11/5    Wow, if only the Green party had done the right thing, the Democrats
        might've won and the world would be a better place....
        \_ Er.  no.  if only the democrats had actually talked about the
           shit that the current administration has pulled, and continues
           to pull, in the corporate and foreign policy circles.  but the
           democrats have their heads too deep in just as many people's
           pockets to do that, so... welcome to hell.  --scotsman
           \_ So what you're really saying is the Democrats don't have a real
              platform other than "the Republicans are eeeeevil so vote for
              us!"?  Is that what you're saying?  Maybe the Senate will finally
              do it's job and pass some bills and confirm some judges instead
              of playing politics with important issues.
           \_ I am so waiting for some independent billionare to put a
              bounty out for scandalous material to sink all of these bastards.
                --erikred
        \_ Oh the horror - tax cuts, school vouchers, privatizing
           Social Security.  I've heard these are all signs of the Armageddon,
           can anyone confirm this?
           \_ I'm pretty sure Nostradamus said something about this.
              \_ 47th quatrain.  Something about Caesar rendering under to
                 the people that which is theirs leading to the earth opening
                 and fire and brimstone rising to cloud the sun.
           \_ No, but it's a step in the right direction for a Cyberpunk
              future.

11/5    bush has the senate (and the house).
        \_ We're goin' to WAR, baby!
           \_ and about time!
              \_ today Iraq, tommorrow California
                 \_ I don't think Bush has enough connection to California to
                    come save us.
                    \_ Repubs own DC.  Dems own California.  California has
                       the fifth largest economy on the planet.  Welcome to
                       the revolution, baby.

11/5    How do I find out who "owns" a specific IP address when it doesn't
        resolve with nslookup? ie. There's a host down, and I want to
        report the outage to the appropriate company.
        \_ whois -a address (substitute -e or -p for non-US addresses)

11/5    Which free version of PGP provides a PGPDisk that works in WindowsXP?
        I'm considering the International and CTK variants.  Is any version
        more secure or trustworthy than another?
        \_ PGP is pretty good.
                   \_ HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. ha. ha. ugh. --aaron
        \_ Screw it.  PGP6.5.8ckt_build08 failed to install on XP, and
           PGP6.0.2i could not read my PGPDisks made by PGP6.0.2 Desktop
           Security in Windows2000.  Now my question is: What other pretty
           good encryption tools are there that does what PGPDisk does?
           -OP
        \_ nai actually stopped developing pgpdisk before XP and before their
           latest versions of PGP.. and even announced that they would be
           killing off pgpdisk entirely.. then sold of pgp to the current
           PGP Corp. which says they will have support for XP in v8.0
           which is currently in beta. check http://www.pgp.com -shac
           \_ Thanks.  I'm looking for something _FREE_, and their Freeware
              products do not include PGPDisk.
              \_ Cheap bastard.  Pay for it if you want quality products with
                 full features.  These people have to eat (sushi and Vik's
                 takeout daily) and pay rent (okay, well, condo association
                 fees) and buy shoes (and private school tuition and cell
                 phones) for their kids.

11/5    UltraSparcIII's SPEC2000 marks really sucks compared to say a P4.
        Why do people still want to buy UltraSparcs?
        \_ Solaris works better with sparcs.
        \_ This was true when the Sparc-10 came out.  I guess CPU power isn't
           everything ...
           \_ What's the allure? Reliability? Bwahahaha. Sun Blade 2000 is
              a POS and Sun Blade 1000 was EOL'ed about 10 minutes after
              its release. Sun is screwed. --dim
                \_ Maybe so.  The UltraSparcIV is "supposed" to be good,
                   but I have a tough time believing it.  The SPARC cpu
                   family has a long history of mediocracy.
              \_ let me know when you can get an intel system in the e15k class
        \_ floating point perf.  "64" bit architecture.  software support.
        \_ Uhm yeah like Intel has a great reliability record.  At last count
           they were 100.0000001% accurate at all math functions.

11/5    Where can you find say the historical P/E and PEG of a company?
        \_ I don't think you can find this info free anywhere. Numerous
           companies sell this type of information... eg, http://www.factset.com
           \_ Damn, quarterly reports have Earning. Historical prices can
              be found at numerous web-sites (yahoo stock/business pages)

11/5    SourceSafe sucks.  Does M$ use it interally themselves?
        \_ Yes and no.  MS bought SS and doesn't try to make it better.
           Same with Rational and ClearCase.  Don't use either.
        \_ What is SourceSafe for?
           \_ Storing and eventually corrupting and losing all your source
              code for a company make/break project.
              \_ Switch to ClearCase.
                 \_ Stupid idea.
        \_ Um, what's wrong w/ CVS?
           \_ on large projects, it can get ungainly, though it doesn't have
              to..  however, it's superior to sourcesafe in every possible
              way.
           \_ I like CVS, I am just wonderng what M$ uses internally since
              SS is their product but it sucks. -op
              \_ there's some data online about the dev of NT vs. 2000. I'm
                 trying to google it now.  i'll let you know if i find it
                 again.
        \_ or perforce?
        \_ M$ has a large-scale source license for perforce. I doubt they
           use SS, if at all, for any projects bigger than "really small".

11/5    Here's a first: a NYT opinion page that gets it right:
        http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/05/opinion/05KRIS.html
        \_ What, we can't go after Bush the way the Right went after
           Clinton? What's the fun in that?
                \_ You need to re-read the article.  That's not at all what
                   the take-away was.
                \_ Except Clinton was the most venal, corrupt, unethical
                   President since FDR.  Don't worry, I was fooled too.
                   The problem is everything said about Clinton was true,
                   but for some reason people were oblivious.  It's safe
                   to say Clinton was a traitor.
                   \_ Uh, Nixon?  Dumbass.  It's not even close.
                   \_ I think you have rabies.
                      \_ No cookie.
                   \_ See what I mean? Why can't we be like that?
                      How come the conservatives get to have all the fun???
                      \_ As stupidity increases, so does the amount of fun
                         you experience. I don't think being a non-sensical
                         idiot is anything to be proud of.
                     \_ Why can't you?  You already are and much worse.
                        \_ You mean I am venal, corrupt, unethical and
                           traitorous (and much worse, even)? Cool.
                           Where do I sign up to learn to debate like that?
                           \_ Do they still teach Subject A?  Or is it all
                              e190 now?
                              \_ Oh, is that where you learned. I see now.

11/5    Hah!  I always knew Reagan's Starwars could *never* work!  What a
        ridiculous waste of money and we got *nothing* for it.
        http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2407807.stm
        \_ Knocking out artillery with photons != missile defense.  This is
           a different weapon.  Congrats to the engineering team.
        \_ are you really this stupid?
           \_ no, i always thought of myself as "that" stupid.  got any other
              stupid-questions-not-worth-asking that you'd like to ask?
                \_ Dear Moron, look up the work "rhetorical" in the dictionary
                   \_ wow pretty snappy for a freshman.  were you the "smart
                      kid" in your high school?
                   \_ Clearly he didn't agree with the implied answer.
        \_ What part of the article says that Reagan's "Star Wars" could never
           work?
           \_ the sarcasm part?
           \_ the "are you really this stupid" part is that shooting down one
              thing, that you fired yourself, doesn't say anything about
              whether you could shoot down everything that a particular enemy
              wants to shoot at you.  It's obvious you can't.
              \_ Ah yes, the man who could fly before he could crawl....
                \_ how much does a high-tech defense laser with missile
                   tracking guidance system cost?  how much does an artillery
                   shell cost?
                   \_ You're looking at the wrong numbers.  If the laser costs
                      say $150m per unit but can limit the effectiveness of
                      enemy artillery by say 25% then it's easily worth it.
                      It'll break enemy morale to see their shells shot out of
                      the air and the technology will be useful for other
                      things like oh say killing 100% of enemy artillery units
                      in LOS for a few kilometers.  Would you prefer our troops
                      get blasted by 100% of enemy artillery instead of 75%?
                      \_ are you really this stupid?
                         \_ Obviously the answer is yes. Why do you keep asking?
                         \_ "There you go again!"  Do you really think this is
                            some sort of genius quality reply?  Obviously you
                            must since you keep rehashing what never should
                            have been said the first time.  Take it back to
                            the sandbox.  The rest of us are in college or have
                            graduated.
                            \_ Except tom.
                               \_ you serious?  tom never graduated?
                     \_ Where did you come up with your $150m figure? If it
                        was that cheap, it might be worth it. The truth is
                        that something like this costs Billions and won't
                        be coming down in price much soon. Not to mention
                        being far too fragile and energy consumptive for
                        actual combat duty.
                        \_ I was guestimating but I was wrong.  It was $118m.
                           It was in one of the articles on it from slashdot.
                \_ This is for ICBM, SCUDs, etc., not artillery shells.  Laser
                   detonation of a missile was demonstrated in the '70s
                   \_ 70s??  URL?
                      \_ I did it in a top secret experiment using my grade
                         school science kit. If I tell you any more I will
                         have to kill you.
                         \_ Oh Jesus!  I already knew that!  Now that you
                            spilled it the MIB will be arriving at your door
                            step in a few moments.

11/05   alternatives to cygwin, or is cygwin the shit? tia
        \_ nothing worth talking about.
        \_ Real *NIX.
        \_ cygwin is pretty good for medium to light use. esp. if you don't
           feel like dual booting and don't wanna deal with linux
           configuration shit and its dearth of certain types of software.
           \_ RIDE BIKE!
        \_ cygwin is THE SHIT.

11/5    damnit, it's november 5.  it is your civic duty to
        vote: .
        troll the motd about it:
        get really agitated about other peoples trolls and
        rant for half a screen about it:
        \_ Actually I disagree with #1.  It is not your civic duty to vote.
           It is your civic duty to cast your ballot after educating yourself
           on the issues and candidates and making an informed decision.  If
           you're just going to blindly vote for some party or blindly vote
           on some proposition you haven't read or don't understand then
           please do us all and yourself a favor and stay home.
        \_ What is the Freeper list of endorsements? I want to vote that.
           \_ Find the Chronicle's list online and vote the opposite.

11/5    Gore in 4!  Gore/Nader would be the ultimate winning ticket!

11/5    Jean "The Widow" Carnahan loses.  That was disgusting.  TG she's out
        of there.

11/5    What's the right pronunciation of Ngyuen? Gwen? New-Yen?
        \_ You can't make that sound without practice. Nyen is close.
        \_ You can't make that sound without practice. Nwin is close.
           \_ Ok, can a Vietnamese native speaker record a correct
              pronunciation (.wav or something) and post it in /csua/tmp?
              Curious people want to know...
           \_ I've always pronounced it closer to new-wen.
              \_ And your first language was what?
              \_ It is definitately only one syllable, no matter how you say it.
                 I think you mean Nguyen, right?
                 \_ bah, the first guy was right Nwin is how you say it
                    \_ I once knew a girl with that name who insisted
                       it was pronounced "nu-yin".
                       \_ that's cuz you she didn't want you in her pants
                    \_ I searched Yahoo and found both Nguyen and Ngyuen.  Are
                       they equivalent?  Or are they both correct but different
                       last names?
        \_ Yeah and what about Ng? Is that "ing"? If so why not spell it that
           way in the goddam first place? For that matter why would someone
           write a name "Hsiao", I mean it sure wasn't written that way in
           China so why not just write it phonetically?
        \_ The name is Nguyen.  It is the most common Vietnamese last
           name, much more common than Smith is here, and was the name of
           a series of emperors, the Nguyen Dynasty.  "Nguyen" is the
           Anglisized spelling.  In Vietnamese, there's a circumflex (^)
           over the "e" and a tilde (~) over the circumflex.  I've never
           heard of Ngyuen before.  That doesn't mean it's not a name, but
           I'm sure the one you're thinking of is Nguyen.

           The reason that they don't spell it "ing" in the goddamn first
           place is that it's not pronounced that way.  It's actually
           pronounced "ng", so a better question would be: why don't you
           pronounce it that way in the goddamn first place?  Actually, it
           can't be pronounced using English, only approximated (the
           alphabet is based on French, btw).  There are three reasons for
           this:

           1.  The "Ng" at the beginning.  We actually have this sound in
           English, but it only appears at the end of words.  For some
           reason it's really hard for us native English speakers to say
           it at the beginning of a word.  It's pronounced like the _end_
           of "ing".  I taught myself to say it by saying "ring" and
           holding the "ng" part at the end, after the "i".

           2.  The tone.  In Vietnamese (and many other Asian languages)
           the meaning of a word depends on the tone you use when saying
           it.  This can't really be described in writing, so get a
           Vietnamese person to pronounce it for you.  It took me a while
           to even be able to hear tones in Vietnamese; they all sounded
           the same to me.  For Nguyen, it's kind of like starting your
           voice at a normal pitch at "Ng", making the pitch drop as you
           say the letters through "uy", and then making the pitch sharply
           rise as you say, "en".

           3.  The pacing.  In English, this word would be pronounced with
           two syllables: Nguy-en or maybe Ngu-yen.  However, in
           Vietnamese it's pronounced as one syllable.

           In my opinion, "gwin" (like Tony Gwynn) is the closest you can
           come in English, but even then it's not that close to the
           Vietnamese pronounciation.  - mikeym
        \_ \Win\

11/6    CVS question: let's say your friend... call him Joe... mistakenly
        tagged the repository as a release_X_Y before all the commits were
        in.  Can Joe commit his stuff, and then re-tag the module with the
        same "release_X_Y"?  --joe's friend
        \_ man cvs. read the section about cvs tag

11/5    hola, is there a "definite" book on photoshop [not superadvanced?]
        kind of like stevens for tcp/ip ... something that stands head and
        shoulders above the rest. ok tnx --psb
        \_ If you're somewhat of a beginner, I've found that the
           (many) books from Peachpit Press are very helpful and
           easy to read. Check them out.
                \_Try the classroom in a book books -mrehrer

11/6    Yeehah! The Dems are out of power! Lets see, what acts of unmitigated
        evil can we commit today now that we're drunk on our own power?

11/6    Cool.  Did you know that by purging the motd of all political topics
        you can actually keep pretending to yourself that your party didn't
        get crushed nationwide?  4 more years!  (Of course if your party had
        won you'd be crowing from the roof tops about it and reminding us how
        you have a mandate going into '04....)  Got your spot in the sand
        prepped for head placement?
        \_ the word for people who delete other peoples' political posts
           isn't "democrat" or "republican", it's "asshole".
        \_ 2004, my fine young troll.  See how the Repubs do when they
           can't blame the Dems for anything. And if you're such a brave
           young republican, sign your posts.  --erikred
        \_ I've already been planning to move from this fucked country.
           \_ Where to?

11/6    I need to write a a file in UTF-8 in java 1.3, and UTF-8 may not
        be the default encoding.  How do I do this?

11/6    What's the easiest way to resolve a name to an IP on a machine
        that doesn't have bind. Is there a shell function?
        \_ ping
        \_ nslookup?
        \_ many os's have "host", but ping is probably most universal.
        \_ The machine doesn't have BIND installed?  Or doesn't use a
           nameserver?  Check /etc/hosts (hostname.hme0 or whatever interface
           on solaris.)  Some Windows boxes have a file called lmhosts or
           lmhosts.sam.  There are web-based nslookups available for boxes
           on the internet.  If your machine doesn't use a DNS server, ping
           won't return a remote machine's hostname, will it?  Otherwise just
           port scan it and see if it has any services running that might
           return a host name (http, smtp) when you telnet to that port. -John
                \_ Doesn't have BIND installed. It's a linux laptop.  ping
                   does just what I originally needed, but I'm going to try
                   to install nslookup and dig (both of which are part of
                   the BIND distribution) without installing named.
                   -- I just copied the two files "dig" and "nslookup" from
                   the /usr/bin of a linux box I trust, and copied them
                   into the /usr/bin/ of my laptop. That was easy.
        \_ vi /etc/hosts
        \_ on solaris/BSD, you can just "arp hostname" to get IP.
           Faster than ping.
           Don't have linux near me to see if behaves the same way.
           There are also web-sites that do nslookup for you as mentioned
           above, but only if it's an Internet IP.

11/6    Laser printer?  Or ink-jet?
        \_ I think for low-cost color printers, ink-jet is better.
        \_ Depends what you're needs /preferences are.
        if you want full-color , hi resolution photo printing == Get inkjet
        but remember inkjet ink is expensive and black quality isn't as good.
        if you want high quality text and halftone PS outout you
        can make great xerox copies of and you want high speed and cheap
        per page costs == get Laser. I got a HP4Mplus PS for $100 at
        "northbay networks" a used business equipment seller in emeryville.
        \_ Got my mom one of each so she can choose which to print on based on
           what she's printing.
       \_ Laser printers print faster. Do you have multi-page-printouts?
          You'll waste your life waiting for inkjet copies and wasting
          time replacing carts. Is startup time important for you (TTFP)?
          Laser is getting cheaper and cheaper ($300 for b/w and still the
          size of a typical home printer). Forget color laser unless you're
          willing to wait for warmup, you print a lot of color and/or youre
          willing to pay extra $$$ for a real-color-laser.
          \_ color laser dithers, anyway.
        \_ thanks for the tips.  so my assumption that laser is cheaper for
           b/w printing is correct then.
                \_ Yeah, and get a laser printer with an ethernet port
                   so you can share it regardless which computer is on.
                   \_ That can cost another $200. Or you can try one of
                      those $40-60 parallel-to-ethernet printer-adapters

11/6    Strongly polynomial time algorithm found for linear programming.
        News at 11.
        \_ Uhm, that was 1979. Or are you using some non-standard definition
           of "strongly"?
           \_ 1979 ellipsoid algorithm was weak polynomial time, i.e. it was
              polynomial in the size of the constraint matrix, not polynomial
              in the size of largest number in the matrix.  The current
              algorithm is polynomial in both, which is the standard definition.
              What definition are you using?
              algorithm is polynomial in both, which is the standard
              definition. What definition are you using?
              \_ The same one; I hadn't considered the numerical behavior
                 of the data. So, enlighten me, are you saying the ellipsoid
                 algorithm can't handle in polytime, say, a matrix with
                 floats in [0,1]?
                 \_ No, the ellipsoid algorithm can't handle in
                    polytime a matrix with really really large
                    numbers.  An easy example of weakly polytime
                    problem is factoring a dot product vector of
                    integers.  If the integers are small, this problem
                    is clearly solvable in time linear in the length
                    of the vector.  The problem is that factoring
                    integers is hard, so there are no (known)
                    solutions which have polynomial runtime in the
                    size of the largest integer in the vector.  The
                    ellipsoid algorithm has a similar problem with
                    numbers in the constraint matrix.
                    \_ You misunderstood my question. Yes, I know what you
                       mean by "strongly polytime." What about LP over data
                       in a fixed range of reals?
                       mean by "strongly polytime." What about LP when all
                       parameters are in a fixed range of reals?
                       \_ I am not sure.  If the float is very small, or has
                          high precision, it will take a lot of bits to
                          represent it.  It may be that in fact the ellipsoid
                          algorithm has exponential behavior for any number
                          that needs a lot of bits, large or small.  (Note
                          that this clearly isn't true for factoring).
                    \- is this one of stephen smale's problems for the next
                       century? --psb

11/6    "Workers to Donate Sperm to Pay Plant Debts"
        http://csua.org/u/4e9
        Co-worker A: "Did you remember to go jerk off today?"
        Co-worker B: "Yeah, I did over lunch break."
        Co-worker A: "Great *job*!  Me too."
        And then they shake hands, their right hands.
                                         \_ What's with the left-handed bias?
                                            \_ i've always prefered using
                                               the left hand.  somehow makes
                                               it less predictable.  and i
                                               can still type...  --right
                                               handed beater
        \_ What do the female workers do?
           \_ Maybe they help the guys?
            \_ Duh.  Eggs are worth a whole lot more.
          \_ I doubt they donate eggs.  Donating eggs is a lot less pleasant
                than squirting some sperm.
                \_ Maybe they assist the men to make their donation.
        \_ Egg donation requires surgical operations and it cannot be done
           during lunch break.