From the Mouth of Gates

Check this out - Gates says of Google, and I quote,

They will obviously branch out beyond internet search, but I think the expectations won't live up to reality.

We can only hope so, Bill. We can only hope so.

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Daily Dose

I just watched The Daily Show for the first time in a few months, and was shocked and pleasantly surprised to watch Jon Stewart conduct a civil, thoughtful, enjoyable interview with Senator Rick Santorum. It gives me hope.

Anyway, check out Senator Santorum's book.

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But I Won't Do That

One of VH1's "40 Most Awesomely Bad Love Songs" was Meatloaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)". Predictably, every stinking one of their talking heads made some wise-ass remark to the effect of "he never tells us what he won't do!", which is in fact patently false. It's true of the chorus, but anyone who has bothered to listen to the whole song (even the short radio version) knows exactly what it is that Meat won't do: screw around.

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static virtuals and C++

Been hacking a lot of C++ and Java code lately, and something that C++ is sorely missing is "static virtual methods". Basically, I want to define an abstract base struct (say, iEventHandler), and I want it to have a static method (say, HandlerName()), and I want to force all descendent classes (say, csEventHandler) to define that static method, such that a programmer can invoke either ((iEventHandler *) h)->HandlerName() and csEventHandler::HandlerName(). This would be tremendously useful, and it's no more "evil" (from the OOP point of view) than static methods and variables.

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Iraqi Elections

Early estimates are that the turnout for the elections in Iraq was at least 57 percent of registered voters, maybe more. We don't get that kind of turnout here in the US, and we don't have nut jobs wearing explosive vests into or lobbing mortar shells at our polling places.

With all the pundits saying democracy will never take root over there, it's enough to make one wonder - has it really taken root here?

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