a glob of nerdishness

While searching for info on how the “ISA Reference” item came to be in my application services menu, I came across a fantastic post on a blog which just got added to the sidebar: Generating Machine Code at Runtime. Esentially, you store machine code in an array (anyone remember POKE in the good old days?) and call the pointer as a function. I was stunned, and then shamed. What else is a function pointer if not a pointer to machine code in memory?

For emergency (i.e. 911) purposes, cell phones are required to be trackable within 50-100 meters. Some phones use GPS to meet this requirement. Will the iPhone? And will it be enabled “client-side”?

Apple, Inc. has put their patents to good use, reviving the Newton MessagePad as a Cocoafied iPod.
Update: Adriano of Notwen is excited.

The default title of this post reminded me of a 24 line piece of code that can be executed in any of five different popular programming languages, producing the usual greeting in each. That code is written by Amit Singh, who is well-known for explanations of interesting inner workings of *nix, including OS X.