself to make me a well-rounded engineer. I felt a little short-changed by my education. However, as my skills aged, I found that I was leaning more and more and my theoretical skills to supplement my abilities and keep up with the fresh meat that came behind me. As I moved up, practical skills were pushed aside as I made use of concepts to help design and diagnose the systems that I develop. In short, like most things, the real answer isn't 'either/or' but rather both. You need to give the students a full tool box that works now, works later, and provides a way to make the box bigger quickly and easily. And a student that doesn't want both sets (theory and practice) probably shouldn't attempt either.

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