8/10    It's easy to tell when a female ape/horse/bear is in heat. How
        do you tell if a human female is in heat?
           \_ They start talking about marriage.
        \_ Let's not forget it's easy to tell when a human male is
           turned on.
           \_ they breathe?
        \_ women are more likely to wear red and lower cut dresses
           when in heat.
           \_ so they go out wearing old sweats, and then when they
              see a guy who turns them on (you, of course) they go
              and change to a low-cut red dress?
              \_ Exactly.
              \_ no, dumb ass, women have a certain time of the month
        \_ Its easy. You smell them.
            Then, if you get slapped or kicked, you know she's not in
            heat. Proceed to next crotch.
                 during which they are in "heat", which is a separate
                 time of the month from that *other* time of the month.
                 \_ 28-day cycles, to be more accurate.
           \_ Please, please ... more tips!  I can't stand being
              alone any more!  UNNNNGRRRUUEEE  -turned on male sodan
        \_ Its easy. You smell them. If you get slapped or kicked, you
           know she's not in heat. Proceed to next crotch.
           [ reformatted ]

8/10    Who do I do line wrapping in vi? (Like M-q in emacs)
        \_ set wrapmargin=5 for autowrap, to format a paragraph, pipe
           it through fmt: !}fmt

8/10    A while back there was a commercial featuring michael jordan.  It
        wasn't about any particular product, just some basketball players,
        images of new york (or chicago?) and then michael comes on at the
        very end. I'm trying to remember the song in that commercial.  Yes
        I did check http://www.adcritic.com it's not there.
        \_ FYI, special effects from that came from the sample who did
           The Matrix's special effects.

8/10    nethack 3.3.1 installed as "nethack-3.3.1"; please try it out, and
        let me know if you notice any problems.  I'll make 3.3.1 the default
        in a few weeks, and then you'll have to run "nethack-3.3.0" to get
        the old version.  Saved games are not compatible.  --mconst

8/10    Anybody own the sony mz-r70PC minidisc unit?  Is it any good?
        Are there any really good ones out there with a USB port for
        transfer of music from a computer (i.e. comparable to the older
        aiwa am-f70)?
        \_ The early Sony MD players had really shitty battery life.  I don't
           know if they've improved since then. -dans
           \_ MZ-R70PC: 17hrs. battery life on one AA battery...not bad.  The
              Sony MZ-E800: 37 hrs. one AA.
              http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/corpcomm/news/consumer/59.html

8/11    Can anyone recommend a good network monitoring program?  We have
        multiple Sun Servers and a buncha PC's, on a 100-BaseT subnet.
         \_ mrtg?
    \_ Memorize References to Tron Game?
               \_ look it up on google
        \_ What exactly are you going to monitor?
           \_ Would like to pinpoint any problem areas, slowness,
              lack of response, highest use, etc.
                \-sounds you want to monitor the network, not monitor *over*
                the network, in which case ping, traceroute etc. are not
                what you want. mrtg is pretty nice and has a lot of uses.
                but to answer your question: if you want to be serious about
                this, you get to get someone who really understands this
                stuff and is well-briefed about your network topology, your
                priorities and other local conditions. too many people spend
                lots of money on these big industrial strength solutions like
                sun net manager or that hp open whatever when a halfway clueful
                person can cobble something together from free stuff that meets
                your needs better. but they have to know exactly what you
                want to monitor. it is a very different matter to continuously
                watch for suspicious stuff security-wise vs. once a week snap-
                shots for capacity planning to have off-line stuff in place
                that can be quickly brought online to diagnose things. it is
                a differnt problem to get exact info about one "class c" vs.
                get 95% accurate info about a couple of classBs, but to be able
                to get it really fast, also depends whether you have privilaged
                acess to routers, whether you are worried about denial of
                service [a realy problem with a lot of monitoring setups] --psb
                service [a real problem with a lot of monitoring setups] --psb
              \_ is it all one ethernet?  how many routers you got?
        \_ Sorry to be anal, but ping, traceroute and snmpwalk work
           for me.
                \_ ping and traceroute are practically useless for
                   monitoring a local network.  -tom
                   \_ Depends on the size and subnetting. We use
                      ping, traceroute and snmpwalk with some homebrew
                      perl/java cgi frontends for managing/maintaining
                      our heavily switched/routed lab nets at cisco.
                        \_ gee, if it's switched and routed it's not local.
                           \_ local to me means everything on my side of the
                              BFR (I mean 12000 GSR). If you think local
                              all on the same switch, I beg to differ. I
                              might agree for all on the same VLAN.

8/11    Why do people ever use trees instead of hash tables?  If I have
        a hash table which grows dynamically to stay less than half full
        then insert/query/delete are all expected constant time.  On the
        other hand, if I use a tree which is perfectly balanced then
        insert/query/delete all take log(n).  Do people use trees just
        because they are better in the worst case?  Thanks.
        \_ Trees let you search for key ranges: if you want to find all
           the elements with keys between 5 and 13, that's fast in a tree
           but slow in a hash table.
        \_ Along the same lines as the post above, you can do an incremental
           search in trees.  For example, if you have a bunch of command names
           in a tree and the user types the first three letters you can find
           all the k matching commands in k+log(n) time. -emin
        \_ But why use trees when God created SkipLists?
                              \_ Not God. Phillip "Edward" Nunez!
                \_ Ease of coding.  Sometimes it just doesn't matter and isn't
                   worth any extra effort.
        \_ Take 186 and become enlightened.
           \_ I have heard trees (or tries) are used in database and disk
              heavy applications, but except for the 2 comments above, why
              not just use hash tables?  I'd be happy if you could give me
              a simple example, or point me to a good book or URL.  I'm no
              a student so taking 186 is not an option.
              \_ Read any data structures book.  And look up "tradeoff".

8/11    Dear Motd, my girlfriend's dad really liked me. That is, until he
        caught her on top of me. Now he hates me. What should I do?
        \_ He is jealous of your sexual prowess.  Suck his cock and he
           will be properly mollified.  If that doesn't work, lick his ass.
        \_ Invite him to join you in a threesome and he will forgive you.

8/11    Berkeley Critical Mass is tonight!  5:30 Berkeley BART, leaving after
        6 PM.  Party, music, libations to follow.  http://www.bclu.org/couch

8/11    I am a contractor and my client wants me to take some stock instead
        of cash as payment. This is for 3-4 months required to finish the
        project that went into overtime. How do I calculate the number of
        shares that (given some risk factor) would match the decrease in
        my hourly rate? Looking for a URL with an explanation and a formula,
        if one exists. These will probably be non-qualifying stock options.
        \_ Don't do it. They'll stiff you.
                \_ More or less yes and that's why I want to make an
                   informed decision