Author Archives: jcs

A Silly But Beautiful Quicksort

Posted on 2012-09-12 by jcs

Steven Goss over at the zero bit stream has another great Common Lisp post. His idea is to compare a minimal Haskell Quicksort routine to the same function written in Common Lisp. A case can be made that the result … Continue reading →

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Turning URLs into Org Links

Posted on 2012-09-11 by jcs

Often times when doing research for a blog post I will collect a series of URLs that I could potentially use as a link in the post. Nothing new or exciting there; almost every blogger doubtlessly does the same thing. … Continue reading →

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Password Cracking

Posted on 2012-09-10 by jcs

There’s a great article over at Ars Technica about password cracking and how easy it’s become. The ease with which passwords can be cracked are the result of two things: Improved hardware using GPU processors, and Huge lists of real … Continue reading →

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Daniel Weinreb

Posted on 2012-09-09 by jcs

As most of you have heard by now, Daniel Weinreb, one of the Lispers’ Tribal Elders and user/beta tester of the original Emacs, died on September 7. The Boston Globe and Xconomy have obituaries but surprisingly Weinreb had some interaction … Continue reading →

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Cracking WiFi Passwords

Posted on 2012-09-08 by jcs

Dan Goodin over at Ars Technica has an interesting and scary article about cracking his neighbors’ WiFi network passwords. Sadly, this turns out to be a lot easier than it should be. The general process is Capture the authentication handshake … Continue reading →

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Cabbage

Posted on 2012-09-07 by jcs

For those looking for a prepackaged Emacs configuration, there is another option available: Cabbage. The configuration is meant to be flexible and extensible and the hope is that a community will emerge around it. If you’re not enthusiastic about dedicating … Continue reading →

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HBO GO: Setting New Standards in Customer Satisfaction

Posted on 2012-09-06 by jcs

Fred Wilson over at AVC has a post about the new HBO GO iPad app. It seems that the app has an Airplay button that allows the user, one would think, to stream the content to a TV. It turns … Continue reading →

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Concurrency with ChanL

Posted on 2012-09-05 by jcs

Stephen Goss over at the zero bit stream has a great post on concurrency in Common Lisp using ChanL. ChanL is a Common Lisp library that implements the Newsqueak concurrency paradigm. Newsqueak was developed by Rob Pike and is described … Continue reading →

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How I Know I’m a Curmudgeon

Posted on 2012-09-04 by jcs

I agree with every one of these 20 controversial programming opinions. Aside: Does anyone else find it astounding that “vetted” interviewees could not write code to calculate the area of a circle in any language? Or is astounding too weak … Continue reading →

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PPTP and MS-CHAP

Posted on 2012-09-03 by jcs

Just in case there’s anyone left out there who’s still using PPTP as a VPN solution, H-Online has an article warning about serious security problems with PPTP when used with MS-CHAP. Even Microsoft is warning users about the issue. It’s … Continue reading →

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