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"Your 'reality', sir, is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever."
— Karl Friedrich Hieronymus, Freiherr von Münchhausen

A Coding Error

Many thanks to Bruce Schneier for pointing out this wonderful little blurb that boils down Bush's "I-can-hold-anyone-I-want-without-a-trial" Bill to a simple programming error:

if (person = terrorist)
{
   punish_severely();
}
else
{
   exit(-1);
}
The coders out there, I'm sure, spot the error right away, but for the non-geeks in the audience... executing this code automatically makes person a terrorist, and always executes the code to punish_severely(). Welcome to the new America.

Comments on A Coding Error
  Comment from Anonymous Anonymous at Friday, October 13, 2006 6:50:00 AM
Right to the point! A brilliant post.
  Comment from Anonymous Anonymous at Friday, October 13, 2006 11:16:00 PM
Wonderful stuff. Really insightful and pointed.

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The Red Bull Diary is the personal pulpit and intellectual dumping-ground for its author, an amateur game designer, professional programmer, political centrist and incurable skeptic. The Red Bull Diary is gaming, game design, politics, development, geek culture, and other such nonsense.