Apr

27

TTT Part 17 of n – Regular Expressions

Filed Under Computers & Tech, System Administration on April 27, 2014 | 5 Comments

This post is part 17 of 39 in the series Taming the Terminal

This instalment is the start of a series of instalments relating to searching from the command line. Searching is all about patterns, and that means getting to grips with Regular Expressions (also called RegExps, RegExes or REs for short). Regular Expressions are languages for representing patterns, and are used throughout IT, not just on the command line. While this series focuses on the Terminal, an understanding of regular expressions will be helpful in many other places, from programming languages to GUI apps like programming editors, search utilities or file re-namers. It’s going to take us two instalments to properly describe regular expressions, but when we’re done we’ll have gained a very useful skill.

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Apr

4

So – About Mozilla’s Controversial CEO

Filed Under Polemics & Politics on April 4, 2014 | 1 Comment

So Brendan Eich’s short tenure as Mozilla CEO has come to an end (report from TMO). The short version is that he donated money to the campaign for Prop 8 in California, an unconstitutional (it turns out) marriage discrimination law (i.e. a gay marriage ban). Since being appointed CEO, Eich has come under ever increasing pressure over his anti-gay stance, with pressure on him to either evolve on the issue, or step down. He made it clear he was not changing his mind on being pro-discrimination, but insisted it wouldn’t affect how he did his job. That wasn’t good enough for the community, and in the end he bowed to the pressure and resigned.

I have skin in the game here, I’m a long-time FireFox user (since before it was even called FireFox), I’ve donated to Mozilla, and I’m a pseudo-married gay man. You can take it as read that I’m not in favour of homophobic laws like Prop 8. You might also imagine that I’d have been straight in there in the chorus of people looking for Eich to step down, but I wasn’t. I had to think long and hard about whether or not it was right to ask for his resignation. My distrust of mobs and my dislike of witch-hunts came into conflict with my abhorrence of discrimination. I needed to figure out the morals of this before I said anything publicly.

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