Author Archives: jcs

The Five Word Tech Horrors Meme

Posted on 2013-12-19 by jcs

Via Jean-Philippe Paradis, I was led to the Twitter meme/thread/hashtag #FiveWordTechHorrors. The idea is identify an especially egregious tech issue in five words. Some of my favorites: It’s a standard, like Windows We emailed you your password Congress is drafting … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

The Real Edward Snowden

Posted on 2013-12-18 by jcs

When speaking of Edward Snowden, the government can’t seem to make up its mind. Sometimes he’s a high school dropout and misfit who couldn’t pass elementary computer classes and cheated on his NSA entrance exam. Other times he’s an evil … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Leave a comment

NSA Phone Metadata Collection Ruled Illegal

Posted on 2013-12-17 by jcs

In a bit of good news a federal judge has ruled that the NSA’s collection of phonecall metadata violates the fourth amendent. This is by no means the end of the story. The ruling is at the District Court level … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

A Problem with Magit

Posted on 2013-12-16 by jcs

Two or three weeks ago I noticed a problem with Magit. When I executed magit-status, I no longer got a list of the untracked files. That meant that I couldn’t add new files to a repository with Magit. The thing … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | 5 Comments

Obama and the NSA

Posted on 2013-12-15 by jcs

Over at The New Yorker, Ryan Lizza has a fascinating article on the history of the NSA’s latest extra-legal surveillance on Americans. These programs all started under the Bush administration as a reaction to 9-11 and, significantly, over the strenuous … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged | Leave a comment

Uncommon Lisp Functions

Posted on 2013-12-14 by jcs

Over at WordPress on cneufeld.ca, Christopher Neufeld is writing a nice series on the less familiar Common Lisp functions. The idea is to give Lisp beginners an idea of how to leverage the power of some of the less commonly … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Your Government at Work

Posted on 2013-12-13 by jcs

Here in the U.S. we have something called the Federal Register. It’s the official journal of the U.S. Government in which are published public notices and other routine publications of the various government agencies. It’s published daily except for holidays … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Leave a comment

A Simple EmacsGolf Challenge

Posted on 2013-12-12 by jcs

We haven’t had an EmacsGolf challenge for a while so here’s something simple that was suggested by Xah Lee based on a Stack Overflow question. The Stack Overflow questioner wanted a solution in Vim so the whole thing fits right … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | 6 Comments

Mickey on Magit

Posted on 2013-12-11 by jcs

As many of you know, I’m a long time user of Magit and really like it. I’m not, however, a power user and haven’t bothered to learn all the details. It’s hard to find documentation that describes how you go … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Tagged , | 2 Comments

The Importance of Mathematical Literacy

Posted on 2013-12-10 by jcs

The other day, I saw this amusing posting on Headlines from a Mathematically Literate World. I chuckled and moved on but then I read an article saying that American students had slipped to 26th place in world-wide mathematics test results … Continue reading →

Posted in General | Leave a comment