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Articles by Faheem Mitha
Is `~/Documents` a relative or an absolute path?
This is merely just a vocabulary question, but which keeps turning around in my head. It comes from a practice exam from a LPIC preparation book. The correct answer according to the book is that is a relative directory because it is relative to the home directory. However, this book contains an honourable ratio of typos and mistakes so I cannot take for granted everything which is written there.
How do we know the human species arose in Africa?
There are two big prongs of the out of Africa theory or whichever name you wish to call it. Prong the first: Fossil evidence. There are lots of different kinds of protohuman fossils. Homo erectus/ergaster are found all across Europe, Asia, and into Indonesia from about 1.5 million years or so until about 70 thousand years ago, where they stop showing up. Up until 125 thousand years ago anatomically modern humans were only found in Africa.
How did the first Linux distribution(s) develop?
This is discussed at the beginning of Glyn Moody's book "Rebel Code", in Chapter 6, "Boot Then Root". He mentions the distribution from MCC (the Manchester Computing Genter) as being a very early example, though perhaps not the first. However, the book does not mention an earlier example. He then says The SLS (Softlanding Linux System) was an important early distribution.
where is the manpage for Programmers C functions?
Just to clarify the reason for this further, the manpage is in section 2 because it is a system call (implemented more or less directly as part of the kernel, rather than the C library). This distinction can seem somewhat arbitrary, especially with older system calls that are now library functions (fork is still in section 2 even though it is now a wrapper for clone), unless you already know it.
Can the filesystem become inconsistent if interrupted when moving a file?
If source and destination are on the same filesystem, mv is an atomic operation. The command mv uses rename(2) if the source and destination are on the same device, e.g same disk and partition. So, since it does not actually involve copying or relocating files, it cannot end up in an inconsistent state. If source and destination are on different filesystems, mv is a copy followed by delete and it can leave things in a half-completed state.
Is it possible to tell if my Linux kernel is custom (i.e. compiled) as opposed to distro?
Sure, just check whether knows about it. First check the kernel version you are running. Then tell to search for the kernel image file in the database. Or, better, use from the package. first builds a cache from the database, and uses that. So it is fast. Finally, check that the Debian archives contain this package. If they don't, then it is a custom package. Of course, if dpkg doesn't know about the image file, then your kernel is not part of a package at all, but has been locally compiled.
Can two PhD students publish without involving their supervisors?
The answer is "yes", but many advisors may respond differently to this. I think it depends much more on the advisor than on any established "academic norm": Advisor might not be happy that you are using up your time for "trivial pursuits" on the advisor's grant money when you should be doing "real work toward your thesis". (For the record, I would consider this as a bad reason to be unhappy with your students).
Why doesn't Fry return to his original time?
Gorchestopher's answer is very accurate, but I'd like to add a little contribution. In "The Why of Fry" (S05E08), when Fry is trapped inside the Infosphere, the Giant Brain suggests he query the database concerning the night of December 31st 1999 (the date Fry got frozen). Fry then finds out that it was Nibbler who deliberately blew Fry's tilting chair, which made him lose his balance and the chair tipped back. They have an argument: Fry: I, I don't understand. You made me go in the freezer tube?
What post PhD path alternatives are there?
I am a researcher in industry, and I love it. I get to work on important problems and my work is expected to translate into real products in roughly 5-10 years. While working on my PhD, I felt that the academic mindset was overwhelming. I have never had any intention of doing anything but research in industry, but I was certainly in the minority.
Whether to publish one big paper or many smaller papers for a given research project?
I think we all want fewer but high quality publications but many aspects of academia seems to favour quantity. We should also not forget that apart from numbers of publications, the impact of them through different index measures such as the "h" and number of citations play a vital role in evaluating your output. A paper with no citations is not "good" for your record.
A year + for first review, one referee report in, want to withdraw paper
To answer the question I must acknowledge the comment that times vary between disciplines (and to some extent journals). You should therefore check what applies to the journal where you submitted your manuscript. Based on what you find you can start thinking about withdrawing the paper. From my perspective what you describe sounds like good grounds for withdrawing and trying a different journal.
Placing a decorative separator in text
The class provides the and commands for this purpose (see the manual, , pp. 99-101). There is also a command that will omit the fancy symbols if the break occurs at the top of a page. To add to @Boris's answer, you can use the package to access many beautiful ornaments that are well suited to this purpose. Here I define two commands: the first just puts ornaments as a break in the text; the second puts a header text plus ornaments.
Is there an optimum time to leave between writing and self-proofreading?
It appears a number of factors come into this, such as what point proofreading should be done, familiarity with the text and length of time away from it. According to Jane Cogie, Kim Strain and Sharon Lorinskas It is important also that editing [proofreading] be done at the appropriate stage of the writing process, that is, as the last step, after issues of organization, coherence, and flow have been addressed.
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