It's amusing how the Republicans go after Obama for changing his position on public funds. I say, good for him, recognizing that you sometimes have to change directions in order to meet your goals. I say it's the sign of a good leader that can realistically re-evaluate previous "promises" rather than stick to a losing strategy.

President Bush and his top aides publicly made 935 false statements about the security risk posed by Iraq in the two years following September 11, 2001, according to a study released Tuesday by two nonprofit journalism groups.

"In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003," reads an overview of the examination, conducted by the Center for Public Integrity and its affiliated group, the Fund for Independence in Journalism.

...

The quotes in the study include an August 26, 2002, statement by Cheney to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction," Cheney said. "There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."

(from CNN)

Read more here, from The Center for Public Integrity.

Bush shouldn't be impeached, he and his cronies should be thrown in jail.

--Marc

My current list for disabling documentation warnings (after trying Sandcastle) is: 1591, 1572, 1573

--Marc

When I asked how many IM applets do you run, Douglas Troy responded "Now, if CP had a private IM server/client ... " and I asked why, to which he said:

1). No bloat; we control client (faster updates/bug patches?)
2). No "What did they just install on my system now!?!?" (e.g., Yahoo! Toolbar)
3). CP IM Network, means I don't have to go looking for programmer/IT types, I know the people on it, are the ones I want to talk with (not some teenie bopper that's trying to score Hanna Montana tickets)
4). Imagine, Bob as your CP IM client ... you know you want it.
5). I have this crazy idea of a "Code Snippet" sharer, like a clipboard, but for IM; shoot, build a link in there with the snippet compiler, and two people could bang out a solution in an IM session (I know, I'm crazy).

To which I think, hmmm, how long would it take to cobble that together, probably from existing code out there???

--Marc

The latest thing I've gotten interested in is concurrent programming. This has been a festering interest for most of my life--I wrote a task switcher 25 years ago for Commodore BASIC so I could run subroutines concurrently.

There's several areas of concurrent programming that interest me: Software Transactional Memory (STM), inter-task messaging, and work scheduling, to name three. I'm also curious to see where Microsoft goes with PFX and STM.

So, to that end, I've started writing about concurrent programming. The first two articles are:

Concurrent Programming - A Primer
Task Messaging

I am also investigating Ralf Westphal's excellent work on STM (start here and work backwards) and am also interested in work on tuple space. I've contacted Ralf and am planning to co-author several articles on STM, using his NSTM code as a basic for 1) learning STM deeply myself and 2) writing up that knowledge as Code Project articles with Ralf.

--Marc

I was particularly struck by some of the great points that Leslie Sanford raised in his post on the Code Project lounge, and I wanted to remember them here.

I especially like that last paragraph.

--Marc

I found the best answer to this survey was by Keith Barrett:

In my own experience the single factor that made the biggest impact on the maintainability of a large project was the implementation of unit tests. It effectively provided documentation on how the code was supposed to work, and allowed the code to be re-factored and restructured without breaking it. Consequently the architecture and coding style could be migrated from 'big ball of mud' to something more elegant and beautiful.

Followed by Shog9's response as well:

Heck, having good test coverage, even if it's implemented as black-box tests, can make a world of difference in giving developers the confidence to go in and change things for the better. When you're continually working for the absolute smallest changes to existing code, it isn't too long before the whole mess just collapses.

--Marc

It won't be much longer before it's just a big screen you walk up to and place your order. Which is all automatically billed to your GCard, Confirmations are sent directly to your GMail, and you can review all your expenses via GSheet. Your GCar will only take GFuel, and as you ask the GAttendant for directions, which are automatically downloaded to your GMobile, along with some driving music ordered via GSongs, you'll think to yourself how great life is ... GWiz.

--The wisdom of CPian Douglas Troy

So says Giuliani:

In a freshly minted radio commercial, Republican Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani boasts, "We have the best health-care system in the world."

So, explain to me, Mr. Giuliani, how it is that we have the most expensive health care system in the world and also the lowest life expectency and highest infant mortality?

Perhaps he should read this.

--Marc

The US civil rights leader and former presidential candidate Jesse Jackson set off a racial firestorm yesterday after he accused his fellow Democrat and fellow African American, Barack Obama, of "acting like he's white" in his campaign for the White House. -- Source

"acting like he's white"??? hahahahahaha! I should be insulted, right?

How is it that Jackson is labeled as a "civil rights leader"? Is this the best our "leaders" can do?