Re: Emacs without knowing any Lisp (was: text editors)
On Fri, 2019-03-29 at 12:48 +1100, Ben Finney wrote: > deloptes writes: > > > I've been there exactly 17y ago. I still have no idea where lisp is used > > except in Emacs and some exotic projects, so being pragmatic ... good for > > you who know emacs - for the rest good that you do not know emacs. > > I've been a happy and productive Emacs user for more than 17 years and > still don't edit any Lisp. It just isn't necessary to get things done. > > (I hear the Atom text editor is implemented in JavaScript; that doesn't > imply JavaScript knowledge is needed to use Atom.) > > With that knowledge, hopefully more people can explore using Emacs > https://tuhdo.github.io/emacs-tutor.html>. > FWIW I've been using emacs on mainframes, workstations, and PCs since about 1984. I've found the elisp programmatic interface useful since I first cobbled together a set of rectangle-oriented tools (since replaced by the rectangle commands provided by more recent versions of emacs; see section 9.5 of the emacs manual for emacs 24). I also use Common Lisp for most of my application programming, which involves either mathematical programming (bignums and big rationals are wonderful for some number theoretic computations) or interesting computational problems (suffix trees for classical cryptanalysis, exploring patterns in calendars, whatever catches my eye). I've recently been developing tools to assist extracting text from web sites and reformatting as page-oriented documents rather than unpaged HTML (personal preference; I'm an old fart who likes documents with real pages, footnotes, headers and footers, etc.) The elisp tools help me transform scraped text into LaTeX source files. I also put together some Python scripts for setting up and managing the directory structure for extracted texts. My first point is, having access to a full-blown programming language for doing task-specific work within an editor is *wonderful*; my second point is, the lisp family of languages are very useful and flexible tools for, among other things, exploratory programming. -- Bill Wood
Re: is xdvi broken?
On Mon, 2019-04-22 at 05:17 +, rlhar...@oplink.net wrote: . . . > That saves three steps over my current procedure: > > = In Emacs, save the document > = Switch to a virtual terminal > = Execute "latex mydocument.tex" > = Execute "latex mydocument.tex" > = Execute "dvips mydocument.dvi" > = Execute "lpr mydocument.ps" > = Switch back to Emacs > = Continue work on the document > Is there a reason not to use pdflatex? My workflow then is = In emacs, save the doc foo.tex = switch to a virtual terminal = execute "pdflatex foo.tex" (as many times as needed) = execute "evince foo.pdf" = when desired, select "Print" from the "File options" menu of evince = switch back to emacs
Re: Security Implications of running startx from command line - was Re: Startx: was Great Debian experience
On Sat, 2014-03-22 at 19:14 +, Brian wrote: . . . > This is the fourth or fifth time in this thread a recommendation to use > ~/.xinitrc has been made. No sensible Debian user would have such a file > in his account. A happy Debian system is one with ~/.xsession. I'm a Debian newbie, so -- why? -- Bill Wood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1395518578.7408.1.camel@bills-debian
Re: Heartbleed (was ... Re: My fellow (Debian) Linux users ...)
On Tue, 2014-04-15 at 15:55 -0400, Stephen Allen wrote: . . . > BTW Revenue Canada was hacked by this bug and publicly admitted so. So > far only a minimal number of people were affected. They were offline for > several days. I've been following this thread since it started, as well as some other Internet sites that have been mentioned, and I have noticed that everyone talks about the impact on the financial services sector but no one has mentioned the health care information sector. I understand that healthcare systems use SSL a great deal, and medical identity theft has risen sharply in recent years. Does anyone know if there have been any exploits of Heartbleed in this sector, or if any healthcare organizations have said anything about fixing the problem? -- Bill Wood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1397619146.26973.8.camel@bills-debian
Re: Heartbleed (was ... Re: My fellow (Debian) Linux users ...)
On Wed, 2014-04-16 at 09:01 -0400, shawn wilson wrote: > On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 8:54 AM, John Hasler wrote: . . . > > What is medical identity theft? Theft of patient identity information, usually for the purpose of insurance fraud. > I'd also be interested seeing the proof for the claim (I think he > means medical data breaches but IDK anyone has disclosed that > information). My brother was heavily involved in bringing hospitals into HIPAA compliance after the Act was implemented in, I think, 1996. He subsequently consulted for the state government and hospital systems defining security and privacy policies and conducting audits until his retirement a few years ago. He told me yesterday (U.S. CDT) about the sharp rise in patient identity theft in recent years. His comment was that ID theft occurred more often as 1-1 cases than as massive breaches like the recent Target exploits. Apparently the goal is usually to obtain health services and prescriptions from another person's insurance. The consequences of the corruption of the victim's medical records can be devastating. -- Bill Wood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1397659016.27492.37.camel@bills-debian
Re: Heartbleed
On Thu, 2014-04-17 at 14:39 -0500, John Hasler wrote: . . . > I keep information secret when revealing it might harm me. I make no > deliberate effort to keep stuff secret just to prevent it from > benefiting someone else. Of course, that requires the ability to discern when some information might be harmful. Take for example current controversies over services like Amazon and Google and the "filter bubble": Do you consider it harmful for them to tailor your experience to their estimate of what you want? Should the fact that I browsed over Marx' "Das Kapital" mean that subsequent searches for Economics and Social Philosophy will bury "Socialism" by von Mises so deep I won't see it? Some think it nifty while it scares the hell out of others. -- Bill Wood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1397766340.31148.11.camel@bills-debian
Re: FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management
On Mon, 2014-05-19 at 16:17 +1000, Zenaan Harkness wrote: . . . > > It involves skull sweat. > > Now there's a new term - I usually find my skin sweats, although to be > honest I'm really not sure about my skull, since it's hidden from my > immediate view. Just FYI, Robert Heinlein used "skull sweat" as a metaphorical term for the effort involved in concentrated thought such as problem solving. Given that concentrated thinking burns energy, hence calories, just as physical exercise does, it's not a bad image. -- Bill Wood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1400482736.3989.7.camel@bills-debian
Check Update, Update and Port Blocking
Do the protocols used for automatic check for updates and for updates require specific ports to be available? I recently switched my cable modem to a Comcast Internet Gateway 1with the firewall set to high security and subsequently a couple of update check icons appeared indicating an error condition to to failure to access a file server. I am currently running Debian 6.0.9 (Squeeze) stable. I want to upgrade to 7 but don't want to get hung up with bad downloads due to port blocking by the firewall. Thanks, -- Bill Wood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1392690508.5535.6.camel@bills-debian
Re: Check Update, Update and Port Blocking
This is an update on my post on 02/20. I got the "yellow triangle" icon again so I went into admin for my Wireless Gateway and reset the security level to intermediate or "typical". I then clicked on the icon and selected "check updates". The usual dialog box appeared and it started checking for updates. A text box then appeared entitled "Could not download all repository indices" with the following text: Failed to fetch ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/squeeze/contrib/i18n/Translation-en.bz2 Could not connect passive socket. [IP: 64.50.233.100 21] Failed to fetch ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/squeeze/contrib/i18n/Translation-en_US.bz2 Could not connect passive socket. [IP: 64.50.233.100 21] Failed to fetch ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/squeeze/main/i18n/Translation-en.bz2 Could not connect passive socket. [IP: 64.50.233.100 21] Some index files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used instead. Are these servers still available or do I have a problem on my end? Thanks, -- Bill Wood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1393813272.27707.7.camel@bills-debian
Re: Check Update, Update and Port Blocking
On Thu, 2014-02-20 at 07:09 -0500, PaulNM wrote: . . . > On second though, I just re-read the OP's message. He's talking about > the firewall on the Comcast modem/router. It's really rare for those > types of devices to have outgoing filtering. > > However, according to: > http://media2.comcast.net/anon.comcastonline2/support/userguides/Wireless_Gateway_User_Guide_030811.pdf > > It does filter outgoing, but high *does* allow 80, 443, and a bunch of > common ports. I really suspect dns/mirror issues, but it would probably > be worth the OP's time to try dropping the firewall level and test again. I've done a couple of such tests and I *think* check update works at the lowest firewall level. I do have a much more focused question: Does either Check Update or Download Updates require FTP? I have a suspicion that Port 21 may be blocked at the higher firewall levels. Thanks for any assistance, -- Bill Wood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1394038167.2579.4.camel@bills-debian
Re: Test
On Sat, 2014-03-08 at 00:11 +0200, Andrei POPESCU wrote: . . . > That's not moderation (it would also be impossible to do with open > lists), it's just oversight ;) I hope oversight works better here than in other all-to-familiar contexts. -- Bill Wood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1394245749.6146.1.camel@bills-debian
Re: On what is helpful and what is not [was: Re: Wifi]
On Mon, 2014-03-10 at 10:34 -0400, Dave Woyciesjes wrote: . . . > The phoentic would be "noob". Which is part of my confusion. That and > having never seen the word nub used in the context like you had When I first read the sentence with "nub" in it I was completely confused because I was reading it to rhyme with the English words "cub", "rub" and "tub". Two common meanings for that pronunciation are 1) a knob or stub, as in "the nub of a cut-off finger", and 2) the heart or core of something, as in "the nub of the problem" (I'd guess the second meaning is the root of the Haskell function 'nub' which returns the list of elements of a list with all duplicates removed). Anyway after reading the post more carefully I guessed that "nub" was being used for "newb", and I conjectured that the writer was such a newb he didn't know how to spell "newb"; obviously I was very wrong about that, sorry! So perhaps the International Committee for the Preservation of the One True Jargon will call a plenary session and vote to change the spelling to "nube", in analogy with the English words "cube", "rube" and "tube", all rhyming with "newb". *sigh* Probably not. -- Bill Wood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1394481628.9425.4.camel@bills-debian
Re: Check Update, Update and Port Blocking
On Wed, 2014-03-05 at 18:53 +, Joe wrote: . . . > From your last post: > > Failed to fetch > ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/squeeze/contrib/i18n/Translation-en.bz2 > Could not connect passive socket. [IP: 64.50.233.100 21] Failed to fetch > ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/squeeze/contrib/i18n/Translation-en_US.bz2 > Could not connect passive socket. [IP: 64.50.233.100 21] Failed to fetch > ftp://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/dists/squeeze/main/i18n/Translation-en.bz2 > Could not connect passive socket. [IP: 64.50.233.100 21] Some index > files failed to download, they have been ignored, or old ones used > instead. > > The 'ftp:' at the beginning of the URL shows that it is indeed > attempting to connect by FTP, as does the reference to 'passive > socket' and the '21' after the IP address. > > FTP uses separate control and data channels, in one of two different > ways, and either way, any firewall in between the ends must know enough > to associate the two channels. Hence the ftp_conntrack module (or > whatever it is called these days) in iptables to do this very job. > > Change the ftp://ftp.us in all of your /etc/apt/sources.list > entries to http://ftp.us and all will probably be well. Note that > the site hostname still begins 'ftp', but it's the part before the colon > that matters. I checked /etc/apt/sources.list and found deb http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib deb-src http://security.debian.org/ squeeze/updates main contrib # squeeze-updates, previously known as 'volatile' # A network mirror was not selected during install. The following entries # are provided as examples, but you should amend them as appropriate # for your mirror of choice. # deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-updates main contrib deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ squeeze-updates main contrib It appears that none of the entries start with "ftp:". So is there a possible Plan B at the OS or am I really going to have to hammer on Comcast? Thank you and thanks to all who replied to my earlier posts about this, -- Bill Wood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: https://lists.debian.org/1394564974.11297.9.camel@bills-debian
