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| 2003/9/4 [Politics/Domestic/RepublicanMedia] UID:10064 Activity:nil |
9/3 Rather than resorting to personal attacks maybe you should articulate
why Coulter's and O'reilly political beliefs are wrong. Attack the
ideas not the people.
\_ how about the same for Franken. His thesis, apart from all the
partisan wrangling is very simple. He points out some very specific
examples of certain people lying. And from that, O'Reilly, and
indeed the FNC can't help themselves from lobbing a pointless lawsuit
filled with nothing but ad hominem against him. Attack the ideas...
--scotsman
\- i think a lot of people are claiming those two are assholes.
i.e. they are quite upfront about attacking the individuals.
in some cases, the idea-person distinction is blurry ... i dont
think it is useful to distinguish between say DAvid Duke, the
racist, and David Duke, the minor politician with racist ideas.
--psb
\_ Nice logic, so Oreilly and Coulter are equivalent to
to Duke (who BTW was for most of his career a Dem).
I think you might want to reconsider who you
consider fanatical - usually the left exhibits more
restraint before invoking the race card.
\- i'm making two points: 1. most people are consciously
attacking the people and not the ideas. 2. sometimes
this is not unreasonable or it is relevant. i think
the sarcastic "nice logic" applies to your positing
the "equivalence". usually the right doesnt accuse
me of being a leftist. and to be accused of being
a fanatical lefty ... well is that an attack on the
man or the idea? i think "fanatical" applied to the
person. so if i were to at this point call you a
hypocrite, i suppose i'd be attacking the man too.
--psb
\_ I'm not really interested in tautilogical
persiflage. Perhaps we'd agree the quality
of criticism reflects depth of thought. I don't
have much more to say. |
| 2003/9/4 [Computer/HW/Laptop] UID:10065 Activity:nil |
9/3 My laptop running XP has two build-in mice: a little button on the
keyboard and also the traditional touchpad. The touchpad is annoying
and I want to turn it off. Under XP how can I do this? Thanks.
\_ I'm shocked at this (I love my touchpad). However, it depends on the
device. You should be able to disable the device in the device
manager, but if it simply is a PS/2 interface it may be hard to get
rid of.
\_ I'm not shocked. People have strong preferences when it comes
to their pointer devices. I totally prever the trackpoint,
so I but IBM ThinkPads.
\_ Fascinating. That's why I don't buy Thinkpads. Good point.
\_ Holy shit! people are different??
\_ It's not just a preference issue for me. One minute
using the trackpoint and my RSI starts tingling.
\_ link:csua.org/u/446?arstechnica.infopop.net
\_ You might try downloading manufacturer device drivers for
the pointing device. The driver for my pointing device on my dell
allows me to disable one or the other. |
| 2003/9/4 [Uncategorized] UID:10066 Activity:nil |
9/3 How do I go about collecting money from a judgement I won?
\- see the Nolo Press Small Claim Ct book. --psb |
| 2003/9/4 [Uncategorized] UID:10067 Activity:nil |
9/3 Is Bustamante in the prison union's pocket too?
\_ Well we know he's a racist (Mecha) and wants to implement
gas price controls (WTF!!???)
\_ Would a non-idiot like to answer my question? -op |
| 2003/9/4 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:10068 Activity:nil |
9/3 Bush happy to use emigre's lies:
link:csua.org/u/444 |
| 2003/9/4 [Politics/Domestic/RepublicanMedia] UID:10069 Activity:nil 53%like:28046 |
9/3 This is probably really old, but still entertaining for O'Reilly haters
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/entertainers/pundits/bill-oreilly
(work-safe)
\_ How could it be old if it's referring to August 2003?
\_ eh, I was confusing it with the Glick interview. Anyways,
here's the complete transcript of that.
http://wienerboard.com/thread.php/id=11534&page=
and a sound file
http://www.littlemeanfish.com/media/oreilyfreakout.mp3
\_ Oh yes, and if you had any respect for Al Franken, it went out the
window in the incident listed there. Al went over his time limit by
5 minutes. He spent 6 minutes slowly telling the story of the
Polk/Peabody mistake. Granted, O'Reilly should have owned up to the
mistake, but the event was a pile-on. The so called 'moderator' was
fawning over Franken and Ivins. It was disgusting. (Especially
since Ivins has so much trouble with facts herself.)
\_ Um, hello. Franken is a comedian, and doesn't paint himself
as any more than that. O'Reilly claims to be a "Fair and
Balanced" journalist under the fair and balanced purveyance of
Fox News. Which has been more truthful? It wasn't a pile on,
as you claim. Indeed, if you listen to the cheers of the audience
for O'Reilly during his time, it's astounding that Franken was
able to speak as long as he did. You know why? Because he's not
trying to be something he's not, and people recognize that
honesty. --scotsman
\_ but I get a sense that Franken himself knows he's a nut.
O'Reilly on the other hand ...
You could also say, "Even a nut can make O'Reilly look stupid"
\_ But he didn't make O'Reilly look stupid except to those who
already think he is. He looked like a petty cretin. And when
O'Reilly pointed out that Franken's claim of O'Reilly's "lies"
was a pretty weak one, and did he have another shot to take.
Franken responded by asking O'Reilly where he grew up, in town
A or B (apparently claiming that O'Reilly had made two
different claims previously). O'Reilly responded quickly that
he grew up in the A region of town B. It was pretty sad for
Franken, really. This is the guy who called Ann Coulter a
bitch several times in his book. Really classy.
\_ It was "Levittown" and "Westbury". The difference is
East Palo Alto vs. Atherton. There is no "Atherton" region
of East Palo Alto. There is no Westbury area of Levittown.
\_ O'Reilly claimed the show he was part of had won a Peabody.
It never did. Not only that the award they DID win was
won after he left the show. How is that weak?
\_ O'Reilly's references to an award for the show was a
response to criticism of *the show*. His response: "we
won a Peabody" referred to the show. He should have
properly said "they" rather than "we" and "Polk" rather
than "Peabody." However, I routinely refer to past
employers as "we" rather than "they"--it's just a slip of
the tongue. It's not as big a deal as Franken was making
it out to be. Though O'Reilly should have owned up to
the mistake and apologized instead of trivializing it.
However, he was being called a liar in front of an
unfriendly crowd, so I can understand his being a bit
flustered.
\_ O'Reilly had made the Peabody claim before then too.
It was just that this was the first time someone
called him on it.
\_ http://www.oreilly-sucks.com/peabodyfacts1.htm
Shows a previous example that is precisely the same
context--someone criticizing the show, and O'Reilly
defending it by referring to awards. He screwed
up, and should be more open about it. But it's not
a big deal.
\_ And Ann Coulter is the woman who claimed that the press
wasn't making enough of the fact that the 9/11
hijackers were Middle Eastern Muslims. Was anyone
besides her not clear on the issue?
\_ Ann Coulter is such a bitch. This is the woman that
says her greatest hero is Joe McCarthy, and that all
liberals are guilty of treason against the United States.
Al Franken is great - finally a liberal Rush Limbaugh.
\_ Al Franken doesn't make shit up.
\_ You may need to read up on Joe McCarthy, and why she
says that before you dismiss the statement out of
hand. (Oh, and BTW, Coulter routinely uses hyperbole)
\_ So what you are saying is that if you agree with
someone they can do no wrong?
\_ No, and I don't know how you concluded that.
\_ Because you dismiss out of hand the use of
hyperbole. And McCarthy really was quite
the Nazi-lovin' bastard.
\_ READ UP on McCarthy? The man ruined lives
and created a politically oppressive fog that
stifled ordinary Americans from even
discussing politics, all to further his own
petty career. Hyperbole or not, there are a
few people that are simply not heroic, for
any reason.
\_ Did you read this from a primary source or are
you simply parroting what you've been told?
Seriously--I've heard these hand-waving claims
for quite a while, but once I actually
investigated it and read primary sources, I
can't believe all those claims.
\_ Venona proved McCarthy was 100% RIGHT. Of
course, some knew this all along. But
as always, the left if full of 'useful
idiots', to paraphrase Lenin.
\_ Actually, I thought O'Reilly was a pretty smart guy,
two or three years ago. |
| 2003/9/4 [Recreation/Dating] UID:10070 Activity:low |
9/4 So I was having dinner with a friend of mine and he said at some
point that he didnt have a conscience. Appropriately, he acknowledged
it was a defect, but he didnt feel bad about it. Do any of you want
to admit the same thing? Know anybody to doesn't have a conscience?
I am wondering how common this is.
\_ do you just live in a hole? Read the paper and scan for
"Halliburton". There are huge numbers of people "without a
conscience." And while I don't think that is a good thing,
I do believe the whole notion of "having a conscience" is
contrived mainly to keep people from straying their societal
bounds. What do you think?
\- being a greedy bastard != no conscience. Do you think haliburton
people dont care about their kids, for example? I think some
of these corporate criminial should be put in "hard" prisons
but I dont think this is an example of "no conscience" unless
you dilute that to cover practically any criminal. --psb
\_ I define conscience as the qualm one feels as he is about
to hurt somebody in some way, or to entertain such an act
or just the likelihood of unwittingly commiting it. If so,
conscience is more a continuum than
the conscience one can have is more a continuum than
binary, and a great number of people barely have any all.
Having too little conscience is a handicap only if one does
not have the cunningness to match and conceal it. Having
BTW, neither your implicit nor my explicit definition of
conscience equates with what a dictionary nearby says, but
that is irrelevant as conscience can be defined by the
individual. Hitler might think he has a lot of conscience.
too much, however, is almost always a debilitating defect.
\_ Yeah, your friend's defective. It's the mark of a sociopath.
Those are the sorts of people who kill a whole family "just to
see what it is like." And of course, not having a conscience,
he doesn't feel bad about not having a conscience. Not having
one is a potentially fatal flaw, because everyone ELSE will
eventually kill you because of your dangerousness.
\_ you should read the short story "null-o", by Phillip K Dick.
\_ You know, I did read it, but I've forgotten. If it's
not too much trouble, could you remind me? --PeterM
\_ I heard there is a form of autism that actually entails not having
empathy and a conscience. It seemed very close to the description
of a sociopath. But I was told it was a form of autism. --chris
\_ Is half of the human race autistic? If one does not have
conscience, how does he know he does not? This is not like
color blindness, which can be objectively tested.
\_ The psych department at Cal would gladly argue that it can
be objectively tested.
\_ the psych department wouuld convince him he's gay so
they can have sex with him
\_ I see. And how did that make you feel?
\_ Maybe the friend is putting "conscience" in quotes. "I don't
have what most people would call a 'conscience'. I see stealing,
cheating, and lying everywhere, and so I don't feel bad about it.
I don't kill or anything like that not because it's so inherently
wrong, but because the cost of getting caught is too great."
\_ So are any of you willing to admit you dont have a
conscience? Or reveal the name of someone on soda who
doesnt? This was not somebody who was obviously comes
across as a sociopath.
\_ oj@soda has no conscience.
\_ One of my ex'es was a sociopath. No joke, she told
me "I have no shame." I guess I should have dumped
\_ That's a long way away from being a sociopath. Not
to mention probably not literally true.
her then.
\_ What is an example of something she did in this vein?
\_ Sounds like fun to me.
\_ Sorry to hear that. What happened? Did you got married? |
| 2003/9/4 [Academia/Berkeley/CSUA] UID:10071 Activity:nil |
9/4 Last night's debate: /csua/tmp/debate_2003_09_03.mp3
(First 20-30 mins are Davis responding to questions)
\_ Bad perms.
\_ Oops. Fixed. -emarkp
\_ ok how is this clip more special than the others and why should
we spend time listening to this particular clip?
\_ Oh, just die.
\_ It was the first debate between the candidates. And it's the full
2 hours.
\_ You mean ( candidates - arnold ) |
| 2003/9/4 [Computer/SW/OS/FreeBSD] UID:10072 Activity:nil |
9/4 Does anyone know whether there's a way to use interface names
in an ipfilter/ipnat configuration, as opposed to an interface's IP
address? -John
\_ With ipfw there was, and I think ipf has a way to. Must dig some.
... with pf (openbsd) it is very simple.
--scotsman
\_ Yeah pf is the reason I had OpenBSD on this box previously,
but it began behaving very erratically, I found the upgrade
process to be incredibly time-consuming and badly documented,
and searching through mailing list archives for answers to
questions I had usually turned up something analogous to
"read the fucking source and quit wasting our time, idiot".
In short, unusable for a box that just has to work. By
the way, I met the guy who wrote pf; he's really cool. -John
\_ If you've switched to FreeBSD, I think there was some
project to port pf over. I don't know how far along
they are, but that may be an option by now. ...Aha
/usr/ports/security/pf --scotsman |
| 2003/9/4 [Finance/Banking] UID:10073 Activity:kinda low |
9/4 i heard something i think is false, but i wonder if someone here can
confirm or deny it. someone claimed that if you call the agency that
services your student loan and offer to pay off the whole thing in
one shot they'll make a deal with you to decrease the amount by more
than just the interest. has anyone seen this happen? i'm guessing
whoever thought they were getting a discount just failed to understand
the concept of interest, since this seems like very very odd behavior
for a loan agency. what's the deal here? I'm about to pay off my loans
and i want to get the best deal possible.
\_ I've a possible explanation. Perhaps they realize that they
can loan your returned money out to someone else for more than
enough to make up for your discount. Perhaps some hapless fool
with an 18% credit card debt. And perhaps they have already
received the federal subsidy for giving you your loan. Therefore,
it's an unadulterated win for them to have your money back. --PM
\_ ok, i hadn't thought of it that way. i'll call them up and
try to bargain. thanks.
\_ If you have one of those 5% loans, they are loaning you money
way below market rates, so they would want to have it back.
If it is a 8 or 10% loan you are probably sol.
\_ I just looked into this. If you have a Direct Loan
(800.848.0979) forget it, they said because it's federal money
they don't do "settlement offers". Most likely your friend had
a loan with a private company or he defaulted. The only thing
you can do with a Direct Loan is if you pay it off within the
first 103 days they will waive the interest and origination fees. |
| 2003/9/4 [Computer/SW/SpamAssassin] UID:10074 Activity:nil |
9/4 What program do I use to block spam on my csua email account?
\_ spamassassin
\_ man spam
\_ ifile
\_ I have been using ifile for a while and ... its just not good
enough, even trained with thousands of spams... |
| 2003/9/4 [Science] UID:10075 Activity:nil |
9/4 Is pam (pluggable auth modules) a worthwhile technology? All I
ever see are fixes for it, and it seems hard to implement.
\_ i prefer secure pam.
\_ looks like spam. Heh. Ok I'll stay outa booze. |
| 2003/9/4 [Computer/SW/OS/Windows] UID:10076 Activity:nil |
9/4 What happened to http://slashdot.org? \_ "Same thing that happened to Crystal Pepsi. It sucked, so it went away" \_ Hey, I liked crystal Pepsi. \_ How do they make Pepsi One taste so much better than Diet Pepsi? That one calorie sure packs a wallop. \_ Hint: check the relative caffeine contents. |
| 2003/9/4-5 [Computer/SW/OS/Windows] UID:10077 Activity:nil |
9/4 Do MS/DOS systems crash?
\_ Why wouldn't they?
\_ I dont't know. Simplicity? I just don't remember having to
reboot my DOS boxes back in the day. Maybe I'm forgetting.
\_ Even my Commodore 64 has crashed before.
\_ They can freeze when some program takes over (dos is only a program
loader, not manager) and won't exit nicely.
\_ that's "relative" because it was usually a 3rd party program
you executed taht crashed. otherwise you could spend all day
typing "dir" and "copy" and there would be no crashes.
\_ good point.
\_ DOS programs used to crash and burn all the time. No memory
protection in the OS led to all sorts of chaos from stray memory
writes. This forced coders to fix most of their bad code. Now
they're not forced to be as careful, so they arent ...
\_ Microsoft had entire legions of programmers who's sole
job was to insert code into MS-DOS that would make Lotus123
crash, so yes MS-DOS used to crash now and then
\_ Heh. MS/DOS has no VM. Draw your own conclusions from there.
-- ilyas
\_ DOS itself *never* crashed. It's only a program loader.
\_ Well, two of VM's jobs are illusion of infinite memory and
address space isolation. Without the OS providing the
latter, it is no wonder the programs run amok. I can't say
it's the programs' fault either.
\_ It's the programs' fault. They know the environment
they're being written for and should play nice. The
fact is DOS didn't need isolation because it was intended
to only launch one program at a time which was given full
control of the system. Anyone trying to run multiple
programs was waaaaay out of spec and got what they
were asking for.
\_ in general, complex systems with dependencies have more points
of failure. Take NASA for example. They have an extremely
complex system, and adding sensors and monitors add even more
complexity making the system more crash prone. A common way
to get around it is using the TMR system (triple modular
redundancy). However the voting system is not fault tolerant,
so often there are redundant voters as well. But by adding
even more redundancy you add on even more complexity, and
modeling it is a nightmare. In short, there is only so much
progress you can make by adding redundancies in the system,
at which point your system will simply become more complex and
more crash prone. -ucla cs student
\_ they taught you all that in sk00l? wow! |
| 2003/9/4-5 [Computer/SW/Database, Computer/SW/Languages/Java] UID:10078 Activity:nil |
9/4 For files that end in .avi, is it a fairly simple matter to tell
what codec is necessary to play it, e.g. DivX or XviD? I'm talking
about programmatical methods here, like reading headers or something.
\_ http://www.geocities.com/ajmas/software/rifffileinfo
\_ why programmatic? are you going to write your own tool? there
are plenty of good tools out there already
(e.g. http://www.headbands.com/gspot), and I don't think you
want to maintain your own independent fourcc->codec database.
\_ prompt% man magic |
| 2003/9/4-5 [Computer/SW/Virus] UID:10079 Activity:nil |
9/4 Is WeatherBug Spyware?
\_ Duh. |
| 2003/9/4 [Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:10080 Activity:nil 75%like:10090 |
9/4 Fast for Bush!
http://www.heartlight.org/fast |
| 2003/9/4-5 [Computer/SW/Compilers] UID:10081 Activity:nil |
9/4 I have a legacy make system that needs to work on several platforms
w/ different compilers. To build for platform X, you type
"make -f X_make" at the top level. I'm trying to get to a modicum
of sanity about this by actually using dependencies correctly.
The problem: I need to have dependencies in subdirectories, and
those dependencies also need to be built using the X_make makefile,
not Makefile or Y_make. Is there a way to specify this without
actually setting up a target for each subdirectory that does
"cd subdir; make -f X_make; cd .." ? Thanks in advance.
\_ make depend? or "makedepend"? |
| 2003/9/4-5 [Computer/HW/Laptop] UID:10082 Activity:nil |
9/4 Can anyone lend me a compact flash card for the next
few days (this is going out to the soda crowd)?
I need to use Norton Ghost, my laptop has no CDROM or
floppy drive, and it can boot off CF, which seems to me
the best way to go. Also, I could use USB CDROM or fdisk.
Feel free to mail me. Thanks, jhs
\_ Does it boot off net? |
| 2003/9/4 [Politics/Domestic/Election] UID:10083 Activity:nil |
9/4 Democratic candidate debates on TV tonight on PBS:
6 PM Mountain time, from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
\_ Who? Aren't they irrelevant ?
\_ No cookie for YOU. |
| 3/17 |