The so called “paper of record” once again showed how biased their reporting is.  Here’s the title of an article published in the June 17, 2011 edition of the New York Times - “2 Top Lawyers Lost to Obama in Libya War Policy Debate.”  The title would lead you to believe that Obama is just so damn smart that the two top lawyers couldn’t successfully compete against him in a contest of intelligence.  If the New York Times was in the least bit ethical, the title of the story would have been - Obama Ignored the Views of 2 Top Lawyers in the Libya War Policy Debate.”

Traditionally, a property in .NET is a member variable with associated get and set methods that are used to read and write its value.

WPF introduces the concept of a dependency property, which also uses get and set methods to read and write its value, but instead of storing the property value in a member variable, instead stores its value in a dictionary maintained by the property system in WPF.  In other words the back store for a traditional property is a member variable and the back store for a dependency property is a dictionary maintained by the property system.  This gives the property system the ability to manipulate the value returned by the property.

So why would you want to use a dependency property?

Dependency properties give you additional functionality that traditional properties do not supply.  Dependency properties allow you to:

• Set the property value using resources.
• Bind the property to a data source, so that property value gets update dynamically whenever the data source value changes.
• Set the property value …
  
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I’ve found that one pretty good indicator of really bad movies is when a movie gets featured at prestigious film festivals but never makes it into the main stream.  Battle in Heaven is a classic example of this.  The critics seem to love it but because it’s “artsy” but that’s about the only thing that it’s got going for it.

Since this movie is pretty bad and I expect that you’ll never see it, the rest of the review will contain spoilers, so bail now if you really thinks you want to see this film.

The movie centers around a Mexican man, Marcos, who along with his obese wife have kidnapped a baby.  Unfortunately, the baby died while in their custody and Marcos is filled with guilt.  Marcos works for the chief of police and one of his duties is chauffeuring the chiefs twenty-something daughter, Ana.  Unbeknownst to the Chief, but known by Marcos, Ana gets her kicks buy working part time as a prostitute.  Marcos unable to contain his guilt over the death of the baby, tells Ana what happened.

The rest of the movie is about Marcos brooding about the city, trying to decide if he should confess his crime, having sex with his obese wife (I considered ripping my eyes out after seeing this), having sex with Ana (made it worth not ripping out my eyes), stabbing Ana …

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Mel Gibson plays a single dad cop whose recently graduated daughter finds herself in some serious trouble.  Mel spends most of the movie trying to find out what happened.

This is definately a second tier Mel Gibson movie.  It’s watchable and somewhat entertaining but just doesn’t come up to the level of most of his previous movies.  There are also a few places in the script where you get the feeling that something was cut on the editing floor because things are happening that don’t make a lot of sense.

My rating: 4 out of 10 stars

I’ve had a small wart on the top of my left hand for about a year now.  Shortly after it appeared I tried to get rid of it using one of those over-the-counter salacylic acid wart remover products.  Following the directions on the bottle, I applied the stuff twice a day, every day for about two weeks.  At the end of the two weeks, nothing had changed.  I knew I should go to a dermatolgist to get it taken care of, but it was pretty minor and I just never got around to scheduling an appointment.

Last night while I was at CVS with my wife, I spotted Compound W Freeze Off on one of the shelves.  The packaging on the product, claimed to freeze off warts similar to the method used by dermatologists.  Since I had had a wart successfully removed by a dermitologist years ago using the freeze method, I decided I’d give it a try.  What the heck, it was only twenty bucks.  What could go wrong?

This morning when I got up, I unpacked the product and read the instructions.  Seemed simple enough.  Stick one of the cotton swab like applicators into the holder, insert the holder into the main bottle and press down for three seconds to unlease the freezing compound.  Take the applicator out and hold it against the wart for a period of time determined by …

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