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Hooray for open code

I'm not sure how, but my Firefox profile corrupted. I created a new profile, but the generic bookmark toolbar of the new profile stubbornly refused to be overwritten by my imported older toolbar. The solution? Open the profile's bookmarks document in TextEdit, pull out the code that gave the generic toolbar precedence, and give that code to my toolbar.

Hooray for open code!

I don't know about you, but I'm in favor of armed kangaroos

While developing VR helicopter flight training software, Australian techs included some kangaroos, they being a common sight in Australia. As they were using object-oriented programming, they did this by taking the object they had used for the other terrestrial creatures, which happened to be enemy soldiers. Unfortunately, since this was object-oriented programming, the kangaroos inherited all of the coding that underlay the basic enemy soldier: including the capability to fire back at the helicopters.

Urban legend states that the kangaroos fired stinger missiles at the helicopters. Snopes disagrees, stating that the glitch was discovered very early in the programming - so early that weapons had not been programmed in any further than firing the default profjectile: a large multicolored beach ball. My interpretation of this is that no pilot trainee was ever faced with a beach ball-wielding kangaroo, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was left in as an option that could be activated, if so desired.