1/20    MOTD Poll:
        Trevor Buckingham has been made a TA in Math 55 this semester.
        IF you have been following the prior developments, then do you
        think that:
        a.  Math Dept should be notified of his prior history by any
            individual willing to do so.
        b.  Math Dept should be notified of his prior history by the
            CSUA as the representative body of potentially affected
            students
        c.  Math Dept should not be notified of his prior history.
        This is a serious issue; please withhold ballot stuffing, etc.
        Results will be considered final at noon on Saturday.
          a:  4.5 + i
          b:  2
          c:  2.5 - i
        \_ with a minimum of swearing and ranting, who is this guy?
                                -alum
        \_ The CSUA ought not to get involved, and moreover, if TB
           can teach he should -- being subservient to the teaching
           establishment is hardly a prerequisite for being a good
           teacher. It's well known there is a shortage of even
           minimally competent TAs. And if he does anything too
           grossly out of line, he can be fired; for those who are
           unsympathetic, you might say that he now has a contractual
           obligation to put his money where his mouth is. -brg
        \_ regarding the half votes:  anyone "should" be able to do
           whatever the heck they want, whether it's reporting TB or not,
           but a notice from the CSUA smacks of ASUC Senate opinions,
           and you really don't want anything to do with that do you?
        \_ The CSUA has no business getting involved and can only get
           in trouble doing so.  Just print out paolo's web page
           & last semesters posts and slip them under the prof's
           door.
                \_ How about letting him demonstrate whether or not
                   he can teach?
           \_ This strikes me as a cowardly way to do things.  --pld
        \_ Wow.  I just read that file.  Someday, I hope to have the
           opportunity to reject him as a job applicant.  I wonder if he
           realizes how many people on soda are in such positions in
           industry?
                \_ Go to work in academia (okay, I'm channeling
                   kchang here) and deny soda motd hosers like this
                   guy the chance to reject you as a job applicant.
        \_ He got an A+ in Kahan's class.  That counts for a lot.
        \_ He just seems to be immature.  I don't think that necessarily
           makes him a bad TA.  - mikeym
        \_ This is a good opportunity for some smartass kid to give him a
           taste of his own medicine.
           \_ That would be great, except that given his stunning ability
              to consider other people's points of view, I don't think
              he'll recognize his own medicine.

1/20    This is a long shot, but can anyone tell me how a frequency
        divider circuit works?  Assume I have a voltage v(t) = cos(2wt).
        How would I build a circuit that outputs cos(wt)?  By the way,
        this isn't homework; I was curious but couldn't find it on the
        net or in my old EE textbooks.  I know how to double a frequency
        by squaring and filtering, but how to do a divider eludes me.
        \_ idiot way - convert the sine wave into a square wave, attach
           the result to the clock of a flip flop, insert an inverter
           loopback into the flip flop, buffer the output of the flip
           flop, and attach a capacitor to the output of the buffer.
           also known as the rube goldberg (however you spell it) solution.
        \_ squaring and removing DC only works on sinusoidal signals.
           a non-causal solution is trivial, but
            if you want caual and works only with sinusoids, use a PLL
            or use the fact that sin^2(u/2) = (1-cosu)/2, and somehow put
            the sign back in after square rooting. homeboy's solution above
            is just as elegant.
            noone deals with sine waves any more dude. -ali.
            \_ you're an idiot.  i suppose you think the carrier signals
              on the 10 GHz irridium phones are TTL pulses, and that
              the engineers who designed them are all digital monkeys
              like yourself?  I know guys who are running mixers at over
              a terahertz; do you think they designed those by clever use
              of digital circuits?
                                -physicist sick of ignorant EE students
              \_ If digital monkeys bug you so much, get the hell off of
                 soda and start your own party on the s00per analog
                 computer you've got back at the lab, physics-boy.  You're
                 just bitter because physicists, as a group, have to be the
                 only set of people with worse hygiene and poorer social
                 skills than EECS majors.
                 \_ Math grad students are fighting for pride-of-place at
                    the bottom of the list, too!

1/21    playah8rz must die.  - tpc
        \_ that's so clever how you used that "8" instead of "ate"
           cause they sound the same, and the "z" was cool too...

1/21    tjb@cory poll.  Someone go to his section, see if he can actially
        explain stuff correctly.  Personally, I don't think he's out of
        the ordinary, given the math ta's I've had (darin G. was the
        exception). Fuck being petty and vindictive. Deal. - paolo
        \_ Yeah, lets all us CSUA undergrads crash that single section
           and piss the hell out of him like how he pissed of every
           single teacher in the EECS department.  Who cares if we
           violate the fire code.
        \_ Time, location of section?

1/21    Just curious, is computer science considered pure science (as in
        medical science research) or is it considered engineering (as in
        Electrical Engineering)?
        \_ Most classes are a mix, though in different quantites.  The
           ABET classifications give a rough approximation.  CS 170 is
           one of the last classes in the world to be considred engineering.
           Nor is CS 188.  While classes like CS 150 and 152 are heavily
           engineering oriented.
        \_ I guess these days if you concentrate on theory stuff like
           the 170 series or AI, it is science.  Otherwise it's more like
           engineering.
        \_ AI = applied math
           complexity = applied math
               \_ no, math = applied complexity
           compilers = applied math
           architcture = applied math

1/21    Anyone played with the IE 5.0 Offline Webpage feature? (store pages
        on local cache for later offline viewing) I got it to work on certain
        sites but not on sited with deeper links (e.g. http://my.yahoo.com). Anyone
        know of any (more reliable) product to cache webpages? Thx.
        \_ Netscape has this feature too, althought I don't use it.
        \_ Most browsers will obey the "Pragma: no-cache" directive. Get
           Mozilla and comment that out.
                \_ Won't compile.  Binaries abort.  Too lazy.  Waiting for M13
                   or M14 to sort it out.
                \_ I spent 4 (!) hours compiling Mozilla from a FreeBSD port
                   (no interaction, that was the easy variant!) on a PPro200.
                   I'm running the latest XFree86 on FreeBSD 3.4.  Mozilla
                   is incredibly slow (slower than Netscape), and it crashes
                   frequently.  Plus it's huge.  I can't believe you'd
                   seriously recommend such a toy.  -John
                        \_ LINUX RULEZ! RIDE BIKE!
        \_ Google Rules

1/21    Annoying 36 year old Indian women just joined our group. I don't know
        why she is hired. She doesn't know anything technically and she
        always talks about her kids, and her husband. She keeps complaining
        about startup long hours and excuses her self early with "Gotta pick
        up kids", "cook", etc. What is the best way to get rid of her?
        \_ Rocket launcher with quad damage