uRandom [ steve-parker.org ]

Email Address		Password	Remember Me	Or Create a (Free) Account.

2004	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2005	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
2006	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Oct	Oct
2007	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	2007
2008	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	2008
2009	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	2009
2010	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	2010
2011	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	2011
2012	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	2012
2013	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	2013

Thu 20th Sep 2012 @ 11:05 2012: DIR_COLORS

GNU ls uses the LS_COLORS variable to determine how to display different types of file. This can be handy, but it's often a pain, particularly when using PuTTY from a Wintel PC, since PuTTY defaults to a black background, and RHEL's /etc/DIR_COLORS is set up to display directory names in dark blue, which is quite hard to read.

The fix is easy enough; edit /etc/DIR_COLORS and change this line:

DIR 01;34    # directory

I tend to set it to 01;36, which is the same cyan (pale blue) as a symbolic link, but use whatever works for you.

The next problem is when you've set that file, and you *still* get an unexpected colour. This is the order in which dir_colors files are parsed on RedHat (and apparently Slackware and SuSE also - I haven't tested those though):

~/.dir_colors

/etc/DIR_COLORS.$TERM

/etc/DIR_COLORS

So if you have (say) an xterm, it will read /etc/DIR_COLORS.xterm, and your heroic updates to /etc/DIR_COLORS will be ignored.

Post a Comment

Mon 17th Sep 2012 @ 17:12 2012: What did you learn in school today?

http://zine.openrightsgroup.org/features/2012/what-did-you-learn-in-school-today

Wendy Grossman, whose work I have been reading since I was a kid learning about computers, and whom I sat across a train table once (but was too timid to introduce myself - she looked busy on her Google laptop) has written a really good article about what the current and near-future state of monitoring in schools is teaching the current generation about identity and security.

"But here's the most telling quote from that Wired article: "The kids are used to being monitored."

Yes, they are. And when they are adults, they will also be used to being monitored. I'm not quite paranoid enough to suggest that there's a large conspiracy to "soften up" the next generation (as Terri Dowty used to put it when she was running Action for the Rights of Children), but you can have the effect whether or not you have the intent. All these trends are happening in multiple locations: in the UK, for example, there were experiments in 2007 with school uniforms with embedded RFID (that wouldn't work in the US, where school uniforms are a rarity); in the trial, these not only tracked students' movements but pulled up data on academic performance.

These are the lessons we are teaching these kids indirectly. We tell them that putting naked photos on Facebook is a dumb idea and may come back to bite them in the future - but simultaneously we pretend to them that their electronic school records, down to the last, tiniest infraction, pose no similar risk. We tell them that plagiarism is bad and try to teach them about copyright and copying - but real life is meanwhile teaching them that a lot of news is scraped almost directly from press releases and that cheating goes on everywhere from financial markets and sports to scientific research. And although we try to tell them that security is important, we teach them by implication that it's OK to use sensitive personal data such as fingerprints and other biometrics for relatively trivial purposes, even knowing that these data's next outing may be to protect their bank accounts and validate their passports."

Post a Comment

Fri 14th Sep 2012 @ 18:28 2012: Science (mainly physics in this case) vs Religion

RANT...
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2011/07/27/science-vs-religion-50-famous-academics-on-god/

Hasn't this been done to death? I've patiently watched about half of this 34-minute compilation of scientists (mainly physicists, which is interesting) stating their beliefs about various questions - some are about "is there a god", some are about "does science allow for the possibility of there being a god" and others are "does science require the existence of god". Yet others are about "do you believe in the afterlife", which is an entirely different question again.

I would love to have the time to address all of these points in turn, but in general, these are physicists talking about theology, which is always interesting to hear, but whilst I'm interested to hear what a GP thinks about music, or what my barber thinks about the internet, the common theme of these clips seems to be along the lines of Feynman's early comment, which is quoted on the linked page:



"I can’t believe the special stories that have been made up about our relationship to the universe at large, because they seem to be too simple, to connected, too local, too provincial. The Earth! He came to the Earth! One of the aspects of God came to the Earth, mind you. And look at what’s out there! How can… It isn’t in proportion." ~ Richard Feynman

If the claims of religion were something ordinary, that heat is energy, or that sound requires a medium to travel through, religion would be science. Science doesn't try to explain (or to explain away), nor to replace literature, though it may get to a point where it is possible to explain what makes good literature, and I'm open to the idea of creating good literature through the scientific method, though that seems like it would be a long way off yet, whatever Marvin Minsky might have hoped for in the 1960s and 70s.

The claims of religion are supernatural; explaining and containing this within the laws of physics is a fool's errand. There is a reason this is called the supernatural, so the only question left to address, is whether or not these scientists are open to accepting the concept of a supernatural alongside the natural.

Many of the speakers, as scientists, are actually showing that they are indeed open to this concept.

The afterlife is frequently introduced into the above video; that is something which is not examinable by scientific method. There is only one historical figure who has claimed to return from death to be interviewed, and who has confirmed all of his own claims by doing so. If one chooses to ignore that single instance (particularly because he does back up his own claims) and also the 500+ witnesses who met him after his public death and subsequent resurrection, then there is no other scientific way of being able to discuss that subject at all, so scientists are at a disadvantage when faced with such a question.

1 Comment

Fri 14th Sep 2012 @ 17:03 2012: Amazon author page

Amazon have a new, friendlier URL for author's pages. Mine is http://amazon.com/author/unixsteve.