The Old New Thing

October 15, 2007 - The Old New Thing

Nicolas Bourbaki, perhaps the biggest inside joke in mathematics

October 15, 2007 Oct 15, 2007 10/15/07
Raymond Chen
If you've studied advanced mathematics, you've certainly read or at least heard about the books and papers of the great French mathematician Nicolas Bourbaki, whose works in the 1930's set out a rigorous formulation of modern mathematics. Except he never actually existed. The name was created as a front for a group of renegade French ...

Why aren't shortcuts as easy as unix links?

October 15, 2007 Oct 15, 2007 10/15/07
Raymond Chen
Commenter dingo asks, "Why are shortcuts so hard to manipulate? Why can't they be as easy as unix links?" Well, if you want something like unix links, then you can just create a hard link. Creating them is about the same difficulty ( vs ) and manipulating them is the same since you don't actually manipulate a hard link. You just use it like a...