3/17    If anyone has 1 or 2 extra tickets to see Radiohead 4/2 in San
        Francisco please e-mail me, thanks      -lolly
        \_ Doesn't require batteries, yet more useful than a "Leatherman" . . .

3/17    If anyone could tar up and put in /tmp hilfie's cs61b java classes
        that reside on the instructional machines, I would be most
        obliged.  I have no account on those machines.  -sky
        \_ /tmp/ucb-classes.tar.gz
           \_ Thank you very kindly, sir -sky

3/17    Is the SF rendition of the "Phantom of the Opera" worth
        seeing?  - curious
        \_ For god's sake, it's Andrew Lloyd Webber.  Spend your money
           on some real theatre.
        \_ As long as it's not the understudies. They weren't very good.
        \_ SF's Phantom is not even worth $5 to see. Forget it   -disappointed
        \_ Agreed.  Yet I was the only one who remained seated at the end.
           It was the most wholly undeserved standing O I've ever seen.
           \_ So I'm assuming you're comparing it to some other production,
              say the Broadway version.
           \_ Or the LA version with Michael Crawford
        \_ When they took out the pliers and the blow torch, I said,
           sheeet! They are going medeival on the Phantom and
           and it's gonna get nasty. I left just when the screaming
           started. Worst $1.75 I ever spent.
        \_ Don't bother seeing *anything* in SF.  I have yet to see anything
           that I didn't leave feeling ripped off at any price.  It's a loss
           of time even when the tickets are free.
           \_ Come see my shows.  at least they're cheaper.
              and often we're better.  -- scotsman
           \_ This applies to many a city. What do you expect in SF? Its
              No. 1 industry is tourism.

3/18    funniest image :
        http://www.abcnews.com/sections/us/DailyNews/clinton0318.html
        \_ Okay, monica and that new old-woman on the scale, so why is it funny?

3/18    looking at mi professors and tas and manager resumes, these people dont
        know how to c0de shit in perl and c/c++ and shell and java, yet they
        make/will make more $ than me, what the fuck?
        \_ I have actually heard a manager refer to programmers, unflinchinly,
           as "unskilled labor", by which I think he meant disposable/inter-
           changeable or something.   Im not sure
           \_ It depends on what kind of application you develop.  I would
              not call people developing optimized 3d game engine or
              financial application "unskilled".
              \_ No, people who develop financial applications are unskilled.
                 Gamers are pretty cool, though.
        \_ demand for a raise and see how high you can go
        \_ Because coding is for kiddies.  You can teach any idiot how to
           code.  It really isn't that hard.  Look how many idiots are doing
           it right now.  No PhD required.  If you wanted to make big bucks
           you went into the wrong field and now possess the wrong skills.
           Sorry, but you're pretty confused about the world and your career
           is already fucked.  Time to retrain I guess.
        \_ It doesn't matter anyway; when bh and his Communist GNU buddies win,
           you'll all be writing code for free.  (Hope you like doing
           support . . . )
                \_ POT STICKER POWER!  YEE HAA!  Actually I'm glad we have
                   self appointed victims like the FSF/GNU people but I
                   wouldn't want to be one.
                \_ If it weren't for GNU cc, our lives would REALLY be
                   fun. (you, yes you, could write your projects using
                   ULTRIX cc!) I, for one, am rather thankful to have
                   cross-platform tools that *work* for a change... -brg
                   \_ I did.  Thanks.  Wasn't much different except the
                      code ran a tiny bit faster.

3/18    "3/17   \_ THANK YOU!!! Soda motd is my window to wisdom!!!"
        \_ This is truly frightening.  Taste the fear.

3/18    Has anyone (else) encountered a bug where after using lseek with
        a negative offset read stops working on that fd, even though a
        valid off_t was returned?  In particular, I have a file with two
        binary unsigned longs at the end, and when I do an lseek(fd,
        -2*sizeof(unsigned long), SEEK_END); the reads then fail. -mel
        \_ Use PERL.
        \_ Did you try seeking to the beginning to the file, then a forward
           seek to where you want to read as a work-around?
           \_ The file is full of longs and I had wanted to read the two
              longs at the end of it.  The workaround I found was:

              end_offset = lseek(fd, 0, SEEK_END);
              lseek(fd, end_offset-2*sizeof(long), SEEK_SET);

              which is ugly but it works.  Throw in a few error checks
              on the return codes and it should work for you too. -mel
                \_ mel you ugly squint, get off the motd
        \_ And now, the right answer: You are specifying a seek relative to
           SEEK_END... Such a seek is implicitly in the negative direction,
           since it's impossible to seek past the end of the file.  The minus
           sign in front of the 2 is unnecessary.  So you should be doing:
           lseek(fd, 2*sizeof(unsigned long), SEEK_END);
           I tried looking for an example of this in K&R, but in each instance
           where SEEK_END is used, they demonstrate with an offset of 0, which
           is not too instructive.  WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME, K&R? I TOOK
           THY WORD AS GOSPEL ONLY TO FIND A HALF-TRUTH LYING IN WAIT TO SNARE
           THE UNWARY! -mogul (hey, it's 3:15am, fuck off!)
           \_ Not quite.  A seek from SEEK_END is not implcitly negative;
              just like SEEK_CUR and SEEK_SET, positive offsets go forwards
              and negative offsets go backwards (see lseek(2)).  The problem
              with your code (and it's not really your fault) is that sizeof
              returns a size_t, which (on freebsd) is an unsigned int; when
              you multiply that by -2, you get another unsigned int (K&R 2.0,
              p. 198); and the unsigned int (0xfffffff8) then gets promoted
              to a signed long long (0x00000000fffffff8).

              This is not what you want.  The Right Way to fix it would be
              for freebsd to make size_t an unsigned long long, but that
              would break a lot of stuff and probably won't happen soon; in
              the meantime, you can cast the return value of sizeof to a
              signed int and your code will work.    --mconst

3/18    Anyone have a working Sparc 1+ keyboard that I can have?
        It's for a University machine.  --PeterM
        \_ The Univeristy treated me like dirt, why should I donate anything
           back? Long lines, redbook, frustration, impersonal professors, you
           name it. If I'm going to donate, I'd rather donate to Stanford,
           where my future kids would have much more creative opportunities. -FU
           \_ strong words from someone who is still using University
              resources after graduating.  I'll see what I can do about
              garnering a keyboard for a Sparc 1+, but don't hold your
              breath as surplus keyboards have a short half-life. -mel
                \_ One's use of University resources has no bearing on how one
                   might feel after being properly abused at Cal.  Should this
                   person be grateful for their suffering at Cal because after
                   wards, they have access to the soda motd?
                   \_ Actually, "this person" should be taken out into the
                      street and beaten to death for being a fucking whiner.
                      I enjoyed my time spent at Cal and appreciate the
                      education I received there.  I don't feel like I was
                      particularly abused, exploited, or forced to suffer;
                      maybe "FU" was exposed to "real life" for once and
                      mistook it for "suffering" (and yes, I got my degree in
                      EECS, not holistic basketweaving, or business, or
                      something like that . . . )
                \_ Actually, I don't mind donating to CSUA-- the only worthwhile
                   donation for Cal                                     -FU
                \_ Fuck you, Mel, you little greasy prick.

3/18    Does anyone know how http://geocities.com and http://tripod.com works? Do they give
        you an actual shell account, or a web account from which you design
        your web pages? Do you have to hand code HTML on their HTML form, or
        what? I'd love to try myself, but those sites are too slow!
        \_ you use a form to edit then submit your html files
        \_ you use a form interface to upload your html files
        \_ you use a form edit interface to upload and then submit your html
           files
        \_ on http://tripod.com, you wear this silver thingie on your head...
                \_ obey the Masters.  The Masters are our friends.
                \_ No, we must destroy the pools of fire!

3/18    Possible CSUA T-Shirt back design in
        ~geordan/pub/graphics/shirt-back.gif.
        \_ 404.  Correct URL is ~geordan/pub/image/shirt-back.gif  -mel
          \_mel you're such a twerp.  Why didn't you just correct the URL?
            Did you have to give the second URL and sign it so we all know
            how smart you are?
          \_ URL?
        \_ gif2ascii output fuzzy.  Try putting it on your homepage