Online C++ Reference

This is useful.

void main()

I ran into an issue when trying out Xcode where it would flag an error if main() were declared to return void. Since I knew that in C "void main()" is legal, I went looking on the Net and found this document. Apparently in C++ it's not legal...one of those tricky little differences between the two languages. I guess I missed that in my reading of the Stroustrup book; and although I have a copy of the C standard, I don't have the C++ standard. Nor would I want it...it's not one of my favorite languages.

Homebrew MP3 Player

Check out this MP3 player kit design: EchoMp3. Sweet!

Interesting Mini-ITX Case

In this article, there's a rather interesting case. The article itself isn't anything special. In my opinion, though, making the PS external is cheating!

Goofy Hacks

Hack A Day has some weird links:
Some guy built a sentry BB gun....
How to build a generator.
An on/off box?! You've got to be kidding me. Some hack.

Articles from 9/12

A couple interesting articles that I'd like to recall:

The Six Dumbest Ideas in Computer Security - Very good security advice


What would you put in a Computer Science Curriculum? - A prime quote:

As for the author's distinction between "computer science" and "software engineering", well, I'm sorry but I really don't think someone who can whack and hack a server-side PHP application is a "software engineer". A software engineer, by my definition, is someone who owns and has read Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming", knows who Edsger Dijkstra was (and can pronounce his name correctly), can define the difference between a binary and counting semaphore, and can tell me why Java and C++ are generally bad ideas for use in high-reliability, hard real-time systems. A real software engineer, in my opinion, should also know the difference between a waterfall and a spiral, and what IEEE 12207 is (DO-178B is a bonus, but I don't hold out much hope for ever seeing that on the resumes I get).

Whoa, that's hard-core! One has to have a lot of spare cash to buy Knuth's encyclopedic work, and a lot of perseverence to read the encyclopedia. But that's the spirit—those kinds of people are what we're missing now.

The squatter's right

I was looking for a Japanese translation of "cybersquatter", then I realized I didn't know what a "squatter" was in Japanese, so I looked it up on Yahoo!辞書. It says:

squatter
　〔名〕　1 うずくまる人［動物］　　the ～'s right　《米》男性と同数のトイレを使う女性の権利.　　2 《米》公有地［空ビル］の無断居住者.3 《豪》牧場公有地借地人，（大規模な）牧畜農場経営者. ..

Somehow, I don't think "the squatter's right" means the right of women to have the same number of toilets as men. I think someone at Yahoo dictionary has a strange sense of humor.

As far as I can recall, the squatter's right is if you live on an unowned or unclaimed piece of land for so long, then it becomes yours. Actually I couldn't find a clarification on the Web after a cursory search. Ah well.

International Freight

Since Tetsuo's friend Ken quit the shipping company he worked for, unfortunately I don't have an insider connection. Here are some links to freight companies:

American Baggage, Inc.
Air Sea Int'l Forwarding
Taurus Logistics - a New Zealand company with a lot of info on their website.
Air Parcel Express - looks interesting, but website's crowded.
American Freight Companies - a really cheesy website.
JHM Freight - for moving out of Japan.
This site has some interesting details about shipping, but it's only from Israel to the U.S.
Gallery of Transport Loss - this is wild!!

Perhaps DHL / Danzas is the most likely. They have an import page as well as an international shipment howto and a resource guide.

Baby Names?

Katie sent me this name generator link. The interface to the Java applet is kinda interesting.

Crazy News, 2005.09.05

I'm a pretty callous guy in general, but this AP article has me ready to chip into the relief effort:

"The guy who runs this building I'm in, emergency management, he's responsible for everything. His mother was trapped in St. Bernard nursing home, and every day she called him and said, `Are you coming, son? Is somebody coming?' And he said, `And yeah, Momma, somebody's coming to get you. Somebody's coming to get you on Tuesday. Somebody's coming to get you on Wednesday. Somebody's coming to get you Thursday. Somebody's coming to get you on Friday' _ and she drowned Friday night. She drowned on Friday night," Broussard said.

"Nobody's coming to get her, nobody's coming to get her. The secretary's promise, everybody's promise. They've had press conferences _ I'm sick of the press conferences. For God's sakes, shut up and send us somebody."

And then more intellectual property stupidity, where by opening a "single-use item" you agree to not reuse it, and if you do, you're liable for patent infringement. Capitalism has its good points, but the dark side is that its political hooks bend the law so that perfectly legitimate things become criminal.

Here's an article reporting that dinosaurs may've had feathers, not reptilian-like scaly skin. Our unknown history keeps revising itself.

Even more important, apparently Shell has come up with a novel way to extract oil from shale. Maybe the Peak Oil theories missed something? Either way, I need to read up on this. Maybe I should buy some Shell stock....

Lastly, here are a bunch of articles on Blu-Ray, including some very unpleasant ones.
Playstation 3 Blu Ray drive will cost Sony $100+
Blu-ray players to "punish" users who hack their gear?
DVD format war looms as Blu-ray backers plan launch