10/14   what's that cool program that is like diff but shows things in a
        3 column format?
        \_ /usr/local/bin/diff3?
        \_ I was looking for comm. Man diff is how I refound it. ok tnx

10/14   Have you tried watching any of these shows on the chopping block?
        http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/10/14/DD19936.DTL
        \_ I actually enjoy watching MDs. John Hannah is pretty funny.
          \_ I'm still pissed FOX killed Titus.  Fortunately, he will be coming
             back, on NBC.  Saw him in Vegas this weekend, he's a riot!
        \_ Death to firefly and birds of prey!  One season each, max.
           \_ It amazes me that Enterprise survives.  I guess Firefly didn't
              learn to get a lead female character with big boobs in a
              skin-tight outfit.
               \_ Enterprise only survives because it's a Star Trek thing and
                  the only way the super nerdy trekky freaks can get their fix.

10/14   How many of you who plan to graduate this Fall or Spring have done
        anything about lining up a job if you're not going to grad school?

10/14   What effect does fixating have on a cdrw?  Does it just write out the
        TOC?

10/14   http://www.soldam.com for some interesting PC cases.  They're in Japan so I
        doubt you'll get free shipping.
        \_ the prism is definitely cool, in a really geeky sort of way
        \_ Other Pz+ case (which brings back fond memories of my first
           indigo2) all the others look like the crap you can buy at
           frys. I would by the Pz+, but alas they don't make it in
           aquamarine or purple.
           \_ "some interesting cases" not "all cases are interesting"
              \_ "some" implies more than one, I didn't see more than
                 one interesting case.
                 \_ A matter of personal preference.

10/14   Anyone have any recommendations on places to ski/snowboard at
        in the Swiss/Italian alps? (why was this deleted?)
                                    \_ because there are a few fucknuts
                                       around here that don't want to use
                                       motdedit.
                                       \_ Blow us.  motdedit is lame.
        \_ _I_ deleted it because you blew away my well thought out and useful
           comments with this crap about snow in the alps.  Duh, it's the
           alps.  The snowy skiing part is at the top.  Go there.
           \_ I didn't delete anything. Repost please.
              \_ You thin appeared, all my things disappeared.  No Sherlocking.
        \_ (useless nastygrams deleted)
        \_ Yes.  Flims/Laax in Switzerland is snowboard paradise.  Arosa
           and Zermatt are excellent as well.  Wallis area (north slope of
           the east-west valley) is pretty touristy, but slopes are very
           steep.  What's your budget?  Timeframe?  Transportation?  Have
           a look at http://www.schweiztourismus.ch (set your country of
           origin for different languages) for booking info, snow reports,
           piste cams, whatever.  Or drop me a mail for more info.  If I know
           far enough in advance, I'll be glad to show anybody visiting some
           good slopes.  -John
           \_ What do you do over in Zurich? I once heard something about you
              working on tanks. But you seem to answer a lot of sysadmin
              type questions.
                \_ IT security contract work, but I work pretty broadly--
                   as long as it's somehow network or security-related.

10/14   I recently setup a new machine as my mail server. I want my old
        machine to forward all pop/imap/smtp requests to my new server. I can
        do this trivially with a persistent ssh connection, but is there a
        better / more robust way to do this?
        \_ look at the rdr rule in ipnat.
        \_ You're *supposed* to be using dns and thus only need to change a
           few dns records, not screw with ipnat or persistent ssh or anything
           kludgey like that.
           \_ If the hostname on client configurations has to stay the same
              for some reason?  Ipnat is not kludgey.  -John
              \_ Then you let it stay the same.  DNS is still the answer.
                 \_ If you want to forward *ALL* pop/imap/smtp connections
                    then DNS won't help you. What if some clients use hard
                    coded IPs? ipnat rdr is the only complete solution.
                    If you can't do ipnat, set up port forwarding on your
                    router (most ciscos can do this).
                    \_ hard coded IPs?  Who is *that* stupid?  Yes if someone
                       was *that* stupid then you need stupid kludges like
                       ipnat rdr but better to switch the clients to dns
                       names like they should have been in the first place.
                       And fire whatever incompetent boob put IPs in there.

10/14   Why all the H1B posts? Our jobs, esp support and QA are already being
        exported to countries like India and China. There was a report from
        60 Minutes that says a few phone companies already shifted their
        phone support ops to India. They even train the workers to be
        knowledgeable about the American culture (football, beer, etc).
        Face it, many jobs are indeed exportable. IT is just a glorified
        auto/steel/whatever industry.
        \_ You're a Cal grad and doing phone support and QA?  Jesus F. Christ!
           Did you graduate with a degree in English or something?
           \_ I thought Jesus' middle initial was 'H'.
              \_ You don't know what the 'F' is for?
        \_ Agreed, IT = auto = steel = dockworkers.  However, since most
           motd readers are sys admins, they confuse themselves with
           real software engineers and architects.  We're not worried
           about H1B workers.
           \_ uh, it's the software development that can be easily exported,
              not the sysadmin work.  Think autoworker vs. policeman.  -tom
           \_ *laugh* As a sysadmin, the last thing I'm worried about is my
              job getting exported to another country.  No sysadmin confuses
              what they do with what a coder monkey does.  When a coder monkey
              fucks up, you get a bug which gets caught by QA (in India). When
              a sysadmin fucks up, the whole shop goes down.  No one is going
              to ship their servers to India.  Silly troll, cookies are for
              kids!
        \_ Recently had trouble with an http://amazon.com order. Emailed them
           (the only way to reach them) and all I got were replies
           from folks with Indian-looking names. All replies either
           had good english or good scripts or both. I suspect
           amazon support may be outsourced?
        \_ I have never gotten good customer service of any kind from
           an Asian-outsourced helpdesk.  In fact, this is the main reason
           why I refuse to buy anything from http://Amazon.com anymore.
           My experience with US helpdesk workers is mixed, although mainly
           positive (unless you're dealing with a fucked up company like Sony.
           The only consistently good tech support I've gotten was from Irish
           call centers (most European tech firms redirect English-language
           calls there.)  -John
           \_ Was on the phone with a Netapp chick in Singapore last night.
              She didn't fix my problem but had a sexy voice so I still logged
              the call as a "10" in their customer service records.
           \_ I have never gotten good customer service of any kind
              through the phone, period.  Almost.
              \_ B&H over the phone seems okay.
        \_ Exporting software jobs is the best thing that ever happened to
           the software industry.  Perhaps now, we will realize that many
           engineering positions are filled by glorified, semi-skilled
           typists (software).  Let's face it-  software systems are LARGE
           nowadays-  but innovation is the crux of value, not WPM.  Stop
           complaining about your obsolete job.  Coding is a monkey task
           that should be outsourced, not protected by some archaic notion
           of an ivory tower of academia.
        \_ Which is why I would recommend moving up to a more architectural
           or managerial level, to avoid your job being 'exported'. I agree,
           coding, not only a 'monkey task' as the above posted noted, is
           often considered a thankless job. Don't shoot the messenger, this
           is what I heard.
        \_ Put it this way.  Number of engineers produced per year in US:
           65000, in China 700000, and their quality is improving.
           \_ This is exactly the kind of reasoning upper management uses to
              justify H1b's shortly before they get a http://fuckedcompany.com entry.
              Because if 1 american engineer can do it in X days, then 10 H1b
              engineers can do it in X/10 days.  Right?  Good math.

10/15   Anyone know why a F18 or something is loudly flying around over
        Mountain View?>
        \_ my keyboard only goes up to F12.
           \_ Northgate used to make keyboards up to F24.
        \_ Uh, because Moffitt Field is there??
          \_ Train harder. Moffett Field NAS closed years ago.
             \_ I thought it was being used by the Air National Guard.
             \_ It's still working. NASA has flights out of there.
          \_ It is now a federal airport.  I saw a bunch of Chinooks
             flying into it on the way into work.
        \_ There was a missle test at 7pm yesterday.  Don't know if that's
           related.  -- yuen
        \_ Are the Blue Angels still in town?
        \_ When?
           \_ This was around 9:30 this morning. Woke me up flying pretty low
              around my apartment.
              \_ Moffett Field. Low rolling thunderous? Probably the big
                 Chinooks mentioned above. Their flight patterns differ
                 on the weather, so you might have just gotten unlucky with
                 the noise today.

10/15   Can you use the "correspond" operator (=>) in perl to initialize a
        a 2D hash? I'm getting some wierd errors. Thanks.
        \_ For major funky data structures and how to build and access them
           read ~scotsman/bin/SearchReport.  Also, use Data::Dumper to see
           what you've actually created/accessed.
           \_ hm... I just want to do this, essentially:
              my %myHash = (
                  "a" => ( "1" => "foo",
                           "2" => "bar" ),
                  "b" => ( "1" => "baz",
                           "2" => "shlep" )
                  );
              \_ All your ()'s here should be {}'s.  --scotsman
              \_ All your ()'s here should belong to {}'s.  --scotsman
                 \_ Actually, I got it to work by replacing all but the outer-
                    most parens with {}. I'm still not clear on when Perl
                    wants an even-length list, and when a map... but oh well...
                    I guess the code works for now. Thanks alot.
                    \_ You should really use {}'s.  These designate specfically
                       that these are HASHES.  If you may eventually add a
                       third dimension, this will trip you up again.  Hashes
                       are basically glorified arrays, which is why your first
                       attempt was so confusing.  Say what you mean and mean
                       what you say. --scotsman
                       \_ Almost right, except that the poster had %myHash
                          instead of $myHash, so in this case ()'s would be
                          correct for the outermost set. {} designates
                          anonymous hashes and returns a scalar (a
                          reference to an anonymous hash). -geordan
        \_ Make everything a global variable!

10/15   "IRS Weighs Using Debt Collectors to Get Back Taxes"
        http://csua.org/u/3fa
        Finally!  Yeah!  (BTW, I don't know why the first paragraph says $200B
        while the second paragraph says only $50B.)
        \_ Why do you care either way?
           \_ That'll help the govt pay the bills without a dime from those of
              us who're already paying our full share of tax.
        \_ 50B is the portion "of the total" 200B that they think they can
           recover. <insult about reading comp. skills here>.  -crebbs
           \_ Oops.  I get it.

10/15   anandtech has a semi-technical article on the P10 for you graphics
        card geeks.

10/15   What's a phone # to dial that'll tell you the number you're calling
        from? I've seen a phone technician do it a couple of times.
        \_ 114 works for me.
        \_ it's called an ANI (auto number id). that should help your
           search on GOOGLE. --aaron
        \_ Doesn't *69 automatically dial the number for you?
                \_ Uhh no, it would dial the LAST number who called you. OP
                   wants to know the phone number he/she is dialing from.
                   I think it used to be 1-800-346-0152, which is a 'loopback'
                   phone number used by PacBell technicians to test newly-
                   installed phone line. If you run into one of them, just ask.
                   It's not a secret..
        \_ Answer is in here:
           http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANAC

10/15   I don't have a long dist carrier. I usually use 10-10-321, 811, 220,
        etc. What's a good plan to use?
        \_ http://www.onesuite.com  Cheap, no hassles, portable.
           \_ http://www.onesuite.com/faqs.htm#G13 , you can get 20 free
              minuts (hey that's like 60 cents)!
              but why don't they just bill the telephone like others?
              \_ onesuite is actually a calling card which you can access
                 through a 1-800 number or local numbers.  it is not a traditioal
                 long distance carrier.

10/15   If psb were laid off from LBL and replaced by two of his hindu
        buddies from india, would he still be so gunho about H1bs?
        Yes:
        No:
        \_ "gung ho"
        \_ It wouldn't go like that.  It'd be psb replaced by 1 H1b who can
           barely speak english, has a resume which is nothing but lies, and
           works for 50% less but can't actually do anything useful.  I loved
           working at Indian run dotcoms.  They'd pass over super qualified
           americans, go out of their way to bring in an H1b buddy, and then
           spend the rest of their time covering for him because he didn't
           know *any* of the things he claimed to know on his resume.
           \_ You too? I thought that was just at my startup.
              \_ I was at more than 1 like this.  It was the way it worked.
                 My favorite was a small software place that had a job listing
                 that read like my resume.  Despite having 10 years experience
                 with much larger places the VP Eng told the HR girl I wasn't
                 experienced enough.  I was shocked until I looked over the
                 company bio page for management.  All Indian.  Then it made
                 sense.  When I last checked they were out of business so good
                 riddance to racists in the industry.
                 \_ for great justice!

10/15   Alright, another perl question (I'm learning...)
        I have a 2D hash of refernces to hashes; is there some way to do the
        following in one line?
                my $ref = $myHash{"a"}{"1"};
                my $dataVal = $$ref{$someIndex};
        Thanks alot.
        \_ I think you want
                my $val = $myhash{a}{1}{$someIndex}
           assuming you have something like
                %myhash = (
                    'a' => {
                        '1' => {
                            'someIndex' => 'someValue'
                        }
                    }
                );
            Basically any hash (or array) dereferences after the first
            assume that you're accessing a reference to an array or hash.
            This means that $foo->{bar}->[baz]->{garply} is equivalent to
            $foo->{bar}[baz]{garply}.  Note that the first dereference
            requires the -> operator if $foo is a reference (in this case,
            to a hash).  Confused yet? -geordan
            \_ Yeah I'm confused.  Where the hell did you come up with garply?
               \_ 'garply' the word or 'garply' the key to an anonymous
                  hash in an anonymous array in an anonymous hash in
                  a hashref?  (Heh.) -geordan
            \_ Actually, I think that makes sense. Thanks. I was trying this:
                   my $val = $$myhash{a}{1}{$someIndex};
               which is more like what I would do if it was a scalar with a
               reference... but I think I understand the distinction now. cool.
                                                                        - op

10/15   What's the number to dial that'll enunciate your own phone #?
        \_ 1-1-4 in many areas.
           \_ Doesn't work from my office phone in Foster City.
              \_ Few things work on a centrex system.
        \_ this used to be useful, but why not just call your cell phone now?

10/15   FYI OpenSSH 3.5 is out.
        \_ Interesting. Is there a ChangeLog somewhere that summarizes
           the changes in this release. In particular, I am wondering
           if PAM and auditing problems have been fixed in Solaris
           when privilege separation is enabled.
           \_ ftp://ftp.ca.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/OpenSSH/portable/ChangeLog