Links for 02 September 2008

A list of links that I came across over the past few weeks.

Business

Meet the PayPal Mafia by Jeffrey O'Brien (Money.CNN.com)
"An inside look at the hyperintelligent, superconnected pack of serial entrepreneurs who left the payment service and are turning Silicon Valley upside down."

Electronics

RGB vs Composite vs S-Video (ElectronicSpy.co.uk)
A discussion on the uses and quality of the various video-signal cable types.

History

Encyclopedia Titanica
A comprehensive resource on the Titanic including passenger and crew lists.

Law

DigitalRights.ie
An information resource covering legal matters related to internet use and electronic communication in Ireland.

Music

Hans Zimmer Reflects on 15 of His Memorable Film Scores (EW.com)
This article features some comments by the composer on some of his better known scores including Crimson Tide, The Thin Red Line, and The Prince of Egypt.
Neko Case
Check out the tracks Star Witness, If You Knew, and Hold On, Hold On.

Music Artist, CD Release, and Track Metadata

FreeDB Database Downloads
freedb.org is a website which maintains a database of CD information. Many software CD players use the service to retrieve track and artist listings when a new CD is inserted. This link will bring you to the location of the monthly database snapshots which the site provides free-of-charge.
Discogs.com
API documentation
Discogs.com is another CD database which offers an XML-based API for retrieving and updating information on artists, releases, and tracks.

Research

Cornell University Library: arXiv.org
A large collection of articles and papers on many subjects including physics, mathematics, and computer science.
Universal Digital Library at Carnegie Mellon University

Software

Snipplr.com
A repository for sharing useful snippets of code.

System Tools

Converting FAT32 to NTFS in Windows XP by Alex Nichol, 2002.
The NTFS file system is supported by Windows 2000, XP, and Vista and is the most suitable file system for large hard disk partitions. This article describes the steps requried to convert a partition formatted with the older FAT file system to NTFS. Although a cleanly formatted NTFS hard drive partition is preferrable, this may be a good compromise if you cannot move the data off the partition in order to do a format.