5/19    spamassassin 2.54 installed; bugs to mconst.
        \_ Thank you. :)
        \_ And so the cat and mouse game continues.

5/20    Headlines:
        1. Warren Buffet criticizes no-taxes-on-dividends plan as laden
           with Enron-style accounting and implies "rich get richer" effect.
        2. Homeland Security Dept. raises terror threat level from Yellow
           to Orange:  Recent chatter suggests terrorists may be planning a
           major attack inside the U.S.

        Leading stories change from 1 to 2.  Haven't we seen this before?
        \_ Warren Buffet and the other ultra wealthy of this country have
           their own interests in mind which differ vastly from the little
           people such as yourself.  Can you do better than WB?
           \_ Good, I see your heuristics are at work! (no sarcasm)
              Now read his http://washingtonpost.com article: "Putting $1,000 in
              the pockets of 310,000 families with urgent needs is going to
              provide far more stimulus to the economy than putting the same
              $310 million in my pockets."
              \_ I don't believe a word the man says.  You can quote WB all
                 damned day.  He and the other ultra wealthy are not a reliable
                 source of economic advice for little people.  They're so far
                 beyond where we live they couldn't possibly understand and I
                 doubt they care.
                 \_ Gosh.  Are you saying, that even though WB is saying,
                   "I really don't need a tax cut.  People poorer than me
                    needa tax cut.  People poorer than me will actually
                    spend the money instead of simply piling it onto their
                    hoard, stimulating the economy." he's not giving good
                    advice for helping the "little people"?  So you're saying
                    that it's actually better for the little people to
                    tax them more, relatively?

5/20    There used to be a unix program "fspb", the faculty-staff-phone-book
        program but it isn't in my $path on soda.  Does it still exist?  Is
        there some web based replacement?  Thanks!
        \_ finger name@berkeley.edu
        \_ locate doesn't find it.  I think it went bye-bye. Sorry.

5/20    http://www.rrstar.com/localnews/your_community/rockford/20030520-4814.shtml
        More right wing nutters who don't understand free speech.
        \_ Dear Mr. Pot, this is mr. Kettle.
           \_ God Bless America!!
        \_ You have to sound more enthusiastic to be a believable liberal.
           \_ I'm working on it. I've got the basic vocabulary down and I got
              the talking points off the fax each morning.  If I can nail the
              delivery I'll be able to drool with the best of 'em!  -op
              \_ First of all... "nutter"? What are you some kind of fucking
                 limey or something?
        \_ aww, but the speaker made the little Education graduate CRY!
           \_ This rocks. We need more liberals that can make the
              conservatives cry like that.
              \_ Because that will convince her to vote your way?  Okey dokey!
                 Good planning!  Because you can convince people of the
                 correctness of your philosophy by abusing them. I like it!
                 \_ Why not? This has been conservative-talk-show-host strategy
                    for the past decade or so. The approach has won these,
                    er, entertainers, a legion of fans, many of whom post
                    regularly on the motd. Go Michael Savage!
                    \_ The radio personalities that bring you to tears aren't
                       making new conservative voters which is all that counts.
                       Stop crying about Rush and Savage and whoever and *do*
                       something to convince people of the correctness of your
                       philosophy and you'll make it happen.  Upsetting voters
                       never got anyone anything.  Savage is light
                       entertainment.  Sometimes he's even correct.  If you
                       say enough stuff, that will happen sometimes.  Rush is
                       nothing more than repeating RNC talking points.  There
                       isn't anything original in his show.  It's 100% party
                       platform stuff.  Shows like theirs are not at all where
                       conservative strength is.  --conservative
                       \_ Your argument is tangent as well as incorrect.
        \_ This is akin to giving an Oscar to Michael Moore and then
           not expecting him to make a political statement.  Get over it.
           \_ and I imagine all the Academy members would throw their caps
              into the air, go back to live with their parents, then look for
              jobs.

5/20    sun gurus, please help.  My ultra 5 had some problem getting out of
        suspend.  I had to power cycle and do nvram-default to get it to boot
        up normal again.  Everything is up now.  But the system is EXTERMELY
        slow.  I don't see any processes hogging up memory or anything strange.
        I think the previous bad suspend left some bad stuff around that's
        screwing up the system.  What should I look for to get it back to
        normal again?  Thanks!
        \_ It's an ultra5.  How fast could it ever have been?
           \_ I type 'top' and it takes 10 seconds for the display to come up.
              Similarly with other commands.  It's not environment related
              because using the same dot files on another machine works just
              fine.
              \_ vmstat, iostat
        \_ Don't use suspend. There is no point and it has problems. --dim
        \_ When suspend hoses me I try this from the ok prompt:
                boot -s
           when it asks for the root password, I hit control D.
           The machine should then come up fine.  I login
           as root, I remove /.CPR or /var/.CPR and edit
           /etc/power.conf so I don't get hosed again.  If you chmod
           /usr/openwin/bin/sys-suspend not to be executable, that
           will prevent accidentally suspending via the sleep key.  -ax
           \_ Just pkgrm the power related packages.
           \_ pkgrm(in this order): SUNWcprx SUNWcpr SUNWpmux SUNWpmowm
              SUNWpmowu SUNWpmowr SUNWpmr SUNWpmu

5/20    How important are course evaluations, and specifically
        the evaluations of the professors, for faculty promotions
        at Cal?
        \_ depends on the dept. all depts read them, regardless of
           whether the prof does. be fair and don't froth at the mouth;
           instructors (and depts) can ID and tend to discount wildly
           angry evals unless it's clear that those evals can support
           their claims. wildly positive evals tend to be discounted
           too. :) --humanities gsi
           \_ Yes, it depends *alot* on the department.  I think the
              Berkeley math department really doesn't give a shit about
              teaching.  I majored in math, and got to see a bit about how
              that department works and how they do their hiring.  When
              you apply for a faculty position there, they don't even ask about
              teaching experience.  Of course there are some great teachers,
              like John Neu, but they decided to be great teachers on their
              own, with no motivation from the department.
        \_ And now the truth: you're an undergrad at a research university.
           Unless you have film of the prof molesting 6 year olds just before
           killing them in a satanic ritual (and his face better show) your
           eval won't mean anything to anyone.  The translation of the above
           about ignoring the angry and the happy people is that the only evals
           remaining are the vast bulk that say very little.  Think about it.
           \_ not ignoring all the non-bland ones, just discounting those
              which sound stalker-like (at either end). there's a
              difference. the research univ. emphasis is correct
              otherwise; ucb does care more about teaching across
              the board than many comparable research schools, both for
              hiring and internally, but that's nothing to the fuzzy
              warmth of small colleges. one's teaching record can help
              for advancement but it rarely hurts enough to prevent
              advancement. if you've a serious contention re: someone's
              teaching, take it to the dept chair--they hold office
              hours like anyone else.
              \_ holy shit, no!  do not go to the department chair!  not if
                 you ever plan to take a class with that department ever again.
        \_ If the professor is good or has tenure your evaluation forms
           probably aren't going to negatively affect his career much.
           Do you really expect one grumpy undergrad to matter that much?
           However a lot of professors actually DO care about teaching well
           and evalution forms do help them with that.  Also departments who
           have profs that have a history of getting really bad evals tend to
           work with that in mind.  For instance I think the famous Hurricane
           Wu no longer teaches undergrad classes.  And that is the math
           getting much funcding yet expected to give almost every undergrad
           department which is famous at cal for not giving a damn about
           the undergrads.  (Probably something to do with that whole not
           getting much funding yet expected to give almost every undergrad
           here a year or more of math.)  Also as has been said, good
           evaluations help more than bad ones hurt.  So give good evalutions
           to the profs you like, give constructive critisism to the ones
           you think will actually listen, and don't stress too much.
           \_ Mostly agreed.  Bottom line, be honest, but be mature.
           \_ I was in Wu's Math 1B class for about 3 minutes.  That's how long
              it took to realise the guy was a total psycho and walk out even
              though I needed 1B that semester.  I couldn't believe no one else
              left.  Did anyone else here actually take Wu for longer than a
              week?
              \_ Actually, a friend of mine took his upper division
                 differential geometry course and loved it. of course he
                 is also insane, and is now getting a phd in differential
                 geometry. For some people, Wu is actually a very good
                 teacher.
              \_ Pulled a B. Worst semester ever. --scotsman
              \- The time has come for:
                 http://www.jiggscasey.com/slappy/book_of_wu.html
                 --psb
                        \_ NOW THAT IS HILARIOUS. Is Wu REALLY like that
                           in person? All that cryptic Chinese proverb shit?
                              \- everyone i have pointed to that page
                                 thought it was funny. everyone who had
                                 wu for a class also added "it was really
                                 like that!" The other funny thing is Wu
                                 rally cares about teaching. If you go to
                                 his WEEB site, he's written papers on
                                 *teaching* math. ok tnx. --psb
                 \_ Now you know why you have fans.
                    \- PSB's Corollary to Godwin's Law: All conversations
                       about teaching at Berkeley eventually end up at
                       Hurricane Wu. --psb
              \_ Wu, Math 113... Hard as all hell.

5/19    Interesting episode of Scientific American -- MIT Media Lab:
        Wearable computer, Toy Symphony, All Day Video Man,
        Small Stature Man, Beat Bugs, Mechanical Device competition
        on a balance beam.

5/20    MSFT buys unix license from SCO.  MSFT will sue linux to death!
        Death to linux!
        \_ MSFT use to own part of SCO, I don't remember how much, but
           before OS/2 MSFT was considering using SCO UNIX as the base
        \_ I hereby predict that Microsoft will soon create the
           of their nextgen OS.
           Linux with their crap.
                \_ Try even further back in history.  Microsoft sold
                   Xenix, an ancient Unix based on AT&T System III before
                   they bought DOS and started selling it.  After DOS
                   took off, they sold Xenix to SCO, but kept a stake
                   in SCO as part of the deal.   (cat /bin/clear on Solaris
                   for a Microsoft surprise left over from their Xenix days)
        \_ yack yack yack.  They can't sue anyone for any such thing.  You
           can go away now, thanks.
        \_ I hereby predict that Microsoft will soon try to create a
           Microsoft Linux Distribution. They they will try to pollute
           Linux with their crap. But the linux folks will audit
           the code, remove any SCO/M$ stuff, and linux will be purified
           in the process and then Linux will slowly overcome Microsoft.
        \_ URLP
           \_ #t
           \_ http://news.com.com
        \_ MS is buying a license, not the right to license.
           Order of events:
           1. Linux spreads far and wide in homes and enterprise
           2. SCO says, "Time to pay up, Linux has some of our source code"
           3. IBM doesn't pay; SCO files suit
           4. SCO sends more letters telling companies they're infringing by
              using Linux
           5. MS buys a license from SCO: "See, we're compliant"
                \_ Why would MS do that? They don't use linux.
                   \_ MS: "See, IBM and all those other loser companies,
                           by using Linux and not paying a license fee,
                           are all damn pirates."
        \_ My theory is that MS bought the Unix license from SCO just to inject
           some cash into this bankrupt company because the longer they litigate
           with IBM with more damage will be done to Linux PR (in short run).

5/20    Game Review:  Freelancer, Microsoft.
        Freelancer is from the Elite/Wing Commander genre.  It attempts to
        capture the Elite be-anything-you-want (trader, miner, bounty hunter,
        etc) feeling but you're mostly stuck on the single player main mission
        path to the end.  You can diverge and ignore it relatively early if you
        want but unless you already know what you're doing you're better off
        following the pre-chosen path.  Space combat is lacking.  All enemy
        ships appear to use the same AI routine.  There's no radar, only a
        bunch of red arrows around the outside of the HUD showing you the
        general direction of targets but not distance.  The UI has numerous
        annoyances like this.  Play time of main mission: 17 hours, 33 minutes.
        I'm glad my friend bought it and not me.
        \_ Last I heard MS was going to MMORG this.
           \_ If you are looking for an MMORG in this genre, try Eve.
              I started playing it a few days ago, and I am very impressed --
              it's a very deep game.