Presumably, the invasion plan for Iraq ran something like the following:
InvadeCountry(Country.Iraq, Tactics.ShockAndAwe);
```
InvadeCountry(Country.Iraq, Tactics.ShockAndAwe);
// Back home for tea and medals
```
// Back home for tea and medals
Now, any semi-competent programmer could tell you that this plan is woefully inadequate. Firstly, there is no checking of assumptions. A start at improving the code could go like this:
Assert(PrettyGoodEvidenceForWMD);
Assert(NotIncrediblyVolitileCountryHeldTogetherByIronFist)
Assert(NotLikelyToIncreaseDangerOfTerrorism)
```
Assert(PrettyGoodEvidenceForWMD);
Assert(NotIncrediblyVolitileCountryHeldTogetherByIronFist)
Assert(NotLikelyToIncreaseDangerOfTerrorism)
If they take the time to keep the nine circles of hell up to date, one circle, perhaps the sixth or seventh, features sinners constantly writing WSDL documents by hand. In fact, the coiners of the phrase Simple Object Access Protocol must be in the hypocrites circle writing WSDL using Notepad, trying to get early implementations of web services talking to each other.
In the outer circles, you’d find the people writing to the WS-basic specification using a tool like XMLSpy, one of the better tools for the job—though I think one would describe it as “encroaching upon reasonable”.
I suppose what I am aiming for here is to bring disparate bits of my online persona together. Flickr, del.icio.us, last.fm and dx13 all live in different corners of the web. Tools are beginning to appear which allow you to bring different aspects together into a single online display — a start page for the self. This site will be the start page for me; a place where I will attempt to bring my online aspects together.
The most abhorrent quality of the most zealous pro-life fanatics is their sheer devotion to life over and above quality of life. A child and its parents could be terribly unhappy because of some circumstance, perhaps the child was conceived due to rape or is severely disabled, but all that concerns the pro-lifer is the life of itself. It’s so un-wholistic you can’t help being shocked by it. What they espouse is essentially that you deserve to be unhappy if the alternative is the removal of the potential for a life — lets remember we’re talking about bundles of cells here.
Apple announced the final bits and bobs that will be in Leopard, the next release of OS X, at the Apple Developers’ Conference yesterday. I thought it would be interesting to note my thoughts on it down, amongst several thousand other people. I’m not sure whether I can re-publish screenshots from Apple’s site — I presume not — so you’ll have to follow the links for pictures and videos.
Before I begin, I can’t resist a slight moan. I was disappointed with the Safari 3 beta version for Windows. It’s simply woefully incomplete for a beta: it doesn’t support proxy servers yet. It also crashed when I tried to browse to our internal TWiki site. Somewhat uninspiring.