Stable sessions

I'd heard about the screen command before, but I didn't really grok it until I read a recent article at kuro5hin.org. I knew that it enables multiple virtual terminals across a single telnet/ssh connection. That's nice, but I do the same thing when I open an ssh connection, launch emacs, then spawn multiple shells within emacs. The nifty thing about screen is that it decouples the telnet/ssh connection from the virtual terminals. Examples of how this can be useful include:

• I can start a big nasty update in an Oracle sqlplus session shortly before I leave work, go home, reconnect to the screen session, monitor and commit from the same sqlplus session.
• If I'm on an ssh connection that is apt to disconnect because of noisy phone lines or a weak wireless connection, I can continue where I left off every time I reconnect.

If you are an emacs user and don't already know about emacs' ability to save sessions, you're missing out. It won't preserve any shells or other processes running within emacs, but it will restore the "buffers, major modes, buffer positions, and so on that the previous Emacs session had." Never to be outdone by emacs, it seems that vim can also save session information.

No viruses under linux?

While searching for details on running some windows program under Wine in linux, I discovered that the Wine devotees are testing just about everything which runs under windows.

The Junk Science of George W. Bush

[The Bush administration and right-wing allies] are engaged in a campaign to suppress science that is arguably unmatched in the Western world since the Inquisition. Sometimes, rather than suppress good science, they simply order up their own.

They're suppressing EPA reports on air quality around the World Trade Center site, replacing independent review panels with industry-selected panels and, in at least one case, let a company monitor itself:

The Bush Administration reacted to the frightening findings not by banning this dangerous chemical, as the European Union has, but by taking the studies away from EPA scientists and, in an unprecedented move, giving the chemical's manufacturer, Switzerland-based Syngenta, control over federal research. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Sherry Ford, a spokesperson for Syngenta, praised without irony the advantages of having the company monitor its own product. "This is one way we can ensure it's not presenting any risk to the environment."

Read The Junk Science of George W. Bush (which I found by way of AlterNet) and if you believe that scientists and science research should not be suppressed for political purposes, please share.