Author Archives: jcs

The Reign of Morons

Posted on 2013-10-05 by jcs

Even if you don’t know who Jamie Zawinski (jwz) is, you’ve probably heard his famous quip about regular expressions. You may or may not agree but there’s no denying he has a sharp wit. Here, for your enjoyment, is his … Continue reading →

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Eavesdropping Versus Surveillance

Posted on 2013-10-04 by jcs

A common reaction to the NSA disclosures has been, “Meh, it’s just metadata.” Unfortunately, the issues are perceived as being overly technical and as a result it is difficult to explain to the man-in-the-street, let alone your Aunt Millie, how … Continue reading →

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Update to the Org Mode Broken Link Problem

Posted on 2013-10-03 by jcs

In my Org Mode and Broken Links post I wrote about a problem with the way that Org 8 handles HTML links. If you want to know how great the Emacs Org Mode community is, read the comments to that … Continue reading →

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SBCL 1.1.12 Is Released

Posted on 2013-10-02 by jcs

Version 1.1.12 of Steel Bank Common Lisp is out. As usual, compilation and installation on my OS X machines encountered no problems. The new release features two enhancements (SOCKET-SHUTDOWN added, documentation for extensible sequences), two optimizations (EQUAL and EQUALP transforms … Continue reading →

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Messing With The Wrong People

Posted on 2013-10-01 by jcs

Some people are delightfully grumpy and best not trifled with. Martha Stewart, it appears, is one of those people. For those who don’t know, Stewart runs a media empire loosely based around design, decorating, and cooking. She has her own … Continue reading →

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The Miracle of UTF-8

Posted on 2013-09-30 by jcs

I’ve written about UTF-8 before and recounted the story of its invention one night over dinner by Ken Thompson and Rob Pike. Now Tom Scott over at audible.com has a wonderful video on UTF-8, which he calls the world’s greatest … Continue reading →

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H.R. 2818–Surveillance State Repeal Act

Posted on 2013-09-29 by jcs

In my The New York Times on Encryption Backdoors post, I mentioned that Representative Russ Holt of New Jersey has introduced legislation that reins in the NSA and prohibits some of its more egregious activities. Although it doesn’t go far … Continue reading →

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Org Mode and Broken Links

Posted on 2013-09-28 by jcs

As a couple of you have pointed out to me recently, HTML links in my posts are sometimes getting broken. That happens when the link has a parameter specified with a question mark and equal sign. For example, here’s a … Continue reading →

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Emacs Regular Expression Recap

Posted on 2013-09-27 by jcs

Xah Lee has a nice summary of Emacs regular expressions and how they differ from the other familiar varieties. I may have linked to an older version of this a while ago but it’s a worthwhile link for anyone who … Continue reading →

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Building a Blog with Org Mode

Posted on 2013-09-26 by jcs

As regular readers know, Irreal posts begin as Org Mode files that are subsequently published to WordPress with org2blog. This works very well for me but not everyone wants to run WordPress. For those of you who want to build … Continue reading →

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