Topic: Computing/Software (Page 10)
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π Emacs Pinky
Emacs or EMACS (Editor MACroS) is a family of text editors that are characterized by their extensibility. The manual for the most widely used variant, GNU Emacs, describes it as "the extensible, customizable, self-documenting, real-time display editor". Development of the first Emacs began in the mid-1970s, and work on its direct descendant, GNU Emacs, continues actively as of 2020.
Emacs has over 10,000 built-in commands and its user interface allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work. Implementations of Emacs typically feature a dialect of the Lisp programming language that provides a deep extension capability, allowing users and developers to write new commands and applications for the editor. Extensions have been written to manage email, files, outlines, and RSS feeds, as well as clones of ELIZA, Pong, Conway's Life, Snake and Tetris.
The original EMACS was written in 1976 by Carl Mikkelsen, David A. Moon and Guy L. Steele Jr. as a set of Editor MACroS for the TECO editor. It was inspired by the ideas of the TECO-macro editors TECMAC and TMACS.
The most popular, and most ported, version of Emacs is GNU Emacs, which was created by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project. XEmacs is a variant that branched from GNU Emacs in 1991. GNU Emacs and XEmacs use similar Lisp dialects and are for the most part compatible with each other.
Emacs is, along with vi, one of the two main contenders in the traditional editor wars of Unix culture. Emacs is among the oldest free and open source projects still under development.
Discussed on
- "Emacs Pinky" | 2011-06-02 | 33 Upvotes 28 Comments
π Greenspun's Tenth Rule
Greenspun's tenth rule of programming is an aphorism in computer programming and especially programming language circles that states:
Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Common Lisp.
Discussed on
- "Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming" | 2021-12-24 | 32 Upvotes 10 Comments
- "Greenspun's Tenth Rule" | 2011-08-06 | 13 Upvotes 3 Comments
π Sony BMG Rootkit Scandal
A scandal erupted in 2005 regarding Sony BMG's implementation of copy protection measures on about 22 million CDs. When inserted into a computer, the CDs installed one of two pieces of software that provided a form of digital rights management (DRM) by modifying the operating system to interfere with CD copying. Neither program could easily be uninstalled, and they created vulnerabilities that were exploited by unrelated malware. One of the programs would install and "phone home" with reports on the user's private listening habits, even if the user refused its end-user license agreement (EULA), while the other was not mentioned in the EULA at all. Both programs contained code from several pieces of copylefted free software in an apparent infringement of copyright, and configured the operating system to hide the software's existence, leading to both programs being classified as rootkits.
Sony BMG initially denied that the rootkits were harmful. It then released an uninstaller for one of the programs that merely made the program's files visible while also installing additional software that could not be easily removed, collected an email address from the user and introduced further security vulnerabilities.
Following public outcry, government investigations and class-action lawsuits in 2005 and 2006, Sony BMG partially addressed the scandal with consumer settlements, a recall of about 10% of the affected CDs and the suspension of CD copy-protection efforts in early 2007.
Discussed on
- "Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal from 2005" | 2026-08-03 | 25 Upvotes 9 Comments
- "Sony BMG Rootkit Scandal" | 2022-07-22 | 20 Upvotes 2 Comments
π CMS Pipelines
CMS Pipelines implements the pipeline concept under the VM/CMS operating system. The programs in a pipeline operate on a sequential stream of records. A program writes records that are read by the next program in the pipeline. Any program can be combined with any other because reading and writing is done through a device independent interface.
Discussed on
- "CMS Pipelines" | 2016-04-27 | 43 Upvotes 12 Comments
π Arachne: a self-contained graphical web browser for DOS and Linux
Arachne is a discontinued Internet suite containing a graphical web browser, email client, and dialer. Originally, Arachne was developed by Michal PolΓ‘k under his xChaos label, a name he later changed into Arachne Labs. It was written in C and compiled using Borland C++ 3.1. Arachne has since been released under the GPL as Arachne GPL.
Arachne primarily runs on DOS-based operating systems, but includes builds for Linux as well. The Linux version relies on SVGALib and therefore does not require a display server.
Discussed on
- "Arachne: a self-contained graphical web browser for DOS and Linux" | 2015-10-20 | 41 Upvotes 13 Comments
π IBM Common User Access
Common User Access (CUA) is a standard for user interfaces to operating systems and computer programs. It was developed by IBM and first published in 1987 as part of their Systems Application Architecture. Used originally in the MVS/ESA, VM/CMS, OS/400, OS/2 and Microsoft Windows operating systems, parts of the CUA standard are now implemented in programs for other operating systems, including variants of Unix. It is also used by Java AWT and Swing.
Discussed on
- "IBM Common User Access" | 2021-05-20 | 32 Upvotes 21 Comments
π Microsoft Works
Microsoft Works is a discontinued productivity software suite developed by Microsoft and sold from 1987 to 2009. Its core functionality included a word processor, a spreadsheet and a database management system. Later versions had a calendar application and a dictionary while older releases included a terminal emulator. Works was available as a standalone program, and as part of a namesake home productivity suite. Because of its low cost ($40 retail, or as low as $2 OEM), companies frequently pre-installed Works on their low-cost machines. Works was smaller, less expensive, and had fewer features than Microsoft Office and other major office suites available at the time.
Mainstream support for the final standalone and suite release ended on October 9, 2012 and January 8, 2013, respectively.
Discussed on
- "Microsoft Works" | 2023-09-03 | 31 Upvotes 18 Comments
π IBM Parallel Sysplex
In computing, a Parallel Sysplex is a cluster of IBM mainframes acting together as a single system image with z/OS. Used for disaster recovery, Parallel Sysplex combines data sharing and parallel computing to allow a cluster of up to 32 systems to share a workload for high performance and high availability.
Discussed on
- "IBM Parallel Sysplex" | 2022-03-30 | 36 Upvotes 10 Comments
π XZ Utils Backdoor
In February 2024, a malicious backdoor was introduced to the Linux build of the xz utility within the liblzma library in versions 5.6.0 and 5.6.1 by an account using the name "Jia Tan". The backdoor gives an attacker who possesses a specific Ed448 private key remote code execution through OpenSSH (a suite of secure networking utilities) on the affected Linux system. The issue has been given the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures number CVE-2024-3094 and has been assigned a CVSS score of 10.0, the highest possible score.
While xz is commonly present in most Linux distributions, at the time of discovery the backdoored version had not yet been widely deployed to production systems, but was present in development versions of major distributions. The backdoor was discovered by the software developer Andres Freund, who announced his findings on 29 March 2024.
Discussed on
- "XZ Utils Backdoor" | 2025-12-19 | 25 Upvotes 21 Comments
π 86-DOS
86-DOS is a discontinued operating system developed and marketed by Seattle Computer Products (SCP) for its Intel 8086-based computer kit. Initially known as QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), the name was changed to 86-DOS once SCP started licensing the operating system in 1980.
86-DOS had a command structure and application programming interface that imitated that of Digital Research's CP/M operating system, which made it easy to port programs from the latter. The system was licensed and then purchased by Microsoft and developed further as MS-DOS and PCΒ DOS.
Discussed on
- "86-DOS" | 2020-06-08 | 38 Upvotes 7 Comments