8/22    Interesting Irving Kristol essay on neoconservatism:
        http://csua.org/u/40g
        And a very interesting analysis of it:
        http://csua.org/u/40h
        \_ I thought Leo Strauss was supposed to be the "godfather of
           neoconservatism", however inadverdently, or am I completely
           mixing things up?  Regardless, people who make generalizations
           are all idiots.  -John
        And a very interesting analysis of it:
        http://csua.org/u/40h
        \_ "People have always preferred bigger government."  *sigh*
           \_ The analysis is definitely worth checking out.  They get a real
              kick out of pointing out his intellectual dishonesty.
              \_ Well, I don't think he is intellectually dishonest, but he
                 isn't really a consevative in any meaningful sense.  No one
                 who considers FDR a hero is a conservative.  At any rate,
                 the larger agenda is to discredit the movement as a whole
                 by pointing to one man, the converse of trying to discredit
                 Nietzsche by pointing to fascism.
                 \_ If not intellectually dishonest, then intellectually
                    lazy.  He's very fond of making sweeping generalizations
                    that cry out for justifcation (such as the one quoted
                    above) and then moving on without any further
                    explanation.
                    \_ I think the neoconservative position probably needs
                       a larger medium for proper expression than a little
                       essay, lest people cry 'generalization'.

8/22    I'm curious, what percentage of rapists use condoms?
        \_ why don't you go hang out at rapists anonymous and report back
           with results?
        \_ There was a case a few years ago where a rapist argued
           that it wasn't actually rape, because the woman had
           consented if he used a condom.  Don't remember the exact
           result.  -John
           \_ He ended up with a whole new set of friends for 10-20.

8/23    Howdy from Black Rock city.
        \_ HI BLACK ROCK CITY FROM THE WINDY CITY!
        \_ G'DAY WINDY CITY AND BLACK ROCK CITY FROM THE
           CITY BY THE BAY!!!!
        \_ WOOT!  FEEL THE LOVE!

8/22    http://www.wired.com/news/conflict/0,2100,60144-2,00.html
        Total crap.
        \_ 1. Post the first page, not the second.
           2. That sucks.
           3. This wouldn't have happened if he were handsome.
           \_ yes. yes. no.
        \_ Look at the mug on this kid!  I don't know if he should be let go
           out of sympathy or locked away so no one else ever has to see him
           again!  http://www.savebrian.org/media.html

8/22    Anyone know if prescription pain killers can be found online
        w/o a prescription?
        \_ I would know.

8/23    Seeing Arnold speak on TV has made me curious: how hard is it for an
        enormously wealthy man to get rid of his thick accent? Some accents
        can be really cool, but not his - it makes him sound dumb. He's been
        living in the country for 20 years, can't he pay a speech coach to
        help him get rid of it? It seems that would help him both in his
        movies and his campaign.
        \_ of course it just depends on the person. Arnold has had speech
           coaches in the course of his acting career. The guy just is not
           capable of losing his accent. But actually if you look at most
           people, unless they had exposure to other languages while young,
           they usually retain some accent. Arnie's is just worse.
        \_ That accent is worth a hundred million bucks for him.  Why would
           he want to lose it?  I'd talk like that if it was worth $100m to me.
           \_ Totally agree.
              \_ Someone once told me his speech coaches were there to
                 *maintain* the accent.
                 \_ This makes sense to me: Arnold moved to the US at age 23.
                    People under 25 usually can drop/change accents fairly
                    easily. I would have expected him to "lose" his accent
                    by the time he made the first Terminator movie.

8/23    I use my laptop at both school and home. At school, I have
        it configured so that it connects via DHCP, and at home I
        connect it to my local network, with a FreeBSD server
        providing IP masquerading. Is there a way to set up
        my laptop so that I can easily switch between being connected
        at home or at school? (i.e. is it possible to just have a
        command of some sort to switch between either configuration,
        as opposed to changing each setting manually every time I
        go between home/school?) My laptop has XP. Thanks.
        \_ Are you saying that at home you have a static IP? There are lots
           of shareware tools that let you switch settings w/ a single click.
                \_ Yeah, static at home and DHCP at school. What are
                   some shareware that do that? Thanks.
                   \_ It's a windows box?  Try http://tucows.com or http://download.com or
                      whatever and you'll find any number of these network
                      config switching programs.  They've been around for a
                      very long time.
                        \_ http://download.com, ip settings... first 5 links.
        \_ Any reason not to use DHCP at home also?
        \_ You could write a short script.  If you wanted to be fancy you
           could do something like try your static gateway first and if it
           isn't there switch to dhcp or vice versa.
        \_ i used to do something like this with my laptop, and i had a bash
           script i would run under cygwin. the script would take different
           network settings dumps and reload them. this relies on a cmdline
           utility that comes with windows, but i forget the name, and my
           laptop was stolen so i don't have the script anymore. try google.
        \_ Dude, Windows XP already has this feature.  Go to where you
           set the IP address.  In that windows, there will be an
           "Alternate Configuration" tab.  Enter your static IP address there.
           If Windows is unable to obtain dynamic after a certain period of
           time, it will use the static IP you configured.

8/23    Anybody know of a computer dial up number. I just want to test my modem.
        \_ go to a random isp's home page and look up their local access
           numbers.
           \_ Thanks, good idea. BTW, did eecs discontinue the annex
              modem pool numbers -op
              \_ a long long time ago.
                 \_ Wow. For some reason, that makes me feel old.
                    What about the <DEAD>hip.berkeley.edu<DEAD> accounts? (Home-IP/PPP)
                    \_ they started charging for them this semester. i.e.,
                       they're as good as dead too. jk. actually, they're an
                       OK deal i guess. $20/semester.
                        \_ Can I get one as a CSUA member and Cal alumni?
                        \_ Can I get one as a CSUA member and Cal alumnus?
                           \_ #f
                              \_ ?
                                 \_ I see they got rid of Scheme from the CS
                                    courses, too. -- "Wow" poster
                                    \_ I'm not CS, my major was ME.
                                       so what is the #f  -- ?guy
                                       \_ false. #t means true. http://csua.org/u/40p

8/23    I want to add credit card processing to my site. Any recommendations?
        Typing "credit card processing" in google returns a billion sites,
        but I'm looking for a few reputable places that are easy to set up
        and affordable. Thanks.
        \_ paypal!
           \_ this is not credit card processing... its payments to anyone
              with an email and requires the buyer to go through a lengthy
              account set-up process. I recently set something like this
              up using LinkPoint (parent company called "Card Services
              Internationl," I think). This is the company that Earthlink
              uses for its ecommerce stores. Its relatively cheap for a
              merchant account with them, and they have many simple API's
              to basic credit card transactions. I used their perl api.
              easy, good documentation.                 - rory
                \) thanks.
                   \_ ps - it probably would have been more helpful to
                      google for "merchant account" since this is really
                      what the companies are offering (with some
                      programmatic api, hopefully). if you google this,
                      http://cardservice.com is the 8th result. good luck
        \_ From what I found, it seems like the basic cost of this is $20/mo.
           Does that sound right? If that's the case, I think I'm just better
           off getting webspace through a third party. I'll keep looking. tnx.

8/23    Did you not hire that tech guy you need:
        We're sorry! Snapfish is currently unavailable.
        \_ All night DB upgrade.  It'll be up in a few minutes.  We're going
           to start calling people on that job this week.  Send resumes.