1/25    Ok, I'm watching a documentary on WWII (on KCET) and it's ENTIRELY
        IN COLOR.  What the hell is going on?  It doesn't look like
        re-enactments; I'm seeing D-Day and hedgerows and concentration camps
        and incredibly thin prisoners an IT'S ENTIRELY IN COLOR.  Martin Sheen
        is narrating.
n       \_ maybe it's technicolor.
        \_ The world started turning color in the 40's.  War-torn areas changed
            first.  Haven't you read your Calvin and Hobbes?
        \_ maybe it's technicolor.
        \_ haven't you ever heard of History Channel's The Color of War?
           Cameras are in color.
           http://www.fsu.edu/~ww2/press_release.htm
        \_ there's been color, just that it's too expensive/too difficult
           so most of the film in that era has been B/W. Economics my friend.
           By the way Color of War is a really good documentary.
        \_ Pay attention to the tint/shading.  If it's sort of dusty matte,
           it's probably authentic.  Really bright, most likely colorized.
           Color film was developed in the late 1930s, and started being
           used for war footage around 1941-2.  -John
           \_ It's real color: http://www.pbs.org/perilousfight

1/25    How come a lot of Muslim countries hate America? I mean, what is it
        we did that offended them?
        \_ Interesting theory (not mine):  Arab culture, such as it is, grew
           up in the last 300 years as primarily a trading one, as opposed to
           western manufacturing/innovating cultures.  Combine this with a
           religion which has never undergone a serious widespread reformation
           or set of challenges, and you have the dangerous mix of a large,
           poor class of uneducated people and a very conservative, stick-in-
           the-mud clergy.  It's easy to whip people up against a simplistic
           the-mud clerggy.  It's easy to whip people up against a simplistic
           enemy (read 1984?) especially if your religion has the grass roots
           decentralized nature of islam.  Voila, instant foe.  Could happen
           anywhere with those criteria.  What I'd like to know is why so many
           Indonesian and Malay muslims I've spoken to think Arabs are such
           terrible boors.  -John
           \_ Because Indonesians and Malays have a deeper culture that pre-
              dates their religion.  They have plenty of other things to
              identify themselves with.  Outside of Egypt, the Arabs don't
              because all they can point to in their past is the Crusades
              which isn't much to hang an entire culture's hat on.
              \_ What I want to know is why there was such a regression.
                 In the middle ages, the arabs had a _wonderful_ culture, we
                 got a lot of mathematics, poetry, and other science from them.
                 Are we borrowing anything from the Arabs now?  (It's not a
                 rhetorical question, I really want to know).
                 Not to mention the Ottomans, the first successful
                 multicultural state (of course it could be argued the Ottoman
                 Empire was really a secular state, nor was it an arab state).
                 Something happened between then and now, and I don't know
           terrible boors.  -John
                 what it is. -- ilyas
                 \_ Islam happened in a big way.  When your entire educational
                    system turns into nothing more than studying the Koran it
                    isn't that hard to see how your people could be passed
                    over.  Big time slavery and the suppression of women
                    doesn't help either but I doubt those are major causes.
        \_ Countries don't hate anything or anyone.  People do.  Governments
           are distinct entities from the people in each country.  Before you
           ask why X hates Y, you must decide which X and Y you're talking
           about.  Once you have answered that, any of the following motd
           answers might be partially or fully correct.
        \_ US arrogance?  Support of Israel?
        \_ There was a time when Muslim countries were rational, even trying
           to be democratic. But we turned against them, establish Israel
           at the expense of Palestinian.  We supported 1967 war, and we
           overthrown Iran's democratic government for some puppet mainly
           for the oil.  These series of events made Muslim countries decided
           that democracy or human right or what not, ultimately, imperialism
           trumpt all other western preaches.  It is then Muslim countries
           turned Islam Fundamentalism for solution, as support of western
           values clearly didn't work.
           \_ Whoa. Back up. Insert the parts about the rise of Arab
              Nationalism and the oppressive right-wing regimes supported by
              the West to oppose the Soviets, and you'll be a lot closer to
              bringing your comments in line with the truth. Remember that
              the people in many Islamic countries would love to see a
              marriage between the democratic ideals of the West and the
              moral resolve of Islam (e.g., Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Malaysia, and
              Indonesia).
              \_ ok, I was talking abou ARABS ISLAM. So, from that, you need
                 to drop Turkey, Iran, Malaysia and Indonesia.
           \_ Are you completely insane?  Do you know any actual history, or
              just the sympathetic Palestinian line?
              \_ You forgot "Why do you hate America?"
                \_ And both of you guys forgot true history, too.
        \_ jealousy
        \_ The Imams would lose power if the contries democratized/secularized,
           hence they keep their position of power by focusing the poeples'
           hate on us.  The governments do the same thing by pointing to the
           'plight of the Palestinians' to distract the populace from the
           massive human rights violations in their own countries.

1/25    I often see cars on the street now with these tiny little fins
        sticking out the roof near the rear window. What is that? Some
        sort of GPS or XM receiver?
        \_ yes, sirius or some satellite radio.
        \_ They're receiving signal from Mars base.  -John

1//25   What's the vegas (/online gambling) line for Bush to win re-election?
        \_ It is 2:1. It was as high as 3:1 but has come down a bit lately,
           now that it looks like Dean is not the Democratic nominee.
        \_ See http://tradesports.com  A 'price' of X means the odds are (100-X) : X

1/26    Yes!  Dean pulls to only 3 points behind Kerry in NH!  --Republican
        http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/43159|top|01-26-2004::07:12|reuters.html
        \_ Those stupid democrats don't know the real issues. The real issue is
           steroids in national sports. How come none of them talk about that?
           Why don't they talk about Saddam's WMD-related program activities?
           I think they're all a bunch of homosexuals too, they way they go on.
           \_ Bad troll!  No cookie!
              \_ Troll?  GW started it.
              \_ I thought he was funny.
        \_ I'm a Republican, and I can't stand GWB.  Why do Republicans like
           him?  The government is bigger, more bloated, and more Big
           Brotherly than it was before.
           \_ Because they've lost their way.  They've fallen into the same
              "win elections at the expense of what we believe in" trap that
              the Democrats fell into years ago.  Now it truly is a one party
              system.  Two names, one party.  --conservative non-(R)

1/26    My laptop only has USB 1.1.  I'm thinking of getting a PCMCIA card that
        has a USB 2.0 port.  Question on this thing.  Is it slower than
        a built-in USB 2.0 port?  I'm curious how fast this PCMCIA interface
        really is.  Thanks.
        \_ assuming you really mean cardbus (or pc card) not pcmcia, ~100mbit
           \_ I'm seeing CardBus Type II with ~ 50 mebibytes/s.
              http://peripherals.about.com/library/glossary/bldefcardbus.htm
              On the official web site, I see similar peak transfer rates:
              http://www.pcmcia.org/faq.htm
        \_ What devices do you plan to hook up that are usb2-only?
           \_ I was planning to buy a iomega DVD writer.  They recommend
              USB 2.0.  The bandwidth of the PCMCIA has to be greater than
              or equal to USB 2.0 for this to work I guess. Thanks.
              \_ USB2.0 = 480Mbit/sec.  DVD = ~10Mbit at 1x
              \_ Combo PC cards (firewire + USB2.0) are about $50.  For CD
              \_ Combo PC cards (firewire + USB2.0) are about $50.  For DVD
                 burning I'd recommend firewire.

1/25    My doctor says he can lessen astigmatism with glasses but not with
        regular contacts (both do nearsight but only one does astigmatism).
        First of all, I've always thought both were the same. Secondly,
        how come contacts don't lessen astigmatism?
        \_ correction of astigmatism requires a lense not be rotationally
           symmetric: there must be some special orientation.  Glasses are
           of course always fixed in their orientation, but contacts are
           generally at a random orientation. I think there are actually
           expensive contacts with weights on one edge that can correct
           astigmatism.
                \_ Ahhh I see... so is this where "axis" comes in play when
                   they put in axis, cylinder, etc in the prescription?
                   \_ "Ahhh I see", you're so funny!
                        \_ uh, never heard of a pun?
                           \_ yes, that's what I thought was funny.  never
                              heard of humor and enjoying it?
           \_ I'm wearing a astigmatism-correcting contacts right now, Accuvue
              toric lenses.  They're only effective up to a certain point
              though.
        \_ i used to wear astigmatism correcting contacts but they fit my
           eyes really poorly. now i have normal contacts (i think .25 stronger)
           and my eyes are much happier
           \_ I'm curious:  RGPs (rigid gas permeable) or soft contacts?

1/26    Taking bets.  Will Kay be Bushco's downfall?
        \_ No.  No one cares and anyway he said a bunch of stuff was moved to
           Syria so there's room for doubt in reasonable minds.
        \_ no.
        \_ No, it will be death by a thousand cuts that undoes Bush.
           \_ You're assuming that there will be a "something" that undoes
              him.  Is it beyond imagining that nothing will happen and he'll
              get a 49 state land slide victory a la Ronald Reagan?
              \_ I agree. I think the democrats might be able to *win*
                 the election, but it's pretty unlikely that Bush will
                 *lose* it in the way the above poster means.
              \_ if every person who voted for gore votes democratic once again
                 , and a few thousand greens in florida switch over to the
                 dems, bush would lose. how many people like bush MORE now than
                 they did 4 years ago?
                 \_ If every person who voted for Al Gore (including the dead
                    ones, the illegal aliens, and the ex-cons) gave me a nickel
                    I'd have a lot of nickels.  So what?
                 \_ Everyone who thinks he did a good job with Afghanistan,
                    freeing Iraq, and creating Homeland Security.  That's not
                    a negligible number of people, even with all the critics.
                    Why did people elect Reagan?  Because he saw the world in
                    black and white, and a lot of people went with that.
              \_ Yes it is beyond imagining that Bush will get a 49 state
                 landslide. There are at least a dozen states, California
                 one of them, that Bush will not win in Nov, no matter what.
                 \_ His poll number in CA aren't that bad.  So, no, to people
                    who watch these things it isn't at all beyond imagining.
                    \_ I "watch these things" too and I sure that Bush
                       will not get 49 or 50 states. He will not get Hawaii
                       or Vermont or Massachusetes or Rhode Island for four.
                       You are nuts and don't even know it.
                       \_ I predict Bush wins California and another 4 years.
                          You heard it here first.
        \_ Did you actually read his Sunday comments?
           "I actually think the intelligence community owes the president
           rather than the president owing the American people. ... Based
           on the intelligence that existed, I think it was reasonable to
           reach the conclusion that Iraq posed an imminent threat."
           \_ Yes I did, and it seems very reasonable to be upset with
              a president who appointed a large number of the administrators
              in that intelligence community.  The administration took the
              worst-case analyses in Iraq to build support for invading,
              and effectively ignored NK, Iran, etc.  They wanted this
              war and they got it.
              \_ So what you're saying is, even though Kay comes out
                 highly pro-Bush, that the Democrats will still be able to
                 leverage Kay's comments into Bush's downfall?
                 \_ What I'm saying is, Kay's comments will undercut the
                    public's faith in this administration's ability to
                    maintain national security, and thereby make their
                    downfall difficult to prevent.
                    \_ I just don't think the buck will stop at the President's
                       desk.
                    \_ The public is also seeing the part about Kay saying
                       stuff was moved to Syria and quite frankly doesn't give
                       a shit anyway.  You're grasping for straws.  WMD in Iraq
                       is not an Achilles Heel of any sort.  Bush is polling
                       higher nationwide at this time than any previous P. in
                       modern times at the same time in their first term.  You
                       are setting yourself up for some serious disappointment.
                       \_ What about daddy.  Approval at 89% in 1991,
                          dropped to 29% by the end of the year. -scotsman
                          \_ Could happen.  Lots of things could happen, but
                             Bush really lost because Perot was there.  With
                             our Perot, he would've edged out Clinton in 92.
                             \_ Ross Perot didn't make daddy's numbers drop.
                                W was at 60% a month ago.  Watch him slide.
                       \_ are you a Republican?
                          \_ no, but I am a conservative.  is it the same
                             thing in your mind?
                             \_ for the purposes of my question, yes. thanks.

1/26    Anybody have stone tiles in your backyard?  I'm thinking of putting
        them in.  There's cement covering most of the backyard already around
        the pool.  Would contractors remove the existing cement before
        putting in tiles?  How was your put in?  Thin layer of cement and
        then the tile?  I'm thinking maybe they can put the tile over the
        existing cement, however, some parts have cracks and the surface is
        a bit uneven.  Thanks.
        \_ Home owners are evil.  When the market drops you'll be begging
           your landlord to take you back!  Villain!

1/26    http://www.microsoft.com/education/default.asp?ID=SecurityPosters
        Free M$ security posters. Dunno if it was posted before due to
        to lame-ass URL shorteners found in the archives.
        \_what is the point?  the poster is not even cool.

1/26    ABC bringing back 'Millionaire.' $10,000,000 top prize.
        http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/7801595.htm

1/26    Fogies: Vh1's Band's Reunited is actually good.
                          \_ http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif
        \_ I'm waiting for VH1's "100 Cheapest Shows on VH1"
           \_ that would be any 100 shows that air music videos
              \_ I was more referring to:
                 "FoBarBaz Band:  Where are they now?"
                 "25 Greatest XYZ Videos of all time"
                 "I love the 1800's"
                 "10 Most inane celebrity things"
                 "Third-rate celebrities talk about memories of dust bunnies"
                 ... ad nauseum

1/26    Is there a program for Mac that catches programs making unauthorized
        network access/"call home".
        \_ Sounds like you want 'Little Snitch':
           http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch
           (This is OS X only, not sure if there was something like this for
            OS 9).
        \_ it's called a firewall.
           \_ most home firewalls only block incoming.. and allow unrestricted
              access outgoing. since he said "call home" i assume he means
                  \_ Yes a firewall can do that. But how is your firewall is going
                     to tell the legitimate outgoing traffic (say web browsing) from
                         such "call-home" connections unless you start monitoring all
                         outgoing traffic or doing something equally inconvenient?
              something more like zonealarm pro but for mac
              \_ what you're talking about is a router that does NAT.  Any
                 decent software firewall will check inbound and outbound
                 connections.
                  \_ Yes a firewall can do that. But how is your firewall is
                     going to tell the legitimate outgoing traffic (say web
                     browsing) from such "call-home" connections unless you
                     start monitoring all outgoing traffic or doing something
                     equally inconvenient?
                     \_ OP wants zone alarm for the mac.
                     \_ because any firewall that isn't totally stupid will
                        ask you, "hey, program X is trying to send packets to
                        Y on port Z.  Do you want to allow this once, always,
                        not this time, or never?"
                        \_ Which is completely inconveniet and unacceptable to
                           lots of users. Many of the sites I visit every day I
                           visit for the first time and I don't want to be asked
                           every minute the same stupid question. Most firewalls
                           have that feature turned off by default for a good
                           reason.
                           \_ ZoneAlarm by default only warns you when a new
                              program tries to access the net, not when the
                              same program tries to access a new site.  So
                              after the first day you almost never get new
                              dialog boxes.  Get a clue.  -tom
                           \_ I used a simple example, but any decent
                              software firewall is rule-based.  Rules look
                              like: "Always allow connections from Mozilla.
                              Allow connections from ssh, but only to csua.
                              Deny all connections from Photoshop.  Ask me
                              about anything else." It's not that hard.
                              Good firewall programs will let you create
                              rules when they initially prompt you.  Yes,
                              you might get a prompt the first time you
                              start your web browser, but not for each site,
                              unless *you* *choose* to configure your
                              firewall that way.
           \_ Which "firewall" checks if an outgoing traffic is generated by
              some spyware/MS rather than ssh/mozilla?
              \_ most firewall will tell you the name of the file which is
                 trying to gain access.

1/26    Hm, I never heard about this thing. Guess I'm too young.
  http://www.awesome80s.com/Awesome80s/News/1980/February/3-Abscam_Revealed.asp
        \_ Being too young or knowing nothing about a topic or history has
           never stopped any motd poster from expressing extreme views before.
           I think it's a good topic.  You should go for it!
        \_ I thought it's illegal for law enforcement to bait targets?
           \_ No.  That's not the definition of entrapment.

1/26    Some cool jobs at DemandTec in Redwood City / San Carlos.
        http://www.demandtec.com/contact/engineering.html
        Applied math, CS theory, distributed systems, UI, etc...
        We also do lots of Operations Research and Stat.  Send me your
        resume if you are interested.  -- joshk
        \_ (We also have some unposted openings for general CS types)

1/26    Would you sign up for a contest you think you have a better
        than average chance of winning in exchange for your info
        (could be used by marketers)
        \_ depends on the prize.
           \_ lots of money.  of course, better than average still means
              low odds.
              \_ Probably not, if there's not a realistic chance of
                 winning.  -tom
        \_ fyi, a good friend of mine has won two notebooks over his ~ 5
           years of entering random contests.  just two weeks ago he won
           a $250 set of Japanese anime DVDs.  I guess he's figured out
           what to do with all the junk e-mail.
           \_ that is pretty good.  But what if they ask for your
              birthday or even your IM name?
              \_ if I were to guess he uses the correct year of birth, but
                 uses a random month/day.  He probably gives them an IM name
                 created just for this type of thing.
                 \_ and probably the same for email address and uses a POB.
           \_ my dad and his gf have gone crazy on the online contests.
              They've won weekends in LA,Vegas, Santana Row. Cruises on the
              SFBay, front-row tickets to concerts in SJ/Concord/SF/MTview
              $200 gift certificates, a partially-paid 3-wk trip to Europe
              and all sorts of other smaller prizes like wine, cameras,
              portable CD, DVD players, TVs, sharks tix and Bocelli tix.
              They use all valid info, but several free email accounts

1/26    Please list what you think are the most influential/important
        math/science algorithms of the 20th century:   (--PeterM)
        \_ Let's try this one again...
        \_ Fast Fourier Transform
        \_ quicksort
        \_ fast fourier transform
        \_ Simplex, resolution theorem proving, belief propagation,
           Shor's quantum factoring.  -- ilyas
           \_ He said 20th century, not 21st, jackass.  Most poeple
              wouldn't regard factoring the number 15 as
              influential/important. I think that the factoring of 15 was
              done after 2000 anyway.
                \_ Those sound pretty obscure.
                   \_ to someone who can't even format properly, no doubt.
        \_ RSA to encrypt billions of dollars of transactions   -business guy
           \_ Maybe a more general statement would be "public key crypto"
              \_ Not an algorithm, maybe a class of algorithms, or better,
                 a research area.
        \_ Generational garbage collection
        \_ 2+2=5
        \_ ee equals em cee squared.  Boom.
           \_ That's an equation; I don't think that's what the OP was asking
              for.
        \_ quicksort
        \_ fast fourier transform
        \_ hamsterdance
        \_ Simplex, resolution theorem proving, belief propagation,
           Shor's quantum factoring.  -- ilyas
        \_ philcompress
        \_ "1) invent algorithm, 2) ..., 3) profit!" is my choice.
        \_ Hashes / hash tables
           \_ That's a data structure, not an algorithm, and it only works
              because we have constant time lookup up to 2^32 (or 64).
              You can't do better than O(log n) access.
        \_ Generational garbage collection
        \_ all answered purged because some humorless jerk censored my very
           harmless 1 line joke.  fuck you.  i'm taking your ball home with me.
           \_ Big man.  And what a sense of humor too.

1/26    I just transfered several thousand files from a Mac to a PC. Macs don't
        have file extensions so is there any UNIX utility (or PC utility) that
        will differentiate between word and excel files so that I can
        programmatically add the .xls and .doc extensions? "file" simply says
        "Microsoft Word" document.
        \_ write an applescript.  Unfortunately, I don't know the syntax for
           grabbing creator codes from the finder.  Maybe someone else on
           here does.  Applescript documentation is horrible.
        \_ What I ended up doing was using perl to traverse the directory
           hierarchy. I changed all :'s to -'s (PCs don't like :'s) and add
           .xls extensions to each file. This is somewhat lame, but 95% of
           the files are excel files and I was able to do this in less than
           10 minutes (I already had the perl readdir traversal code handy,
           I just had to find it)... of course, I did all this before asking
           on the motd bc i didn't think i'd find any useful information here.
           I'd still be interested in a nice solution (ideally, someone would
           tell me that I just need to upgrade my version of file)
           \_ you should rename the files while they are on the Mac.
              http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/14404
              \_ link not found and this is System 7 we're talking about.
                 \_ DEAR GOD WHY???
                    Uh.  can you transfer them to a more modern mac first?
                    \_ It only took him 10 minutes this way.
          \_ 'file' depends on the 'magic number' which is stored in a file.
             you only really needed an updated magic file.
        \_ This came up on google under "automatically macintosh file
           extensions".  I bet you can find more:
           http://peccatte.karefil.com/software/MacNames/MacNamesEN.htm
        \_ using perl, you can issue the file command recursively through
           your dirtree and dump the results into a text file. You can
           then open up the text file and issue a rename accordingly to
           each of the files it finds. Should take about an hour to write
           up in perl. -williamc
           \_ An hour?  It should take about 5 minutes in any shell.  On a
              bad day.  Between commercials and surfing.  This is a good
              time for sed/awk for those too lazy to use the search/replace
              function on their text editor.
              \_ Hmmm, apparently you don't do any "shell scripting" on a PC
                 in Windows/DOS.
                 This can be done in five minutes on a UNIX machine, but
                 with Windows through a DOS VM box (assuming you're not
                 using cygwin) I'd have to spend some time testing it to
                 make sure it was functioning correctly. If using
                 the find command you'd have to figure out how to
                 dump the information into an intermediate text file
                 and parse the contents. Regardless, I'd like to see
                 your five minuts solution posted on the motd, it will
                 be informative. Also, wtf does does your text editor
                 have to do with identifying binary files??? Reading
                 comments like these makes you think that the poster
                 didn't understand the problem domain. -williamc
                 \_ i'm not the guy above, but you might want to consider
                    posting anonymously, lest people associate "williamc"
                    with "talking out of his ass". cygwin often works
                    *just fine*, and i don't see any reason to believe it
                    wouldn't in this case. as the OP has already mentioned
                    though, 'file' doesn't give enough information to
                    distinguish between word and excel files. but even
                    supposing it did, you would either want to use sed/awk
                    to massage the output into an easier to parse format,
                    or use a text editor to do it if you don't know how
                    to use sed/awk. perhaps you should keep quiet instead
                    of making an ass of yourself next time.
              \- ObEmacsDiredMode --psb
        \_ What I ended up doing was using perl to traverse the directory
           hierarchy. I changed all :'s to -'s (PCs don't like :'s) and add
           .xls extensions to each file. This is somewhat lame, but 95% of
           the files are excel files and I was able to do this in less than
           10 minutes (I already had the perl readdir traversal code handy,
           I just had to find it)... of course, I did all this before asking
           on the motd bc i didn't think i'd find any useful information here.
           I'd still be interested in a nice solution (ideally, someone would
           tell me that I just need to upgrade my version of file)

1/25    ALL CAPS TROLL PURGED.
        \_ damn that was fast
           \_ A lot of people read motd.