Author Archives: jcs

Java and Security

Posted on 2014-01-24 by jcs

With respect to Java, I’m pretty much in the same boat as Paul Graham: I’ve never used it but it does seem to have an unpleasant odor. One thing for sure, it’s a major exploit vector and, as a result, … Continue reading →

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An Empty Do

Posted on 2014-01-23 by jcs

Back when I was first learning Lisp by reading Paul Graham’s Ansi Common Lisp, Graham mentioned that sometimes you can do useful work with a DO loop having an empty body. I thought that was pretty neat but I’ve never … Continue reading →

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How to Stay Safe on the Internet

Posted on 2014-01-22 by jcs

Stephen Haunts has a nice post on remaining private on the Internet. It’s reminiscent of the Prism Break web page that I’ve written about previously. He talks about some of the utilities that you can use out of the box … Continue reading →

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How is this Legal?

Posted on 2014-01-21 by jcs

I’m in favor of stopping botnets and all but remotely deleting old copies of Tor from users’ machines? I don’t see how Microsoft avoids law suits and criminal complaints. They doubtless have some obscure terms-of-service item covering this but if … Continue reading →

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Electric Indents

Posted on 2014-01-20 by jcs

Bozhidar Batsov over at Emacs Redux has another post up in his series on features of the upcoming Emacs 24.4. This time, he writes about Emacs Auto-indentation. The feature was added in Emacs 24.1 but in version 24.4 it’s enabled … Continue reading →

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Ido Vertical Mode

Posted on 2014-01-19 by jcs

A couple of days ago, I mentioned how much I’m enjoying ido-vertical-mode. I first learned about it from Sacha Chua’s chat with Magnar Sveen as I wrote about previously. Now, serendipitously, Bozhidar Batsov over at the excellent Emacs Redux is … Continue reading →

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Judge Rules Against the TSA

Posted on 2014-01-18 by jcs

Back in December, I wrote about the government’s dubious tactics aimed at preventing a woman placed on the no-fly from getting a fair trial on the matter. Because the woman is not a U.S. citizen, the government attempted to keep … Continue reading →

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Emacs Index Searching

Posted on 2014-01-17 by jcs

Xah Lee has a blog post (2014-01-16) that reminded me of two useful functions that I can never seem to remember: emacs-index-search and elisp-index-search. They allow you to look up a topic in the Emacs or Elisp manuals by querying … Continue reading →

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Schneier on the NSA Threat

Posted on 2014-01-16 by jcs

Yesterday, I wrote about how there is little evidence that the NSA’s mass surveillance is effective. Bruce Schneier has an interesting article up that argues it’s worse than that. Schneier says that the NSA is a threat to our security. … Continue reading →

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The Usefulness of Mass Surveillance

Posted on 2014-01-15 by jcs

Remember those 50 plus terrorist plots that the NSA mass surveillance was instrumental in stopping? You won’t be surprised to learn that that was yet another lie. Ars Technica is reporting on a New America Foundation study that examined 225 … Continue reading →

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