Monthly Archives: January 2014

OS Security Appraisals

Posted on 2014-01-31 by jcs

The United Kingdom’s CESG has published an appraisal the security of various operating systems. The TL;DR is that Ubuntu Linux is the “most secure” but Ubuntu is probably a proxy for Linux (no other Linux distros were profiled). Happily, the … Continue reading →

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An Overview of C

Posted on 2014-01-30 by jcs

I spent so many years writing C code that I still tend to “think” in C when considering an algorithm. That’s true even when, as is mostly the case now, I’m going to write the algorithm in Lisp. A lot … Continue reading →

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Not Just Illegal, Criminal

Posted on 2014-01-29 by jcs

Back in August, I wrote a post about Jennifer Granick’s outstanding article, My Dinner With NSA Director Keith Alexander, that appeared in Forbes. Now Granick is back with another great article that discusses the recent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight … Continue reading →

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Passwords in 2013

Posted on 2014-01-28 by jcs

PC World in reporting on the 25 worst passwords of 2013. As it does every year, Splashdata, a security firm, has compiled a list of the most common passwords culled from stolen password lists. Everything is depressingly normal. All our … Continue reading →

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The Government Gets Crazy Over Snowden

Posted on 2014-01-27 by jcs

The latest meme being floated by the apologists for the NSA is that Edward Snowden must have been a spy who received aid from the Russians. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was busy pushing that theory on … Continue reading →

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The Insanity of Open Space Offices

Posted on 2014-01-26 by jcs

Bodil Stokke tweets an excellent point on open space offices This bears repeating: NOTHING is more hostile to developer productivity than the modern open plan office. http://t.co/Q9K3XMtMfZ — Bodil Stokke (@bodil) January 4, 2014 I’ve written about this before and … Continue reading →

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A Blank Canvas in Emacs

Posted on 2014-01-25 by jcs

Some people, especially creative writers, like to write on a blank canvas without any distractions from their editor. Bastien Guerry, who we’ve discussed before and who’s sat on both sides of a Sacha Chua interview, has a nice post on … Continue reading →

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Java and Security

Posted on 2014-01-24 by jcs

With respect to Java, I’m pretty much in the same boat as Paul Graham: I’ve never used it but it does seem to have an unpleasant odor. One thing for sure, it’s a major exploit vector and, as a result, … Continue reading →

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An Empty Do

Posted on 2014-01-23 by jcs

Back when I was first learning Lisp by reading Paul Graham’s Ansi Common Lisp, Graham mentioned that sometimes you can do useful work with a DO loop having an empty body. I thought that was pretty neat but I’ve never … Continue reading →

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How to Stay Safe on the Internet

Posted on 2014-01-22 by jcs

Stephen Haunts has a nice post on remaining private on the Internet. It’s reminiscent of the Prism Break web page that I’ve written about previously. He talks about some of the utilities that you can use out of the box … Continue reading →

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