Category Archives: General

A New Look for Xah’s Emacs Tutorial

Posted on 2013-03-28 by jcs

Xah Lee has updated the look of his Emacs Tutorial pages. He’s organized the material into functional categories that make it a bit easier to find a specific page. Go on over and give it a look.

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Emacs Redux

Posted on 2013-03-27 by jcs

Bozhidar Batsov has started a new blog, Emacs Redux, that is dedicated to tips and techniques to make the Emacs experience more productive and enjoyable. So far, I like what I see. One of the tips from the first day … Continue reading →

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Sacha Chua Chats With Carsten Dominik

Posted on 2013-03-26 by jcs

The tireless Sacha Chua is on a roll with another video chat about Emacs. This time it’s with Carsten Dominik, the creator of the essential Org mode. Org mode has become so important that many newcomers are taking up Emacs … Continue reading →

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The Wages of Sin

Posted on 2013-03-25 by jcs

Well, not sin really. More like the consequences of ill considered decisions. As we all know by now, Google has decided to terminate their Google Reader service. On the face of it, the decision doesn’t appear particularly controversial. The service, … Continue reading →

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Meetings Are Mutexes

Posted on 2013-03-24 by jcs

From Vivek Haldar, an absolutely wonderful characterization of meetings.

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What to Do About the Worst Law

Posted on 2013-03-23 by jcs

Over at the New Yorker, Tim Wu writes about Fixing the Worst Law in Technology. That law is, of course, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. CFAA was the vehicle that federal prosecutors used to threaten Aaron Swartz with decades … Continue reading →

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An Emacs Crash Course

Posted on 2013-03-21 by jcs

Andrey Kotlarski has posted a very nice Emacs Guide on github. He says he wrote it for his coworkers after he got tired of being asked to give introductions to Emacs. It’s the perfect guide for someone who wants to … Continue reading →

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Hashing Passwords: An Object Lesson

Posted on 2013-03-20 by jcs

Irreal regulars know that I periodically go off an a rant about the proper hashing of passwords and the dire consequences of failing to do it correctly. Not even I, however, could have imagined that Cisco would get it wrong. … Continue reading →

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A Talk on Lisp Machines

Posted on 2013-03-19 by jcs

Over at LoperOS they’ve put up a video of a talk that Kalman Reti gave last year at the Boston Lisp Meeting. The talk is about the Symbolics Lisp Machines and includes a demo of the original software running in … Continue reading →

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Analysis of the Gauss Malware

Posted on 2013-03-18 by jcs

Over at Ars Technica Dan Goodin has a nice article analyzing the Gauss malware. Gauss appears to be related to Stuxnet and internal code signatures suggest that its provenance is the same1. Although Gauss was discovered last year, very little … Continue reading →

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