5/5     Canadians have too much freedom, complain US officials:
        http://csua.org/u/e4e

5/5     Has anyone had experience with RCN as a cable modem and/or telephone
        service provider?  Was the experience good or bad?  Unfortunately,
        my house is not reachable by reasonable DSL, and my only choice to
        leave Comcast is RCN.  I'm in San Mateo, if that matters.
        \_ RCN was my nightmare for 2 years while I was in New York City
           (lower manhattan, 2 minutes from NYSE).  It has a very unstable
           service.  No, I am not bitching about slow speed at peek time.
           I am talking about the connection will intemittenly go black
           completely, that you can't even keep telnet session alive.

           That was New York City, you might fair better in Bay Area.

5/5     Restored link about Canadians having more rights than Americans:
        http://csua.org/u/e4e
        \_ Let's all go there.
        \_ If only Canada wasn't so close to the darn North Pole, I'd move
           there...
           \_ Agreed.  Why can't we have a successful socialist state in
              the tropics?
        \_ Yeah Canada is totally perfect.  Everyone says so except the
           people I know who've actually lived there.  Only about a dozen or
           so over the years but none of them would go back.  And by the way,
           while we're on this topic, did you know the Soviet (USSR, not the
           current Russia) Constitution guaranteed more and better rights than
           the US one?  A whole lot of good it did them.
           \_ Wow, that's too bad.  The Canadians I've met (over fifty over
              the years) have generally been very happy with their country.
              I'm sorry to hear that your Canadians didn't agree.
           \_ I have hundreds of relatives in Canada and they're very happy.

5/5     I say we invade Israel for possesing weapon of massive destruction
        and consistant records of violation of international laws, and
        aggression toward its neighbors.
        \_ And being the only mid east state to allow arabs to vote and the
           mid east state responsible for the fewest arabs deaths in the last
           50 years and the only democratic mid east state and the only mid
           east state to support the US in the UN general assembly more than
           20% of the time.  Those jew bastards, I so hate having such a solid
           democratic ally in such an ugly part of the world.  We should ally
           ourselves with peace loving terrorist dictatorships like the PLO.
           \_ Democracy has NOTHING to do with it.  Lighten up.  Look at
              our OTHER allies: Saudi Arabia? Kuwait? UAE? what do they have
              in common? Absolute Monarchy!  And... if anything, *IRAN* has
              a democracy!  It just that their democracy is very different
              than what we got over here.
                \_ You can't have a democracy if there is no freedom of ideas,
                freedom of the press, etc. If you're too progressive, you'll
                get the death sentence in Iran...
                -dated an Iranian, I guess that makes me an expert.
        \_ It's really simple, Sam:  If the other side has suicide bombers,
           all bets are off.
           \_ Stupid logic trap.  Suicide bomber are only thing they got.
              without it, Israel will never even consider return land
              which they conquered.

5/5     motd survey: Do you your shoes have a granny knot or a square knot?
        Take your shoe laces. Instead of untying them by pulling the
        ends of the laces, pull the loops until the ends pass thgough
        the knot. If you have a granny knot, that's why your shoes are
        always coming untied. Get the word out. Teach your kids correctly.
        http://www.u.arizona.edu/~gasmith/knots/knots.gif
        square:  .
        granny:
        \_ neither is ideal.  use a slipped surgeon's knot.  --jon
           \_ I can't find a diagram of a "slipped surgeon's knot".
              I'm not suggesting people tie their shoes with an square
              knot, but instead use a "slipped square knot" -op
        \_ square doesn't keep your laces tied, but does make the loops
           fall nicely perpendicular to the heel-toe axis.
        \_ kids?  Thats what God invented velcro fall.
         \_ I think you mean that's what God invented condoms for.

5/5     More on smelly co-workers:
        The only smelly co-worker I've had is a really fat white guy.
        I don't know why he stinks like shit; maybe it's because he
        doesn't wash under his folds or maybe he has some kind of
        fat disease.  Still everyone is kind enough not to say
        anything.  This fat guy also liked to make off-colored racist
        jokes which eventually got him a warning from management.  I
        guess the phrase "stinky racist" aptly describes him.
        \_ Why do you mention he was white or that he was male or his weight?
           I find your lack of PC sensitivity truly offensive!  What did the
           berkeley dyke say to the other berkeley dyke?  That's not funny!
           BWahahahahhahaha!  I love that one!

5/5     What is the hot chick ranking for the UCs? I'm pretty sure UCB
        isn't ranked so high but I'm wondering if it's better than say
        UCD or other UC schools.
        \_ UCLA has h0t ch1x0rz.
        \_ Which school has more hot chix, UCLA or UCSB?
        \_ UCB = last.  How could you possibly think UCB >> UCD?  They've
           got all those healthy and friendly farm girls.  UCB has drug
           addict whores putting out for hits and taking third helpings in
           the food line at the dorms.
                \_ UCD=hot white chix. UCB=hot azn chix
           \_ so much hate!

5/6     How do I use sed to truncate output lines to say 60char/columns?
        \- helo "man cut" ok tnx. --psb
           \_ command | cut -c1-60
              \_ will truncate, yes, but not useful for wrapping the text.
                 \_ Was text-wrapping requested? No.
                 \_ Um.. if you wanted line wrapping, use fmt.
        \_ perl is the answer to all text modifying or extraction questions.
           \_ Ok fine.  How do I do this in perl?
              \_ command | perl -n -e 'print substr $_,0,60,"\n";' though
                 I suspect this would be trivial with sed.--scotsman
              \_ command | perl -pe 's/^(.{1,60}).*$/\1/;'
        \_ Try "fold".
        \_ Try "fmt".
        \_ Try ED! and counting out to the 60th character on each line and
           deleting everything after it.  Save the file out to a different
           file name if you need the original.

5/6     Self Appointed Motd Censor, thank you for reducing the motd to the
        lowest common demoninator every day!  Without you, I might see
        something more interesting than whatever it is *you* deem motd worthy!
        All praise the SAMC! Thank you for saving us from interesting content!
        \_ I like your implicit equation of "interesting content" = "hate and
           invective filled trolls." -not the motd censor

5/6     I was looking at a csua user homepage a few months ago and someone
        had worked on a project involving something about making disk
        backups to physically seperate locations, arguing that a flood or
        fire would destroy any local backups just as easily as it would your
        normal disk. anyone know the name of this project or user?
        \_ The project you describe is the Distributed Internet Backup
           System (DIBS) developed by Emin Martinian and available at
           http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~emin/source_code/dibs/index.html -emin
           \_ thanks
              \- how are you determining what to incrementally backup?
                 are you looking at file timestamps? is the unit of change
                 a file or a block of data? i.e. if 1 byte is appended
                 to a 100meg file, does a 100mb get xferred? does this use
                 rsync under the hood? ok tnx. --psb
                 \_ if you're interested in that sort of stuff, try
                    http://oceanstore.cs.berkeley.edu
           \_ Emin, were you a part of Kubi's group?
                    \_ OceanStore is a great project but it has different
                       goals.  DIBS is designed to provide a way for people
                       to exchange files for backups in a secure, robust
                       way without requiring a central authority. -emin
                 \_ DIBS stores an MD5 hash for each file and does a full
                    backup of any file which changes.  Rsync is not used
                    because DIBS uses encryption and erasure correction
                    coding and that is difficult to combine with rsync.
                    Also, DIBS is peer-to-peer while rsync requires you
                    to have accounts on both ends.  -emin
                    \- yeah i have some limited familiarity with oceanstor
                       but again for something lightweight i am curious
                       about this dibs thing. we hacked up something we
                       call the "storagelocker" with ssh keys and some
                       other access control technology and a big perl
                       script ... it works ok as a palce to write and
                       recover a bitstream but it would be nice to have
                       some smarts to reduce the traffic volume.
                       BTW, does anyone know if the hummingbird fs
                       was ever released and what performance stats
                       look like? --psb
                       \_ Although I'm tooting my own horn, I think DIBS
                          is what you are looking for.  The way I use DIBS
                          is to put links to everything I want backed up in
                          a special directory and DIBS automatically and
                          incrementally makes backups to other machines. -emin
                                \- ok i will analyze it and let you know
                                   if i incorporate it into a front end
                                   to the StorageLocker(tm) ok tnx --psb
           \_ Emin, were you a part of Kubi's group?
              \_ No.  I was in Zakhor's group at Berkeley and I'm in the
                 DSP group at MIT.  I work on DIBS because I think it's
                 cool; the stuff I do for "research" is much different. -emin
        \_ Haven't companies been storing backup tapes or disks at separate
           physical locations for years?  He's not the first to realize that
           a flood or fire would destroy any local backups, is he?

5/6     Re: cordless phone again.  If a cordless phone says it's runs at

        2.4 Ghz, it means that there's a range of frequencies near 2.4 Ghz
        that it's transmitting and receiving.  If so, isn't it true that as
        more people get the same kind of phones the more likely you'll get
        crosstalk and bad reception?  Anybody happen to know the range of
        frequencies that a typical phone uses?   Thanks.
        \_ My impression was that 2.4 Ghz was just an idea to appeal to the
           guy who thinks that more hertz==better.  I've used many of both
           and my favorite *by far* was a 900Mhz uniden-- no static, no
           crosstalk, no problems.
                \_ Your impression is wrong.
           \_ My 900Mhz Uniden's battery runs out after fifteen minutes
              of talk time.  What the hell?
              \_ Mine is a lead-acid battery that wears out after several years.
                 If you pop open the battery casing you can probably find a
                 serial number; type "uniden battery" along with that # into
                 google and and you can find some quality resellers... I
                 replaced mine with a longer per-charge battery for about $18
                 incl. shipping.
                 \_ Good advice, will give it a shot.
           \_ Yeah, use what works.  2.4 GHz is a range that isn't regulated, so
              it's clobbered by X10, 802.11 and other products.  I'd rather not
              have a phone that interferes with my wireless network.

5/6     From fuckedcompany today about HP (random poster):

        "I'll tell you how fucked HP is: They offered ME a job in Boise a
        couple years ago, and I have no disernable skills or talent
        whatsoever.

        I've made a fortune by shorting the stocks of companies dumb enough to
        hire a clueless marketing fuck like me. If I get called for a 2nd
        interview, I short a few thousand bucks worth. If they make me an
        offer, I bet the farm baby!"
        \_ HP has a call center in Boise. Maybe HP didn't care that he didn't
           know anything and just wanted a phone-monkey.
           \_ I've had very good luck recently getting help from
              "phone monkeys" from Agilent, but maybe that's totally different
              from HP.
           \_ He said he's a marketing guy.  I doubt self proclaimed marketing
              guys were talking to anyone about call center jobs back in the
              day.
              \_ I don't get your point. HP is going down because some
                 anonymous fucked company poster says they offered him
                 a job he didnt deserve?
                 \_ No, HP is fucked because they pulled a DECompaq and tried
                    to compete with Dell instead of being the innovative
                    company they were. Thanks Carly! --dim
              \_ Well, he doesn't have to worry about being wrongly hired now.
                 We haven't been hiring in well over a year.
                 \_ I guess I should have been flattered when they came through
                    with an offer for me.  Heh.
                    \_ Hmm, then maybe we have started hiring again. So hard
                       to get reliable info within the company.

5/6     How difficult is it to write a python wrapper around a small C++
        class?  Any references would be appreciated, thank you.
        \_ Pretty easy.  If you use the simplified wrapper and
           interface generator (http://www.swig.org you can use the same
           C++ code from python, guile, tcl, perl, etc.

5/6     Dear smelly ethnic food hater, is your co-worker Indian or Chinese?

5/6     [Self Appointed Motd Censor whine deleted] - SAMC fan #1

5/6     Boy I love my country Singapore.  I remember US used to bitch
        and whine about Singapore's Internal Security Act which allows
        detention without trial.  Now, US is doing exactly the same,
        following our lead.  I also remember US used to bitch and whine
        about Singapore restricting the circulation of commie-liberul
        rags like feer, etc., now US did pretty much the same with al
        jazeera.  I also remember the various negative articles about
        Singapore being too authoritarian.  Now liberul rags like NYT
        are praising Singapore for its authoritarian measures for
        controlling SARS.  Singapore has been saying all along that
        detention without trial is necessary against commie and islamic
        terrorists, and successfully broken up al queda cell in Singapore.
        For that, now US is signing free trade agreement with Singapore
        like a good pussy cat.  Boy, it still feels good to remember
        Singapore caning buttocks of American naughty boy who defaced
        several of Singapore's precious cars some years ago.  Soon,
        US would be following Singapore's lead in banning the sale of
        chewing gum.   Singapore, land of the free, and a beacon for
        democracies all over the world:
        http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/06/international/asia/06CND-TRADE.html
        \_ something to keep in mind is that in this country we enjoy far
           greater freedoms than mandated by the constitution and various
           amendments.  even the bare basic document without all the stuff the
           supreme court invented in the last 30 years still grants more rights
           and protections than you'd have in most of the world.
        \_ Many Chinese think Singaporian Authortarian is the model for
           modern China.  Though I just don't see how Singapore model
           could scale up 10 million times.
        \_ While I agree with your general assesment that Singapore
           is far to authoritarian and we ought not develop our gov.
           in that way, the kid who got caned deserved it. Why the
           hell did he have to go around spray painting other peoples
           cars?
           \_ short answer: because he's a flaming idiot.
           \_It was a school graduation prank, and the spray paint
             wasn't even permanent. If the same laws applied to the U.S.
             Steve Jobs would've been hung and quartered because he was
             part of the Buck Fry's club and he used to pull stuff like
             this. The kid should've just been fined and do community
             service. On a tangent, the comparison is apt. It reminds me
             of the game A Mind Forever Voyaging (if anyone is old enough
             to remember infocom games)
                \_ sometimes you do a prank and get busted for it and pay the
                   price.  in this case, the dumbshit lost some skin off his
                   ass and not even that much because of US pressure because
                   too many idiots here don't raise their kids right.
                \_ That's what you don't understand.  Poor Singaporeans
                   make half as much as Americans, but your typical Honda
                   Accord plus a car ownership license costs about US$100000
                   there.  When you spray paint an uptight Singaporean's
                   car, you might as well have violated his wife.
             \_ I see someone spray painting my car and they are lucky if
                all they get is a caning. Remember that guy who shot the
                kid who destroyed his Halloween decorations and then said
                "What are you gonna do about it?". That's justice. --dim
                \_ now you know why his login name is "dim"
                   \_ actually this is one of the very rare times I find myself
                      in 100% agreement with dim.  Is there a URL for the
                      holloween shooting?  I'd love to read that one.
             \_ 1. So what if it was a grad prank? He could have just
                   as easily done something else that did not violate
                   private property rights. (MIT and CalTech students
                   seem to be able to pull of interesting grad pranks
                   that don't violate the private property rights of
                   random people)
                   \_ You obviously don't know much about CalTech. -ausman
                        \_ I haven't seen anything on par with
                           spray painting random cars.
                           \_ ausman went to CalTech.
                           \_ While I was there, it was routine to do things
                              like brick up the entrance to someone's dorm room,
                              steal The City of Pasadena's Christmas decorations
                              and scatter them around campus, break into the
                              Rose Bowl and hack into the sign control system,
                              etc. Maybe things are tamer these days.
                2. The paint wasn't permanent? Maybe I should run
                   over to your car right after you had it washed
                   and dump a load of cow dung on it and glue some
                   free Dimitry flyers to it. After all glue and
                   dung aren't permanent.
                   \_No, it wasn't permanent. You obviously don't know
                   anything about paint. They were using a non-bond type
                   paint on top of a bonded surface. In fact, the people who
                   owned the cars didn't say it was a big deal because it
                   just washed off. Get your facts straight before bulleting
                   nonsense.
                        \_ I don't care what shit you put on my car.  I don't
                           car that it washed off.  I shouldn't have to spend
                           1 second of my life cleaning up your shit.  I'd
                           cane your ass if you touched my car with anything.
                           Hey is it ok if I deflate your bike tires?  It isn't
                           permanent!
                3. So what about Steve Jobs? If he broke the law he
                   should have been punished.
                   \_Apparently you have no concept about civil disobedience.
                   Let me guess, you're the kind of dweebie idiot who
                   doesn't J-Walk or has ever copied software illegally.
                   Get real and get bent.
                     \_ How is painting someone's car an act of civil anything?
                        You're a nutter.
                4. Community service and fines don't teach people that
                   what they did was wrong. They just teach people that
                   you can do what you like so long as you can fork over
                   a few $s and some time cleaning up roads.
                   \_ So you believe only in physical punishment for all crimes
                      or you don't believe in any?  Should we cane people who
                      violet basic traffic laws?
                   \_Getting a $200 traffic ticket surely hurts. I don't know
                   about you, but I'd rather take the caning than part with
                   my hard earned cash.
                   \_ And corporal punishment teaches them more?
                      \_ It isn't about corporal vs. non-corporal punishment.
                         The idea is that the punishment should be severe
                         enough that it is a deterent to further crime yet not
                         out of proportion to the crime, such as a $1,000,000
                         fine for spitting on a side walk.
                      \_ "We'll be careful." "You'll be dead."
                Its people like you who don't understand what
                responsible social behavior is who are ruining
                this country.
                \_ BS.  It's overreactions both ways (the 'off with his
                   head!' crowd AND the "he's only a lad, he really can't
                   help it" crowd) that's ruining this country.  Grow
                   some common sense and a sense of scale.
                   \_ love the boingo reference.
                      \_ actually that was oingo boingo making a pointed
                         commentary on the sorts of people who say those
                         sorts of things.  Off with yer head!
        \_ Good point, we're screwed.
        \_ Since you love so much about your country over our good pussy cat
           one, why did you come here?