Author Archives: jcs

Increased Productivity With Function Keys

Posted on 2011-06-14 by jcs

Xah Lee has a self-confessed obsession with keyboards. He’s particularly interested in their ergonomics and features that can enhance productivity. Not everyone agrees with his take on these things but his views are thoughtful and often useful. In a recent … Continue reading →

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Lisp in a Production Environment

Posted on 2011-06-12 by jcs

Over at the Symbo1ics Blog, Robert Smith has a nice post on the myth that Lisp is inappropriate in a production environment. He says that, like many others, he believed that while Lisp is flexible and expressive it would not … Continue reading →

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The Greatest Hack of All Time

Posted on 2011-06-11 by jcs

I just saw a reference to one of my favorite papers on computer security. It’s Ken Thompson’s Turing Award Lecture, Reflections on Trusting Trust. In it he describes what the Jargon File calls a truly moby hack: the insertion of … Continue reading →

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iMessages

Posted on 2011-06-09 by jcs

Now that the excitement over the WWDC Keynote has died down, people are beginning to think about the new features and what they will mean. One interesting take on that is that iMessages is really a very disruptive technology. There … Continue reading →

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Encrypting (Some) Dropbox Files

Posted on 2011-06-08 by jcs

A while ago I wrote about the developing ‘scandal’ involving Dropbox’s supposed admission that they could read your data. As I remarked at the time, no one with an ounce of sense ever thought otherwise but the question did remain … Continue reading →

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More Password Analysis

Posted on 2011-06-07 by jcs

A week ago I wrote about the analysis of the Gawker passwords. Now Troy Hunt has provided a similar analysis based on the SonyPictures.com compromise. He looked at 37,608 accounts from the LulzSec torrent and analyzed the passwords for Length … Continue reading →

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The History of UTF-8

Posted on 2011-06-06 by jcs

Via the Programming subredit I was led this History of UTF-8 by Rob Pike. I already knew some of that history (such as Ken Thompson and Rob Pike designing UTF-8 on a paper placemat at a diner) but much of … Continue reading →

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Two Interviews

Posted on 2011-06-05 by jcs

Recently Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie sat down for interviews: Thompson with Dr. Dobb’s and Ritchie with IEEE Spectrum. Ritchie talks mostly about he and Ken inventing Unix—the occasion for both interviews was Thompson and Ritchie winning the Japan Prize … Continue reading →

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Scrolling The Other Window

Posted on 2011-06-04 by jcs

Trawling through the old Emacs COTWD twitter entries I came across something I didn’t know. In some situations, such as help screens, Emacs will open another window but keep the focus in the current window. When this happens, Emacs will … Continue reading →

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The Hits Keep On Coming

Posted on 2011-06-03 by jcs

It appears that kicking the hornet’s nest worked out better for Lisbeth Salander than it has for Sony. The “hacker group” LulzSec has again embarrassed Sony by compromising SonyPictures.com and exposing user data for over one million users. Fortunately for … Continue reading →

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