7/3     Not sure if everyone here already agrees Berkeley is a pretty
        fucked up city with Mayor Jackass Shirley Dean running the show,
        but now Berkeley wants to make sure you only drink fair-trade, shade
        grown, organically grown coffee and will have a task force roving the
        cafes, making sure no one is selling "the bad coffee", and putting
        cafe owners a possible 0.6 months in jail + fine.
                            \_ Jailterm shrunken by the motd jailterm shrinker.
        \_ Don't get involved.  Leave.  They'are all insane.  -John
        \_ most of us are alums, and you should post a url explaining
           what the hell you're talking about.
           \_ This was in the news a few weeks ago.
              http://www.bayarea.com/mld/bayarea/3491892.htm
        \_ I was at the meeting where this was brought to the table (I was
           there for another issue). You may want to get your facts straight.
           I'm no fan of Mayor Dean but she didn't have anything to do with
           that initiative petition.
           It was presented by a "member of the general public" - in this case
           an individual freshly out of law school.
           If you care that much, CM Breland had the matter postponed for
           consent discussion until next week. You can have your 3 minutes next
           Tues, 7/2 at 7PM in the Old City Hall.
           Please do show up, actually. I'll be out of town and somebody needs
           to be a voice of sanity in this town from time-to-time. -- ulysses
           \_ Uhm, next Tues, 7/9, or yesterday, Tue 7/2?
           \_ Hmm, sounds tempting, but the fact that they are even taking
              this seriously, is just so disturbing, Im not quite sure
              if they are even reasonable... I mean, this is the same
              council that wants to make the speed limit 15mph(?or was it 20)
              and put flowerpots and posts that make all neighborhoods
              ridiculously tricky to get through. I posted the article
              my friend sent to me @ http://csua.org/u/57
           the place would be a complete shithole.
              \_ Ever driven south side?  They already have those cement
                 blockers there specifically to fuck up traffic.
        \_ Berkeley residents should realize, if not for the University
           the place would be a complete shithole.  Wait, it still is
           one.
           \_ Actually, it'd be a nameless boring lower-middle-class suburb
              on the outskirts of Oakland. Which, by the way, would also not
              be a particularly happenning place, having not had as much reason
              historically to detract activity away from SF.
              \_ I always figured it would have never actually become a city in
                 the first place since the university was there before anything
                 that looked like a city was.  It'd just be called "North
                 Oakland" or something like that.  There'd be no Berkeley.
              \_ it'd just be a boring non-city like albany or elcerrito.
        \_ Good for Berkeley. Someone has to lead the way.

7/3     Jail Martha!  http://tshirts.pettyvices.com
        \_ I'd like to do her.
                \_ WTF? Soda has some wierd people.
                   \_ Martha Maven? I'd do her too. She's SEXY
                      \_ they always said that bill clinton took his
                         vacations in martha's vineyard.  now i think
                         i know what that means.
                         \_ heh heh... I like this joke.

7/4     Is anyone on Soda a shareware author for living?  Is it at all
        possible?
        \_ does http://www.wulfram.com count?
        \_ I think this guy has no day job, and probably makes a decent living:
           http://www.winedt.com
           his software really really really kicks ass, though, and
           the price is pretty low for how great it is, so people don't
           feel as annoyed by paying.  if this software were for sale in a
           store for 100 bucks, i'd still go buy it.
        \_ There are a very rare few people in the world who have made huge
           wads of cash from shareware.  There is a slightly larger group that
           makes a living but nothing spectacular from it.  The other 98% don't
           make enough to buy a can of beans.
        \_ I don't know of anyone who does it full-time, but there are a lot
           of people out there who write one or two cool toys, and then
           get a fair amount of pocket money out of it.  Except for the fact
           that he's a really over-the-top jesus looney, the dude who wrote
           UltraEdit is a pretty good example.  -John

7/3     What is a good free project management tool in Unix?  This is for
        personal projects, so it doesn't have to be that fancy.
        \_ emacs, jove, vi, etc.
           \_ those are editors, not project management tools.  i think he
              means cvs, maybe even rcs.  If you want something like crystal
              reports, you're out of luck.  And please don't say, "ED is an
              editor" because that is just old, trite, and oversaid.  ok thx.

7/3     Does anyone still believe the hype around global warming?
        \_ Only econuts like tom and algore.
           \_ or the evil liberal commies on the editorial staff at
              Science and Nature.  of course they don't have the kind of
              rigorous peer review as freerepublic, so I wouldn't trust
              all the hundreds of scientific papers in thosre journals
              documenting human impact on the atmosphere and climate
              change.
              \_ Have you actually read any of the papers on climate
                 modeling and on historical climate trends? If you
                 had you would know that climate change (such as
                 drastic cooling and heating) have been going on for
                 millions of years and that the minor current warming
                 cannot be attributed to humans alone. Most of the
                 evidence (objective) is that the earth is warming on
                 its own and our contribution is not that significant.
                 \_ You fucking idiot!  How dare you bring *FACTS* into a
                    thread on global warming!  The nerve!  Bastard!
                 \_ OK, I'll bite. Please cite bibliographical references
                    to papers that present the relevant data/reasoning in
                    mainstream scientific journals. (I do not mean to assert
                    that you are lying, just want to have a first-hand
                    look at your sources.)
        \_ What a limp attempt at a troll.
           \_ News Flash:  Global Warming causes impotent trolls.
        \_ So why have atmospheric temperatutes FALLEN in the past 25 years?
           And ZERO models predict / include the existence of El Nino...
           just for starters.  As admitted by EU Bereaucrats, Kyoto
           was an attempt handcuff US business - go Al GORE.
           \_ Oh please, like you didn't know Al and his pals are heavily
              invested in EU companies.
           \_ ZERO models, huh?  That's pretty interesting because my ex's
              father does long term weather prediction, and his group
              predicted El Nino several years in advance.  Where are you
              getting YOUR information from?

7/4       Read this and believe this guy is understating the issue- is has
        nothing to do with auditing, afterall every report which was
        released by enron, global crossing and wcom forever have been
        audited and were signed off by very high ranking guys. The
        "audit" is not the problem. Its is corporation which is the
        problem. Auditors take numbers that corps given them and sign off
        that the "accounting" is correct. Auditors don't look at actual
        invoices and costs and put the money where is really should and
        compare against what the corp said. Most auditing is just
        proceadural bullshit which investors/public don't understand.
        Like when an audit occurs it starts with an operating procedures
        guide, the auditor reads the OSR (operating proceadures) and then
        spot checks the procedure- THEY DO NOT check the numbers- the
        idea is that if procedures are followed than numbers are
        accurate. For instance you read a lot about how boards of
        directors signed off on a lot of crap which they should not have.
        The auditors job is not to check to see if the crap "should" have
        been signed off on they only make sure that is "was" signed off
        on as that is what the procedure calls for and that is all the
        audit requires.
          When I audited time sheets for DWP (department of water and
        power), I only had to make sure that timesheets were signed, the
        work accomplished and the hours worked were irrelevant and not
        checked in an audit. It was not my job to verify that the work
        completed had anything to do with the northridge earthquake- it
        was only to check to see if the time card was signed by
        supervisor as that is all the proceadure stipulated.
          So although I have never been involved with a full blown audit to
        see all the little pieced which go together- I have an idea of
        how they work and have known for a long long time that they are
        just bogus and do not actually verify if the numbers were
        correct. As I have written previously when I reviewed Level 3
        books I found 700M in double booking or not accurate booking
        (exactly what wcom exposed). What we did was just instead of
        reporting the error we just slowly worked the error off the books
        by doing 150M adjustments now and then and no one was the wiser.