10/22   Is Alice hot?
        \_ Yes, very.
        \_ Are you hot?

10.22   The Ketchup Song. Be afraid. Very Afraid.
        \_ Pure evil. I suspect I'll be avoiding this for quite a while.

10/22   Clinton Korea policy has left us a more dangerous world
        with a nice photo of Roger Clinton in North Korea
        http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/773836/posts
        \_ Jesus Christ you Freepers sure have an unhealthy obsession
           with Bill Clinton. Did you know he is not the president
           anymore?
                \_ Really?  Clinton and the Dems are one and the same.
                   \_ a democrat is president?  STOP THE PRESSES!!!
                \_ Clinton fucked this country time and time again, and
                   we will continue to pay for it.  And yet
                   in your eyes hes a saint.
                   \_ Bush turned this country into a totalitarian
                      society that would make communist USSR look like
                      a thriving democracy. The Clinton years were
                      some of the best years of my life in this country
                      until someone messed it up.
        \_ Stop being naive. Nuclear technology is going to spread no
           matter what.  We just have to deal with this fact (along with
           the fact that we have unleashed nuclear weapon on defendless
           civilian in the past, which justifies others to do the same).
           Clinton tried to make friend with them, it is probably the
           best defense policy one can make.   And... remember, United
           States CREATED North Korea if you actually try to remember
           things we have done which we are not proud of.
                \_ 'Unleashed nuclear weapons on defendless civilian'
                    ummm, yeah - this is what you are taught at Berkeley?
                    Nice historical revisionism - youre either very young
                    and naive or completely ignorant.
                    Yours is the Carter doctrine right?  Make
                    friends and everyone plays nice - history clearly
                    vindicates your position.

10/22   dumb C question: what's the difference between
          fread(buf, m, n, fp)
          fread(buf, n, m, fp)
          fread(buf, m * n, 1, fp)
          fread(buf, 1, m * n, fp) ?
        \_ The last one reads any number of bytes between 0 and m*n, and
           returns the number of bytes read; the first one is guaranteed
           to read some multiple of m bytes, and returns the number of
           m-byte chunks read.
        \_ AFAIK, fread() takes chunk size and number because some
           operating systems' i/o API was based on chunks -- unlike
           Unix which uses bytes.  fread() is in the ANSI standard library,
           so the concept of chunk was added for portability.
                                                    -- misha.

10/22   What's your big beef against Clinton anyway, freepers?
        I mean honestly. Bush is so totally unrepresentative of most
        Americans it's not even funny. Not only is he a WASP, he's a
        big-business WASP. He's a political cartoon cliche.
        \_ What's wrong with WASPs you racist fuck?
           \_ Just that every president is one.
        \_ You criticized Bush. Therefore, you must be un-American.
        \_ Hating Clinton is tangential to how one feels about Bush.
           \_ Yeah. I tried deleting my mini-Bush rant but someone
              replied to it without using me. I could write an essay
              about him, just ignore those 3 lines and start ragging
              on Clinton. And not about so-called sex scandals.
        \_ Because, upon investigation, it becomes clear
           that Clinton was the worst, most corrupt and venal post WWII
           president.  The damage he did to this country and its
           institutions may be irreparable.  And yet he is still revered by
           many as the Messiah. But what do you expect
           from the quintessential Baby Boomer. Oh, but the economy was good.
           And you think Clinton / Gore is somehow more representative of
           'most Americans' - are we playing the victim / race card?
           Thank God a large part of America is completely antithetical to
           the California of today.  Democrats have run the Federal government
           for 40+ years - are you pleased with the current state of
           domestic affairs?
           \_ You haven't said anything specific, only that he's "worst".
              Try harder and explain how he was more corrupt or worse
              than other presidents. The Democrats running gov't is a lie
              also. Eisenhower '52, Nixon '72, Reagan '80, Bush '88.
              The country was doing pretty well until the 70's and 80's I
              might add. Bush is more corrupt than Clinton, and Reagan +
              Bushes have fucked the nat'l debt like no other. Fuck them.
           \_ oh is that so? so what did he do that so irreparable?

10/22   Who here lived in USSR for 13 years?
        \_ Me.
        \_ Me too (well, almost -- 12.2)
        \_ Not the stupid kid who thinks Bush's USA is worse than the USSR
           at any time including now as Russia/Ukraine/etc.
           \_ You're dumber than Bush if that's how you interpreted that.
              \_ He said Bush's regime makes USSR look like a 'flowering
                 democracy.'  How would you interpret it?
                 \_ Uhm, most likely as sarcasm or irony.
                 \_ If someone says "I'm starving. I could eat a horse.",
                    do you actually interpret that as the person is really
                    dying of hunger and has the digestive capacity to
                    eat a horse?
                    \_ sarcasm doesn't translate well into ascii
        \_ Is that your magic number?

10/22   is ilyas hot?
        \_ are ilyas' stars hot?

10/22   [ automatically generated freerepublic URL deleted ]

10/23   March for peace on Saturday. This should be the biggest yet:
        http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14353 Note this is just
        an announcement for those interested. If you don't support the purpose,
        don't go to the march. This is not a troll.
        \_ What's wrong with war on Iraq?  Would you rather wait until
           they demonstrate their WMDs before doing anything about it?
           \_ They've already used them. And America shrugged.
           \_ 1) Everything, if all other means of detection and prevention
              have not been pursued (and they have not).  2) I would rather
              send in inspectors and disarm the bastards than
              indiscriminately bomb innocent Iraqi civilians. --erikred
              \_ 1)  They have refused inspectors, or said they would
                   allow only very limited inspection.  How long would you
                   wait for them to change their mind
                 2)  War on iraq would not be undiscriminating bombing of
                   civilians.  Did you see the last gulf war?  Some
                   civilians were killed, but the primary damage was to
                   the military targets.  Unless you believed their
                   claims that weapons factories were actually producing
                   formula for infants...
        \_ I can lend a hand...
           http://www.masturbateforpeace.com

10/23   Do you think Al-Quaeda has cyber-terrorism ability?
        \_ Depends on whether their "IP by camel" protocol is working.
           \_ they may have recruited people outside the country who
              are cyber-capable.
              \_ And how do you know about this, MR. EVIL?!?!
                          Doctor... Its Dr. Evil. _/
                          \_ I didn't spend ten years going to evil
                             medical school to be called "Mister".
        \_ oooo, web sites down, routers are broken. I'll actually have to
           get out of the house to buy stuff. I'm so scared!!!

23.10   http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFreeMain.cfm

10/23   In CSS (and in any other formatting sense) what does the "em" unit
        mean?  How does it convert to, say, points, picas, or mm?
        \- um it sort of depends. it can be the width of an M dep on
           font. see also "em-dash". you can google for "em-dash tex" and
           that will turns up lots of discussion. or can look in TeXbook.--psb
        \_ It's the width of an "m" as opposed to the width of an "n".

10/23   On modern disks, where should you place swap?  At the beginning?
        at the end (like on old ide disks)?  Can we be assured that mfr's
        think "end" is the edge of the platter?  I wanted to know in general
        and in the case of "20 Gig Maxtor drive".  Also, I do infact
        reliaze that it probably doesn't matter, but theoretically where
        should it go?  Thx.
        \_ experiment -don't know either.
                      \_ no, just sick of people asking questions that they're
                         simply too lazy to take care of themselves.  The
                         answer would be: "it depends, but probably doesn't
                         matter"
        \_ i tend to place it next to partitions used for filesystems that
           I might want to resize later on.  easier to resize swap than to
           resize another filesystem to rearrange space to make /var, for
           exmaple, bigger.  on some OS's you can even stop swapping on a
           particular partition without rebooting (as on Solaris). --Jon
        \_ I put it near the beginning, but these days when main memory
           is 1 gb or greater and much much faster than disk, it doesn't
           really matter that your placement will make vm a bit faster,
           since the overhead is just so damn high.
           \_ so it makes absolutly no performance boost to put swap at
                 "optimal" placement will be unnoticable.
              the edge of the platter?
                \_ if you're swapping, you've already lost.  -tom
              \_ Even on a budget system the disk runs at 7200 rpm and
                 has a 2 or 4 mb buffer. Whatever speedup you get by
                 "optimal" placement will be unnoticable with such a
                 disk. The thing to worry about these days is getting
                 the fastest ddr ram you can find and making sure that
                 it is interleaved properly.
              source of latency anyway).  Putting the swap near the center means
              that you're more likely on average to swing the head less.
                `\_ Even the slowest RAM is 8 orders of magnitude faster
                    than the fastest disk.
                     \_ Try 5 orders of magnitude.  Your point is still
                        valid, however.
        \_ huh, isn't the disk access going to be faster at the outer
           parts of the platter? look at the math, i degree of turn on
           the inner goes thru less distance than on the outer edge.
           \_ Aren't hard disk tracks concentric and non-uniform density
              (the inner tracks have the same storage capacity as the
              outer ones)?  If that's the case, it shouldn't impact
              performance either way.
           \_ once again tho, how can you make sure that what cfdisk thinks
              is "end" is  what the mfr thinks is "outer edge of platter"
              is there a standard to these things?
           \_ That doesn't account for moving the head (which is the larger
              source of latency anyway).  Putting the swap near the center
              means that you're more likely on average to swing the head less.
              \_ this is pointless ... use the time and energy to buy more
                 memory or kill a unneeded application. if you are interested
                 in doing this to see if the difference is measureable well
                 then obviously you will have to measure for your hardware.
                 this might be an interesting way to see how good a
                 disk simulator is.              --psb
                 \_ Actually, that was kind of my point.  Making guesses this
                    deep without actually measuring the performance isn't
                    productive.
        \_ WinXP automatically place it in the beginning 1/4-1/5 of your
           partition. Not sure if that means anything.

10/23   MOND is dead.

10/23   How much sleep do grad students get?
        \_ I get more than I did as an undergrad, but I also work harder.
           You have more control over your schedule as a grad student and
           don't have to have deadlines all the time (i.e. for class projects).
                 -- Stanford PhD student
                \_ GEE I wonder who this is.
                   \_ Well, I doubt you have any idea, but you're welcome
                      to guess.   -- Stanford PhD student
                        \_ twohey is the only Farm student this year right?
        Yes, Cal only sent one single graduate student to all of Stanford_/
                                             this year. Are you on crack?
                           \_ they didn't say this year. I belive paul
                              signs his messages, anyways. -chialea
                        \_ There are plenty of others, like calbear.
  Doesn't he hold the record for most units taken in a semester? _/
  \_ How many did he take?  24?
                            \_ I thought it was 37.
        \_ I get less sleep than I did as an undergrad, but I didn't really
           DO much as an undergrad. This is hopefully temporary, I expect
           it to be. -chialea on paper deadline
        \_ I usually get more sleep than as an undergrad since I don't
           have to wake up for 8 o'clock classes anymore.  By the way,
           for those of you considering or starting grad school, I would
           recommend reading the book _Getting_What_You_Came_For_ by
           R. L. Peters.  The things to do to be successful for a grad
           student are different than for an undergraduate.  Read the
           book before you learn these differences the hard way. -emin
                \_ Any difference between MS vs PhD?

10/23   Any Star Trek fans here interested in a couple hand-made Star Trek
        Batleth battleswords collector item?   -mail hkg for more info
        \_ no, but i'll take them to burning man for use at thunderdome.
           how sturdy are they?

10/23   Does anyone know the keyboard shortcut in MS Excel for going
        between two or more different sheets that are currently open?
        \_ Ctrl+PgUp/Ctrl+PgDn to switch between sheets within an Excel
           document.
        \_ Ctrl-tab if you have two instances of a worksheet open; use the
           Ctrl-pgup/pgdn to go between worksheets in a workbook.
                \_ sorry, just realized I misphrased my question. how do I
                   go between two different excel FILES that are open?
                   (instead of going to the Window menu and choosing
                   between file1 and file2? thanks.
                   \_ Ctrl-tab will also go between two different Excel files
                      that are open.  Ctrl-Shift-tab will cycle it the other
                      way.  In Excel 2000, the different files also show up on
                      the Windows task-bar, which means Alt-tab will also let
                      you switch back and forth.  I'll leave Alt-Shift-tab
                      as an exercise for the reader.

10/23   MOTD is dead.
        \_ Long live MOTD!

10/23   What's the best way to get back at someone who screwed you over
        but all you have is their phone number?
        \_ Shrug, move on, grow up.
        \_ Are they on an old crossbar switch?  Do you have a tesla coil?
        \_ Post it in "casual encounters" on craigslist?
           \_ yeah, I like this suggestion... try this. Also, in high
              school as a practical joke, a friend and I called hair club
              for men and told them we were really interested and gave
              another friend's info... they didn't stop calling him for
              years.