Some Interesting posts regarding Subprime.

Tim O'Reily: Subprime Loans Glossary

I am not sure how Automated Underwriting really played in the over evaluation of the Housing Market.  I believe this swift ramp up was the result of low interest rates backed by very creative loan programs especially Stated Asset Stated Income or ( liar loan as the washingtonpost's Steven Pearlsteing describes it.).

The washingtonpost has 'No Money Down' Falls Flat

I don't agree with item D Piggyback loans were not (at first) a means to no down payment but rather a way to escape Mortgage Insurance.  One could argue that it was a lie to the Investor because there was more then 80% loan to value relating to the borrowers actual liability.

The New York Times offers The Subprime Loan Machine

Little bit of history relating to how AU came to Subprime and its ramifications.  Although A paper ala Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae had AU years before.

Phil (haacked.com)has a story about a nasty little scam some one sent to his father.  In this case the check more then likely will clear paid for by some other hapless victim.  Thankfully Phil's father wasn't taken by the allure of easy money.  Check out the rest of the story

In a slight case of irony and humor you can watch the Daily Show making fun of the law suit between Viacom and Google.

or watch it on YouTube which makes this clip even more humorous. Thanks lonelyjew14

Microsoft's XML Team just announced the release of XML Notepad 2007 2.3

You can find the change log here and down load here.

This is the new feature that caught my eye.

"better handling of XML documents containing illegal characters"

Hmm,

The Google oddity if you search for This Old Code my site does not seem to be listed, nor is "This" searched for.  When you search for "This Old Code" still no joy.  Now if you happen to take out the spaces thisoldcode my site renders at the top.  How very odd and annoying.  And if you ever search for microfisch This Old Code does list as the 15th  site and Microfisch.com doesn't show up at all worse Google is pretty sure you should correct your spelling to microfiche.  Now I may have ulterior motives for this post, maybe if my site has enough This Old Code it will show up in Google's page rank.  Only time will tell.

I have noticed the Feedfetcher-Google; (+http://www.google.com/feedfetcher.html) user agent in my log files.  Last week it would state the number of subscribers.  So does any one know where has that information gone to?

Microsoft has an interesting site were they followed the money for search spam, using Fiddler.

Strider Search Ranger: War on Search Spam: Shifting the Battleground by “Following the Money”

Ask's little guerilla marketing campaign information-revolution-org seems to be back firing. 

My suggestion before you go after Google. Ensure your search is as good or better then Google.  Unless you just wanted to make every one laugh.

I  have now passed the CodingHorror Certification Program

after testing my blog engine with the following steps:

1. Compile your application code. Getting the latest version of any recent code changes from other developers is purely optional and not a requirement for certification.
2. Launch the application or website that has just been compiled.
3. Cause one code path in the code you're checking in to be executed. The preferred way to do this is with ad-hoc manual testing of the simplest possible case for the feature in question. Omit this step if the code change was less than five lines, or if, in the developer's professional opinion, the code change could not possibly result in an error.
4. Check the code changes into your version control system.

Now I to can proudly display my new logo:

Wal-Mart Now has the right to offer mortgages and debit cards.  I don't know.  I just don't know.

Full story.  A home loan from Wal-Mart?