Moral outrage

Submitted by devin on Sat, 04/26/2014 - 11:32

I have a problem with moral outrage. 

On the one hand, I often believe in the causes people are outraged about. On the other, I get so sick of the way they treat the causes as God's own truth. Let's pick an example cause: people being angry because they want a higher minimum wage.

I think the best salespeople truly believe in what they're selling. So it's a good thing that people really believe that there should be a higher minimum wage. On the other hand, the argument that a higher minimum wage would lead to less jobs has its merits too.

Parkinson's Law

Submitted by devin on Sun, 04/13/2014 - 08:27

I just found out about "Parkinson's Law", which simply stated says that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion". Students, take note! You could spend hours in the library procrastinating on Facebook and saying you don't have time to hang out with your friends, or you could hang out with your friends and then do the work on a deadline and get it done decisively.

A Slashdot Thread

Submitted by devin on Sun, 04/13/2014 - 08:09

Re:If you make this a proof of God...  (Score:4, Insightful)
by marcello_dl (667940)  on Friday April 11, 2014 @09:52AM (#46724593)

Let's simplify.

Conway's game of life creatures became sentient.
They discovered they are made of cells.

People love their titles

Submitted by devin on Wed, 03/19/2014 - 22:09

One of the things I noticed when I started university was that my peers started signing their emails like this

Jane A. Student
Honours Bachelor of Aviation and Biochemistry
Class of 2020, part time student
jstudent@uwaterloo.ca

There is a lot of hilarity hidden inside this signature, and most of it isn't mine. 

Why do people love titles so much? Probably has to do with identity, grumble, grumble, grumble...

Wordpress permissions script

Submitted by devin on Tue, 03/18/2014 - 15:33

In the same vein as my Drupal permissions setup script, here's a script that should set up a Wordpress install with file permissions that are secure, except Wordpress will allow editing of the files through the admin backend. Permissions are locked down in the same way as with Drupal, except wp-content is set up like Drupal's files directory with write permissions for the webserver.

Partisanship

Submitted by devin on Sat, 03/08/2014 - 19:12

People love complaining about YouTube comments, and I do too. I disagree with lots of people in YouTube comments.

People also love hating democratically elected leaders; which is their right. Among the people I know, it's common to hear people saying "Stephen Harper doesn't do anything right" or "Rob Ford should never have been elected". I'm not really in a position to evaluate these claims and probably agree based on what I know.

Drupal and Wordpress on Apache and Nginx

Submitted by devin on Thu, 03/06/2014 - 22:17

My two favourite CMSes and my two favourite web servers. Here are four config files for the same website. Let's assume we have a user devin with two directories in his public_html folder:

/home/devin/public_html/drupal
/home/devin/public_html/wordpress

And then has already created the following logs folders (nginx and Apache have a habit of crashing when you try to specify a non-existent logging directory):

Setting up an FTP server with vsftpd

Submitted by devin on Thu, 03/06/2014 - 22:03

vsftpd is a simple and secure FTP server, I hear. I've used it to set up an FTP server quickly. Rather than fighting with TLS and FTP, I just use SFTP now - it's much simpler.

You'll need to download and install vsftpd and openssh-server at least. Also, I usually use AllowUsers in my /etc/ssh/sshd_config to whitelist  which users are allowed to ssh in like so:

Why I drink beer

Submitted by devin on Thu, 03/06/2014 - 21:39

Beer is a vice, so I shouldn't feel particularly proud of drinking it. But I feel a certain kinship to those with vices. Drinking beer isn't pleasant, on first glance. It can be bitter and literally tastes like poison.

Individualism in Canada

Submitted by devin on Wed, 03/05/2014 - 08:18

Last night I watched some videos from the "Kids React" series, which is a great way to see what people are thinking. Kids are getting their ideas from others and recombining them in their brains just like I am, they're just more up front about it and say it in simpler words.

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