Strangelove

I bought a copy of Dr. Strangelove last weekend. I hadn't seen it in years, so I had the joy, once again, of discovering all the the little gems buried in the movie.

"You can't fight here! This is a War Room!"

To really appreciate the movie, you have to understand it in the context of the early '60s with the commie scare, the bomb scare, and, yes, the floridated water scare.

So where is the moviemaker today who'll do a comedy about terrorism, Al Queda, homeland security -- with a side jab or two at intellegent design? Yes, we really do need to laugh while we watch the World Trade Centers burn -- otherwise the terrorists win.

Remember at the end of Strangelove the doomsday device was triggered while George C. Scott was warning the president about the "mine shaft gap."


Dale

We've come a long way...

I just stumbled over this code deep down in ACE -- a C++ library/framework that prides itself on its portability:

ACE_OS::sprintf (date_and_time,
ACE_LIB_TEXT ("%3s %3s %2d %04d %02d:%02d:%02d.%06d"),
day_of_week_name[local.wDayOfWeek],
month_name[local.wMonth - 1],
(int) local.wDay,
(int) local.wYear,
(int) local.wHour,
(int) local.wMinute,
(int) local.wSecond,
(int) (local.wMilliseconds * 1000));
return &date_and_time[15 + (return_pointer_to_first_digit != 0)];

A word of explanation. For a long time the ACE community didn't believe in bool, so "return_pointer_to_first_digit" is a bool-like substance that when equal to zero means false. Thus (return_pointer_to_first_digit != 0) converts the pseudobool to a genuine bool.

Question: What value does *your* favorite C++ compiler use to represent true?

Dale