03/14   Yes, soda crashed.  No, we did not get a dump.  Goodnight.  -vp

3/15    What this the meaning of "biff" (as in a program's name) ?
        \_ />00/> \/\/|-|47"5 7|-|15 /<-R4/> P%0G%4|\/| U 54Y?!?!
        4 |\|0 %3450|\| 1 G07 A \/\/00/>%0\/\/ 7|-|3 5123  0F
        3\/3%357!!!@@!$%#@@7P<
                \_ and why is biff sometimes related to this unreadable
                        junk?
                        \_ 0bveuslee UR n0t 318 enuf 2 reede b1ff skr1pt!11
        \ eYe cunt r34d ths sh1t.
          \_ "Dood what's this k-rad program you say?!?!
             "For no reason I got a Woodrow the size of Everest!!!"
        \_ man 1 biff: it tells you when you have new mail.
           \_ I know what biff does. I was wondering what the word "biff"
              means.
              \_ Read the man page I pointed you at. "The biff command
                 appeared in 4.0BSD. It was name after the dog of Heidi
                 Stettner. He died in August 1993, at 15."
                 \_ That's sad if true.
                    \_ I believe it is. The foldoc entry is relevent and seems
                       to confirm it. Say, I wonder if anyone on soda was
                       there when they were developing BSD? Could be we have
                       someone who knew Biff.
              \_ http://www.instantweb.com/~foldoc/contents.html
                 See "biff", "b1ff".
        \_ http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/biff.html
           http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/entry/B1FF.html

3/15    GE has a new oven called "advantium" and it cooks using
        halogen lights. Doesn't this seem incredibly inefficient?
        \_ Not off hand. Why would it be? I assume they are designed
           differently from normal halogen lights.
        \_ More so than, say, passing electricity through a bent-up metal
           rod until it becomes red-hot from resistance?
        \_ the purpose of an oven is to heat.  in an electric oven,
           all electric energy is convetet to heat, so it's 100% efficient
           the only machine in the universe that can be totally fefficiaent
           is a heater.  the only loss is from heat leaking out.  that
           is the *only* limiting factro to efficientcy.
                \_ And light leaking out.  Light isn't free energy.
        \_ the amount of energy required to generate a particular amount of
           heat is very high in an electric range compared to a gas one.
           \_ ok, that's just stupid.  where does the energy go if
              not into heat?  usefull heat that flows into your food
              you're trying to cook is another matter.  yes, i'm inlucing
              radiation as "heat", since if you put the burner in an
              isolated cavity it would all end up heating everything
              including your food.  the heaters that claim to be 100%
              efficient really are.
           \_ A small amount of energy goes into making the metal expand
            as it heats up, I believe.
                \- maybe there is some advantage from focusibility and
                amplification by reflection. --psb

3/15    VeriSign+Thawte+NetworkSolutions=one company.
        Why isn't anyone protesting the monopoly?
        \_ everytime i search for a domain name, it isn't there.
         then a few days later, they claim it.. stealing peoples ideas
        \_ There are competitors for them all now. We should be protesting the
           ICANN meta-monopoly on DNS registration companies. Or doing
           something about it: http://www.idno.org But netsol is
           irrelevent as a monopoly at this point.

3/15    Anybody else besides mehlhaff have a motd archive?  I'm trying to
        find answers to a question I posted yesterday.  mehlhaff's motd
        mechanism seems kinda flaky.
        \_ Many versions of the motd have been sent to /dev/null
        \_ hey, if you dont like it, archive it in your own better
           way.  -mehlhaff
        \_ I think mehlhaff should turn off read access so little whiners
           like you get what they paid for.

Always: Participate, don't spectate.
        (25% of my disk quota to whoever knows where that's from.)
        \_ It's from "Gregory's Two Girls". You got it backwards. Send disk
           space to bray@csua.
        \_ Mate, don't masturbate.  (From me.)
           \_ Does that include gay mating?
              \_ Up to you.
                 \_ Yay!
                    \_ Homosexuals can only attempt to make.  The attempt is
                    \_ Homosexuals can only attempt to mate.  The attempt is
                       biologically doomed to fail in humans.

Now:    Be a creator, not a destroyer.
        \_ I create crap.  And lots of it. -netuser

3/14    Job posting for http://guru.com, /csua/jobs/guru.com - posted for friend. Thx.
        \_ permissions fixed. sorry.
                \_ well, no, they're not fixed, and you gave the wrong path...
           \_ ahem
-rw-------  1 jowens  csua  2268 Mar 15 16:58 /csua/pub/jobs/guru.com

3/14    Do some of you still invest in "old economy" stocks?
        \_ I do.  WAG.  Dropped 25% over the past year. :-(
           \_ I do.  ANN (Ann Taylor).  Not too shabby if bought it
                2, 3 weeks ago.  Had a loser too: TYC.
        \_ do people still believe in Warren Buffett? (brkb, brka)
           \_ You mean the stock that's ~$70k per share last year?
                \_ yes, Berkshire Hathaway Class A shares.
                \_ You mean the one that dropped 40% in the last year?
        \_ I do. ALK. Finally popped today and is up 15%. SRE (utility)
           which has done nothing, but that is what I expected of it.
           Some bank stock which is down 10% even with todays jump.
           Diversity is good, which the last few days have shown.
           I probably don't see the huge gains you pure tech investors
           see though.
                \_ I think a balanced tech and non-tech portfolio is best
                        these days.
                        \_ Geeze, just go get an index fund or buy bonds.
                           What's the point otherwise if you're barely making
                           more than a BofA savings account?
                                \_ didn't mean balanced = 60% stocks, 40%
                                        bonds.  I meant around 50% high
                                        tech stocks, 50% non-high tech stocks

3/14    Is there a UNIX utility that, when given pw and salt pair, will
        give me a /etc/passwd|shadow equivalent of crypt(pw,salt)?
        \_ its called perl.
          \_ something like:  perl -e 'print crypt ( "$salt", "$pw") . "\n" ;'
             \_ ("$pw", "$salt")
        \_ Can't ed do this?

3/14    March Madness is here!  Join the "CSUA" group on http://espn.com!
        \_ Fuck March Madness.
        \_ college hoops suck big dick, i agree.
        \_ March Madness?!!! Is there a Macy's at Hilltop or should I go to SF?
           \_ There's a Macy's at Hilltop.
        \_ Is it better to be NIT champion, or invited to the NCAA tourney
                and lose in one of the earlier rounds?
           \_ Better in what sense? In terms of respectability and
              prestige, I would say getting into the NCAA tournament, but
              in terms of preparing the team for the future, probably
              winning the NIT.
           \_ Better to make Sweet 16 in NCAA than win NIT. Better to win
              NIT than bow out of NCAA before Sweet 16.
           \_ Actually, depends on the team. Some are lucky just to make it
              to NIT and would call themselves successful just for making it
              that far. But some teams like Vanderbilt feel jilted for missing
              NCAA and feel NIT is "loser's bracket."
           \_ Not to be the spoil sport, but why does anyone care?
              \_ (Trying not to be flippant here), but there are those of us
                 who enjoy watching sports. Does it make a difference in our
                 lives? Most likely not. Are there things better to do?
                 Probably yes. You could make the argument why should anyone
                 care about anything, but that's a pointless path to take.
                 Just accept that some people enjoy the NCAA tourney.
                 \_ 'dont ask, dont tell' -- keep your closet habits in the
                     closet.  We dont want to hear about them.
                     \_ By closet, I assume you mean habits we prefer not
                        to display or are too embarrassed to reveal.
                        Who says that's the case?
                        \_ You're missing the point.  I think the fellow is
                           saying, "Stuff your whiny-ass, self-important
                           opinions up your ass, sit-the-fuck-down, and save
                           your specious justifications for someone that gives
                           a damn."  But that's just a guess on my part.
                           \_ And my point is, who's to judge what's a topic
                              that people around here give a damn? Does it
                              have to be *nix related or geek-related? Does
                              it have to involve trying to get laid? There's
                              no answer. If you don't like a topic, ignore it.
                           \_ Petulant whine deleted.
                                \_ I censor all topics of no direct and
                                   immediate interest to me.
                 \_ Just that the results of other people's sporting activities
                    are about the least important thing I can imagine.  Unless
                    you're monetarily involved in some way they're completely
                    meaningless to the workings of the world.  Is that the
                    point?  The ultimate in vegging out?

3/14  Leave it alone, dans.  Stifling the racist and the stupid is not the
      correct way to deal with them.
      \_ What would you suggest? -curious
           \_ Why should anything be done?
         \_ Censoring them is wrong.  They must be confronted, their views
            aired and addressed and put in their place in a public forum if
            it is a public forum where they spew.  Anything less and you
            lend credibility.  Why censor that which is easily debated and
            shown to be false?  Only the truth gets censored and by doing
            so you falsely make it appear that their hatred has a basis in
            fact.
            \_ I'm not "curious", and I agree with you on this.  If I thought
               it was an actual hate diatribe, then I would have left it to
               be skewered by public discourse.  Thing is, it looked more
               like a troll than anything else.  It was a direct quote from
               The Blues Brothers, I alluded to this in the message I put
               in place of the nuked thread.  Someone else, I think kube,
               noticed it as well, posting a comment about hating Illinois
               nazis, another Blues Brothers allusion. -dans
                \_ Keeping in mind that most of the people here haven't seen
                   the BB's and almost as many have no idea who Belushi is
                   since he died when they were learning to walk....
                        \_ No one who has never seen the Blues Brothers should
                           be allowed to join the CSUA
                           \_ Hmm, we may have to add that to the Constitution.
                              -dans
                        \_ "We got two guys out here who look like they from
                           the FBI or somethin'..."

3/14    In my web page, I can always get around by using "relative path" such
        as ../, myhomepage, ~tomboy, etc. But if I want to jump to the same
        URL with a different port (e.g. http://yahoo.com/~tom -> http://yahoo.com:8080/~tom)
        is there a generic way of doing it? Also, what if I want to jump
        from http://hi.com to http://hi.com Can I not use absolute path?
        Thanks.
        \_ changing http ports? changing to SSL?
           You must use absolute URLs.
           eh, wait, you might be able to do something using JavaScript
           but I'm not sure you want to do that
        \_ Alas, no.  If you run the server and it's running Apache, you
           can use mod_rewrite to do this fairly cleanly; there's an example
           in the mod_rewrite docs.  --dbushong

3/14    Does anyone know of a tool that will convert EPS files to HTML?  We've
        found PS to HTML but need EPS... -davidf
        \_ ps2ascii (in gs-aladdin on my linux-debian potato)
        \_ do you just want to make giant gifs or jpgs out of the EPS files?
           \_ No, we want to pull text out of EPS files to make it
              searchable online.  We found a possible product at
              http://www.onevision.com (see PlugTEXTin), but are hoping for
              alternatives. -davidf
        \_ any way to convert from EPS to PS to HTML?Ghostscript/GSview
:wq
\_ :x is fewer characters to type. So is ZZ.
   \_ ZZ is worse on your fingers. :x
        \_ ^x^s^x^c

3/15    Does anyone find it weird that this university won't print out
        unofficial transcripts because "You can print your own off the
        web Bearfacts web page"?  Most organizations I know (insurance
        companies, employers, etc...) want an "unofficial transcript"
        but will laugh out loud if you even attempt to present to them
        a Netscape printout for any useful purposes.
                \_ And they can tell it's a netscape printout how?
        \_ A month ago I stopped by that office at the end of the hall
           in Sproul Hall and they printed out an unofficial transcript
           for me, and it looked much better than a Netscape printout.
           I think it was $4 or $8, though.
        \_ It's html. Save to a file, and EDIT IT to clean it up.
                                          \_ muhahaha
                                             \_ but that would be wrong...
                                                \_ Well I didn't mean alter
                                                   the CONTENT. Sheesh.
                                                   Some people...

3/16    <DEAD>artists.mp3s.com/artists/37/thedopamine_reuptake_in.html<DEAD>
        -sky

3/16    When I do some pattern Matching in a Perl script on the string
        in the arguement $_[0] to a subroutine, it seems that $_[0]
        itself gets modified.  Is this normal?  I thought backrefrencing
        affects $digit but not the argument array @_.
        \_ "argument"
        \_ just have a temp value to preserve it before you call the
           subroutine. some of the mysteries of perl seem to be not
           clear no matter how many times you scour the O'Reily series
           \_ I did try that and it worked and I concur with the observation
                about perl in general.  It perhaps shows how match (not
                substitution) really works.
        \_ @_ is passed in by reference.

3/15    Anybody else besides yermom have a STD archive?  I'm trying to
        find answers to a question I posted yesterday.  yermom's STD
        mechanism seems kinda flaky.
        \_ Many versions of the STD have been sent to /dev/null
        \_ hey, if you dont like it, archive it in your own better
           way.  -yermom

Always: Participate, don't spectate.
        (25% of my disk quota to whoever knows where that's from.)
        \_ It's from "Gregory's Two Girls". You got it backwards. Send disk
           space to bray@csua.
        \_ Mate, don't masturbate.  (From me.)
           \_ Does that include gay mating?
              \_ Up to you.
                 \_ Yay!

Now:    Be a creator, not a destroyer.
        \_ I create crap.  And lots of it. -netuser

3/16    Does Linux do SMP now?
        \_ Uh, it has been for years....
           \_ Yeup. Years of doing SMP badly. But I hear it has recently
              improved some.
                \_ Figure by 2.4 it might be almost as good as nt4 and only
                   2 more revisions behind nt2k.  Or you could just use a real
                   unix that already properly supports SMP.
                \_ These guys are very critical of Linux/SMP, but I've
                   been using it for years and it works fine for me. --PeterM
                   \_ These guys are very critical of microsoft,but I've
                      being using microsoft word for years to write all my
                      been using microsoft word for years to write all my
                      term papers, and it's worked fine for me.
                        \_ peterm benchmarks serious CPU-bound research using
                           SMP.  You could write your term papers in ed. -tom
                           \_ That's nice.  It works for shit vs NT in web
                              page serving.  Not interested in anything else.
                        \_ what does that have to do with SMP?  Anyway
                           serving web pages is trivial unless you're
                           Yahoo. -tom
                        \_ ED!

3/16    Is People's Park still around?  What cross srtreets is it at?  It's
        not on the campus map at http://www.berkeley.edu/campus_map  (Having
        left campus for too many years.)
        \_ it was never on campus. it's between haste and channing, 1/2 block
           east of telegraph.
                \_ People's park is a part of the university but isn't
                   directly connected to the campus proper.