A Coding Error Thursday, October 12, 2006

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.