7/14    Star Wars II question: if the Separatists, led by Count Dooku, are
        planning on battling the Republic, led by Palpatine/Sidious, why are
        Dooku and Palpatine collaborating with each other at the very end of
        the movie?
        \_ Cuz Dooku is a stooge of Palpatine. Palpatine is trying to
           make himself emperor of the Republic.
           make himself emperor of the Republic. He secretly wants the
           Republic to fall apart so he can come in and save it and declare
           himself El Numero Uno.
                \_ ah, got it.

7/12    Woohoo!  I am getting my $250 back!  Can buy new toy now!
        -----
        As you may have learned, NextCard has closed credit card accounts for
        many of its customers, including cardholders who may have accrued
        http://Amazon.com Rewards credits. Rest assured that http://Amazon.com has every
        intention of honoring Rewards points you have accrued with your
        http://Amazon.com NextCard Visa card.  We will announce a redemption program
        for outstanding Rewards points in the coming weeks.
        -----

7/12    Anyone know of a lightweight secure ftp program like secure fx?
        Putty PsFtp is *too* lightweight.
        \_ try WinSCP
        \_ ssh secure shell client for windows, available on http://depot.berkeley.edu
           if you can't access http://depot.berkeley.edu, maybe you shouldn't be on
           a machine that is supposedly for undergrads.
           \_ I wake up every morning and try to fuck up everyone else's
              day just a little bit too, cool!

7/12    "Gates to buy out Telecom" - BS. i really don't think so..... I
        also don't think the level 3 guys would go along with it. Gates
        is going after would telecom with the sat corp he owns along with
        McCaw. See the US market is all landline controlled by baby bells
        and Cable corps.. due to the fractured nature of the wireless
        market it is not a good investment to get into the mix.. Level 3
        is just the backbone for everyone... Paul Alan went after the
        cable corps (he owns charter communications) but gates wanted
        nothing to do with it because his visiion was on wireless and
        specifically satelite
          His plan goes back WAY WAY long time ago check out this press
        release
        http://www.att.com/press/0394/940321.pca.html
        Recently they have actually signed laumch orders to start sending
        up the birds
          I do not believe gates would get involved with landline bullshit
        when he has teledesic,, I also doubt he has any interest in the
        US. I additionally do not believe anything I read in the
        financial press.. those fuckers are DUMB idiots.
          Regarding level 3- you have no idea how PISSED I am at all the
        fucked up analysts and short sellers who just destroyed that
        stock.. I knew that they were the best (especialyl after being
        intimately involved with basically all the guys who are no
        bankrupt- level 3 was simpy the best run and best funded with the
        best IDEA, all the others were just crap) Anyway I finally threw
        in the towel on my shares last week at like $2.8 share, I simply
        could not afford to lose any more of my portfolio since it had
        basically dropped to nothing, and what happens the week after....
        its fucking bullshit.... I should really issue a report.. What
        darrin bought (and what you should sell).....
          Anyway its not very fun to see several thousand dollars do down
        the drain.

07/12   I added some log files to /etc/newsyslog.conf, shredded a
        bunch of old log files by running newsyslog -Fv a couple of times,
        and removed the 20 biggest files in /var/tmp.  /var is now slightly
        less crowded. Bugs to /dev/null. --Evil Alumnus with Root

7/13    /var ful again.  can't mail root, cuz /var is full.  sendmail -bv
        wont' work to tell me who's on root, cuz /var is full.  Wow, fbsd is
        unusually h0zed when /var is full.  I had to resort to emacs to edit
        motd because /var being full locks up vi when its autosave is broken.
        please fix /var!    Hell, wall logging doesn't even work.  -ERic
        \_ Has anyone even bothered to look through lastcomm to see why it's
           getting so damn big?
grep             -       new              ttyDX      0.00 secs Sat Jul 13 12:34
frm              -       new              ttyDX      0.00 secs Sat Jul 13 12:34
grep             -       new              ttyDX      0.00 secs Sat Jul 13 12:34
frm              -       new              ttyDX      0.00 secs Sat Jul 13 12:34
grep             -       new              ttyDX      0.00 secs Sat Jul 13 12:34
frm              -       new              ttyDX      0.00 secs Sat Jul 13 12:34
grep             -       new              ttyDX      0.00 secs Sat Jul 13 12:34
frm              -       new              ttyDX      0.00 secs Sat Jul 13 12:34
grep             -       new              ttyDX      0.00 secs Sat Jul 13 12:34
frm              -       new              ttyDX      0.00 secs Sat Jul 13 12:34
           Or why those acct files aren't gzip'd on rotation? --scotsman
        \_ all this is due to user mail being in /var/mail.  dumb dumb dumb.
           quotas in /var/mail or delivery to user home dir fixes this ongoing
           regular problem.  I'll volunteer to fix it if given appropriate
           permissions again...  -ERic
           \_ It does?
Filesystem           1K-blocks     Used   Avail Capacity  Mounted on
/dev/da0s1f            1016303   725014  209985    78%    /var
/dev/da3s1e            8617749  3890198 4038132    49%    /var/mail
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  2097120 Jul 13 12:07 /var/mail/quota.user
        \_ get a life.  It's 1pm on a saturday.  Don't you guys have mail at
           work?  It's not even raining today.
           \_ the csua is a social organization.  many members organize
              social events through soda e-mail.

7/13    how do i pass variables to the system in C ?  e.g.
         system("echo input is %s", argv[1]);
        results in "input is %s" but I want the system to see argv[1]
        (I know i can just use printf, but not for what i really want to do).
        \_ sprintf into array, pass array to system?
        \_ so write your own function that takes a variable number of
           arguments, allocates memory, concatenates the arguments together,
           calls system on the combined string, and frees the memory.  That
           wasn't so hard, was it?  or, depending on what platform you're
           using, there may be some non-ANSI functions that do what you want.
        \_ Something like the following should work on Linux/BSD:
                #include <stdio.h>
                #include <stdlib.h>
                #include <stdarg.h>

                int  fsystem(const char *cmd, ...) {
                  va_list ap;
                  char buf[BUFSIZ];
                  int ret;

                  vsnprintf(buf,sizeof(buf),cmd,ap);
                  if (cmd == NULL)
                  return system(buf);
                    return -1;
                  va_start(ap,cmd);
                  ret = vsnprintf(buf,sizeof(buf),cmd,ap);
                  va_end(ap);
                  return (ret > sizeof(buf) ? -1 : system(buf));
                }
                \_ except for the obvious buffer overflow this code is
                   susceptible to. A very dangerous thing to do, especially
                   when passing things off to system().  One should include
                   sanity checking to keep someone from passing on args like
                   " ; /bin/rm -rf /"
                        \_ I see no buffer overflow as long as vsnprintf
                           is correctly implemented.  Of course system()
                           still sucks.
                  \_ It is an example. He would be a fool to use it
                     exactly as written without argument validation
                     and command checking. BTW what buffer overflow are
                     you talking about? I'm using a fixed size buffer,
                     and I'm passing sizeof(buf) to vsnprintf, which
                     is the safe way of doing this AFAIK. Is the problem
                     in the fact that the return code from vsnprintf
                     isn't checked? If so, I've just added that.
                     \_ I was hasty about the overflow, missing that it was
                        vsnprintf that was used, and thinking of vsprintf
                        instead, which would make it susceptible.  The
                        point about argument checking still stands.

7/15    [repost] Can somebody recommend a good web site to get refurbished or
        generic printer cartridges?  There are a lot of sites, but I don't
        know which ones are reputable.  Also, what are your general experience
        with refurbished or generic cartridges?  Thanks.
        \_ hope you don't have an HP.  they will only do lower dpi if the
           cartridge is refurbished thanks to a chip on their OEM cartridges.
           \_ I heard it was a tracer in the ink itself. --scotsman
        \_ Post your email address on a ton of usenet groups, then sit back
           and wait--the offers will just stream in.
        \_ sigh... of course some idiot deleted my original reply.  We used
           refills for laser printers years ago and they worked fine.  I don't
           know about non-lasers or any reputable companies.