I’m a programmer and I’ve written a few compilers, but maybe my expectations are too high? Here is some PHP code that doesn’t work. But if you report it as a bug as I did they say, “that’s how it’s supposed to work”. I think they think if you document a bug it’s not a bug any more. This is what gives open source a bad name… lack of responsibility.

Here’s the code. Pretty simple stuff

$myarray = array("one","two","three","four");

foreach ($myarray as &$x) {
   $x = "$x -";
   print "$x\n";
}

print "\n";

foreach ($myarray as $x) {
   print "$x\n";
}

You would expect it to print this:

one -
two -
three -
four -

one -
two -
three -
four -

Actual result:

one -
two -
three -
four -

one -
two -
three -
three -

As you can see – not what a reasonable person would expect. Not only am I shocked that PHP fails this simple example, but when I went to report it the response is “that’s not a bug – it’s supposed to do that”. It supports my claim that the VI editor causes brain damage.

Among the 100,000-plus applications for the iPhone is one that allows users to “kill” bankers.

The TARP-inspired Bailout Wars app lets iPhone users “take revenge on bankers” by “throwing them into the air, blowing them up, shooting them down and shaking them so hard their clothes fall off, writes American Banker. The point of the game, made by Gameloft and selling for $.99 on iTunes, is to destroy bankers in order to save both the White House (and US taxpayers’ money) from greedy day traders, high risk investors, and finance CEOs.

The game’s description on iTunes reads:

Defend the White House and save the US taxpayers’ money before it gets stolen! It’s time for you to give them what they deserve! [...] It’s your only chance to really take revenge on bankers for the recession they caused [...] Explore many different ways to beat bankers: tap, grab, or shake them in the air. Bailout Wars current has a three-and-a-half star rating on iTunes, with 219 users out of 492 giving the app a five-star rating.

I just hope it works on the iPod Touch.

Click pic to learn all about it

With support for “18 buttons, an analog joystick, and support for as many as 52 key commands,” it’s for people who think the new Apple Magic Mouse has gone a tad too far the other way. Designed for use with the free Open Office suite, the three extra fingers needed to operate it are, well, extra.

Shy and retiring Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer seems to be having trouble finding something nice to say about Windows 7’s launch.

Analysts seem to think Windows 7 has done quite well, but the man who knows all the figures seems to be keeping uncharacteristically quiet.

When hacks at ComputerWorld asked Ballmer how Windows 7 was doing, he said “er… its fantastic… er, in Japan.”

“It is helping to spur PC sales… um… in Japan. We’ve had a great response… in Japan. The first ten days were bigger than the first ten days of XP or Vista or any other Windows launch that we have done… in Japan.”

True he was talking to a Japanese news conference, but it is rare that the great man is that specific. If it was really doing well in Japan and everywhere else we would expect him to start waving his arms, flinging chairs and shouting, “I rule the world, baby!”

The maker of a life-saving radiation therapy device has patched a software bug that could cause the system’s emergency stop button to fail to stop, following an incident at a Cleveland hospital in which medical staff had to physically pull a patient from the maw of the machine.

The bug affected the Gamma Knife, a device resembling a CT scan machine that focuses radiation on a patient’s brain tumor while leaving surrounding tissue untouched. A patient lies down on a motorized couch that glides into a chamber, where 201 emitters focus radiation on the treatment area from different angles. The patient wears a specialized helmet screwed onto his skull to ensure that his head doesn’t move and expose the wrong part of the brain to the machine’s pinpoint tumor-zapping beams.
[...]
When the hospital called the company that makes the Gamma Knife, it learned that there was a “known software bug problem” affecting the unit’s couch sensors. Known, anyway, to the company, Stockholm-based Elekta AB.

“Elekta was aware of the software ‘bug’ at the time of the December 2008 event and had implemented actions to correct the ‘bug’ in a future software release,” says Thomas Valentine, director of quality assurance and regulatory affairs for the Elekta’s U.S. arm, in an e-mail.

Since then, he adds, “The ‘bug’ has been corrected in software upgrades that have been implemented to all of the affected sites in the U.S. The U.S. NRC was notified of the completed status of software upgrades to correct the identified ‘bug’.”

We don’t know why “bug” is in quotes; surely this wasn’t a feature.

And then there was this:

The chief executive of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said Thursday that he regretted the “circumstances” that subjected 206 patients to radiation overdoses and laid out reforms made since the hospital discovered that a CT scanner had been set erroneously for 18 months.

“New Canadian anti-spam and anti-spyware legislation is scheduled for a key vote on Monday. Michael Geist reports that the copyright lobby has been pushing to remove parts of the bill that would take away exceptions which currently allow spyware to be installed without authorization. ‘The copyright lobby is deeply concerned that this change will block attempts to track possible infringement through electronic means.’ There have also been proposals to extend the exemptions granted to telecom providers to include the installation of programs without the user’s express consent, which Geist says will ‘leave the door open to private, surreptitious surveillance.’”