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Linkage 2007.11.27

Nov 27, 2007

Usenet: Osdev: USB Boot Sector<br/>

The code works as expected in Bochs (though I treat it as a hard disk image). I have made the assumption that USB keys are treated like hard disks. That is, it loads the first sector of the device and checks the boot sig, etc.

Weird Tales<br/> I had a subscription for the past two years, but I probably will not continue due to lack of time. The stories were pretty good however, and I would probably buy a collection if’n one existed.<br/>

<br/>

Antarctica<br/>

It covers more than 14 million km² (5.4 million sq mi), making it the fifth-largest continent, about 1.3 times larger than Europe. The coastline measures 17,968 km (11,160 miles) and is mostly characterized by ice formations…

(see also: extreme points, islands, Terra Australis, history, and At the Mountains of Madness)<br/>

Comparing Java Web Frameworks<br/>

While creating the 2nd presentation, I found a couple things that surprised me. The first is how popular Flex is – not only in job listings, but also in skilled developers and mailing list traffic. Below is a graph that shows how there aren’t many jobs for most of the frameworks, but there’s lots for Flex.

2 types of programmers<br/>

As I work with teams of programmers in the field, I’m consistently struck by the yawning abyss between that 20% and the rest of the world. It makes the divide between the open-source and Microsoft camps look like a shallow ditch.

Probability Puzzle<br/>

Imagine there’s a completely random event with two outcomes, say flipping a coin. Each flip has an equal probability of landing heads or tails. Now imagine that we’re interested in seeing how long it takes to get a certain sequence of outcomes.

Signs You’re a Crappy Programmer<br/>

Developers who actively seek to apply patterns to every coding problem are adding unnecessary complexity. Far from being something you look to add to your code, you should feel bad every time you are forced to code up another design pattern, it means you are doing busy work that makes things more complex and is of dubious benefit. But hey, your code has design patterns, and no one can take that from you.

Monad Wars 1: The Prompt<br/>

OK, people often find it most convenient to do State using “Monads”. I think I’m going to leave that for now, and just thread state explicitly. Mainly because I haven’t yet got around to learning how to use the State Monad. Hopefully this will eventually become annoying enough that it will give me impetus to learn the monadic version.

Zelda with source!!! (awesome)<br/>

If you look at the image starting at 0×106000, you will find all kinds of interesting data, which will tell you a lot about the game’s development. Let’s call this “game development archeology”…

Usenet: Osdev: Page table location<br/>

The Intel scheme doesn’t use a page table per segment — it uses the segmentation hardware to map to a linear virtual address space, and then uses the paging system to map this to physical memory.

Rainbows End<br/> I personally disliked it… but here’s a link regardless.<br/>

<br/> get the code to geosDS<br/>

Dave Haynie on the end of Be<br/>

It’s sad, the way things turned out for Be. Having been involved in several other “great technology meets questionable corporate practice and/or harsh market conditions” situations in the last ~8 years or so, this isn’t a shock. But even though I wasn’t actually working for Be, several of my friends were, and as well, this was the technology that should have had a chance.

(plus see his archives)<br/>

py2app<br/>

py2app is a Python setuptools command which will allow you to make standalone application bundles and plugins from Python scripts.

Famous Uncracked Codes<br/>

The Shepherd’s Monument at Shugborough Hall carries a relief (pictured above) that shows a woman watching three shepherds pointing to a tomb. On the tomb is depicted the Latin text “Et in arcadia ego” (”I am also in Arcadia” or “I am even in Arcadia”).

(see also Holy Blood, Holy Grail<br/>

-m

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