e Billion Dollars 

<Insert Dr. Evil Laugh Here> More Reasons to Love Google. When I originally heard about the IPO, it didn't even register... but Chris Sells Points Out that the value of the IPO is the Mathematical Constant e (Euler's number) multiplied by 1 billion. Those Google people sure are clever.

Twenty Years Late? 

Florida town will soon have cameras and computers running background checks on every car and driver.

One of the nation's wealthiest towns will soon have cameras and computers running background checks on every car and driver that passes through.

Police Chief Clay Walker said cameras will take infrared photos recording a car's tag number, then software will automatically run the numbers through law enforcement databases. A 911 dispatcher is alerted if the car is stolen or is the subject of a "be on the lookout" warning.

Not quite 1984... but we're getting there.

Now That's Patriotism 

Take One For The Country... Patriotism Redefined.

Spread the Word 

A Plea from a Marine in Iraq

In an industry that feeds on ratings and bad news, a failure in Iraq would be a goldmine. When our so-called "trusted" American media takes a quote from an Iraqi doctor as the gospel truth over that of the men and women that are daily fighting to protect the right to freedom of press, you know something is wrong. That doctor claimed that out of 600 Iraqis, that were casualties of the fighting, the vast majority of them were women, children and the elderly. This is totally absurd. In the history of man, no one has spent more time and effort, often to the detriment of our own mission, to be more discriminate in our targeting of the enemy than the American military. The Marines and Soldiers serving in Iraq have gone through extensive training in order to limit the amount of innocent casualties and collateral damage.
...
That is why I am asking for your support. Become a voice of truth in your community. Wherever you are fight the lies of the enemy. Don't buy into the pessimism and apathy that says, "It's hopeless," "They hate us too much," "That part of the world is just too messed up," "It's our fault anyway," "We're to blame," and so forth. Whether you're in middle school, working at a 9-5 job, retired, or a stay-at-home mom you can make a huge difference! There is nothing more powerful than the truth. So, when you watch the news and see doomsday predictions and spiteful opinions on our efforts over here, you can refute them by knowing that we are doing a tremendous amount of good. Spread the word. No one is poised to make such an amazing contribution to the everyday lives of Iraqis and the rest of the Arab world than the American Armed Forces. By making this a place where liberty can finally grow, we are making the whole world safer. Your efforts at home are directly tied to our success. You are the soldiers at home fighting the war of perception. So I'm asking you as a fellow fighting man: Do your duty. Stop the attempts of the enemy wherever you are. You are a mighty force for good, because truth is on your side. Together we will win this fight and ensure a better world for the future.

Fight the Good Fight.

The Latest Tourist Hot Spot... Literally 

Tourists flock to the dead zone of Chernobyl

Nearly 20 years after the world's worst nuclear disaster, the Chernobyl power plant and the poisonous wasteland that surrounds it has become an unlikely tourist destination.

Day-trippers armed with Geiger counters take guided tours from Kiev through military checkpoints to the doorstep of the reactor. Increasing numbers of adventurers are finding their way into the irradiated zone, seeking the eerie thrill of entering family homes unchanged since they were evacuated at a few minutes' notice, two decades ago

I'd hate to see what sort of stuff is available in the gift shop. So what did you get on your vacation? Oh nothing much... just some lesions and a tail.

How to Buy a French Veto 

Buying a French Veto takes a little more than a good dinner and a bottle of wine... but it is really easy to do:

ANYONE who pines for genuine international multilateralism would do well to follow the bribes now being uncovered in the United Nations' Oil-for- Food scandal.
Why did France and Russia oppose efforts to topple Saddam Hussein's regime? And why did they press constantly, throughout the '90s, for an expansion of Iraqi oil sales? Was it their empathy for the starving children of that impoverished nation? Their desire to stop the United States from arrogantly imposing its vision upon the Middle East?

It now looks like they it was simply because they were on the take. Saddam was their cash cow. If President Bush has suffered some discredit over his apparently false - but not disingenuous - claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the lapse is minor compared to the outright personal selfishness and criminality that appears to have motivated many of those who opposed his efforts to rid the world of one of its worst dictators.

Throughout the '90s, France and Russia badgered the United States and Britain to increase Iraqi oil production. President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair fought them at each step, but then reluctantly gave way. First Iraq was allowed to sell 500,000 barrels daily. Then, on Franco-Russian insistence, it was raised to 1 million, then to 2 million and, finally, to 3 million barrels a day.

So why doesn't this story have more attention in the media? Spoons has a handy chart to help explain it.

What Does WMD Look Like Anyway? 

Saddam's WMD Have Been Found... but not recently... they were found a while ago. The media just doesn't know what WMD really looks like, so everything that has been found thus far can't be it... right?

In virtually every case - chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missiles - the United States has found the weapons and the programs that the Iraqi dictator successfully concealed for 12 years from U.N. weapons inspectors.
...
A prison laboratory complex that may have been used for human testing of BW agents and "that Iraqi officials working to prepare the U.N. inspections were explicitly ordered not to declare to the U.N." Why was Saddam interested in testing biological-warfare agents on humans if he didn't have a biological-weapons program?

"Reference strains" of a wide variety of biological-weapons agents were found beneath the sink in the home of a prominent Iraqi BW scientist. "We thought it was a big deal," a senior administration official said. "But it has been written off [by the press] as a sort of 'starter set.'"
...
But what are "stockpiles" of CW agents supposed to look like? Was anyone seriously expecting Saddam to have left behind freshly painted warehouses packed with chemical munitions, all neatly laid out in serried rows, with labels written in English? Or did they think that a captured Saddam would guide U.S. troops to smoking vats full of nerve gas in an abandoned factory? In fact, as recent evidence made public by a former operations officer for the Coalition Provisional Authority's (CPA's) intelligence unit in Iraq shows, some of those stockpiles have been found - not all at once, and not all in nice working order - but found all the same.
...
Caches of "commercial and agricultural" chemicals don't match the expectation of "stockpiles" of chemical weapons. But, in fact, that is precisely what they are. "At a very minimum," Hanson tells Insight, "they were storing the precursors to restart a chemical-warfare program very quickly." Kay and Duelfer came to a similar conclusion, telling Congress under oath that Saddam had built new facilities and stockpiled the materials to relaunch production of chemical and biological weapons at a moment's notice.

The entire article is good... basically what this boils down to is that the media wants something huge, glaring and obvious that can get good ratings when they do a Breaking News spot. Anything short of that will be ignored in the hopes that something bigger will be found later. In the end what we'll find is that all the little barrels here, and the hidden stockpiles of "pesticides" hidden in ammo dumps will add up to a huge stockpile in the end. Shame on the media.

The Media and Politicians... 

Here's a few different stories on the media... and their interactions with politicians (both via Instapundit.

First from Britian. The Sun is holding their people responsible for lining Saddam's pockets with UNSCAM:

SADDAM-supporting MP George Galloway blew his top yesterday after The Sun sent him a barrel of OIL.

Mr Galloway claims he has never seen one — so we arranged for him to have his own 200-litre drum.

It came as the Glasgow Kelvin MP fiercely denied pocketing £1million from Iraqi tyrant Saddam.

Read the whole thing, including the pictures of the barrel and Mr. Glasgow hiding it in the hedges.

Second, from the US... President Bush reminds the media of something we all know by now:

And the reporter then said: Well, how do you then know, Mr. President, what the public is thinking? And Bush, without missing a beat said: You're making a powerful assumption, young man. You're assuming that you represent the public. I don't accept that.

Go to The Instapundit Archive for his take, and all sort of reactions from his readers, including some emails he received from former journalists:

President Bush is right. The media do not represent the people. Journalists (I hesitate to call them reporters because they are all failures at that job), whether working for electronic or print media, represent a minority of vocal holier/smarter than thou liberals who would make all important decisions for the "great, unwashed masses" that comprise the electorate in our country.

I am a former reporter. I have a journalism degree. I left the business because of its drift from real reportage to advocacy and the abandonment of journalistic standards and ethics in favor of the kind of slanting and spinning we see today on the pages of the morning paper and on the evening news broadcasts. I knew it was time to find another way to make a living when I watched Peter Jennings, on a closed circuit feed to ABC affiliates, berate the American voter for Ronald Reagan's election victory over Jimmy Carter. Jennings, who was a Canadian citizen at the time, repeated that disgraceful performance in a toned down manner thenight he ascribed the Gingrich led Republicans' takeover of the House of Representatives to a temper tantrum by the voters.

This is why I personally don't watch mainstream news... I prefer to read my news from all sorts of blogs out there... which is actual fair, unbiased coverage of stories. Not only that, when the make a mistake, they put the correction right along side the story, where you can read it right away... not 50 pages away in little itty bitty type that nobody can read or even find.

Speaking of which... I really have to update my links.

Oh Well Then... That's Different 

Kerry Says His 'Family' Owns SUV, Not He...

Does John Kerry, who supports higher automobile fuel economy standards, own a gas-guzzling SUV? There is one in the family, but Kerry said it's not his.
...
"I don't own an SUV," said Kerry, who supports increasing existing fuel economy standards to 36 miles per gallon by 2015 in order to reduce the nation's dependence on foreign oil supplies.
...
Kerry thought for a second when asked whether his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, had a Suburban at their Ketchum, Idaho, home. Kerry said he owns and drives a Dodge 600 and recently bought a Chrysler 300M. He said his wife owns the Chevrolet SUV.

"The family has it. I don't have it," he said.

Oh... the family has it. That's totally different. That's not hypocritical at all... as long as you don't consider yourself a member of your own family. Who does he think he's kidding?

UNSCAM Blog 

Here is a blog that is kept up to date on the latest news reports from around the world on UNSCAM (what the blogosphere is calling the UN Oil for Food Scandal) called Friends of Saddam. Since the mainstream media still is having a hard time admitting that their darling the UN actually might have been very corrupt here... this might be your best source on what really happened, and on the details of any investigations.

Battle History of Zero Bug Bounce 

ZBB... Zero Bug Bounce. A concept not a lot of programmers are familiar with, but one that I think is important to know about. The Microsoft bloggers have been posting a lot on this lately... although nobody actually has mentioned what product(s) their working on... I can only hope that they are hard at work on Whidbey trying to get it out the door sooner than anticipated. Matt Warren has one of his elaborate and colorful posts on the carnage that ensues after a Zero Bug Bounce Battle entitled Code Warriors.

Eric Gunnerson explains ZBB as the Acronym of the Day, while Shaykat has more on Bug Bounces from the perspective of a product manager.

Happy Bug Slaying.

The Scourge of Commuters 

OK... this one is really bugging me. I was driving to work this morning and came up to a stop light as the second car in line. At this particular intersection, people tend to form two lines because there are a lot of people who left turn there... but I stayed in the left because the one car ahead of me didn't have his turn signal on. But of course the left "lane" his stacked with cars because the car behind me has it's turn signal on. A minute later, the light turns green, the car ahead pulls slowly into the intersection, stops, and puts on his turn signal. And now I'm screwed. I wait there as car after car to the right blows by... laughing cause some moron doesn't understand the simple concept of signaling when you're supposed to. How hard is this concept people? At that point, he might as well not have put on his turn signal at all. So I have to wait there until the light turns yellow... he waits forever to clear the intersection, and I actually get a chance to go.

These people are the scourge of good intentioned drivers everywhere. So to review, that little bar sticking out to the left of your steering wheel is a turn signal. Use it! Use it early and often!

Looking for Toto 

Went riding this weekend on my new bike. The wind was whipping both Saturday and Sunday... I thought I would see Toto floating around there, or at least some flying cows. What's cool is that I never would have gotten half as far as I did on my Mtn Bike... now I can just duck my head down and haul butt. The gearing is great. Its just going to take some time to get used to the thin tires... its much less stable then what I'm used to. What was freaky was when I was riding perpendicular to the direction of the wind... I could hear it howl threw the wheels... In fact it almost blew me over. The wind can definitely be demoralizing. I just keep telling myself... I'm a reed in the wind... neither opposing nor being opposed. Of course reeds get blown every which way and down... which isn't too good. Maybe I need to be something else in the wind? Lets see... a fart in the wind? Yuck. A ghost in the wind? At least the howling was right. I'll have to think on that one.

I'll be competing in the Lake Mills Triathlon in June. I'm also definitely doing the Devil's Challenge again in September. I did that one last year... and want to better my time. I also want to do at least one in between... but I haven't decided which one to do yet.

More to Look Forward to in VS.NET 2005 

That of course is the offical name (for now) of what had been code named Whidbey. Anyone who has been working with .NET lately has seen the now infamous .config files which are "supposed" to make application settings a breeze. Wrong. Why? Although Microsoft provided a half way decent (though by no means great) API for reading in these files, they don't provide any way to save them back out! Who was the rocket scientist who decided on that? So the only way to actually change application settings is to tell a user to open up Active Visual NotePad.Net + Enterprise (aka Notepad) and edit some XML? I don't think so. Thats why hardly anyone actually uses .config files. Most people roll their own XML file format that is easier to write to.

Well have no fear... the people at Microsoft actually listed and have revamped the API for managing .config files so that now Configuration is a breeze. Amen.

In Case of Nuclear War... Don't Pollute 

From the You've Got to Be Kidding Me Files:

In order to comply with EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) regulations, and at a cost of about $5.2 million per ICBM, the rocket motors on 500 Minuteman III missiles will be replaced with new ones. These rockets will emit less toxic chemicals when used.

But wait... the rocket motors will pollute less... but don't nuclear warheads pollute when they detonate? You might ask... shouldn't those be made to not pollute according to EPA statutes?

EPA regulations do not apply in foreign countries, so no changes are being made to reduce the harmful environmental effects of the nuclear warheads.

Phew.

I wonder what down on their luck military contractor got that one pushed through?

Null as a Way of Being 

I have this little issues at work from time to time. One of the members of my group is a hardcore database developer. In fact, he's on the board of PASS (Professional Assocation of SQL Server). He lives and breathes databases. I on the other hand live and breathe programming languages. Right now, I live and breathe C#/.NET. Before that, I lived and breathed C++. As it turns out, one of the major differences between the databases and languages is how you handle Null.

Null is an interesting beast in the computer world. For my database programming afficianodos, Null is beautiful. You can pass around Null, and even operate on Null as if it were any other value. For us in the C# world, its a little different. You can check for Null (as you often should)... and in fact I often times use it as a special flag. But if you try to operate on Null... you are greated with an ugly little surprise... the Null Reference Exception. We often times have issues when the database returns Null. We beg and plead to please return something... anything else. Null can be a harbinger of doom.

What does any of this have to do with life? Matt Warren has an interesting post on Being Null.

Null is the absence of actuality, the state before you make up your mind, the moment before you peek inside the box to see if the cat is still alive. When you are null you are free; free to choose and free to be. The future is laid bare with all its paths before you stretching out toward the horizon emblazoned with the orange and gold of sunrise.

I try to reach a state of null as quickly and as often as I can. Null is completion, when you cross off all the items from your list and are left with the satisfaction of a job well done. It’s like standing on a mountain top looking down over all that you’ve ever done and seen and known.

Null is Zen.

Maybe I should rethink my attitudes on Null.

Some More Details on UNSCAM 

The UN Oil for Food Scandal from US News and World Report by way of Instapundit.

The U.N. was supposed to oversee the oil-for-food program that allowed Saddam Hussein to sell oil and use the proceeds to buy essential food and medicine for the Iraqi people. At least $10 billion, evidently, went into the pockets of political operators.
...
Here's how the scam allegedly worked: Saddam sold oil to his friends and allies around the world at deep discounts. The buyers resold the oil at huge profits. Saddam then got kickbacks of 10 percent from both the oil traders and the suppliers of humanitarian goods. Iraqi bean counters, fortunately, kept meticulous records.

Coincidence. If you wondered why the French were so hostile to America's approach to Iraq and even opposed to ending the sanctions after the 1991 Gulf War, here's one possible explanation: French oil traders got 165 million barrels of Iraqi crude at cut-rate prices. The CEO of one French company, SOCO International, got vouchers for 36 million barrels of Iraqi oil. Was it just a coincidence that the man is a close political and financial supporter of President Jacques Chirac? Or that a former minister of the interior, Charles Pasqua, allegedly received 12 million barrels from Baghdad? Or that a former French ambassador to the U.N., Jean-Bernard Merimee, received an allocation of 11 million barrels? Perhaps it was just happenstance, too, that a French bank with close ties to then French President François Mitterrand and one of the bank's big shareholders who is close to Saddam became the main conduit for the bulk of the $67 billion in proceeds from the oil-for-food program. All told, 42 French companies and individuals got a piece of this lucrative trade. No matter how cynical you may be, it's sometimes just plain hard to keep up with the French.

But they're not alone. Russians received more than 2.5 billion barrels of the cut-rate crude. Some 1.4 billion barrels went to the Russian state. Not to be left out of the feeding frenzy, even the U.N. got in on the action. It received administrative fees of about $2 billion for the program, which may be fair, but the senior U.N. official in charge of the program, Benon Sevan, is reported to have received 11.5 million barrels himself. Cotecna, a Swiss-based firm hired by the U.N. to monitor the import of the food and medicine to Iraq, hired Kojo Annan, the son of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, as a consultant during the period when the company was assembling and submitting bids for the oil-for-food program.

Thats way too much coincidence for my taste. And John Kerry wants to put that fox back in charge of the Iraqi Hen House? I don't think so. I say keep the UN as far away from Iraq as possible. This is what multilateralism through the UN gets us. I much prefer the coalition of the willing... especially with the recent problems in Kosovo the UN is having. The grass isn't always greener.

Also... what would more involvement by the UN really buy us here? Joe User has some thoughts on just that.

Remember the first Gulf War? The one that had UN approval? The model of multilaterialism? The US burden in the UN approved Gulf War was (according to CNN) (wait for it) >75%. Tthe French sacrifice included 2 combat deaths -- during the entire conflict.

The horse still lives so a few more whacks: Non-UN approval for current US policy in Iraq puts the US burden in Iraq at over 75%. UN approval of US action would likely put the US burden in Iraq at...over 75%.

UPDATE: National Review has some more details that show that the Oil for Food Program was funding Terrorist Organizations like Al-Qaeda (from InstaPundit).

There are at least two links documented already. Both involve oil buyers picked by Saddam and approved by the U.N. One was a firm with close ties to a Liechtenstein trust that has since been designated by the U.N. itself as "belonging to or affiliated with Al Qaeda." The other was a Swiss-registered subsidiary of a Saudi oil firm that had close dealings with the Taliban during Osama bin Laden's 1990's heyday in Afghanistan.
...
The stated aim of the program, which ran from 1996-2003, was to reduce the squeeze of sanctions on ordinary Iraqis by allowing Saddam to sell oil strictly to buy food and other relief supplies. As Oil-for-Food worked in practice, however, the program gave Saddam rich opportunity not only to pad his own pockets, but to fund almost anything and anyone else he chose, while the U.N. assured the world that all was well.
...
For a sample of the latitude enjoyed by Saddam, there's Treasury's announcement last week that the U.S., in its latest round of efforts to recover Saddam's loot, is asking U.N. member states to freeze the assets of a worldwide group of eight front companies and five individuals that were "procuring weapons, skimming funds, operating for the Iraqi Intelligence Service, and doing business in support of the fallen Saddam Hussein regime." The list includes a Dubai-based firm, Al Wasel & Babel General Trading, a major contractor under the Oil-for-Food program that turned out to be a front company set up by Saddam's regime specifically to sell goods (and procure arms) via the program — right under the U.N.'s approving eye.

So much for no link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda... too bad we're not hearing more about this.

Screw Palestine... Its Time for Kurdistan 

Here's a rather short blog post on something that makes complete sense to me...

Why do the Palestinians get to jump ahead of the Kurds?
...
Oh, one other thing. The Kurds have never blown up any busses full of civilians, never desecrated religious shrines, never mutilated 'enemy' corpses, never machine-gunned elementary schools, never sent teenagers in bomb vests to kill other teenagers at restaurants and coffee shops, and as far as I know, they have never tried to make a bomb filled with rat poison or HIV+ blood.
...
That's the problem with the Kurds. They spend their energy and talents on things like economic development, education, and infrastructure. They justy go ahead living their lives, farming, raising their kids, passing along their culture to new generations.

Well said. Normally in our society, we choose not to reward bad behavior. We don't negotiate with terrorists... at least that's what we keep saying. Except when it comes to the Palesitinians. That's somehow different. I say we give the Kurds what they deserve (and thumb our nose at Turkey in the process for screwing us in Iraq) and show the Palestinians what it really takes to deserve a state of your own.

What If Bush Had Said This? 

I don't watch main stream media news any more. I can't stand it. It's not just that the media is clearly biased. In fact, we've known this for a long long time. But at least before, the media tried to pretend not to be biased. Now they just don't care. They're biased and proud of it.

How do I know? Well, you could use a test like the Supreme Court's infamous pornography test... I'll know it when I see it. But that doesn't seem accurate enough for an engineer. Instead I use the "How would the media react if <insert someone from the other party here> had said this?" For instance, Bush says X and the media goes ballistic. How would the media react if Kerry said X?

Case in point. The New York Times has a very sweet article on John Kerry's visit to Head Start program for 4 and 5 year olds:

Mr. Kerry obliged, but still seemed to have politics on the brain as he narrated the story of the magic wand — "Zoop!" — making things disappear.

"I could go zoop! and Republicans would disappear," he said.

Now ask yourselves this. What if George Bush had made a similar comment about Democrats? Just One Minute has an interesting take on just that. I have just one question for John Kerry. Of all the things that you could have made disappear... zoop... Disease, Famine, War, Crime, Terrorism, Hate, Suffering... the worst thing in the world you could think of was Republicans? THAT is what is wrong with the Democratic party today.

My Syntactic Sweet Tooth 

I haven't done a general programming rant in quite a while...so you'll have to forgive me for this one. I'm a fan of little syntax shortcuts in programming languages. You know what I mean, those little things that are assumed in code that a lot of people hate because "they make your code unreadable" or "less understandable". Of course I think that's B.S. It just means that you don't know the language as well as I do :D. Its like saying that saying "I'm" is less understandable than "I am". Unfortunately it seems like these gramatical perfectionists are winning out in C#. A lot of the nice syntactic sugar that I took for granted in C++ is gone in C#. Case in point... null object checking. In C++ you could write the following:

SomeObject* obj = FunctionThatReturnsSomeObject();
if ( obj )
   DoSomethingWithSomeObject( obj );

The syntactic sugar here is that an object can be referenced like a bool. If obj is null, then the if statement fails and DoSomethingWithSomeObject() never gets called, otherwise it does. However in C#, you can't do that. There is no implicit cast to bool in this case so you have to write this:

SomeObject obj = FunctionThatReturnsSomeObject();
if ( obj != null )
   DoSomethingWithSomeObject( obj );

You may say... what's the big deal? Wait... you would actually have to say... what is the big deal. Nothing... its syntactic sugar. But... when you have lots of objects that could possibly be null that you want to check for in order to avoid null reference exceptions, it's nice not to have to constantly, and explicitly say you're checking for null. Plus I think the code visually looks better, and it is generally understood what being accomplished there. And while I'm at it... what's with C#'s inconsistancy in bracing rules?

// Don't need to brace around a single statement if clause
if ( obj != null )
   DoSomethingWithSomeObject( obj );

// You do need braces around single statement try/catch/finally blocks
try
{
   DoSomethingWithSomeObject( obj );
}
catch ( Exception ex )
{
   MessageBox.Show( "obj is null!" );
}
finally
{
   if ( obj != null ) obj.Dispose();
}

Ok... that's enough for now.

Why Gmail Will Fail 

Matt Warren has some interesting thoughts on Gmail... and why it will fail:

Of course, as it turns out this is a really bad idea. Not that I wouldn't mind getting ads showing me luscious beach-scapes and crystal clear oceans. It's just that very little of my mail actually pertains to anything I'm at all interested in. What's this? Don't believe me? The truth is, 90 percent of all mail messages I recieve on my 'public' accounts are spam, messages sent out by disreputable personages trying to hock their wares. So, if google uses this data to determine what I'm interested in, then all they'll find are subjects pertaining to insurance, home loans, pornography, viagra and various other unmentionables.
...
I really don't need more pop-up ads targetting this stuff.

If you think about it... Google will be creating self propogating spam. As if we didn't have enough already. Spam on Viagra?

The Real Reason Behind All the Microsoft Bloggers? 

Or The Legion of Doom...

I just thought you would all like to know the truth behind the blogs here at Microsoft. There was something going on that you knew nothing about. At least for me, the blogs that I posted, the comments, the gags, the code snippets, had nothing to do with reaching out to the community.
...
Of course you would not. You know better. In fact, I suspect that a whole hoard of you banded together to try and unravel the mystery of this charade of glastnost that has being perpetrated upon the world. You probably suspected that something was up from the moment the first Microsoft bloggers took to the web, hitting hard like a platoon of soldiers storming onto the shore to capture that first beachhead. Who were these guys (and gals) anyway? What were they up to with their sly editorials and propaganda disguised as useful facts and humorous tidbits? You probably suspected their mission was to secure a host of converts that would help smooth the way toward enslavement of the remaining billions, surrendering to the juggernaut and total world domination. That would have made sense.
...
Or maybe I’m just blowing smoke.

Read the whole thing... its pretty funny. In fact, I'd generally recommend Matt Warren's blog. Its pretty amusing. I should really update my links some time.

More on UNSCAM 

At least that what some people are calling the UN Oil for Food Scandal... from Transterrestrial Musings.

In an earlier letter to Annan, to which he received no reply, Hankes-Drielsma noted that allocations of "very significant supplies of crude oil [were] made to ... individuals with political influence in many countries, including France and Jordan," both of which supported Saddam and his regime to the bitter end.

Under the U.N. program, the Dutch company Saybolt International BV was paid hefty fees to inspect oil tankers loading Iraqi crude in Basra, to make sure no cheating took place. "Now it turns out that the inspecting company was paid off," one investigator said, "while on the ground, individual inspectors were getting cash bribes." Saybolt denies it received an oil allocation, although the Iraqi documents show it was down for 3 million barrels.

Personally... this doesn't make me feel very good about John Kerry's promise to have more international cooperation, and to get the UN more heavily involved in Iraq. It is pretty clear that the UN is irresponsible, and would do much more harm than good given their recent history there. Maybe Kerry should rethink his stance.

The Degeneration of the Democratic Party 

And one long time democrat's reason for leaving the party... The Degeneration of the Democratic Party.

Bush-Hate, racism, calls for the death of Republican cabinet members, snide innuendo, joy at the death of Americans in Iraq, the endless political thumbsucking of the 911 Commission, and there's more on the way, much more. It's a tired, sick and crazed political party that is so greedy and hungry for power that it will do anything, including selling this country down the drain, to get it back. I'll have no more to do with it. I'm not the only one.

What did I ever see in it? Oh, there were lots of things. But they are all long gone and not likely to come back. The Democrats once had a lot of great ideals and they acted on them. Now they just mouth those ideals and look for the main chance to tell you how bad, how really bad for the country Bush is -- and by the way did you know he stole, he really, really, stole that last election. And, oh yes, he lied.

Right. Got it. Next.
...
Life and politics though don't run backwards. One the hardest things to learn in life is when to leave, that's why we're always leaving late. It's not that the Republicans are running the most decent game in town. It is only that lately they seem to be the only game in town, at least the only one that puts America first. That's why I'm getting on their train. At least to the next stop.

Welcome to common sense... enjoy the party.

Apparently George Bush Now Runs Every State 

At least that's how John Kerry sees it when he talked to college campuses this week.

Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry says deep cuts in education spending at the state level have forced college tuitions so high that tens of thousands of young people have been denied access to higher education since President Bush took office.

Of course the article doesn't go any further to describe exactly how George Bush forced states to cut their spending, which George Bush has no control over. When asked about what he would do in Iraq:

Kerry said he would keep the United States in control of the military operation in Iraq, and repeated his call for greater international involvement in the effort to stabilize and rebuild the country.

"I would summon the world to an effort the world has a stake in," he said.

Wow... great plan. Now I feel good about how you would handle things. Gives you shivers doesn't it?

Canada is a Pleasently Authoritarian Country 

That means don't say anything that might offend anyone... or you'll go to jail. Here is an opinion piece from US News & World Report on a new law being passed in Canada.

It would add "sexual orientation" to the Canadian hate propaganda law, thus making public criticism of homosexuality a crime. It is sometimes called the "Bible as Hate Literature" bill, or simply "the chill bill." It could ban publicly expressed opposition to gay marriage or any other political goal of gay groups.
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Since Canada has no First Amendment, anti-bias laws generally trump free speech and freedom of religion. A recent flurry of cases has mostly gone against free expression. The Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission ruled that a newspaper ad listing biblical passages that oppose homosexuality was a human-rights offense. The commission ordered the paper and Hugh Owens, the man who placed the ad, to pay $1,500 each to three gay men who objected to it. In another case, a British Columbia court upheld the one-month suspension, without pay, of a high school teacher who wrote letters to a local paper arguing that homosexuality is not a fixed orientation but a condition that can and should be treated. The teacher, Chris Kempling, was not accused of discrimination, merely of expressing thoughts that the state defines as improper.

Is this where we're headed in the U.S.?

Still, First Amendment arguments are losing ground to antidiscrimination laws in many areas, and once stalwart free-speech groups, like the American Civil Liberties Union, have mostly gone over to the other side. An unlikely split has occurred. In the interest of fighting bias, liberal groups reliably promote laws that limit First Amendment principles. The best defenders of free speech and freedom of religion are no longer on the left. They are found on the right.

Freedom isn't free folks.

The French Love Bush After All 

Or at least they're acting more like him every day...
Europe Trying to Act First Against Terrorist Networks (emphasis added).

With a new threat of terrorism coursing through Europe, intelligence and police authorities say they are acting more aggressively, with greater emphasis on pre-emptive action to roll up networks of Islamic militants whose members may not have committed crimes, but who have the skills or ideological resolve for violence.
...
The French had kept a group of Moroccan-born militants under surveillance for some time, but had no specific cause to arrest them when the police struck in dawn raids on Monday, seizing 13 men with suspected links to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group.

A senior French official admitted as much on Tuesday, saying "There was no evidence they were preparing an imminent attack in France." The crucial factor was that they had traveled to Afghanistan, where they learned to use weapons and make explosives.

What's that... unilateral action... with no evidence of imminent danger? Wait... the French did this? I wonder where they got that idea?

Short Straw is Mayor? 

Normally when I think of drawing lots... I think of having to pick the poor guy who has to stay behind to detonate the bomb and die while the rest of the group escapes... or something similar during a movie plot. But in this case, the Mayor of South Milwaukee was chosen by picking a piece of paper from a can. There were two pieces of paper saying Mayor 1 and Mayor 2. Jim Logic picked Mayor 1. During the actual election, there was an actual dead tie. 2,783 to 2,783. There will be a recount, but if its still a tie, then the guy who picked Mayor 1 wins. Why not just flip a coin?

Read all about it.

General Sets and Disjoint Sets 

Efficiently Representing Sets is Part 6 of Scott Mitchell's running series called "An Extensive Examination of Data Structures". Read up, and find yet another data structure that might very well be a better fit for your application than the ArrayList or Hashtable you've been using so far.

Someone Explain This to Me 

Public Health Commercial Pulled in Tennessee from FoxNews.com...

The ad, placed on 10 stations statewide by the Tennessee Department of Health, encouraged listeners to "try baking your chicken, eating a fresh tossed salad on the side and scrumptious watermelon for dessert."

"I don't believe it was intended to have any racial overtones," said Diane Denton, spokeswoman for the department. "We wouldn't want to offend anyone. We want to be culturally sensitive."

But even some African-Americans contacted by the paper thought the reaction was overkill.

"That's a wonderful advertisement. Tell them to put it back," said the Rev. Enoch Fuzz, who heads the health committee of the local NAACP.

"African-Americans are dying at a much higher rate than other populations, and we've got to turn that around. That's a stereotype we've got to get past. We can't get sensitive."

What I want to know is... who complained?

WiX Toolkit from Microsoft Released 

Windows Installer XML (WiX) toolset has released as Open Source on SourceForge.net. This is the first Microsoft released product to be under an Open Source License. Bascially its a set of tools for creating MSI Installers using XML. There is a complier called Candle, a linker called Light, a lib tool called Lit, and a decompiler called Dark (cute huh?). Anyway, here is the link on Rob Menshing's Blog about it, and here is the project link on SourceForge. Looks very promising.

Some Interesting Dissents 

From the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals... They issued an order denying rehearing en banc in another case that would have the court to redecide whether the 2nd Amendment gives an individual the right to bear arms, or whether this is a "collective right" (which is the dominant view of the federal courts). The fact that the rehearing was denied is not a shock. What is interesting is the strong wording that has come from the dissents of that ruling in the court. Here is the best quote from Judge Kleinfeld (Emphasis Added):

Our court has erased 10% of the Bill of Rights for 20% of the American people. No liberties are safe if courts can so easily erase them, and no lover of liberty can be confident that an important right will never become so disfavored in popular or elite opinion as to be vulnerable to being discarded like the Second Amendment.
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Some people think that the Second Amendment is an outdated relic of an earlier time. Doubtless some also think that constitutional protections of other rights are outdated relics of earlier times. We The People own those rights regardless, unless and until We The People repeal them. For those who believe it to be outdated, the Second Amendment provides a good test of whether their allegiance is really to the Constitution of the United States, or only to their preferences in public policies and audiences. The Constitution is law, not vague aspirations, and we are obligated to protect, defend, and apply it. If the Second Amendment were truly an outdated relic, the Constitution provides a method for repeal. The Constitution does not furnish the federal courts with an eraser.

There are more here... read on.

Got a New Road Bike 

Giant TCR. Wheel & Sprocket in town had their annual bike expo at State Fair where they have some pretty significant price reductions... so I went down there... talked with a really cute sales woman about bikes... and bought this one for use on the triathlons I plan on doing this season. Of course I bought the cycling shoes needed to hook into the clips... and whats the first thing I did? Fell down. Now I have to re-learn what to do when I lose my balance at low speed... cause you can just put your foot down any more. You have to unclip. It should be an interesting experience.

This is an April Fools Joke... Right? 

Google Gets the Message, Launches Gmail... although I wouldn't put it past them to actually do something like this. Of course after you read it you would say... well of course its a joke. If it is a joke... then what does that say about the New York Times which wrote this article in their Technology section?

Update: FoxNews is running this story almost a week later... so I'm guessing that it is in fact real... but with some caviats. You get tons of storage space, but Google will scan your emails so that it can provide ads that are targeted towards the email content, and they may keep your email even after you delete it, or even remove your account:

Google intends to deliver ads by analyzing what's being discussed. For instance, an e-mail from one friend to another talking about an upcoming trip might include links to hotels or airlines.
...
"Consumers really need to look this gift horse in the mouth because it has rotten teeth and bad breath," said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a watchdog group.

Of course the immediate reaction by some people is to try to prevent Google from launching the service because of these privacy concerns. I say that's BS. As long as they are up front about it, and people are willing to make that choice, then LET THEM MAKE A CHOICE. I personally would never use that service because of those issues, but other people may be willing to. Even though it won't be available for several months, you can signup at Gmail.com.