1/17    I'd like to have some script that just goes to http://www.cnn.com and
        yanks off the main headline (usually no more than 5 words or so).
        Is this doable? Thanks.
        \_ yes.
        \_ Here's a lame hack. May easily break at any time:
           lynx -source http://www.cnn.com | perl -ne \
             'm%cnnMainT1Headline"><a.*?>(.*)</a>% && print("$1\n") && exit;'
                                                                 -alexf
           \_ [new code re-posted after motd rollback]
           \_ curl -s http://www.cnn.com/|perl -lne \
                'print $1 if m,cnnMainT1Headline"><a[^>]+>([^<]+)<,'
              10 chars shorter --dbushong

1/17    I read somewhere that a large percentage of asians can't drink milk.
        Something genetic.  How true is this statistic?  My parents can't
        drink milk but I can.  And most people my age drink a lot of milk.
        If this is genetic, how does one explain the generational difference?
        \_Race is a poor indication of the genetic makeup of a person.
          As for the generational thing, your sample size is small, (less than
          1000 I bet) and the decision to drink milk may be a personal
          preference than an ability to do so.
             -Sofia
             \_ race is highly predictive of many things, but asians being
             lactose intolerant probably results from low lactose intake,
             thus starving the acidophilus in the digestive tract
                \_ exactly. taking in lactose will result in your body
                   in producing more enzymes that break down lactose in which
                   your body expect to get more in the future. It is the same
                   as getting injections of snake venon-- people who work in
                   the snake venon lab have a much higher tolerance for venon
                   than people who have never gotten bitten because they have
                   slowly built up tolerance.
        \_ Because you're not a clone?  Many people have trouble with milk as
           they grow older regardless of race.
        \_ Not just asian either.
        \_ The statistic is probably referring to lactose intolerance.
        \_ http://www.niddk.nih.gov/health/digest/pubs/lactose/lactose.htm
           claims 90% of asian-americans.  How much milk you can drink is
           another matter.  And many people prefer not to have diarrhea. -oj
           \_ 90% ?? no way!
        \_ Environmental factors change one's ability to become lactose
           tolerant IMO.  Not quite sure of this, but i base my reason that i
           know alot more as-am's can drink milk than thier parents.
           \_ age is also a big factor.  as people age, they produce less of
              the enzymes that break down lactose.  your asian-american friends
              may become lactose intolerant when they reach their parents' age.
           \_ this reminds me... I have alot of gas... I think this is a
              somewhat disgusting fact. Anyone have any good solutions for
              this problem? I would imagine that there should be some kind
              of pill I could take before or after meals that would help my
              digestive system break down foods in a better way... but I'd like
              to hear recommendations if anyone has any. Thanks.
              PS - for what it's worth, I'm white.
           \_ Most of severe lactose intolarnt people used to drink milk
              when they were born.   I am somewhat lactose intolerant.
              If I drink less than 1 cup a day, I will be perfectly fine.
              If I drink more than that, my stomach start to have more
              violent-than-usual reaction.  If I keep drinking, let
              say, one cup a day for less than 2 weeks, I will be able to
              drink that amount of milk without problem.  But if I stop doing
              this daily ritual for 4-5 days, I will need to go through the
              same 2-week drill over again.  Human definitely can build
              tolerance for lacose.  I can, my 70 year old uncle also can.
              I am suspecting majority of lactose-intolerance Asian fells in
              this catagory.
              And please, blaming on genetic is simply silly.  Just because
              the part of Asia where *YOUR* parents come from happen don't
              drink milk doesn't mean rest of Asian don't.  People in
              Beijing drink this "sour milk," somewhat a semi-fermanted milk
              that is more of a diluted yogurt;  Tibetians and Mongolians
              drink milk tea part of their stable diet.  and I don't recall
              there is any genetic differences between those people and
              rest of Far East Asia.
        \_ did you know that white people fart more than Asians when they
           drink in large quantity of soy milk and eat a lot of tofu?

1/17    In ANSI C, is there a single function call to get the size of a file?
        I only know of fseek()+ftell().  Thx.
        \_ Aren't these two not ANSI C either? They're part of the standard
           C library, but not part of the language itself. And you probably
           want to look at stat/fstat (depending on whether you've opened the
           file already). -alexf
           \_ if you want to be pedantic, yeah, but I think it's safe to
              assume that the original poster meant, "Using the ANSI C standard
              library...".
        \_ while (getc()) i++;     /* (heh) */
           \_ wrong.  EOF != 0, so even after you added the required argument
              to getc, your loop would either terminate prematurely or loop
              forever.  perhaps you meant:
                while (getc(fp) != EOF) i++;
                \_ Oh yeah... it's been several years since I did any C.
                   I'm falling back on "it's the thought that counts!".
        \_ http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/q19.12.html

1/18    NY Times Writer Took $50,000 "Consultancy" Fee
        From Enron To Give Them "Cover"
        http://www.andrewsullivan.com
        \_ Oh no!  A NYT writer?!  I'm shocked!  He took more than 99% of
           politicians in either party?  It's a scandal!

1/18    PPRO: it's a $1 stock with a 52 week high of 31.34 and a low of .37.
        The P/E is negative, EPS is negative.  Sorry but this dog don't run.
        \_ why do we care?
           \_ because someone is running a script every 20 seconds to get
              15 minute old data on this POS and it's your machine too.
        \_ At least it still hasn't gone belly up.
        \_ And this is different from every other stock because...?

1/18    How to pick up all the 30-something women in SF:  Sit in a BART
        station in SF when BART stops running trains to the East Bay for
        some random reason at West Oakland.  I was looking like crap but
        still had 3 different women strike up conversations with me and two
        of them invited me out for drinks.  If I wasn't married I would've
        been in a hotel last night with those two.  Sigh... I love desperate
        but still attractive 30-somethings.
        \_ And if you weren't married, they'd have avoided you like you
           were packing a piece. Funny about that.
           \_ I don't wear a ring.
        \_ Those two are probably prositutes looking for easy money. LOL
           \_ Nah, I went to Berkeley.  I know what hookers look like.
        \_ Sigh.  Things like that never happen to me.  I envy your good look.
           \_ My good look?  :-)  Stop shaving.  Dress down.  Waaay down.

1/18    See "Black Hawk Down" you liberal, conscience objectors.
        \_ Does it show how a few dozen Americans beat the crap out of 1000+
           lunatic barbarians who made 3 mass rushes at them but couldn't
           budge them from their position for 48+ hours?  Or does it show
           some leftist lie trying to justify pulling out and making us
           (again) the laughing stock of the world a la Jimmy Carter/Iran?
           (again) the laughing stock of the world a la Reagan/Beirut?
           \_ History lesson: It was Republican pressure that pulled
              Clinton out of Somalia.
              \_ Leadership lesson: The President is the CIC and decides who
                 goes where, when, why and when they come back.  Thanks for
                 the effort.  Are you going to claim all bad things are the
                 fault of the Republicans pressuring the poor baby and all
                 good things are the result of the heroic Clinton valiantly
                 resisting the eveil-doers of the right?  Oh please....
                 \_ Darn Bush Sr. sent them there for no good reason, mostly
                    to distract people from his having done nada on the
                    domestic front.  Maybe that's why all the reporters
                    were there waiting when the troops first landed in
                    Somalia.
           \_ What was the mission at Somalia?  (Sorry I missed some
                      American history.)
              \_ Some bullshit about sending our men there on some sort of
                 'peace keeping' mission.  As if there was peace there to
                 keep.  Very similar idea to sending our men to Haiti and
                 handing them brooms to sweep their filthy fucking third
                 world streets.  Ask a Clinton fan about proper use of the
                 military.
                 \_ Bush Sr. sent them there.
           \_ the former. over ninety minutes of it is pure action.
              (BTW is was more than a few dozen. it was 99 Rangers - one
               company)
                \_ Don't forget the Deltas. -=Liberal Berkeleyite
                   who accepts the occastional necessary use of force.
               \_ IIRC, the rangers were split into 3 groups for most of the
                  time.  They only hooked up again on the last day shortly
                  before getting out.
        \_ I think Ridley Scott should stick to making Aliens.
           \- See the "war on afganistan". I have no doubt many of the
              people in the armed forces are have all the boy scout
              virtues and would do what is asked of them by and for their
              country. Nevertheless the way this war was conducted was
              "we will bomb while you ride into the valley of death on
              horseback" [we'll give you some ammo but no APCs]. and
              then "we'll cut you a check to walk through the caves
              facing boobytraps and ambushes ... bringing the market
              to war fighting ... while we back at our armed compound."
              This was very obvious and prominent in Afganistan and it
              looks sort of bad. The europeans [aside from the Brits]
              look even more foolish. This is pretty obvious to much of
              the world and part of the reason for the ambivalence towards
              the US. --psb
              \_ And you suppose if 500,000 Americans showed up it would've
                 been better and over faster?

1/17    Jewish mob beat and kill yet another Palestinian man then destroy
        Palestinian government building.  Your tax dollars at work supporting
        Jewish terror in the Middle East.
        http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/w-me/2002/jan/17/011701595.html
        \_  I wish the Arabs / muslims had some balls and attacked Isreal.
            That way Isreal would simply nuke them all, and
            effectively remove them from the gene pool.  The human
            race would be better off.

1/18    I just bought 2 120GB HD for less than $200 each (they're so cheap!).
        What's a good use for my old 2 4G HD (which I bought at $400 each
        back in 1996).
        \_ Some schools accept donations for computer equipment, but I don't
           have any contact info now.  -- yuen
        \_ Where'd you buy your 120GB HD?  What brand/model?
        \_ Give them to me.  My 1GB hard drive is running out of space.
        \_ ooh, sorry... I got 80GB for $125... barely beating your GB/$
           ratio... Mine is 7200 rpm from Western Digital.

1/18    Any recommendations for another product like
        http://www.spiderplant.com/hlt/index.html a cheap flexible
        room temperature monitor? They aren't taking more orders. thanks.
        \_ Me too, I need something similar to HLT. -- Marco
        \_ What do you want it for?  If it's for a machine room then your
           routers might already have a temp. value you can retrieve with
           SNMP.

1/18    What's the point of matching checked-in luggages with passengers
        boarded the airplane?  We all know too well that the bin Laden folks
        are suicidal.
        \_ those damn suicidal hijackers/bombers just ruined it for us
           non suicidal hijackers / bombers. now we can't do ANYTHING.
        \_ And the real answer is: so they don't get bombs put on the plane
           that don't have a matching (suicidal) passenger.  The rest of
           you: thank you for playing.  You may go home with the consolation
           prize now.  You're now a tiny bit smarter and maybe less self
           righteous and obnoxious about your know-nothingness.
           \_  not self-righteous, but smug.
              \_ That's a better word thanks.  I was stuck for the right
                 phrase.
                 \_ You seem like the smug, obnoxious, moron to me. What makes
                    you think your answer is any more correct?
                    \_ probably because his answer is the correct one.
                    \_ you answered your own question.
        \_ If you didn't, they'd be able to recruit more bombers.
        \_ oh, like there's a point to the other useless security measures they
           implemented?  a lot of it is for show.
           \_ winning the hearts and minds of morons.  same as terrorism.
              the terrorists know they can't blow up enough planes to make
              plane travel any where near as dangerous as car travel, and
              the gonvernment knows they can't really stop terrorism, but
              since most people are fucking idiots, they can be swayed to
              travel or not travel by stupid bombings or stupid security.
              \_ Ha ha.  Good point.
              \_ Yeah, but I gotta suffer thru lines and wait and shit.
                 And am not allowed to bring my leatherman aboard which
                 will be needed when the terrorists find some way to sneak
                 aboard.

1/18    "Saudis May Ask U.S. to Leave, Washington Post Says"
        http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20020118/ts/attack_saudi_report_dc.html
        Time to really invest on high efficiency automobiles.
        \_ When hell freezes over
        \_ After their corrupt pseudo government crumbles because they can't
           pay off their own extremists anymore we'll be setting up bases
           there with the post-extremist government's help.  Time heals all.