Comic JK 311: A Fateful Choice. At last a cartoon about inheritance!

“This limit, which psychologists dubbed the “magical number seven” when they discovered it in the 1950s, is the typical capacity of what’s called the brain’s working memory.”

Experimental evidence why study breaks are good and cramming doesn’t work!

via Digg

If the comments are ugly, the code is ugly | ITworld. Programming, whether you're doing it as an open source enthusiast or because you're workin' for The Man, is an exercise in attention to detail. Someone who writes software must be a nit-picker, or the code won't work.

via Slashdot

Java String Concatenation and Performance ~ Joey’s Scribble’s. “The quick and dirty way to concatenate strings in Java is to use the concatenation operator (+). This will yield a reasonable performance if you need to combine two or three strings (fixed-size). But if you want to concatenate n strings in a loop, the performance degrades in multiples of n.” An article that compares the speed of  4 different ways to concatenating Strings in Java.  Using  StringBuilder is clearly the fastest but it is interesting to see the range of differences. The comments to the article also mention when StringBuffer should be preferred.

via Dz0ne

Clever fools: Why a high IQ doesn’t mean you’re smart “…how can a “smart” person act foolishly?” An interesting article with examples, references and suggestions.

DocWeb – Java API
“A Sun-sponsored community JavaDocs site where members: Translate JavaDocs, Offer Bug References, Contribute Notes, Provide Code Examples & Rate Community Contributions” — a new way to view JavaDocs, includes more code samples!

Security Fix – Tighter Security Urged for Businesses Banking Online  “An industry group representing some of nation’s largest banks sent a private alert to its members last week warning about a surge in reported cybercrime targeting small to mid-sized business. The advisory, issued by the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, recommends that commercial banking customers take some fairly rigorous steps to secure their online banking accounts.” Even companies running anti-virus programs had serious losses. A serious warning! (via slashdot)

gulli: Bundestrojaner: A programmer speaks out  “His job there was to code malware that would allow to invade PCs of private users. ERA IT Solutions should in particular be involved in constructing trojans which allow the wiretapping of VoIP calls.”  A very interesting and enlightening interview.  (via slashdot)

Slashdot Technology Story | IPv6 Challenges and Opportunities A slashdot article with good IPv6 links: a video of IPv6 issues, business case and an iPhone app (IPv4 death march).

10 Must-Dos for the First Week of College – College – Lifehacker Some excellent suggestions! Also good links for textbook shopping. Please read. (via digg)