OK, so how does a prisoner, even if it at a minimum security facility, just walk out with his wife (who was coerced by the prisoner to take him back home). Now, you have two murder victims.

I realize that there isn’t a direct connection between what I am about to write, but the next time you do something so stupid as reply to a piece of spam for a sex aid or whatever, think of the above incident. Maybe that will stop you as the only technological way to stop spam is to not respond to it and hope that it will not be profitable for whoever is doing it.

The official exchange rate for Zimbabwe dollars is (July 23, 200 is 1 US Dollar = 33,288,144,660 Zimbabwe Dollars, but according to this story a UK pound is trading for $1.4 trillion Zimbabwe dollars.

However today on Ebay a $100 billion Zimbabwean note (real?) has a bid price of 40 GBP (practically $80 US) and a number of bidders for 12 available bills.  Clearly Zimbabwean currency is worth a lot more than the usual channels!

Interview with the operator of the TheNextRight website, which is actively seeking to reboot the political right in the US.

And, my city Charlotte made the 10 least walkable list.

Not the Japanese soybean brown stuff, but a reference here and here and here to Microsoft, IBM, SAP and Oracle - the Big Four in enterprise computing. Apparently the term was coined by Bruce Richardson of AMR Research in 2006. Hasn’t caught on really big,  but since I like miso soup and it’s good for you, maybe the other MISO is good for you too:

Because not only does it taste great, it’s virtuous. Some claim miso neutralizes the effects of smoking and radiation, discourages the growth of cancer, and breaks down cholesterol. Others say it preserves beautiful skin and counteracts the effects of aging. If even a couple of these are true, we should certainly eat more of it.

What can one say about this, incredible

Twenty-five people with albinism have been murdered in Tanzania since March, a BBC investigation has found.

At least 19 albinos have been killed in Tanzania in the past year, victims of a growing trade in albino body parts.

Crackdown on witchdoctors after albinos killed to harvest body parts

And apparently you just can’t blame it all on a corrupt government like in Kenya or ZImbabwe. This appears to be based on folk beliefs and a few greedy people.

BBC Magazine has an article and a video on speech coaches who attempt to teach Brits an American accent, and vice versa. Obvious customers would be actors from one side of the pond or the other trying to sound credible for their roles.

Which American accent to learn? Californian (to other Americans they don’t have an accent), Texan, MIdwestern, Bostonian, Philly, Ney Joisy, or one of a variety of Southern ones? It would be funny for a foreigner to learn a Southern accent when there are classes in the US that teach Southerners to lose their accents. Many in the US believe that rural Southerners are stupid, so you have to lose at least some of the rougher edges to get by in the big city. Most accent modification courses however are directed toward Asians and Hispanics.

If you are Brit coming to America to flee high taxes among other things, do not reduce your accent, unless of course it’s Cockney. Americans are wild about British accents, thinking they are a sign of intelligence and breeding. Many Brits appreciate American accents too, though not as a sign of intelligence.

According the British government, the United States can no longer be trusted on its claims of torture and other abuses of human rights. According to the UK Guardian:

Britain can no longer believe what Americans tell us about torture, an MPs’ report to be published today claims. They also call for an immediate investigation into allegations that the UK government has itself ‘outsourced’ the torture of its own nationals to Pakistan.

In a damning criticism of US integrity, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee said ministers should no longer take at face value statements from senior politicians, including George Bush, that America does not resort to torture in the light of the CIA admitting it used ‘waterboarding’. The interrogation technique was unreservedly condemned by Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who said it amounted to torture.

Thus according to the Brits, the US has thus put the UK in ‘compromising positions’ regarding its behavior, not to mention I guess that US is going around torturing people.

In return, the UK is gravely threatening the free speech rights of Americans and others because of its archaic libel laws:

Perhaps you don’t live in England or Wales, so you think this has nothing to do with you. You’re wrong. English libel law now applies to everyone on earth. Make any accusation, anywhere in the world, and if the subject can demonstrate that a single person in England or Wales has read it, you could be sued here for every penny, cent, rouble, rupee or renmimbi you possess. The internet and the global nature of publishing ensure that these mediaevel laws have become the most powerful extra-territorial legislation ever drafted.

Yesterday two men with whom I seldom agree, the US senators Arlen Specter and Joe Lieberman, launched a new bill, called the Free Speech Protection Act, to defend US citizens against English libel law. Our laws, they argue, threaten the “free-flowing marketplace of ideas” which “enables the ideals of democracy to defeat the totalitarian vision of al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.”(3) English libel law is an international menace, a national disgrace, a pre-democratic anachronism. It defends crooks, terrorists and tyrants from investigation. It threatens the free speech of people all over the world and causes untold damage to the reputation of this country. And neither the British government nor the British parliament gives a damn.

With friends like this, are we all enemies?

I always have some caution when passing trucks. Some of the tales in this wire story would be mildly amusing, if they haven’t been so tragic for innocent people.

Now, who should be responsible, say, if a diabetic truck driver blacks out while hauling ass on a freeway and takes out several other people when he wrecks out his truck. His employer (if he has one, could be an independent, so he would be his own employer) would have obvious responsibility. How about the driver? If the driver drives while knowing he has a condition that could present a danger to himself and others, should he be responsible? According to the courts, probably not.

Lack of judgment regardless of illness kills people too. There was a case in the local area where a trucker pulled over on the side of a freeway offramp, and failed to set the parking brake. The truck rolled backward onto the freeway and killed some people when they ran into it. There’s some responsibility there according to the courts. So what about the case of chronic diseases or afflictions. The truckers need to make a living somehow and will hang onto their job while they can.  The trucking companies, going by the want ads, are constantly hiring truckers. If there is such a shortage of drivers, they’re going to hire who they can get.

A lot Java programmers believe C# is just a bastard version of Java. On first appearances, especially looking at C# 1.0, it could look that way. Regardless, the language has evolved through C# 3.5, and it has a number of language features that would be odd to a heads down Java programmer., but may actually be useful. Maybe an article highlighting these would be a good idea (maybe there is a good one, I haven’t searched for it yet).

One article that explains the ?? operator in C# (what the ?? to a Java programmer):

Since C# 2.0, there is new operator called null coalescing operator (??) is available to provide inherent null-checking capabilities. It returns the left-hand operand if it is not null, or else it returns the right operand. For example, the equivelent statement using null coalescing operator (??) for the previous code is:

string employeeName = “Dave Gate”;

Console.WriteLine(employeeName ?? “Employee name not specified”);

The result of the expression is based on whether the first operand is null. If the first operand is not null, it is the result of the expression, otherwise, the result falls to the second operand. In other words, return thefirst value if not null, otherwise the second.

Granted in Java you could code something like this:

String it = “hello”;
String x = it == null ? “not hello” : it;

But the ?? gives you cleaner syntax. It’s up to a programmer if in this case this is valuable or not.