• CVS SSH

    Sorry for the long posting hiatus. I have enough readers now that it’s hard to write the usual random nonsense. I was recently reminded of an old problem using CVS over SSH, which was an interesting example of various different instances of reasonable behaviour adding up to a bug. It’s possible that this bug has…

  • Executable stack

    The gcc compiler implements an extension to C: nested functions. A trivial example: int f() { int i = 2; int g(int j) { return i + j; } return g(3); } The function f will return 5. Note in particular that the nested function g refers to the variable i defined in the enclosing…

  • Thor

    My expectations going to see the Thor movie were fairly low, so I was not disappointed by the result. The movie was not dumb, it was entirely watchable, it just could have been a lot better. My daughter was excited about the idea of a Thor movie because she thought it would be from the…

  • A Third Way

    I have long felt that there is a space in U.S. politics for a party which holds traditionally right-wing views on social issues but traditionally left-wing views on economic issues. Many voters in the U.S. vote against their economic interests in support of their social views. The limousine liberal is a cliché, a wealthy person…

  • Casino

    A New York Times op-ed column by Edward E. Kaufman Jr. and Carl M. Levin warns that if steps are not taken, “our stock markets will have become a casino.” It seems a bit late for that. While there may still be some predictability to the market in the long-term, in the short-term it is…