1/4     Wow.  I actually enjoyed _Chicago_.  Catherine Zeta-Jones was actually
        quite good (read: wasn't totally obnoxious).  They overran a lot of the
        humour, but all in all a fun watch. --scotsman

1/4     Has anyone gotten a Creative MuVo working under Linux? Is it stable?
        Does it look just like USB storage to Linux?
        \_ when there is naught but useless decay and detritus on the motd,
           why dost thou plod on in search for useful information here?

1/4     BTW, to the person who wanted a card reader which can read
        smartmedia, cardbus, and other formats, all in one reader, such
        a thing DOES exist.  I saw it in a camera store, of all places.  --PM
        \_ was it Firewire (as the poster originally requsted)?  There are
           plenty of USB ones that can read a multitude of flash formats.

1/5     Why aren't newsgroups working?
        \_ because the news server is off/not-accessible.
        \_ power is off in Evans this weekend, maybe the
           news server happens to be in Evans
>agate.berkeley.edu, aka <DEAD>news.berkeley.edu<DEAD>, the USENET news server,
>suffered a major disk failure this afternoon.  My current best guess
>for ETR is Saturday afternoon, given the time for hardware replacement
>and restore.  Many apologies for the inconvenience.
>

1/5     So, what really happened to old Trevor Buckingham?  Anyone care
        to fill me in?  Did he really get banned from campus for a year?

1/5     Good analysis of America, its empire, and the role it should play
        in the middle east:
        http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/magazine/05EMPIRE.html
        \_ Fuck the NYSlimes - the article couches arguments in the
           context of a republic but the whole paper is full of nothing
           but leftist statists.  The Slime's politics are anithetical
           to a Republic.
           Take this pithy quote for example - '...America backed stability
           over democracy, propping up the autocratic rule of the shah,
           only to reap the whirlwind of an Islamic fundamentalist
           revolution in 1979...".
           Well no fucking shit, this was the U.S. paradigm of foreign
           policy throughout the cold war to contain Soviet influence.
           You can't build a democracy in civilizations a 1000 years behind
           the West.  But wait a minute, wasn't it the left's
           Messiah Jimmy Carter who reversed U.S. support of the Shah only
           to embolden Khomeini.  This was militant Islam's first success,
           a success that ignited the situation we face today
           - all thanks to the fucking moron Jimmy 'moral foreign policy'
           Carter.  The man who brought us Stansfield Turner and ethics
           to the CIA.  So much for 'Good analysis' eh?
           \- hello, you may wish to read the "Living with a superpower"
              article in the "Mr. Kim" issue of the E'ist. International
              Security is very good on for more technical discussions,
              although you may unknowingly miss some things because the
              authors take some shortcuts because they assume some
              familiarity with IR literature. e.g. take a look at:
              http://csua.org/u/763
              [IS is better than FA, FP, WP etc.]
              n.b. JSTOR may give you better access. --psb
              \- oh this article may also make you feel better:
                 http://www.policyreview.org/JUN02/kagan.html
                 i dont agree with all of it but it is more interesting
                 that the article by that communist from the TLS the asp
                 walled about. --psb
                 that the article by that communist from the TLS or LRB
                 the asp walled about. --psb
                 \_ Kagan's article is very long and extremely boring, to
                    the point that his points become irrelevant.  BTW,
                              \- the kagan article is a little repetitive
                                 but he raises an interesting "large issue"
                    and the reset of the world (where American power
                                 while the only interesting thing in the
                                 article the asp mentions is the democrats'
                                 "manhattan problem". i am unable to
                                 respond at greater length to these comments
                                 via wall. by the way, if you want to acquire
                                 some culture, if you havent read it, read
                                 the Melian Dialog at the end of BookV
                    should it pursue for the rest of the world?
                                 in the History of the Peloponnesian War.
                                 it's a fantastic read. (i'm not suggesting
                                 it's immediate relevance, but this is a
                                 good thing to have in your pocket) --psb
                    communist or not, that article from LRB was at least
                    entertaining and the view could represent any
                    "conservative realist" of another country.  To people
                    who know what that word means, Bush and his troops
                    sound very much like the Bolsheviks.
                    \_ Hi.  I know what the word 'Bolshevik' means.  You
                       do not.  You are likely the same moron who was
                       comparing US under Bush to USSR.  You have no sense
                       of scale.  Go kill yourself now before you get smacked
                       again like last time.
                 \_ There is no disagreement between Kagan's article
                    and the NYT article.  They deal with different realms
                    of the world, Kantian vs Hobbesian, Europe (where
                    American power is needed only for external threats)
                    and the rest of the world (where American power
                    is needed to impose internal order).  The NYT article
                    deals with what US should do in the rest of the world.
                    Should US act entirely out of its self-interest or
                    should there be a 'moral foreign policy'?  If it is
                    entirely for self-interest, how is it different in
                    essence from the Europen empires of the 19th century
                    and earlier?  It could not be, so what other options
                    should it pursue for the rest of the world?  When
                    Kagan argued that "Americans ought to be the first to
                    understand that a threat to one's beliefs can be as
                    frightening as a threat to one's physical security",
                    he is referring to post-WWII Europe's belief in
                    solving problems between nations through international
                    laws, negotiations, diplomacy and forging of economic
                    ties which is the essence of the European Union,
                    which many Europeans feel is being threatened by
                    America's unilateralism.  The same, however, can also
                    be said of the third world's experience of throwing off
                    colonialism to attain self-determination and self-rule,
                    after significant hardship and sacrifice.  For many
                    people these beliefs are similarly threatened by
                    American unilateralism, which is why many nations
                    outside of Europe also feel uneasy about US's
                    unilateral exercise of power.

1/5     Besides Sephora what are some of the stores that let you try out
        perfumes/colognes more easily?
        \_ the perfume counters in any department store will give you
           free samples.
        \_ You can get a free sample if you slap a hooker across the face
           hard enough for the perfume to rub off on your hand.
        \_ Let you?  After *decades* of complaints they finally mostly stopped
           randomly spraying people with the shit.  *Any* place that sells
           perfume will allow you to try it out.  It costs them 5 cents a
           gallon and costs you 50 bucks an ounce.  Why should they care?
        \_ I've never been all that interested in scent on a woman other
           than her own natural scent.  Motd poll:
                I like my women clean but unperfumed:  ..
                I like my women clean and perfumed:
                I like my women dirty and unperfumed:
                I like my women dirty and perfumed:
                Men stink no matter what:

1/5     I want to split a PDF file by half, page by page, so that I can view
        one column per page instead of two.  It is entirely made up of tiff
        images, but I'd rather not convert it to tiff, slice tiff,and
        convert back, nor do I know how to do the first two.  Please help.
        Ok, tnx.
        \_ if you didnt make page breaks to start with you can add them
           in using Acrobat... or if you want to actually split it up,
           you can do that... with Acrobat.
        \_ suck it up and convert it to tiff.  If it's entirely made up of
           images in the first place, it's not as if it would be easy to
           have automated tools to do what you want.
           \_ Huh?  pdf has internal marks so it knows where page breaks are.
              wtf are you talking about?

1/5     Having wasted too much time, why are bean getter/setters required
        to be non-static?
        \_ because each bean is an instance with it's own data