Tag Archives: Slashdot

emacs smackdown of the week.

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The question is what to write html in… on slashdot. Where hairy unix geeks go when they are not chilling at alt.sysadmin.recovery.

Someone mentioned notepad there. Silly person.

Before someone comes in putting down all the IDE’s and tools for web designing and suggests Notepad, let me just say this – no, notepad is not replacement for a good, solid IDE.

Notepad is not only a useless HTML editor, it’s a useless text editor. Use a real one and you’ll see the virtue of this argument.

EMACS or vi on a decent Unix/linux workstation is your IDE. I challenge any web developer to keep up with me in site design and updating. You might be able to stay with me on a trivial site with a couple of pages/templates, but I guarantee you that as soon as you start working on anything non-trivial (like the 100,000+ static documents I currently administer), a real text editor and the basic set of *nix utilities will leave any IDE looking weak and impoverished.

via Ask Slashdot: Web Site Editing Software For the Long Haul? – Slashdot.

Now, as far as I’m concerned, emacs is a useful front for ESS, which allows me to run R. Most of the time I write scripts in nano.

But I’m not programming large amounts of css, html, or (worse) C. If I was, I would live inside emacs.

Why is Obama the Borg?

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The term has some history. Firstly, Slashdot has used the Borg symbol to describe those who use Windows… in part because Microsoft says that there is no alternative and you have to join us. To a certain extent this is true, but true Microsofties have drunk the coolaid and are waiting for the true OS that solves all their problems

 

From Microsoft: where the only secure OS is on service pack 5 or at the end of its useful live. I still think they peaked at NT4…

 

Now many on the right were interested to see how the press ordained Barak Obama as “the ONE”. It was at least embarassing and (for those of us with a catholic faith, including the reformed varieties) at times blasphemous. Barak was (and is) a fairly standard product of the Chicago Democratic Machine, in fact the comparisons with JF Kennedy are at times appropriate as JFK owed his election to the very same system. It was corrupt then and it is corrupt now.

 

But there is no option. We are told by the left we must drink this cordial despite the poison it contains. As with the Borg  or the Microsofties, no other option is considered.

 

It would be unfair to say that Obama is the Borg, but the Democratic party machine has become quite Borglike. Obama is a member of good standing and the face of this system (it would be very, very hard to sell Pelosi, Reid or Biden, by the way).

 

And the Borg should be resisted in any form. Use any other OS. Vote any other way. And if the US trashes its constitution, leave for an environment where free speech, personal responsbility and the rule of law is part of the DNA: that will mean Australasia until Southern Africa regains its senses (and is post-ANC,