Category Archives: General

An Emacs Timeline

Posted on 2013-08-05 by jcs

Jamie Zawinski has an interesting old post on Emacs history. It’s a timeline of Emacs versions from Stallman’s, Moon’s, and Steele’s original merger of TECMAC and TMACS in 1976 to Gnu Emacs 22.1 and XEmacs 21.4.21 in 2007. His original … Continue reading →

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Fred Brooks on Computer Science

Posted on 2013-08-04 by jcs

Someone posted an old address by Fred Brooks, author of the celebrated The Mythical Man-Month, given on the occasion of his acceptance of the ACM Allen Newell Award in 1994. It’s an interesting talk and one that I hadn’t read … Continue reading →

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Troy Hunt on SQL Injection

Posted on 2013-08-03 by jcs

The invaluable Troy Hunt has an excellent post on SQL injection attacks. We all know the basic ideas behind SQL injection but Hunt shows how attackers actually mount the attacks and why they work. It’s extraordinary that these attacks still … Continue reading →

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Updating to Org Mode 8

Posted on 2013-08-02 by jcs

I just upgraded Org mode to version 8.0.6. I’ve been holding off waiting for org2blog to fix some incompatibilities. Mostly, the transition went smoothly. By following the commentary in the release notes and the new installation instructions I had everything … Continue reading →

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Embedded Notes in Text

Posted on 2013-08-01 by jcs

The other day, I ran across this 2009 Norwescon interview with Vernor Vinge. Irreal readers will be happy to know that he’s an Emacs user and writes his novels with it. The interview includes a screen shot of his work … Continue reading →

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The Last Word on XML

Posted on 2013-07-30 by jcs

Jean-Philippe Paradis has a pithy evaluation of XML.

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Making My Email Safer

Posted on 2013-07-29 by jcs

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been looking for ways to tighten up my email security and, at the same time, move away from Google to avoid being caught in another nasty surprise like the shuttering of Google Reader. Today’s post … Continue reading →

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Making DuckDuckGo Your Default Safari Search Engine

Posted on 2013-07-28 by jcs

Editorial Note: You probably won’t care about this post unless you’re a Mac user but all readers are welcome. In my continuing quest for a smaller (visible) footprint on the Net, I’ve stopped using Google and switched to DuckDuckGo for … Continue reading →

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Doing It Right, ISP Edition

Posted on 2013-07-27 by jcs

I wish these guys were my ISP. Although it won’t be news to Irreal’s European readers, Americans may not be aware that British PM David Cameron is pushing a plan to have ISPs filter pornography. Originally, the plan called for … Continue reading →

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A Patent Win

Posted on 2013-07-26 by jcs

This is so cool. Joel Spolsky tells how he shot down a garbage software patent with only a 15 minute effort. He did that by using his new Stack Exchange site Ask Patents, a site on which anyone, including patent … Continue reading →

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