thyrsus

66 ms·

631.
by thyrsus 16y ago
Both vim and emacs can split (either horizontally or vertically) to show as many files as your typeface can usefully cram in. As a greybeard, I learned the vim predecessor vi, which didn't have that ability, then learned emacs, which at th
632.
by thyrsus 16y ago
This article just prompted me to change my Blackberry signature: * In e-mail application, Menu key * Select Options * Select Email Settings * edit text beneath Use Auto Signature
633.
by thyrsus 16y ago
Work all the demonstrations and exercises in Kernighan and Pike's Chapter 8 of "The Unix Programming Environment". Less than 60 pages in a friendly large font. You'll be glad you did.
634.
by thyrsus 16y ago
On my suburban street, without sidewalks, the pedestrians and children playing own the street nearly as much as the cars - the traffic is sparse, and there are stop signs on just about every corner. The kid's games are suspended to allow c
635.
by thyrsus 16y ago
What will, e.g., China do with this technology?
636.
by thyrsus 16y ago
Just yesterday I was trying to get the macutils package built ( http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/utils/compress/macutils.tar... ) and wishing they had used autoconf instead of ad hac #ifdef'ing for each arbitrary environment they had enco
637.
by thyrsus 16y ago
At the end, he asks "What would a version control system for a web app look like?" Perhaps that's only a rhetorical question, but I think he's already touched on a partial answer: it's a configuration management system. A good configurati
638.
by thyrsus 16y ago
I inferred that, since he couldn't be talking about an effect at constant velocity, that this effect would be an extra mysterious hazard of extreme acceleration - beyond the mundane hazard of being crushed into a damp spot on the bulkhead.
639.
by thyrsus 16y ago
I'm baffled by the title. Is the author trying to trap non-programmers into understanding their error by (falsely) promising to provide them a scapegoat? Or is he using "trust" as in "trust in the omnipotent"?
640.
by thyrsus 16y ago
The pledgie tool is either v e r y slow or misbehaving; it shows 0 pledges even though there are believable comments that there are more than that. pledgie took my e-mail address, but I haven't gotten anything from them yet.
641.
by thyrsus 16y ago
For proxied services, the proxy (e.g., squid) server on the other end of the ssh tunnel will be making the DNS requests. If you want to be fastidious enough to hide the DNS for un-proxied services, you'll probably also want to have a firewa
642.
by thyrsus 16y ago
I heard an administration official state that it was a customs officer who recognized his name on the flight manifest, which led to his detention. My speculation: customs has a long history of attempting real security; the Theater of Secur
643.
by thyrsus 17y ago
I agree with all but one point concerning evolution in the article, which is its dismissal of the evolution of the population. The example in extremis is the ant colony: a mutation in a drone may give no advantage to that individual dron
644.
by thyrsus 17y ago
My understanding is that Perl 6 is the polar opposite of lisp, in this sense: In lisp, the code is always and everywhere already in a parse tree, and can be manipulated easily by, e.g., macros; Perl 5, on the other hand, is the most unpar
645.
by thyrsus 17y ago
My browser (Firefox 3.5 on Fedora 12) doesn't appear to be interpreting the mathematical symbols correctly; e.g., \Gamma doesn't appear as a gamma symbol, but instead as a grey box containing the characters (without quotes) "\Gamma", and wh
646.
by thyrsus 17y ago
Since my transmission is stick shift, I'm not worried about Toyota floor mats, accelerator or brake pedals, or software bugs. I've never had a problem, and I would reflexively respond in a safe way were something to occur.
647.
by thyrsus 17y ago
It's worth it to me because they present a respected and sane point of view concerning computing to the U.S. congress. CACM makes me aware of the larger context. The Safari subscription you get includes much, but not all, of O'Reilly's ca
648.
by thyrsus 17y ago
Once the patent to the DNA was granted, the suit against the farmer in the neighboring field was logically necessary. It's the way patents work: you either sue to protect your monopoly whenever you're aware it's being infringed or you lose
649.
by thyrsus 17y ago
The article endorses this criticism: "The syllogism goes as follows: 1. Socialism has been a failure everywhere it has been tried; 2. Everyone knows this; and 3. Therefore, we need more socialism. " The article doesn't provide support for 1
650.
by thyrsus 17y ago
I started out in programming, but became a de facto system administrator when I found the best way to accomplish a job was to assemble other people's components. Now my title is system administrator, and I'm solidly in the "automate everyt
651.
by thyrsus 17y ago
There have been consumer, production, cars with the fuel door in the back. I believe the early Mustangs had that feature.
652.
by thyrsus 17y ago
At one point Red Hat paid to get one of their releases "officially" tested as conforming to the POSIX standard, and passed, and was thus able to officially call that version of Linux "Unix(TM)". I may be mistaken, but I haven't heard them
653.
by thyrsus 17y ago
The author asks about books that include examples from multiple languages. On of the best was "The Elements of Programming Style", which used examples of failure to follwow their principles from other books. Most were Fortran and PL/I, wh
654.
by thyrsus 17y ago
The caffeine hypothesis may be contradicted by the experiences reported here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/health/nutrition/26best.ht... I'm disappointed that the BBC article doesn't specify how to find Dr. Elisaf's study; I suspect