Hieratic documentation

Here’s where I attempt to revive and popularize a fine old word in a new context. hieratic, adj. Of or concerning priests; priestly. Often used of the ancient Egyptian writing system of abridged hieroglyphics used by priests. Earlier today I was criticizing the waf build system in email. I wanted to say that its documentation… Continue reading Hieratic documentation

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Categorized as Software

I’m not going to ‘take everyone’s guns away’

An expectation of casual, cynical lying has taken over American political culture. Seldom has this been more obviously displayed than Barack Obama’s address to police chiefs in Chicago two days ago. Here is what everyone in the United States of America except possibly a handful of mental defectives heard:

I improved time last night

Sometimes you find performance improvements in the simplest places. Last night I improved the time-stepping precision of NTP by a factor of up to a thousand. With a change of less than 20 lines. The reason I was able to do this is because the NTP code had not caught up to a change in… Continue reading I improved time last night

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Categorized as Software Tagged

Vox is wrong – we don’t have too many guns, we have too many criminals

One of my followers on G+ asked me to comment on a Vox article, What no politician wants to admit about gun control. I’ve studied the evidence, and I don’t believe the effect of the Australian confiscation on homicides was significant.  You can play games with statistics to make it look that way, but they… Continue reading Vox is wrong – we don’t have too many guns, we have too many criminals