Author Archives: jcs

Credit Card Numbers and Lazy Programmers

Posted on 2013-07-24 by jcs

Ben, over at Brush Technology, has a splendid rant on something that I’ve written about before on my old blog. Why, in 2013, are we still suffering Websites that refuse to accept spaces in credit card numbers? There really is … Continue reading →

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EmacsMovies Looks at Gnus—Part 2

Posted on 2013-07-23 by jcs

Noufal Ibrahim has part 2 of his series on Gnus up. The screencast is about 30 minutes so he broke it into two videos. As with part 1, the screen is too small to be read comfortably, even on my … Continue reading →

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Jekor #3

Posted on 2013-07-22 by jcs

Jekor has a new Emacs video up. This time it explores loading packages through ELPA in Emacs 24. The new video continues the excellent production values of the first two. This series is shaping up to be a really useful … Continue reading →

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Prism Break

Posted on 2013-07-21 by jcs

If you’re looking for ways to make your Internet activities more opaque, here’s a very useful site that discusses alternative software to help you be more secure. It also discusses phone services that may help too. Most of us, of … Continue reading →

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I Have Nothing To Hide

Posted on 2013-07-20 by jcs

Jamie Zawinski links to a frightening response to a post on Reddit that offered the usual tripe about not caring about government surveillance because “I have nothing to hide.” The responder purports to be living in an Arab country that … Continue reading →

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Applying defadvice to Several Functions at Once

Posted on 2013-07-19 by jcs

One of the distinguishing—and most useful—features of Lisp is the macro. Sadly, we don’t often see them discussed in the Emacs blogosphere so I was happy to see Bozhidar Batsov over at Emacs Redux give a beautiful example of macro … Continue reading →

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EFF

Posted on 2013-07-18 by jcs

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed suit in Federal Court on behalf of 19 organizations. The suit asks that the court rule that the NSA mass surveillance violates the first, fourth, and fifth amendments to the U.S. Constitution and … Continue reading →

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A Random Emacs Wiki Page

Posted on 2013-07-17 by jcs

Here’s a nice little trick to help you waste time on the Emacs Wiki. As the Redit post explains, if you navigate to http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/?action=random you get a random page from the Emacs Wiki. It’s easy to imagine building a simple … Continue reading →

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A Second Jekor Emacs Video

Posted on 2013-07-16 by jcs

I was alerted by this Magnar Sveen tweet that Jekor has another Emacs video up on YouTube. As I mentioned in my post about the first video, these videos are extraordinarily well done and worth your time. This episode discusses … Continue reading →

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The Other Side

Posted on 2013-07-15 by jcs

In my The Good Guys and Bad post, I had harsh words for Microsoft’s collaboration with the NSA and FBI. I still find their actions over the top and inexcusable but there is another side to the story. Declan McCullagh … Continue reading →

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