2/21    http://biz.yahoo.com/bizwk/040220/b3872001mz001_1.html
        Software War - Deepa Paranjpe vs Stephen Haberman
        One thing I find funny is how some think the US can keep the
        design jobs and "people skills" jobs like project management while
        outsourcing just the boring programming work.  I think India will
        quickly move up the ladder and be able to do everything.
        \_ pffft, why bother with India? Just take the whole thing to
           China. Much better trained engineers and they already do all
           the hardware manufacturing. Add in Taiwanese investment in
           knowledge and capital into the mix and we'll bury you dot head
           Indians.
           \_ you forgot about the language barrier.
              \_ There's no real language barrier since on the US side we don't
                 talk to the grunt workers, only the 1 project manager.
                 \_ developers that don't talk to each other? you'd better have
                    a fuckin good project manager.
                        \_ The developers talk in mandarin or tamil or
                           whatever. There won't be any developers in
                           the US, they will all be in India or China.

2/22    Can someone point me to an RFC that specifies which ascii characters
        are valid in email addresses?  I can't seem to find it in 2821 or
        2822.  -John
        \_ It's scattered around RFC 2822.  The actual definition of an email
           address (addr-spec) is section 3.4.1, but it refers to a lot of
           stuff from earlier in section 3.
                \_ Cool, thanks.  I noticed that a lot of online email
                   address parsers reject 'a+b@domain.com'--was just sort of
                   wondering whether there's anything they're "supposed" to
                   accept.  -John

           The upshot is that nearly any ASCII character is allowed if quoted
           properly, including whitespace and control characters.  The only
           thing you can't have at all is a NUL character -- and even that
           used to be permitted, so RFC 2822 still requires you to handle it
           properly.  Non-ASCII characters (anything above 127) are not
           allowed; RFC 2047 specifies the =?ISO-8859-1?Q?=E9?= syntax for
           encoding them.

           Of course, you may not want to send mail to anyone belligerent
           enough to have control characters in their email address.  --mconst
           \_ ooooh, sweet.  I never thought of that.  If I had control chars
              in my email address do you think that would avoid all spam?

2/22    Dear motd personal trainer: Is using an elliptical machine as
        effective as a treadmill? (the goal is weight loss and i'm worried
        about impact on the knees).
        \_ why are you considering the elliptical machine over treadmill?
           \_ He said "i'm worried about impact on the knees".
        \_ I've been losing weight at the rate of about 2lbs per week
           largely on an elliptical trainer.  I work hard, though:  52
           minutes/day in 140-150 heart rate range.  If you believe the
           calorie count, it is MORE effective than equivalent time/effort
           on a treadmill.
           \_ Elliptical training is for the weak - the numbers make it
              look far more impressive than it is.  Stairmaster creams it
              by a factor of 2x on a calorie count.
                \_ ellipticals are not at all for the weak. they're meant
                   to be a very low-impact way of getting aerobic exercise.
                   they work slower than some machines and quicker than
                   others, but it has nothing to do with being weak or not.
                   nice try.
              \- the stairmasters that have real steps in an infinte loop
                 rather than the pedals that just go up and down seems
                 pretty good to me. i ran up those for a couple of months
                 before heading off to nepal. i also operate those on manual
                 rather than program modes and just always push pretty
                 hard with a sprint at the end and maybe a breather now
                 and then. treadmill with a manually varied slope is also
                 reasonable, --psb
              \_ Calorie count is worthless.  You can't lose significant weight
                 from exercise alone.
                 \_ My 2lbs per week weight loss and I beg to differ.  Is
                    14 lbs "significant"?
        \_ i've been using the elliptical due to knee problems as well,
           and it is good at low angle and low resistance, but i have now
           found that my knees are again the limiting factor, as my cardio
           conditioning is now good enough that i can't get my heart rate
           up without causing too much strain on my knees.  i've recently
           added treadmill to my workouts for short periods of time and so
           far my knees have been okay with it, but we'll see!  it's a much
           more intense cardio workout and if you are interested in training
           for actual activity like hiking or whatnot, gives a realistic and
           transferrable muscle workout, unlike the elliptical, which has
           helped my overall cardio conditioning, but otherwise hasn't really
           seemed to help my hiking all that much.  -lila

2/22    It's official.  Ralph Nader is running.
        \_ Read the far far far left debating Nader's presidential bid:
           http://publish.portland.indymedia.org/en/2004/02/281004.shtml
           About the same level of dialog as freerepublic, on the other side.
        \_ God dammit.  I hope he runs off the edge of a cliff.  It's not
           worth another 4 years of BushCo just to have a "viable third party"
           that no one would want in power anyway!
           \_ Actually, it would be great to have a *viable* third party.
              One egotistical asshole running as an idependent in a few states
              and getting about 1% of the vote has no relation whatsoever to
              establishing a viable third party other than making poeple
              mistrust future third party attempts, however.
        \_ Go Ralphie go!  Four more years!
        \_ Whee. I wonder how many states will have <1000 vote margins this
           year? Freeper and Naderboy should go get drunk together.
        \_ When is BushCo going to start donating to Nader's campaign?

2/22    It seems that iPhoto isn't able to change the resolution of an
        image. Does anyone know of a good shareware utility for OS X to
        let me do simple image editing like this?
        \_ You can crop the photo in Edit mode or do File: Export.
                \_ I don't want to crop, but rather change the resolution
                   to a lower one. -op
                   \_ **** File: Export. ****
        \_ I guess I'm not the only one who thinks iPhoto is pretty dumb.
           Reminds me of some article that said something about OSX making
           easy tasks easy, but the rest impossible.
           \_ Dude: it makes stuff easy for non-computer users.
              What do you expect? GUI blowjobs from your keyboard?
              It isn't Photoshop light, it is a digital photo album. That's it.
           \_ weak troll.  There are a million ways to do this on a Mac.
           \_ that is the same philosophy as Microsoft Windows' GUI.
           Anyway, get FINK installed and then get GIMP installed.  Works
           fine here.
           \- have you used darwin ports rather than fink? i think ports
              may have more legs --psb
              \_ Haven't tried darwin port but when recently I skimmed over
                 its packages it seems that its intersection w. fink <<
                 than their union.  As for fink, I haven't been able to
                 upgrade it since moving to Panther despite following the
                 "instruction" on fink site.  Fortunately, most of the existing
                 packages still works and did not get removed.
                 \- i havent given this tremendous thought but i think
                    the ports system/philosophy is a better approach for
                    packages that need tighter integration with the OS ...
                    say X11 or in my case some networking libraries. it is
                    possible i dont understand all the apple-specific
                    implications, however. --psb
                    \_ I just think it shouldn't be so hard.
        \_ I use Pixel NHance, which is better than photoshop for a lot
           of things. Doesn't resize though. Have you tried iResize?
           \- hey do the "less well known" programs have worse generational
              loss/re-encoding issues if you rotate/resize/crop etc jpgs
              or does everyone use standard functions/algorthms so say a
              2degree rotation is photoshop vs. "joe's graphics manipulator"
              will be essentially the same. ok tnx. --psb
        \_ Try http://www.yellowmug.com
           There may be a utility there.  If not ask the guy to write one
           for you.  He responds to emails and may be willing to.  He is
           a berkeley eecs dude.

2/22    Who will Cal Deaniacs support now that Dean is out of the race?
        \_ I wasn't a Deaniac, but I think most people will do what I do:
           not necessary get involved in the process, nor donating money, but
           *WILL* do his/her part cast his/her vote to make sure Bush out of
           office.
           \_ oh yeah?  which of the half dozen or so states where your vote
              actually matters are you planning to move to before november?
           \_ No one can get elected without the support of independent voters.
              If you put up some zero like Kerry who has no draw from that
              demographic you're doomed.  Instead of worrying about the other
              guy with that "anyone buy Bush" theme, why don't you support a
              real candidate that you actually like?  Success will follow.
              \_ I'm not the guy above, but there were two candidates who
                 I actually liked, and they've both left the field before
                 I even had a chance to vote.  By super tuesday, it's
                 already become a lesser of evils game.
              \_ So Deaniacs should just go ahead and vote for Dean in the
                 general election no matter what? I'm sure that will work.
                 \_ no, your party already screwed it up by voting for someone
                    based on their belief about his ability to defeat the
                    other guy as opposed to their faith in him as a person.
                    meaning they think they know how independent voters will
                    vote and tried to second guess them by presenting the
                    candidate they believed would get the most (I) voters,
                    but instead ended up with a passionless elitist cog who
                    is going to get his ass handed to him.  as one of those
                    (I) voters you so badly need I assure you that Kerry isn't
                    on my short list.
                    \_ Passionless elitist cog?  are you talking about
                       George Bush, who achieved NOTHING on his own?
                       got into Harvard with 1200 on SAT, using family
                       connection to get him out of Vietnam (serving
                       national guard instead), won presidency by asking
                       his brother perform what I considered as vote
                       fraud.
                        \_ Can you please elaborate on what he 'asked'
                           his brother to do?  Jeb Bush recused himself
                           from the recount.
                        \_ As an (I) I'm totally turned off by your anti-Bush
                           rhetoric.  This is exactly the reason you're going
                           to lose to Bush again.  You attack the other guy
                           but say nothing about why I should vote for your
                           guy.  As an (I) I prefer the evil I know to the
                           unknown but certain evil of your guy.  You don't
                           even like your own guy, so why should I?
                   \_ You don't get it.  Most of the time, people vote
                      *AGAINST* someone than *FOR* someone.  I have no
                      idea who Kerry is, but I know that 1. He is not
                      Bush, and 2. everyone around me who think like me
                      will vote for him.  and that is good enough.  For
                      many of us, nothing can be worse than President Bush
                      right now.
                      \_ And your friends are a fair mix of the general voting
                         public?  I doubt it.  Give people someone to vote
                         *for* and you'll see Bush out of office by a landslide
                         but instead you give us (I) voters no choices.
                    \_ You need to wake up. Everyone is basically an (I). You
                       are obviously liberal, therefore you're stuck with the
                       Democrats. That's the way it is, kid. The conservatives
                       don't all like Bush either. Kerry and Edwards are the
                       candidates the most people are comfortable with. They
                       never act weird like Dean, and have a political history
                       unlike Clark. Sorry the world is too boring for you.
                       If you don't like it, voting for a third party doesn't
                       change anything. It's a lazy way to pretend you actually
                       care while doing nothing. Just stay home.
                       \_ I'm not liberal.  I'm also not conservative.  I am
                          definitely *not* stuck voting for Kerry.  I can stay
                          home or vote for Bush or Nader or anyone else I like.
                          I'm not voting for Kerry if I show up.
              \_ Go away, Naderboy.
                 \_ whatever, wrong call.
              \_ I'm a decline-to-state and I hate Kerry and Dean both as
                 well as Bush. If Clark or Kucinich made it I'd probably
                 vote for them, and perhaps for Edwards. I might vote for
                 Kucinich anyway. I despise Bush, but I'm not voting Kerry
                 to keep Bush out of office.
                 \_ why do you "hate" all those guys?

2/22    I'd like to go backpacking in the Yosemite wilderness in June.
        Looking for a good 4-5 day hike that preferably loops back to
        the starting location.  Recommendations?  tia. --sky
        \_ maybe you can talk to people at REI?
           http://www.swsmtns.com/backpacking_and_survival
           \- how tough of a hike are you looking for and what are your
              priorities? [avoiding people, seeing the classic views etc].
              for classic hike so at hikes out of little ymte valley [tough
              to get permits]. fewer people in hetch-hetchy, and hikes out
              or Toulemne Medows. the mosquito sitution in jun may be pretty
              bad in some higher parts. you will need anti-bear technology--psb
              \_ I haven't backpacked since cubscouts, but my gf and I
                 aren't in horrible shape, so I'd say a medium difficulty
                 hike.  Avoiding people is prolly #1 priority, as well as
                 actually being able to obtain a permit.  thx.  --sky
                 \- getting a first come first serve permit depends a lot
                    on what day you get there. if midweek, not a problem.
                    otherwise you might need to stay outside the park and
                    then drive to the park at liek 7am and get a backcountry
                    permit for whatever area is avail. rather than loop,
                    you might want to consider the hub-spoke model [hike in
                    and then do some day hikes from base camp] ... like say
                    out of the voglesang area. you may wish to GOOGLE or
                    AMAZONG for "Yosemite Jeffrey Schaffer". toughness not
                    just about what you *can* do but what you *want* to do ...
                    i.e. walk 6+ hrs a day. --psb
                    \_ thanks partha.  --sky