Misc

The accumulation of laws that have been passed over our nation’s history have a striking resemblance to a crufty code base:

• Dead code → Obsolete laws
• Bugs in border cases → Legal loopholes
• Patches and workarounds → Exhibit A: The AMT fiasco
• Unanticipated side-effects → Pretty much every law ever passed
• Spaghetti code → Insane cross-references which make reading some statutes almost impossible

The major difference, of course, is that most crufty code bases don’t run people’s lives.

“…and, in addition to the rest, the reluctance with which men commonly part with money for purposes that have outlived the exigencies which produced them and interfere with the supply of immediate wants.” - The Federalist Papers, No. 7

The funds in the budget for the TiVo subscription came from canceling the YMCA membership.

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in usenet and e-mail?

I can’t begin to describe how cool this is… the best part is at the end.