x86 PC emulator written in Java

I guess it had to happen sooner or later. A team at Oxford have written a pure Java emulation of an x86 PC with fully virtual peripherals, complete with a few demo DOS games. I guess people have finally realized Java is fast enough on the client side to run a virtual PC :)

My favourite Java emulation is still the one for the Commodore 64.

Shutdown Day March 24

Apparently tomorrow is Shutdown Day, a day when people are asked to shut off their computers to see if they can cope without a computer for a day.

	days	hours	minutes	seconds
countdown:	00	07	05	50

I wonder if I can convince my client to participate so I don't have to work tomorrow :)

Computer techie wipes out info on $38 Billion fund

All developers manage at one time or another during their career to accidentally delete important data, and it is at those moments when you find out if there is a backup strategy in place :) I feel for the tech dude at the Alaska Department of Revenue doing routine reformatting of hard disks:

While doing routine maintenance work, the technician accidentally deleted applicant information for an oil-funded account — one of Alaska residents' biggest perks — and mistakenly reformatted the backup drive, as well...

And the only backup was the paperwork itself — stored in more than 300 cardboard boxes.

Japanese version of Sarbanes-Oxley : J-SOX

Japanese companies and their international subsidiaries have started prepping for next year’s implementation of a corporate governance framework - called J-SOX - that’s comparable to the requirements imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the U.S.

I wonder what impact this regulatory framework will have on the already struggling Japanses economy?

I can see lots of IT work coming from this very soon :)

Expanding The Blogger Hierarchy

Blogger/blogspot, where my blog is hosted, recently did an upgrade. One of the new features is the ability to display archived posts in a hierarchical tree. Unfortunately this archive tree displays links to just the last few posts and I want it to display more. If you look at the raw HTML you will find that in fact links the last 40 or so posts have been preloaded but are hidden by default. I wrote this little bit of javascript, which you put just before the end body tag of your template, to display those hidden post links.

<!-- A small script that expands all collapsed items in the blog archive -->
<script type='text/javascript'>
function getElementsByClassName(oElm, strTagName, oClassNames) {
   var arrElements = (strTagName == &#39;*&#39; &amp;&amp; oElm.all)? oElm.all : oElm.getElementsByTagName(strTagName);
   var arrReturnElements = new Array();
   var arrRegExpClassNames = new Array();
   if (typeof oClassNames == &#39;object&#39;) {
       for(var i=0; i < oClassNames.length; i++){
           arrRegExpClassNames.push(new RegExp(&#39;(^|\\s)&#39; + oClassNames[i].replace(/\-/g, &#39;\\-&#39;) + &#39;(\\s|$)&#39;));
       }
   }
   else{
       arrRegExpClassNames.push(new RegExp(&#39;(^|\\s)&#39; + oClassNames.replace(/\-/g, &#39;\\-&#39;) + &#39;(\\s|$)&#39;));
   }
   var oElement;
   var bMatchesAll;
   for(var j=0; j &lt; arrElements.length; j++){
       oElement = arrElements[j];
       bMatchesAll = true;
       for(var k = 0; k &lt; arrRegExpClassNames.length; k++){
           if (!arrRegExpClassNames[k].test(oElement.className)) {
               bMatchesAll = false;
               break;                     
           }
       }
       if (bMatchesAll) {
           arrReturnElements.push(oElement);
       }
   }
   return (arrReturnElements)
}

var listItems = getElementsByClassName(document, &#39;li&#39;, &#39;archivedate collapsed&#39;);
for (var i = 0; i &lt; listItems.length; i++) {
   listItems[i].className = &#39;archivedate expanded&#39;;
}
</script>

NOTE: The above javascript is in a valid XML format since blogger now XML validates any changes you make to your blogger template.

Are You Satisifed With Your Wall Street Bonus?

Thanks to half-agile daddy Marc for this article on satisfaction for the 2006 bonus season. What would be even more interesting if people taking the survey also volunteered how much their bonus was as a percentage of their annual salary.

UNIX Rapper

Check out this dude who raps about his favourite UNIX commands.

"kill -9 and your process is mine..."

Terrorism in Second Life

Looks like US presidential candidate John Edwards is not even safe in cyber space with the attack on his HQ in Second Life using Bill Cosby posters (huh?) and Nintendo's Mario.

Such an attack could be a danger for companies that have established a presence in Second Life like ABN Amro and Sun.

I See Geek Everywhere

Even on my vacation I see geek phrases everywhere.

Shame I don't have a picture of that licence plate that starts with "TCP"...