8/3     Anybody else find cubicle flatulence to be a problem?  The woman
        that sits next to me farts a lot!  and it really stinks.  Women like
        to pretend that they don't fart, but they do.   And it smells really
        really bad.  -victim of cubicle flatulence
             \_ that's fuckin' funny...are you a guy or a girl who's
                suffering miserably.  I haven't seen an older woman
                rip one yet in public, and much less the "silent
                but deadly" type.
        \_ iaido.  A cubicle is roughly 6' in diamter.  nice and quiet.
        \_ Pretend that the AC is not cool enough for you, then get a small
           fan and face it her way.
        \_ I often fart in my cube. What else should I do, run to the bathroom
           20 times a day?
                \_ Cut down on the beans or see a doctor.
        \_ Screw the cube, get an office.
                \_ IF you're Asian, you might be lactose intolerant.
                   Watch your dairy intake.
                        \_ Even if you're not asian.

8/3     What does the postfix .db mean in a directory of digitized pictures?
        \_ The standard word is suffix
        \_ They are Dolby-encoded but the extra info is sideband.
        \_ DumBass
        \_ I keep thinking you are talking about the dbm format file for
           the postfix mailer

8/3     Not to be a nag or anything ... but can someone (rewt) look at
        the possibility of the mail mount filling up this weekend?
        /dev/da0e             1270240  1128013    40608    97%    /var/mail
        \_ As of 7:30pm:
           /dev/da0e     1270240  1158790     9831    99%    /var/mail
           tjb, fscking moron....
           \_ using fsck as an expletive isn't leet, it's lame.

8/3     tjb latest sig:

        M. Ali tol' me, I AM THE GREATEST.

        What's ali doing with tjb!?! (Its a joke)

8/3     What do most of you do while waiting for long compiles or very
        long computer processes?

8/3     Fight for the future - nuke Philly now

8/4     I need an 31337 h4x0r name:  can you come up with one?
        \_ yes
        \_ tjb
        \_ kaptain krappo (whoops, sorry, didn't see tjb)
           \_ whoops, sorry, forgot that I was a complete fucking moron
                \_ that's not very nice to say about me

8/4     tjb - could it be possible that he's getting paid for all the
        people who follow the links he spouts off on emails?  That would
        be the ultimate laugh.
        \_ what links?

8/5-1   When people talk about flex dollars (for insurance and stuff)
        they always say to use it or lose it.  What does this mean?
        I thought you could always elect to have the leftover money
        go towards your salary or 401(k) contributions.
        \_ Then you weren't paying attention, were you?
        \_ I get leftover monies in a lump-sum around mid-year.
           You can look at this as them "secretly" giving you a higher
           salary, and having to pay for your own benefits. (tax-
           advantaged, and at group rates)
        \_ Most places if you don't use the leftover money it goes to the
           company doing the flex plan.  However, most places also let
           you spend money you haven't put in yet (at least for medical)
           so it's possible to spend money you haven't put in,
           leave the company, and not have to pay it.

8/5     Will Visual Studio and all subsequent documentation fit in
        3Gb? I am just using visual C++ and Basic and trying not to
        give my whole drive over to windows. (I know the IDE is what
        takes up all the room, not the compiler).
        \_ Yes, it will fit in the 3 GB.  Don't install the MFC source,
           all the docs, FoxPro, VSS, or InterDev.

8/4     Can someone please clean up /var/mail?  We're going to get
        bounced messages tomorrow morning unless it's cleaned out.
        Thanks.
        /dev/da0e             1270240  1128013    40608    97%    /var/mail
        \_ As of 7:30pm:
           /dev/da0e     1270240  1158790     9831    99%    /var/mail
           tjb, fucking moron....
        \_ Our spool is shrinking Obi-Root.  You're our only hope!
           /dev/da0e             1270240  1159194     9427    99%    /var/mail

8/4     Why do people on the motd cap on Linux? Is FreeBSD so much better?
        I just tried to install FreeBSD on a machine, and in some
        places I could barely tell WTF the installer was doing. After
        I got it running, it seemed much less user friendly. I'll
        admit my experience is limited, but setting up my Linux machine
        was a breeze and getting Linux info on line is a snap. I didn't
        really see anything in FreeBSD that wasn't available to me on
        Linux either, esp. since FreeBSD seems to rely on Linux Binary
        Emulation for a lot of stuff.
        \_ Because now that Linux is the "in thing", all the rebels don't
           get a woody from yelling about it any more, so they pick the
           next "outcast" in line to defend
           \_ That's what I thought.
        \_ FreeBSD is known for stability when stressed.
           \_ I've seen the stats for the network stack and yes FreeBSD
              is better than Linux, but for a home firewall connected to
              my DSL line, I don't need all of those capabilities. I'm not
              running <DEAD>cdrom.com<DEAD> or yahoo.
              \_ This is what you get when you say "Is X better."  Is FreeBSD
                 a better desktop Win98-replacement GUI desktop for running
                 all of those precompiled commercial apps you love?  Of
                \-what stats are these? --psb
              \_ This is what you get when you say "Is X better than Y?"
                 Is FreeBSD a better desktop Win98-replacement GUI desktop for
                 running all of those precompiled commercial apps you love?  Of
                 course not.  --dbushong
        \_ openBSD 2.6 and above have really good installers.  I installed
           2.7 + X in the time from the powell street to berkeley bart stations
           on a dell inspiron.  Linux has better driver support (at least it
           has cardbus).  I've noticed that openBSD is useful on old systems
           since I can run windowmaker on a P133 (whereas when I ran fvwm on it
           the machine ran dog slow) reasonably.  Linux does have better sound
           and has a much better camraderie. - paolo
           \_ I really like the way OpenBSD keeps the source for the entire
              system in /usr/src and you can rebuild the whole thing with just
              "make build".
              \_ I may be mistaken, but aren't all open-source *BSDs like
                 that?
                 \_ Yes, but for FreeBSD it would be "make buildworld"
                        \_ except for FreeBSD it would be "oh shit I've
                           gotta reformat because I let myself get two
                           revisions behind".  OpenBSD almost certainly
                           has the same problem.
           \_ Is it similar to the RH 6.x installer? I found the FreeBSD
              installer to be pretty confusing. No, I am not a newbie, I've
              installed *BSD's before, but mainly NetBSD.  I was attracted to
              OpenBSD because of the security features, but the state of Java
              on OpenBSD seems to be pretty bad. I have a set of servlets that
              I run at home and I would prefer not to have to rewrite them in
              Perl.
              \_ NO there is no X graphics, it's all SANE step by step
                 text based instructions. (Think Slackware) you just need
                 to get used to diskedit which shows things in 512K blocks
                  not 1024.  If you're going to use linux, then dear God,
                 use Debian (especially if you're a business) for their
                 almost-cronable upgrades. BTW:  I don't recommend
                 freeBSD for laptops since there's no cardbus support
                 That being said, I don't really recommend freebsd at all
                 either go with openbsd or go with linux/windows if you must
                 put openbsd on your firewall and portforward http[s] - paolo
                 \_ How is OpenBSD berter than FreeBSD?  OpenBSD lacks
                    significant performance features (like SMP) and provides
                \_ we all know how much experience paolo has in this area.
        \_ These were the type of responses I was looking for. Thanks for
           all of the sanity. Sometimes the motd can be very hostile.
                                                             \_ I love you! :D
                                                                        -yermom
        \_ And as we all know, ease of use is the sum of an operating
           system's value.  Why aren't you using a Mac?
           \_ My day to day computer is a PB G3 2000. My main desktop
              is a SMP LinuxPPC box. I was looking at replacing my Linux
              2.0.36 firewall box with a *BSD box.
        \_ Use what work better for -you-. I have heard many success stories
           about BSD. Good for them. But even if it is better than Linux,
           Linux does well what I need it to do and I see tripple
           digit uptimes on our production Linux boxes, so I am mostly happy
           with it.
           \_ BSD's stability is a myth.  Look at soda uptimes.
                    nothing more than a false sense of security.
                 \_ I'm more interested in the SANE step by step installer
                    than anything else. The RH installer was pretty clear,
                    thats what I liked, not the GUI crap. I'll try installing
                    openbsd today. Does the ftp install work over a firewall
                    and nat? I also liked the clear and complete docs for
                    openbsd. Thier web site and docs seem quite professional.
                    Much more so than the sketchy docs in FreeBSD.
                    \_ I have installed OpenBSD via ftp from behind a nat
                       firewall. --Galen
                       \_ Just finished installing it myself. Much easier
                          than FreeBSD. I think that I'll buy a CD even.

8/4     when is it better to use  strcpy vs strncpy?  what is  strlcpy?
        \_ Short answer: man strcpy.
        \_ It isn't. Use strncpy
                \_ Wrong.  strcpy is much faster (doesn't have to 0-pad the
                   full space), but should only be used when you are
                   absolutely positively sure you won't overflow the buffer.
                   (i.e. when you've already called strlen, or the string
                    is embedded in your source and not from user input).
                   strlcpy/strlcat is a OpenBSD invention that other OS'es
                   are picking up - it's more efficient & easier to use
                   correctly than the strn* equivalents.
\_ http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix99/millert.html

8/4     Aladdin and Jasmine seem like lovely characters, but why are most
        \_ racist and unintelligent discussion deleted. if you're going to
           bag on a race, stick with the mainstream and bag on the jews. -ali
           bag on a race, stick with the mainstream and bag on me. -ali
           \_ ali, its just a troll.  Obviously, each "group" has its
              good elements and its bad.
              \_ Yes, obviously. And your group's problem seems to be that
                 you don't understand what racism is and under what
                 circumstances it's dangerous. -ali.
                 \_ I didn't read the discussion.  Yes, racism exists and
                    it can be dangerous.
                 \_ and yet you decide to volunteer the jews above,
                    just because....?
        \_ look ali. I generally find middle eastern people hard to deal
           with. i don't know if it is their guy-must-be-macho culture or
           something. also i think it is funny that they like to call
           themselves Persian or something. Also Persian girls are ugly.
           Persian cats are prettier. It is just my personal opinion. Bye.
           \_ its my personal opinion that the middle eastern people I've
              dealt with are real cool, nice, friendly people.  This
              is my opinion too. - !ali and !middle_eastern
           \_ I find that Middle Eastern people are incredibly difficult
              to deal with. Guys are smarmy and women are high maintenance,
              although Persian girls can be damn hot. -- !ali && near_eastern
              \_ Like one of my firends, he like got mugged by this black
                 man once and you know that, like, all black people are
              \_ Like one of my firends, he like got mugged by this software
                 engineer once and you know that, like, all programmers are
                 criminal scum, and child molesters too.
                 \_ I'm basing this on hundreds of Middle Eastern people
                    that I know, not one.
           \_ the problem is exactly that you don't know why you have had
              the experiences you've had with those people. if you knew, then
              it would be ok for you to form an opinion of the form "people
              who have personality attribute X (ex, smarmy, egomaniacla, etc)
              get on my nerves." But you make some very unfounded leaps
              if at the end of the day you say "middle easterns are Y".
                \- something you people need to keep in mind is often you
                are seeing a narrow and biased crosssection of another society
                when you are dealing with immigrants. let's take indians ...
                there are a lot fo dumb indians in indian. there are a lot
                fewer dumb indians in the usa because so many are here because
                their parents are scholarship winners to study in the usa. a
                lot of iranians who "ran from iran" to avoid the fundamental-
                ist turn are from kind of a snobby part of society. i think
                you would get a very differnt "typical" sense of america if
                you met a group in the audience of the jerry springer show vs.
                a deb ball vs. the library of congress reading room. --psb
                \_ Oh yeah well the chinese everywhere are equally icky.
                   -- alice & chinese & that's just my personal and
                      expert opinion
                      \_ Russians are extremely fucking crude and annoying
                         for the most part.  -- ilyas
                      \_ I think that works out to 0 (bitwise, that is)
                \_ This is very true. But Middle Easterners are still quite
                   different from Westerners. The bargaining attitude is
                   in the blood.
                   \_ i am middle eastern. i don't have bargaining attitude.
                      the problem with your idiotic way of coming up with
                      conclusion is that it takes one counterexample to
                      leave you with no recourse.

8/5-1   <DEAD>redesign.earthweb.com/dlink.resource-jhtml.72.1082.|repository||softwaredev|content|article|2000|07|19|SDlairdbehl|SDlairdbehl~xml.0.jhtml<DEAD>

8/4     What's the average yearly raise (without jumping ship)?
        0-2%?  2-4%?  4-6%?  6-8%? 8-10%? > 10?
        \_ When I jump I get 15-35%.  When I don't jump, I get 8% and they
           always cry and high pressure beg me to stay but never come up with
           more bucks.  "My offer at this other company is $X" and the current
           place just turns pale and then asks if there's anything else they
           can do to keep me.  Uh huh.  "WHERE'S THE MONEY, HONEY!?"
        \_ > 10%
        \_ My first year, got a measly 5%. Then in this year alone, got
           20% raise *twice*
           \_ why?  Got promoted?  Thought you were leaving?
              \_ first was a level promotion (doesn't mean that much except
                 i get paid more), and second was an adjustment to keep
                 pace with dotcoms.
                 \_ Now this is a company that you can stay with.  what's
                    the name? =)
                 \_ Did you get the two 20% raises as counter-offers when you
                    were thinking about jumping ship, or did you get the
                    raises even though you were not considering leaving?
                    \_ HP. They were afraid I was going to leave even though
                       I had given no indication (I'm happy here). It's cuz
                       so many other people have left.
        \_ When I was at Cisco, they told me salaries were going up
           17% a year. That includes people jumping ship. You make your own
           estimates (I'm guessing 10% if you stay, 25% if you jump around).
        \_ 40% first year, 100% second year, 25% third year.
                \_ You must have started with dirt.  $20k * 1.4 = $24k.
                   $24k x 2 = $48k.  $48k * 1.25 = $60k.  Hmmm... so your
                   first two raises *tripled* your initial salary??  It
                   _must_ the case that you were getting nothing and now have
                   an almost FMV salary _or_ that you're now getting paid an
                   outrageously high salary.  Is there something else going
                   on?  Is this a startup where you're employee #2 and own
                   10% of the company?
        \_ You people are nuts.  Find somewhere to work that you _like_, and
           that pays you enough that you don't worry about it.  If it really
           bothers you whether you're getting paid _enough_ or _as much as
           everyone else_ you've got issues.
           \_ Yes, this is a nice fantasy.  Living in the bay area with sky
              rocketing housing and other costs, there's no such thing as
              "paid enough that you don't worry about it".  And if I'm working
              my ass off for half the pay the slacker next to me is getting,
              then my issue is that I'm getting fucked.  You must be working
              in academia or <DEAD>Dilbert_Corp.com<DEAD>.
              \_ Part of my definition of "someplace I like" is that I'm not
                 working next to slacker idiots who get paid as much as me.
                 And I'm not working my ass off...  I'm not slacking, but I'm
                 not killing myself, and the company doesn't ask me to.
                 Could I get paid more?  Probably.  Can I afford a house in
                 SV?  Not yet.  This doesn't mean "fuck loyalty, fuck
                 happiness, gotta job-hop till I hit the jackpot" though.
                 I know so many people doing this, because they take as given
                 that their job is the negative, the money from it is the
                 positive, and what they do with the money will make up for
                 all of their work-related unhappiness.  Sounds needlessly
                 complicated to me.  Find a job, be happy.  If you need more
                 money, yeah, sure, that's a factor.  But just job-hopping
                 because of some vague sense of self-worth, or because some
                 job website (or, dear god, the motd) told you "you aren't
                 making enough" is idiotic.
           \_ If I don't get paid as much as everyone else then
              I think I'm getting stiffed and any like I may have had
              turns into hate.

8/4     Is it more common to have 1 year salary reviews or 6 month
        salary reviews?
        \_ 1 year
        \_ The trend is for more frequent reviews, however.
           Can't exactly have all your employees thinking the only
           way they can get a raise is to say you're going to leave.
        \_ 1 year is more common in general. 6 months for .com's.
        \_ It's common to get whatever you negotiate for.  There is no
           "industry standard" for anything.  Anyone who talks to you about
           what the "industry standard" is, is either lying or stupid.  There
           is no source of information for any of this stuff for reviews,
           salaries, option packages, etc, etc, etc.

8/5-1   Why is unstructured code (e.g. goto, jump, etc) hard to optimize?
        Isn't control flow implicit anyway? Also, is it difficult to make
        a transformation from unstructured code to a structured code? For
        example, from byte code or a binary back to a structured intermediate
        representation?
        \_ GOTO LOOP_START:
        \_ gotos aren't evil if they are just a low-level analog to structured
           control flow (e.g. gotos can be used to implement a FOR loop).
           Gotos are evil when they are used to create what is known as
           "irreducible control flow", which essentially means that there
           is no 1-1 correspondence between gotos and FOR loops. E.g. a goto
           can enter a loop in the middle! It ends up that early exit
           loops aren't as bad as entering in the middle. Irreducible
           control flow makes many syntactic analysis algorithms barf, cause
           those algorithms assume reducibility. -nick
                \_ which nick are you? Mitchell? Kevin Mitchell's brother?
           \_ concretely, compilers will reorder instructions and make lots
              assumptions about what register contains what at what point.
              if there are many points of entry to some piece of code, there
              will exist many possible initial states for that piece of code,
              and you end up with ltos of dependencies. -ali.
        \_ Don't loop then. Write everything data-directed. -muchandr
            \_ go APL!!!!!!!! -nick (yes, mitchell)
                \_ nick mitchell, you a phd candidate? what's your area?
                   \_ yes, nick mitchell is a phd candidate, compilers
            \_ data directed is much more difficult to optimize
        \_ APL kicked ass. It depends what you are trying to optimize I
        suppose. Data directed code is much easier to parallelize for instance
        and in specific case of vector languages like APL you easily do
        allocate lots of memory statically for some of those cases they are
        making fancy garbage collectors that never work as advertised today.
                -muchandr

8/4     what's the diff between 1 channel and 2 channels in RAID Controller
        card?
        \_ 2 channels allows double the bus bandwidth.

8/4     <DEAD>joel.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$139<DEAD>

8/4     What's a fair price for a dual processor (200 MHz) Ultra 2
        with 256 MB ram? I'm asking around $2400, is it too high/low?
        Checked on E-Bay but similar machines have sold for between
        $1200 and $3000 so I'm trying to get a better idea.
        \_ Fair market value is what someone is willing to pay.  I'm not
           being a smart ass.  That's the real answer.
           \_ Fair market value is $1200-$3000. I am being a smart ass, but
              that IS the real answer. There is no Kelly Blue Book for
              old model Sun hardware