3/18    Exteremely intruguing paper (as seen on wall.log):
        http://www.cs.umaine.edu/~chaitin/cmu.html
        \_ snooze...
           \_ take your philistine ass back to where you came from
           \_ Yeah, get your ass back to High School, you aren't
              mature enough to be in college yet.
        \_ That algorithmic complexity/information theory stuff is
           more religion than math or science.  Godel and Turing's
           results are far more practical, useful, and valuable.
           \_ Advanced mathematics is just welfare the insane.
        \_ "Chaitin's Omega:
             * irrational number
             * incompressible number
                -- Oliver King
             * all around fucked up number"
                - Crow T. Robot
        \_ Oh shit!  It is now proven that we can't possibly prove
           everything.  (Seriously)
           \_ So is it soon going to be deemed un-constitutional to ask our
              troubled high school students to prove something in final exams?
              (Just like how teachers are not allowed to teach Darwin's Theory
              or Evolution, or something like that.)
              \_ Huh?  High school finals?  It's all about feeling good.  They
                 don't have to prove anything but that they've been properly
                 socialised and turned into good little robots.
        \_ Intruguing?  Paper?  It was interesting, yes, but hardly
           Intruguing.  It wasn't a paper.  It was a lecture.
           \_ Okay, I got the paper part wrong.
           \_ I think that people who are underwhelmed by this do not
              understand the consequences of "maximally unknowable"
              within the context of a proof system.

3/18    For const vs. #define thread that someone deleted below, here's my
        answer.  #define is much more flexible than const. It lets you
        take in paramters, or generate a series of function calls (const
        will only let you create a value). #define also lets you refer to
        other #define's and will accept command line -D arguments passed
        into the compiler.
        \_ thanks, but I was really asking about the use of #define vs. const
           for the specific situation of constant values.  obviously #define
           can do things that const can't (like macros). (similarly, #define
           can do things typedef can't, but typedef clearly is preferable.)
           misha's answer was more what I was looking for.
        \_ There's No const. There's Only mconst.

3/19    http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~christos/turing.ps
        \_ romance from the dept chair

3/18    Can we install nmap on soda?
        \_ no. - paolo
           \_ Can I install my own copy in my home directory?
              I want to nmap my box at home to make sure that
              all the ports are shutdown and that the strong
              TCP sequence generation is really working. I'm
              not an 3113T GN00/H4X0R who wants to G37 R007
                     \_ j00 m155p3113d "31337", m0|20n
                        \_ 500RY.
              on someone's box.
              The only reason that I'm asking about this is
              that ever since we got a socks proxy at work,
              I can't nmap my box, because nmap isn't "sockified"
              and I haven't had enough time to "sockify" it.
              \_ "runsocks nmap"
                \_ ahahahaahah. you kill me. --aaron
              \_ Yes, you are welcome to install nmap in your home directory.
              \_ why don't you netstat -tuap? - paolo
                 \_ doesn't cover trojaned netstat binary. of course,
                    remote nmap isn't perfect either since an intruder can
                    filter backdoor traffic by source ip, but it's half
                    a step up. -alexf
                    \_ he didn't say anything about suspecting he was 0wned.
                       he's trying to audit the setup. talking about trojans
                       is useless; the only rational response to a breakin
                       is quarantine and reinstall. --aaron
                       \_ Yeah, I'm just trying to figure out if my ipf and
                          ipnat rules are blocking ports/icmp correctly.
                          Since I'm running ipnat, portmap shows up in the
                          local netstat and internal nmap results and I want
                          to be sure that portmap isn't available externally.
        \_ Doh, why ask. Just compile it on your own. Whether we can also
           use nmap on soda is another quetion ;p
        \_ if you have to ask, you're too fucking stupid.
        \_ Install whatever you like.  Just remember the "I will not be a
           hoser" bit in your membership form that you signed, or its informal
           summary: "I will be squished for drawing the wrath of outside
           agencies onto the CSUA"

3/18    don't you hate pants?
        \_ yes. I mainly wear shorts. I only wear pants when
           it rains.
        \_ Yeah, I hope he tells us to burn them. Mine are itching me.
        \_ Yes. I only wear skirts. Women's pants are very uncomfortable
           and almost never come with useful things like pockets. - girl
        \_ yes. I mainly wear shorts. I only wear pants when it rains.
           \_ how are third graders posting on the motd?
              \_ Uh, I'm 25.
                 \_ still not old enough to understand "subtext"?
                 \_ % dict subtext
                      No definitions found for "subtext", perhaps you mean:
                      wn:  sub-test
              \_ daddy says I'm this close to living in the yard!
        \_ "The great men of our time have all worn pants. Roosevelt,
           Churchill, de Gaulle, Ghandi -- well, almost all of them."
                              -Crow T. Robot

3/19    All women are evil.
        \_ You are Dave Sim and I claim my five pounds.

3/19    Hi everybody!
        \_ Hi Mr. Gibson!

3/19    Looks like NCR invented the Palm Pilot but forgot about it for
        13 years:
        http://public.wsj.com/sn/y/SB984697809762979579.html
        \_ Weren't there already numerous PDAs out there before the Palm
           Pilot?  Is NCR going to sue all of them?
           \_ "Numerous"?  No.  But similar things had been tried before, yes.
                \_ BELLIGERENT AND NUMEROUS. --MORBO
                \_ Apple, Sharp, Psion, all had PDA's before USR/Palm.
                   \_ Yes.  That's not numerous.
        \_ BTW, what processor do the Palm Pilots use?
           \_ most Palm OS PDAs use 33 MHz Dragonball VZ or 17 MHz Dragonball
              EZ CPUs from Motorola.
                   \_ Plus Casio and HP.
        \_ If you were Palm or HandSpring, what would you do in this case?
           Seriously.
          \_ I'd hire expensive lawyers and make expensive press releases! --oj
          \_ Find a friendly judge and show that the patent in question is
             too broad to be meaningful.  --erikred

3/19    Hi, I'm looking for a simple encryption program for PC/w2k.  I want to
        create a directory and everything I copy into that directory gets
        encrypted.  It can pop up a window and ask me for a passphrase.  That's
        not a big deal.  Is there something simple like that?
        \_ There was something or other PGP that could encrypt a partition...
           \_ PGPdisk
        \_ store your porn offsite. it'll be safer there.

3/19    can someone post a host name that is a public relay
        smtp host? This is not for spam, but I'd just like to
        set all my email clients to some reliable smtp that
        I can always mail through, regardless of connection,
        thanks.
        \_ any host that does this is likely to wind up on the
           RSS or the RBL. who is your ISP? they should be able
           to auth you in non-IP ways. there are lots of good
           solutions which do not involve "all-access public relay". --aaron
        \_ Also, it's possible to setup SMTP so that it'll accept email
           \_ other than the POPAUTH stuff, what is a good way to set up an
           \_ Other than the POPAUTH stuff, what is a good way to set up an
              auth for "insiders" when they are coming from the outside?
                \_ do some websearching. this is a common problem and there
                   are a lot of good references on this. i've seen password
                   schemes, From: schemes, etc. --aaron
                   \_ Pointer or keyword?  Thanks!
                        \_ http://www.google.com --aaron
        \_ Also, it's possible to setup SMTP so that it'l l accept email
           from your IP for a certain period of time after you
           authenicate with POP.
        \_ Also, if you're sending mail through uclink, it only cares that
           your from field is of the form user@uclink4.berkeley.edu.  If
           you don't want responses to your mail to go to your uclink4
           account, just set your reply-to header.

3/19    Fake vegetarians all over Europe!
        http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,42479,00.html
        \_ Why did you say they're fake?
        \_ When did vegetarianism become a religion? If anything, this
           will force people to think about their eating habits.
        \_ Why do you say they're fake?
                \_ Read the article.  They're just going to go back to eating
                   the dead flesh of their fellow creatures we share this
                   one small planet with as soon as they feel it's "ok". Fake.

3/19    galen, shower or you are doomed to die cold and alone
        \_ Of course, if you do shower, and the water heater craps out
           and causes a heart attack, you could die cold, alone, and wet.
        \_ cut him some slack he was working on the filesystem stuff for bsd
           on something that actually would be cool - paolo
           \_ And a shower would cause all code to be dumped to /dev/null?
              "I'm hacking so I can't behave like I'm not a barbarian" is
              the lamest nerdy shit I've ever heard.  Go shower.  The computer
              will still be there, and you might actually get a date and find
              out women are in full 3d.
              \_ Wo-men? I'm sorry, I don't think that word is in my
                 vocabulary.

3/19    Is it better to use "login@soda.csua.berkeley.edu" or
        "login@csua.berkeley.edu" as my e-mail address?
        \_ login@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
        \_ Hmm, I use login@soda.berkeley.edu  When will that not work?
        \_ login@xcf.berkeley.edu
           \_ login@vadim.berkeley.edu
              \_ ahh the mark of TR00 L33+N355
                 \_ It's all just shell and net.  How can the same shell be
                    "kewler" when only the $hostname variable changes?
                    \_ becasue csua is on 10MB, xcf is on 100MB, and vadim's
                       is 2.1 Terrabytes of happy funland, baby. aw yeah.
              \_ i think tpc has one of these already.
        \_ login@lightning.berkeley.edu