3/11    What are some light and small devices that could cut through
        padlocks?
        \_ depends strongly on the padlock.  there is a whole class of
           master lock that can be defeated with a towel.  those padlocks
           on campus are really a bitch to defeat by any means, though.
           \_ with a towel?!?! pray tell?  Link?
              \_ no, i don't have a link. not everything happens on the
                 web.  I just rememeber when i did martial arts at the RSF
                 people making announcements in class about it.
                 they were talking about those cheap shitty rsf combo locks.
                 people were able to bust them open with an RSF towel and
                 steal the contents of the locker very fast.
              \_ It's in the Anarchist's cookbook, which you can find on the
                 web.  You basically stick the towel in between the hasp and
                 the body of a cheap spin dial lock (though they claim that
                 Master locks can't be broken this way) and yank down very
                 fast and hard until it opens.  I highly doubt this will work
                 on the new RSF locks because they force you to turn the dial
                 back a bit *while* pressing down on the hasp.
        \_ How long do have to cut it off?

3/11    Why do so many conspiracy theories revolve around the Bank of England?
        What's with that?
        \_ Isn't George Bush somehow a distant member of the line of
           succession?
        \_ Its because all conspiracists are actually just an underground
           group conspring to overthrow the Bank. I think it has something
           to do with the Masons.
           \_ Close. It stems from the large number of Masons in positions
              of power within England during the 1800's and early 1900's.
              The Royals were said to be the head of the Masons during this
              time and Masonic approval was "needed" to appoint someone into
              an upper, upper class job. This includes the Bank of England.

3/11    Dell was having a good deal on their PowerEdge servers so I ordered
        one yesterday, and this morning I got a call from them asking if I
        was going to use the computer in a home or a business. I told them
        'home' and they said something about how the computer I got (600SC)
        is meant for a business. I thought they were going to make me cancel
        the order but then the guy started talking about how the 600SC
        emits more radiation than a normal home computer and they just
        wanted to let me know that and confirm I still wanted it. I
        said I did, but now I'm really curious if there's any truth to
        what they were saying. I searched the web and found nothing about this.
        I guess I wasn't even aware that computers themselves emit much
        radiation (I always thought it was the monitors). I tried googling
        but couldn't find anything. Is this something I should be worried
        about?
        \_ FCC A versus B rating.
           \_ yeah he probably is referring to general RF noise.. etc.
              in certain circumstances they have to notify the consumer
              if the product is classified for business only or business /
              residential
           \_ any links for more info on this?
        \_ may be what he meant is in a "general" sense, i.e. heat
           radiation :p
           \_ so I don't have to worry about my computer giving me cancer? -op

3/11    Our World-Historical Gamble
        http://csua.org/u/a96

3/11    RUSSIAN THREATS TO UNITED STATES SECURITY IN THE POST-COLD WAR ERA
        http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/862609/posts

1/12    I have two similar but seperate sendmail questions, both of which are:
        why is it that my (send)mail implementation likes to tack on
        http://mydomain.com to the end of otherwise valid email addresses...
        Sometimes when sending mail to jane@somedomain.com, it gets sent to
        jane@somedomain.com.mydomain.com (and thus bounces).  This is not
        consistent and seems only to happen if i'm sending out to more than one
        person with (you guessed it) pine.
        On a DIFFERENT BOX, any mail i send out (any client) to any sendmail
        server, gets THEIR domain tacked on the end so that me@mydomain.com
        becomes me@mydomain.com.theirdomain.com. This is consistent. Insights?
        \_ 1) stop using pine, 2) reinstall sendmail

3/12    Call me paranoid.  How likely is it for someone to decode traffic
        sent to/from an ssh connection?  The encryption is done end-to-end,
        so if the govt is getting a copy of every packet between two boxes
        is it possible for them to crack it?  I'm not a technical guy BTW,
        I just know the high level functionality of these things.
        \_ If they really REALLY care and are willing to wait a couple of
           weeks before the traffic is decoded and have some insane amount
           of computer power... pretty unlikely.  There is a reason this stuff
           scares the shit out of the powers that be.
           \_ It is much easier for them to attack at the unencrypted endpoints
        \_ If the government wants to see your shit, they can get a tap for
           your keyboard or put a van outside your home/office and read your
           monitor.  You're only fooling yourself thinking ssh will really
           keep the United States' Federal Government from reading your shit.
           I suggest you find a good defense lawyer and send good-bye notes to
           your family and friends.
                \_ any URLS with stories from people this has happened to?
                   \_ http://www.you.com.au/news/1009.htm
        \_ If you are using SSHv1 there is a possibility that someone could
           read your traffic. If you are using SSHv2 (AES128-HMAC SHA1) your
           traffic will be unbreakable for the next several billion years
           assuming that (1) the RSA factoring problem is impossibly hard,
           (2) the Discrete Log problem is impossibly hard, (3) SHA1 is a
           true 1 way hash and can't be inverted in less than 2^80 tries,
           and (4) there are no weaknesses in the AES S-BOX.
           There is a further concern among some about the way that HMAC
           is performed in the SSH protocol, iirc SSH does E(K,P) HMAC(K,P)
           rather than the more secure IPSEC method E(K1,P) HMAC(K2,E(P)).
           I'll look this up in my notes and post later on.
           \_ It might take decades, or even centuries, but the quantum
              computers are coming.
           \- we've broken ssh session keys when we were "really really
              interested". ok tnx.
                \_ what size session keys and did you break them using
                   brute force or via some other method?
                   \- "we measure computing power in acres"
                        \_ how much ct did you need?
                \_ who's 'we'?
                        \_ "ok tnx" is the hallmark of PSB, and PSB works
                           at LLBL, so he could have "acres of computing power"
                           Was that you, PSB?

3/12    Interesting Puma ads...
        http://adrants.rantworks.com/2003_03_02_archive.php#90425451
        \_ s/Interesting/fake/
           \_ Dude, fake can be interesting too.
              \_ What is interesting is that someone went to all the
                 trouble to produce these high quality fake ads. Sorta
                 like the fake boobs on yermom down at the strip joint.
                 \_ It puts bread on the table and crack in the pipe. I don't
                    complain.

3/12    Got the notice from comcast yesterday that they want to jack up my
        cable modem access if I don't have cable from them.  How can they
        get away with charging $20/month more than DSL?!?  Has anyone called
        to yell at them and gotten good results?
        \_ Vote with your feet.
         \_ damn right I will!  Just gathering info first, so that I can
            make the most informed decision... -OP
        \_ Say you want basic cable for $9.65/month, but you don't want
           to rent the converter or remote.  See if that works.
           \_ Do you mean that the hassle of giving me cable without the
              rentals will make them give me the original price back, or
              just that if I'm going to pay the extra I might as well get
              the cable? -OP
              \_ I mean they'll give you your original rate (last I heard
                 it was $46/month) if you get Basic Cable.  I understand
                 it's $60/month without cable TV.
        \_ They can't.  They jacked up cable tv prices so I've got satellite
           now.  It's cheaper and better.  If they jack my cable modem rates
           I'll switch that too.  It's a semi-open marketplace.
                \_ less open than it was last year.  Thank you FCC.
        \_ I received that notice as well.  They said that if I sign-up for
           cable my internet montly fee will remain the same (~40$) and my
           cable will cost $6/month for the first 6 months (with no setup or
           cancellation fees).  So, ~$50/month for cable and internet still
           seems better than DSL since my cable connection is faster than
           T-1 for download.
           \_ I did that calculation too.  Are there any surcharges (fees,
              taxes, equipment rental, etc.) on the $6/month cable?
              \_ I just called them, and when they say "basic cable" they're
                 not kidding.  You only get the local channels (that you
                 would normally get for free via broadcast) plus C-Span,
                 a few other government access channels and sometimes they
                 include the Discovery Channel.  The next plan up (which
                 all of us would consider basic cable, i.e. CNN, etc.) is
                 $32/month to $42/month depending on digital vs. analog,
                 location, and probably how much they think they can extort
                 \_ In oakland, with taxes and fees, analog is $42/month.
                    digital is more.  cable selection around here sucks.
                    find something else.
                 from you, etc, etc.  So, if you want to keep your cable it's
                 still cheaper to get the $6/month for a total of $48.95, or
                 splurge for real cable for a total of $74.95.  I'm thinking
                 of choice 3: spend the extra $6/month for basic, and when
                 the cable guy comes just give him $20 to hook up the
                 additional channels.  Last time a cable guy was at my place
                 he offered this deal to me out of the blue.

3/11    In unix what function/lib can I use to translate from a date to an
        integer value (given month/day/year, it returns a value), and
        vice versa? Thanks...
        \_ how about using a search engine? why wait several hours
           for an answer on the motd? i mean even "man -k time" would
           have given you the answer. you loser troll.
        \_ mktime and localtime, respectively.  You might also have a look
           at strftime and strptime, which convert between the integer value
           and human-readable strings.
        \_ Could you clarify what you are using?  Are you writing a C program?
           a perl script?  An sh script?
        \_ You could probably do this using strptime and then futzing around
           with the tm ptr.
        \_ perl
        \_ If you don't care what the integers are, you could concatenate
           the year, month, and day into something like "20030312". Use
           positional string operators to create and extract. You'll have
           Y10K problems if you stick with a 4-digit year. It's not an
           int, but neither are the numbers used in mktime(), etc.

3/12    What's with http://berkeley.edu?  Up and down for the last hour...
        \_ From http://ucb.net.announct:

        From: lindahl@ack.Berkeley.EDU (ken lindahl)
        Subject: unexpected service outage today
        Newsgroups: http://ucb.net.announce
        Date: Wed, 12 Mar 2003 22:43:53 +0000 (UTC)
        Organization: Communication & Network Services

        the campus border router that connects to our ISP service failed
        around 1:30pm today. there is some evidence that the failure was
        preceeded (and perhaps caused) by an incoming packet flood; CNS
        is investigating this possibility.

        usually when this router fails, there is an automatic routing
        change that shifts the traffic to different border router in
        roughly a minute or so, so that the disruption is short-lived.
        for some reason, this did not happen gracefully in today's
        incident. traffic is moving across the backup router at this
        time, while we check the condition of the primary router. for
        reasons unknown, one of the interior interfaces on the primary
        router also failed in this incident; CNS has not seen this hap-
        pen before.

3/12    mySQL vs. postgreSQL: Thoughts? Likes? Dislikes? Horror stories?
        Success stories?  Thanks.
        \_ I have found mySQL to be surprisingly good. I built a network
           and system management product using mySQL for the db backend.
           This system has been deployed in several dozen sites worldwide
           with between 100-500 nodes managed per site. Most of the sites

           have been running for about 1 1/2 to 2 yrs and during this time
           with between 100-500 nodes managed per site. The amount of data
           I originally wanted to use postgres or sysbase (the cheap one,
           store per node varies, on ave its about 25-30 MB. Most of the

           sites have been up for about 1 1/2 to 2 yrs and during this time
           mySQL has been quite reliable (no data loss to date).
           Originally I wanted to use postgres or sysbase (the cheap one,
           SQLAnywhere iirc) but one of the people in my group told me
           about mySQL so we tried it out for a bit and really liked it
           because it was easy to install and maintain.

        \_ PostgreSQL used to have edge over MySQL because MySQL by design

           sacraficed features for performance.  Some of the features
           MySQL at the time didn't have includes: Transaction, Nested
           Queries, and things like foreign key constraint support.
           Later version of MySQL uses either innoDB or BerkeleyDB, which
           effectively allow transaction (table locking, oppose to row-locking
           but personally i can live with table locking for now) and
           enforcing foreign key constraint.
           I think in 5.2, MySQL started to support nest queries.  it used
           to be clear on when to use PostgreSQL (i.e. you need transaction)
           now, the answer is less clear.  You can ask other guys about the
           performance aspect.  Personaly, I perfer MySQL because 1. I don't
           do anything real.  2. better on-line documentation, 3. more
           on-line communities support, and 4. easy to use.
           Then again, true hacker may have different opinions.
        \_ I've never heard of a reason NOT to use PostgreSQL over MySQL
           other than "I've never heard of it and can't pronounce it".
           \_ MySQL is much easier to install and maintain.
        \_ PostgreSQL is a "real" database: ACID compliant, supports
           transactions, etc. MySQL is just a small lightweight
           DB that is fine for small jobs but can't (shouldn't) be
           trusted for any serious application
           \_ That's what I've heard.  The benchmarks I've found have
              been pretty crappy all around, but the mySQL users in
              general tend to be pretty unclear on standard DB concepts.
              Not that benchmarks are particularly useful anyway, in the
              computer industry there are lies, damn lies and then
              there are benchmarks.
              \_ You are so kewl!  Can I use that clever quote?!
           \_ Um, no.  #f.  Try again.  What you said was true six months
              ago before mysql stable natively supported the innoDB table
              format.  The innoDB table format supports (among other things)
              transactions and gives mysql ACID compliance.  mysql has a
              larger, more active support community, is backed by mysql AB,
              which is a successful and growing company, and, at this point
              appears to be developed faster than postgres.  Success story:
              http://Kuro5hin.org.  They've been using mysql + innodb support since
              innodb was WAY beta.  Success story: Slashdot.
              \_ I'm not sure I'd use kuro5hin and slashdot as examples of
                 success.
                 \_ me neither. mysql is a hobby database and the only
                    reason to use it is if you can't get oracle.
                    \_ Um, wow.  You ARE an idiot.  Oracle is good for one
                       thing only: putting money in Larry Ellison's pockets.
                       \_ Don't be stupid.
                       \_ Hi Mr. Clueless Mindlessly Anti-Establishment Lad!
                 \_ Hmmm, hammers on database, both sites have impressive
                    uptimes.  How do YOU define success?
                    \_ Slashdot is slow as shit and has a mediocre uptime.
                       Kuro5hin doesn't have that much traffic and frankly
                       in the real world where neither does slashdot.  It's
                       all heavily cached which won't work for anything
                       important.
                       \_ Please continue doing that thing where you make
                          your ass talk.  It's almost as funny as when
                          Jim Carrey does it in Ace Venture: Pet Detective.
                          Let me know when you have some *gasp* examples
                          from your 'real world'.  Go away troll.
                          \_ Thank you for adding nothing to this thread but
                             mindless personal attack.  When you can explain
                             why I'm wrong without using 3 and 4 letter
                             childish 'insults' then maybe you'll be able to
                             discuss databases with the rest of us.  Troll,
                             indeed!  Your 'reply' is laughable.
                             \_ Thank you for admitting that you are wrong.
                                What does it matter if I use 3 and 4 letter
                                insults while explaining that you are wrong.
                                This does not change the fact that you are,
                                as per your admission, wrong.  Please let
                                me know when you have real world examples.
                                Until then, I repeat, go away troll.
                                \_ Uhm, no one admitted to being wrong or you
                                   being right about anything.  You're just
                                   being silly now.  I've no idea how you came
                                   to believe that you're right or anyone
                                   else is wrong about anything.
                 \_ Google, Slashdot and Yahoo use mySQL, some w/ innoDB.
                    Also, Google and Slashdot gzip their content, which is
                    another sign of a savvy site.
                    \_ who have you been talking to? you don't want to go
                       citing us as a testimonial; mysql has given us more
                       headaches than you can imagine. --aaron
                       \_ Don't confuse the issue with facts!

3/12    My company wants me to take some short (2 days) management
        training.  I am in the South Bay.  Any pointers on what's a good
        class to take?
        \_ I strongly recommend a presentations skills class and/or a
           public speaking skills class.  Those are the most important in
           advancing a management career.
        \_ Does your boss know s/he's being replaced?
           \_ Probably not.  I am pretty sure the request skipped
              him--it came directly from the general manager.
        \_ anger management? - danh
           \_ Speaking of which:
              link:www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/local/5372692.htm
           \_ hmm...more like people management.

3/12    For those of you who are naturalized citizens or who somehow know,
        after you have formally filed application for naturalization but
        before you are granted an interview and/or the approval, can you
        leave the country for an extended period of time without jeopardizing
        your application?  I have googled and searched on INS site, but did
        not find the answer.  It must be in some CFR or USC, but that are
        big.  Please answer only if you know the answer.  Appreciate any URL
        too.  Ok, tnx.
        \_ Yes, but you need permission. If you leave the country w/o it,
           you are f*cked.
           \_ That's for leaving Before you file the application, for over
              1 year or 6 months, or there is a requirement for after the
              application is filed also?
           \_ the needed permission is called "advance parole":
              <DEAD>www.immigration.gov/graphics/howdoi/travdoc.htm#parole<DEAD>
              Here is the link for travel:
              <DEAD>www.immigration.gov/graphics/howdoi/registry.htm#travel<DEAD>
        \_ My mom left the US for a few months after filing her application
           for naturalization.  She came back after getting her interview
           notice.  She is currently staying put waiting for her oath
           ceremony after her interview resulted in a "recommended for
           approval", but I believe the immigration officer at the interview
           told her she can leave the country if she wants to.  Consult a
           lawyer.
           \_ How long does it take her to get an interview notice and
              interview itself after filing the application and how long
              to get the ceremony?  Ok tnx.
              \_ She filed in April, had her fingerprint in July, and
                 her interview the day before Thanksgiving.  She got her
                 oath ceremony notice very fast (originally scheduled
                 around late December), but the day before the ceremony,
                 she was informed that the whole ceremony got cancelled.
                 From reading the news, it seemed that in the past, if
                 INS doesn't hear back from FBI, they assume the case is ok,
                 but now, each case needs to be individually approved by
                 FBI, and FBI cannot keep up with the work load, so INS
                 cancels.  Also, it seemed like INS just left the
                 whole pile of cases sitting there until my mom called them.
                 Then things started rolling and they said "4 weeks".
                 3 1/2 weeks later, my mom called again, and was told
                 "one more week" (to get the notice for ceremony).  That's
                 where it is sitting now.  Calling INS can mean long hold
                 times.  I think they then give you a  number for a local
                 INS office to call, which is where you can find someone
                 who can actually check your case.  All this is in Chicago,
                 so it may not apply to you.
                 \_ ** errors corrected **
                 \_ Great, another immigrant come to steal my social
                    security trust fund.
                    \_ I think you don't get any social security unless
                       you work and pay taxes for 10 years.  My mom would
                       get it though since she worked for U of Chicago
                       for some years, back in the 60s.
                       \_ Not so.  She'd get it if her husband had it.  She'd
                          get welfare and a boatload (hah!) of medical bene's
                          just for being here.
                          \_ I think you are mistaken about the "husband"
                             part.  Also, I believe the same 10-year rule
                             applies to medicare and medicaid.
                 \_ My God!  We live in a fascist state!  Look at the huge
                    and privacy destroying hassle we put innocent people
                    through just to be able to live here.  Just because they
                    were born somewhere else is no reason they shouldn't have
                    all the rights of someone who simply had parents here.