I don’t really have a sure solution, but I did manage to evade that error with, so far, a 100% success rate. I got the error while doing some machine learning (feature selection + classification task, not sure at which step it broke), and I noticed that even though it was in a pretty large loop, it seemed to be 100% reproducible for me (loop always crashing on the same iteration). I realized that I was using set.seed() in order to get more stable results (I’m generating lots of artificial data, and having them vary between various experimental conditions adds unwanted noise), and so I thought, since this seems to usually be a random error, maybe setting another seed would work. And indeed it did: changing the seed from 100 to 99 in my case “solved” the issue.

Long story short: If it occurs randomly and you don’t use a seed, if this is a possibility do try setting a seed (try a few if it doesn’t work the first time). If it occurs deterministically and you do use a seed, try another seed value (same, try a few if needed).
If it occurs deterministically and you don’t use a seed, I’m not sure setting a seed would help. If it occurs randomly and you do use a seed, I really don’t think changing the seed would help. But I guess it costs nothing to try…

To install it, pretty straightforward (NB: I’m using Ubuntu, should be the same on Debian; on Fedora should be the same but with yum):
apt-get install wipe

And then to run it, for basic use it will take ALMOST (see below the warning about wildcards) the same kind of options as “rm”:
myLaptop:/home/david$ wipe -r thisFolder
Okay to WIPE 1 directory ? (Yes/No) y
Please answer "Yes" or "No".
Okay to WIPE 1 directory ? (Yes/No) Yes
Wiping ubuntu-11.10-dvd-amd64.iso, pass 9 (12) [ 213 / 5994]

The default setting is 34 overwrite passes, which is huge and slow, but I guess helpful if you are paranoid. If you want fewer passes, use -Q [number of passes]. The manual might be an interesting read, too.

A very important warning about using wildcards: DO NOT use wipe -r .*. As reported there, this pattern matches .. so wipe will then browse around and erase the whole disk if you’re running it as root (and even if you’re not, it will likely get to places where you didn’t want it to go). This is not a bug, it’s actually a feature. rm not matching .. when you call it on .* is a safeguard, but when you’re using wipe chances are that it’s more of a problem to miss deletions than to do too many of them, thus this aggressive behavior. I didn’t try it but most likely this is true of wipe -r * too.

If you want to erase all the dot files in a folder, you can either use wipe .??* or move on level up and do wipe -r theFolder, like I did in my example.

Edit: actually, I did gave a shot at wipe -q -r .* on a virtual box, it didn’t wipe everything out, as can be seen from the output:
root@xxxxx:~# wipe -q -r .*
Okay to WIPE 9 regular files and 7 directories ? (Yes/No) Yes
Will not remove .
Will not remove ..
Operation finished.

Finally, I thought that could be useful on Windows so I checked out: unfortunately wipe is not available in Cygwin as of today.

The only question left is: do we get a redemption period, say half a minute or something, to undo the request without it actually being sent (via e-mail)? Not really motivated to test that, so if you happen to know please comment about it

<Language name="sql" ext="sql" commentStart="/*" commentEnd="*/">
<Keywords name="instre1">abs absolute access acos add add_months adddate admin after aggregate all allocate alter and any app_name are array as asc ascii asin assertion at atan atn2 audit authid authorization autonomous_transaction avg before begin benchmark between bfilename bin binary binary_checksum binary_integer bit bit_count bit_and bit_or blob body boolean both breadth bulk by call cascade cascaded case cast catalog ceil ceiling char char_base character charindex chartorowid check checksum checksum_agg chr class clob close cluster coalesce col_length col_name collate collation collect column comment commit completion compress concat concat_ws connect connection constant constraint constraints constructorcreate contains containsable continue conv convert corr corresponding cos cot count count_big covar_pop covar_samp create cross cube cume_dist current current_date current_path current_role current_time current_timestamp current_user currval cursor cycle data datalength databasepropertyex date date_add date_format date_sub dateadd datediff datename datepart day db_id db_name deallocate dec declare decimal decode default deferrable deferred degrees delete dense_rank depth deref desc describe descriptor destroy destructor deterministic diagnostics dictionary disconnect difference distinct do domain double drop dump dynamic each else elsif empth encode encrypt end end-exec equals escape every except exception exclusive exec execute exists exit exp export_set extends external extract false fetch first first_value file float floor file_id file_name filegroup_id filegroup_name filegroupproperty fileproperty for forall foreign format formatmessage found freetexttable from from_days fulltextcatalog fulltextservice function general get get_lock getdate getansinull getutcdate global go goto grant greatest group grouping having heap hex hextoraw host host_id host_name hour ident_incr ident_seed ident_current identified identity if ifnull ignore immediate in increment index index_col indexproperty indicator initcap initial initialize initially inner inout input insert instr instrb int integer interface intersect interval into is is_member is_srvrolemember is_null is_numeric isdate isnull isolation iterate java join key lag language large last last_day last_value lateral lcase lead leading least left len length lengthb less level like limit limited ln lpad local localtime localtimestamp locator lock log log10 long loop lower ltrim make_ref map match max maxextents mid min minus minute mlslabel mod mode modifies modify module month months_between names national natural naturaln nchar nclob new new_time newid next next_day nextval no noaudit nocompress nocopy none not nowait null nullif number number_base numeric nvl nvl2 object object_id object_name object_property ocirowid oct of off offline old on online only opaque open operator operation option or ord order ordinalityorganization others out outer output package pad parameter parameters partial partition path pctfree percent_rank pi pls_integer positive positiven postfix pow power pragma precision prefix preorder prepare preserve primary prior private privileges procedure public radians raise rand range rank ratio_to_export raw rawtohex read reads real record recursive ref references referencing reftohex relative release release_lock rename repeat replace resource restrict result return returns reverse revoke right rollback rollup round routine row row_number rowid rowidtochar rowlabel rownum rows rowtype rpad rtrim savepoint schema scroll scope search second section seddev_samp select separate sequence session session_user set sets share sign sin sinh size smallint some soundex space specific specifictype sql sqlcode sqlerrm sqlexception sqlstate sqlwarning sqrt start state statement static std stddev stdev_pop strcmp structure subdate substr substrb substring substring_index subtype successful sum synonym sys_context sys_guid sysdate system_user table tan tanh temporary terminate than then time timestamp timezone_abbr timezone_minute timezone_hour timezone_region to to_char to_date to_days to_number to_single_byte trailing transaction translate translation treat trigger trim true trunc truncate type ucase uid under union unique unknown unnest update upper usage use user userenv using validate value values var_pop var_samp varchar varchar2 variable variance varying view vsize when whenever where with without while with work write year zone
mediumint datetime tinyint text unsigned</Keywords>
</Language>

Comments in BibTeX

Comments in LaTeX start with a %. I don’t think they implemented multiline comments. You’d thing BibTeX would use the same format? Well, thing again. Comments in BibTeX look like:
@Comment{This is my comment}
The good news is: it works on multiple line. The bad news is: it doesn’t work inside another tag. So you can’t have, say:
@article{Saeys2007,
@Comment{Nice taxonomy of feature selection methods}
title={A review of feature selection techniques in bioinformatics.},
volume={23},
url={http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17720704},
number={19},
journal={Bioinformatics},
publisher={Oxford Univ Press},
author={Saeys, Yvan and Inza, Iñaki and Larrañaga, Pedro},
year={2007},
pages={2507--2517}
}
But you need to put the comment out of that @article block.

Forcing a specific display of authors’ names

I had a case where one of my reference had as an author the “MAQC Consortium” (or as an alternative, the huge list of all members of this consortium). The default BibTeX behavior, as programmed by the editor, was to treat authors as “firstName lastName”, so I had a reference by “Consortium, M.”, not really what I wanted… It’s possible, however, to manipulate the author field using the \relax command. Its typical use is to modify the way the firstName is abbreviated, ie to keep more than its first letter like {\relax Jo}hn Doe vs {\relax Ja}mes Doe. But it can as well be used on the whole author’s name, like:
author={{\relax MAQC Consortium} and John Doe}
I guess that’s cheating, but it works…

Getting a BibTeX entry from any PubMed reference

PubMed let you export entries in “Medline” and XML formats, but don’t offer BibTeX export out of the box. However, there’s a web service, TeXMed, able to export PubMed entries to BibTeX. It works by query so you can get a whole batch of entries at the same time by searching by keywords, but if you only want one specific entry just search for its PMID.

This is controlled by the browser.download.manager.showAlertOnComplete setting (edit it via about:config): set it to false to disable the highly annoying “download finished” popup which sloooooowwwwly appears and then diiiiiiiiisappeeeaaaars every time a file has finished downloading (this thing is particularly slow when your GPU is busy doing something else).

How to skip antivirus scanning of incoming files + don’t tag downloaded exe’s as coming from Internet

This is controlled by the browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone setting: set it to false to disable the bloody time-wasting virus scan at the end of every file download. This never caught a single virus for me anyway… Also, it makes the downloaded files bypass Windows security policy checks (the former preference browser.download.manager.skipWinSecurityPolicyChecks was merged into this one), ie when you launch a downloaded executable Windows won’t bother you with the warning popup “this program was downloaded from Internet, are you sure you want to run it?”.

How to delete words from the personal dictionary

For some reason, I find it extremely easy to accidentally add misspelled words to the personal dictionary – I guess that menu item is somewhat misplaced. On the other hand, deleting them is then a pain in the ***, notably the GUI provides no way to do this. You’ll have to manually edit the dictionary file…
It’s located in your profile folder (on Windows NT/2k/XP/Vista/Se7en, it looks like %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default – just browse to %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ then it will be obvious -, for other OSes, check out Profile folder on MozillaZine, or even simpler go to about:support and click on “Profile Directory – Open containing folder”) and is named persdict.dat. You can edit it with any plain text editor supporting Unix line breaks (for instance Notepad++ is good, the standard Windows notepad isn’t). Make sure that Firefox isn’t running, as it will overwrite the file when you close it. Source

How to configure several profiles

Close Firefox (make sure there’s really no more firefox.exe running in the background), then relaunch it with the -profilemanager argument. On Windows, the easiest way to do is is probably to hit [Windows key]+R (for “Run”), and then type firefox.exe -profilemanager. After that, you should get the profile manager window, which should be self-explanatory enough. If you need more details, this post should be helpful.

How to prevent Firefox from trimming link URLs

That stupid feature was added when they replaced the status bar with that retarded add-on bar. Before that, when you hovered a link it’s target would show up in the status bar. As far as I remember, they then moved that preview to the address bar (with big fat huge trimming, as this is a limited and already well-filled space), and due to enough people getting upset with it, they moved it back to the bottom of the window (to the bottom-left, or when the find bar is opened (bug?), to the bottom-right), but this time above the add-on bar. BUT they didn’t remove the trimming: that URL preview is by default limited to 50% of the window’s width. Why the heck not 100%?? Anyway, to change that, go to your chrome folder (you might need to create it manually), which is located in %appdata%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\chrome (see the section about dictionary entries for more details and alternative OSes), then edit or create (with a plain text editor) the file userChrome.css. In this file, add the following section:
statuspanel {max-width: 100% !important;}
And voilà, when you restart Firefox link URL previews will be able to use the whole width of the window, so they shouldn’t get trimmed often, then…

How to decrease the minimum tab width

As in the previous tip, you need to create/edit userChrome.css. Add the following code (edit sizes as you wish):
.tabbrowser-tab[fadein]:not([pinned]) {
min-width: 15px !important;
max-width: 250px !important;}

How to force Firefox to display the full URL in the address bar

By this I mean, the real full URL, including the bloody http:// part. Well, I long thought this was impossible, but eventually a setting was created for this! In about:config, just set browser.urlbar.trimURLs to false. The change will be immediately visible!

Well, that’s all for today… Those are pretty much all the dirty hacks I need to perform when dealing with a new Fx install, apart from the ever changing extensions.checkCompatibility mess. Keeping them on a single page should make my life easier the next time I need them…