Dead men cash no checks?

Why is it most of the Obama administrations errors seem to be in the "well-meaning but clueless" category? Giving DVDs to the English Prime Minister that won't play in British DVD players. Sending VP Biden to talk about Swine Flu. And now issuing stimulus checks to the dead. Or did I miss a "Zombie Americans Act" somewhere?

Antoniette Santopadre of Valley Stream was expecting a $250 stimulus check. But when her son finally opened it, they saw that the check was made out to her father, Romolo Romonini, who died in Italy 34 years ago. He'd been a U.S. citizen when he left for Italy in 1933, but only returned to the United Stated for a seven-month visit in 1969.

The Santopadres are not alone. The Social Security Administration, which sent out 52 million checks, says that some of those checks mistakenly went to dead people because the agency had no record of their death. That amounts to between 8,000 and 10,000 checks for millions of dollars.

An Excellent Analysis of the Zune 30 GB Leap Year Bug

It is unlikely that any of our regular readers is a Zune owner, but I have found the revelation and analysis of the bug in Zune 30 GB players that locked it up for all of New Years Eve to be fascinating. If you missed the original analysis, basically there was a bug in the year calculation function that runs just before the end of the boot cycle which ended up in an infinite loop on the last day of a leap year.

This article is a great read on the bug, and illustrates why QA is so important and how even now Software Engineering is an art. There are many solutions, but few which are both bug-free and elegant.