3/8     Would someone be willing to take delivery of a handgun for me in
        the Bay Area in the next 2 months?  It's a gift from a friend in
        Oregon, which I would like to take over to Switzerland the next
        time I'm in the US (May-ish.)  He can't meet me in person.  I can
        supply any needed papers.  -John
        \_ Which handgun?  (I am not in BA, or I d take it) -- ilyas
        \_ Can you supply a good lawyer, too?
        \_ can i use it on Highway 580?
        \_ Just sort of curious, John, why're you asking in the motd rather
           than approaching some friends you consider trustworthy directly?
        \_ Assuming you go through with this, it is illegal and considered
           a federal crime. To do this right, your friend needs to transfer
           ownership using someone with a FFL. Any reputable gun store will
           do this, for a small fee, and even hold it in storage, for another
           small fee. Transferring the gun out of country is another whole
           mess of paperwork.
           \_ You have to forgive John.  Living in oppressed Europe for so long,
              he must have forgotten how easy it is to commit a federal crime
              here in the Land of the Free.  -- ilyas
              \_ Was he thinking of wearing a head scarf, too?
              \_ In Switzerland, men are REQUIRED to keep an arsenal in their
                 home as they are citizen military reservists, and could be
                 called up in time of need.
                 \_ Because so many Italians and Germans will be invading for
                    the chocolate and watches?  Actually, it won't be the
                    Germans.  They already bought their way in with blood
                    money.
              \_ As if Europe is a haven of freedom and goodness.  Whatever.
                 \_ I think you are missing the point.
                    \_ I don't think there was a meaningful point to begin with.
                    \_ What point?  It was standard mindless America bashing.

3/8     Can someone recommend a good 3 button mouse for PC hardware?
        Is there any reason to favor USB over PS2?  Price not an issue.
        \_ Microsoft Intellimouse Optical (Retail).  It has two more buttons
           that you'll use a lot for going Back or Forward in web pages.
           Look, Amazon is selling it for $23.84, no tax!  It's an upgrade
           from a year ago, it captures 6,000 images per second, which you'll
           notice.
           \_ Eh, the extra buttons are useless and get in the way.  Stick with
              Logitech, and you'll never go back.  The MS wheel-buttons have
              too much (or too little resistance).  Logitech gets it right.
              Logitech also makes symmetric mice so I can use them with my left
              hand.  And they have great drivers.
        \_ I really like my Kensington expert mouse v5 (the huge trackball
           with 4 buttons.)  It takes a bit of getting used to, and the
           price is astronomical, but for work it's superb.  Only problem
           with mine (I use the serial one) is that the connector to the
           trackball chassis is bad quality and can fall out if you move it
           (so not too good for active gaming.)  They may have fixed this
           since I bought mine a few years back, though.
           http://www.kensington.com/html/1175.html  -John
           \_ I appreciate the suggestions but I am looking for something
              3 buttons.  I would rather not get a wheel-as-button.
              I just use X11, no Windows. Any basic 3b mouse options?
                \_ Oh sorry.  For bog-standard 3 button mice, I really
                   like the older Compaq ones (sort of wide-ish and goofy-
                   shaped.  Can't find a picture, but you should be able
                   to pick one up on ebay.)  I find them pretty relaxing
                   on my hand.  -John
                \_ Kensington is the answer to all mouse needs.  Go to their
                   site and see their 3b mouse products.
                   \_ We had a short-lived manager that came in here ordered
                      a $300 kensington track ball to see how high he could
                      get people to jump.
                      \_ They only go to $105.
        \_ I like USB mouse on laptops.  It has advantage of hot plugin /
           pull out without causing too much harm.  For desktops, I prefer PS2
           mouse mainly because USB ports are relatively valuable real estates.
           I prefer reserve USB ports for truely portable devices such as
           thumb drive, digital camera, etc.
           Personally, I use the cheap logitech optical mouse (wheel mouse)
           for portable needs.  And, if you want an ergonomic mouse, I highly
           recommend this product called "Anir Mouse."
           http://www.animax.no
           it is the most comfortable mouse I ever used.  email me if you
           got more questions.                  -kngharv

3/9     Good Skin Guy, I've followed your advice and stopped drinking milk
        and I've shown marked improvements in complexion. Do you have any
        other tips?
        \_ Sorry, milk doesn't have anything to do with acne. It's
           just coincidental.
        \_ stop eating grease.
        \_ what do you wash your face w/ ? also, what shampotioner do you use?
           lastly, have you considered that acne medication that fucks w/ your
           liver (forgot the name)? --washes face w/ water, no soap.
        \_ http://ixix.com/english/beautiful/beautiful_01.htm
           http://ixix.com/english/life/life_01.htm
           \_ hahah!!!  "Years of working 18-hour days and delivering 40
              babies a month led to a drastic weight gain."
        \_ 1. stop touching your face
           2. if you take showers in the morn, wash that pillow cover or
              start taking showers at night.
           3. change your bed sheets often.

3/9     GREEN! : .
        PURPLE! : .
        \_ This a lightsaber color poll?
           \_ No
           \_ Are you the Green leader?
        \_ Why do motd polls always lack the right answer?  Everyone knows
           RED! is the right answer.  I want to see a url from a source I
           approve of before I'll even consider discussing these other useless
              \_ Red Five standing by.
        \_ Green must fight purple, purple must fight green. Is no other way.
                 \_ Cut the chatter, Red 5.
                 \_ It's not a Star Wars reference --op
        \_ Why do motd polls always lack the right answer?  Everyone knows
        RED! is the right answer.  I want to see a url from a source I approve
        of before I'll even consider discussing these other useless options.
           options.
           RED!: .
           \_Green must fight purple, purple must fight green. Is no other way.

3/9     Read businessweek online issue on 'china.net'.  Lots of stories on
        internet activities in china.  Anybody thinking of moving back to
        china or taiwan to start companies?  I've been thinking about going
        back to TW to start an online gaming company.  DSL penetration is
        pretty high.
        \_ let me know if you do please!        -brain
        \_ in the same vein (is there a latin term for that expression?),
           does anyone have any Indian tech connections? I have an idea for
           outsourcing (not HiTech related) to India but don't have the
           connections.
           \_ mail me.  - rory
        \_ "Online gaming company", you mean developing online games, or what?
           \_ I think he means online sex chat
              \_ No wonder DSL penetration is so important!
                 \_ I would think penetration not important for online sex.
           \_ He said "gaming" which is gambling, not "game".
        \_ An ex-boss went there 2 years ago.  He has a company, website, etc,
           but I don't think he has final product or beta customer 1.
        \_ I wanna make the China version of Yahoo Maps / Mapquest.
           Anyone here has any experience?  eg. Worked at Navtech?
           We can start with like Beijing and move on from there.
           \_ Do people there really have a need for a service like that?
              \_ I am sure there is.  Hwy system and car ownership are
                 exploding.  Biggest problem is probably that the road
                 system is changing and expanding too fast.
           \_ Instead of driving direction from pt A to pt B, you can provide
              transit directions from pt A to pt B.  --- yuen
           \_ In Taiwan right now, and talked to friends from the mainland
              regards to LBS service.  The main issue is that, unlike USA,
              which essentially gave out GIS map of entire country for free
              (TIGER db), in both mainland China and Taiwan, GIS Maps has to be
              purchased.  I am less familiar with what is going on in the
              mainland, but in Taiwan, first, the government actually holds
              copyright on these maps, secondly, the government impose a very
              restrictive license on how the map can be used, and charge a
              very handsome sum for "value-added redistribution."
              Second issue is less difficult.  There is simply no good Chinese
              parser out there to tokenize addresses.

              In taiwan, life get even more complicated because maps are
              controlled by several different government agencies.

              The main obsticle is that Chinese people on both strait treat
              map as some sort of military secret, and very reluctant to
              release them to civilian use.

              If you are interested in this kind of things, email me, as I
              am in the process of getting street maps of Taipei to play
              with (which going to cost me $150 USD just for personal use).
                                        -kngharv
              \_ You mean in Taiwan tourists can't buy somthing like "Map of
                 Taipei" at a bookstore for a few bucks?
              \_ I don't get the tokenize address part.  Just let the
                 user enter the address as seperate fields.  Take my
                 aunt's address (using commie romanization):
                 tai2 bei3 (taipei city), xin1 dian4 (subdivision), zhong1
                 zheng4 lu4 (road), wu3 hao4 (number)
                 If they write it all together, sure, but if it's entered
                 in seperate fields or with a delimiter, I don't see
                 what's the difficulty.

3/8     http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/040309/95575_1.html
        Scary! 1918 Spanish Flu is an avian flu similar to today's Bird Flu.
        Scientists are very worried.
        \_ So we can't eat meat, chicken, fish or veggies?  What's left?
           \_ Sperm.
              \_ Must..not...quote...Monty...Python...mUst..NOT..<croak>

3/8     Another annoying Firefox/Mozilla question: I like the find-as-you-type
        feature, but is there a way to make it do "next match"? It seems pretty
        useless to just get the first one.
        \_ ctrl+g to find next, ctrl+shift+g to find the previous match.
           http://texturizer.net/firefox/keyboard.html
        \_ F3 also works, but that was just a random guess of mine.
        \_ hit F3
        \_ Great question, I've been wonderin the same thing.

3/8     Why is Soda still running 700Mhz? Is it suffice? Do you want a
        better processor?                       -alumni working at Intel
           \_ The CSUA wants all the free hardware you want to give it,
              but if we're going to go to the trouble to upgrade soda
              we aren't just going to throw in a new CPU - I think that
              the VP-ish people these days are thinking along the lines
              of dual-xeon or something. If you have the juice to get us
              free stuff from {Intel,AMD,*}, you should email politburo
              or the vp directly, they will be very interested. Disk for
              the office system got upgraded last semester thanks to njh,
              soda disk is probably next (eventually). Some of this stuff
              is in the CSUA minutes. --jhs (current ugrad)
                \_ I think I have a 6 year old 80GB RAID 5 SCSI Array.
                   Can we think of anything fun to do with it?
                   \_ Drop it off of evans?
                \_ Hey jhs, are you on the politburo, or do you just take it
                   upon yourself to speak for them?
                   \_ I'm not on politburo, I do go to most pburo meetings, I
                      spent a lot of time in previous semesters talking with
                      the previous and current VPs about these issues. I
                      thought that everyone might be interested in what is
                      actually going on with current pburo thoughts on
                      these issues.
                      The current pburo people don't go on the motd very often
                       - I pointed this thread out to erikk, the vp, so maybe
                      he can post with definitive info if that's what you
                      desire. --jhs
        \_ so youre saying if i donate a few terabytes i wont get
                insulted on the motd for daring to offer free stuff to
                the csua?  -alum
                \_ A more charitible interpretation is that they have uses for
                   any semi-modern hardware, but that they won't bother
                   upgrading the main server without having something
                   substantially better.  Lesser donations can be used on the
                   lounge machines.
                \_ I don't think there's any way to guarantee you won't be
                   insulted on the motd.  The statements found on the motd
                   do not in any was represent the opinions of either the
                   Politburo or the CSUA's official stance on any subject.
                        - Poliburo-alum
                   \_ Indeed.  There are much more appropriate venues to
                      discuss such subjects where you won't meet with the
                      motd-type railing.  Try mailing csua@csua.berkeley.edu,
                      politburo@csua, hardcorps@csua, etc.  --scotsman
        \_ suffice is a verb, but yes, we need a better processor!
           \_ hey nice way to slam someone doing you a favor for nothing.
              \_ Also, "alumni" is plural.  It should be "alum", "alumnus",
                 or "alumna".
                 \_ How do you know it wasn't posted by a few alums who
                    decided to make a gift together?  How deep do you look
                    into a gift horse's mouth before your head gets bit off?
        \_ don't tell them about the "Prescott is AMD 64's beyatch" thread
        \_ Because it doesn't run Windoze which needs 2GHz for one user.
           \_ Another clown....  No class.
              \_ See the post below, moron.
                 \_ You: no class.  It doesn't matter if the item offered is
                    useful or not.  Oh fuck it, nevermind.  Why do I bother
                    trying to teach the most basic manners that any 6 year old
                    understands to motd jerkoffs?
                    \_ It's funny that someone calling others clown with no
                       justification talks about basic manner.
                       \_ If you don't see the justification you're beyond
                          hopeless.
        \_ a better processor is not much use without a motherboard (and
           everything else that entails) to support it. though frankly,
           how much processing power can a machine used to read mail and
           edit a text file need...
           \_ But Intel makes mobos too. All you'd need is probably new RAM.
              I don't know what type soda has now. We don't need the latest
              greatest RAM so maybe the current stuff would work.
           \_ uh, run uptime:  183 users, load averages: 1.29, 0.94, 1.00
              \_ Your point?
                \_ his point is that politburo is stingy on processing
                   power and imposes our freedom to run useful tasks such
                   setiathome and gene folding and porn storage.
           \_ motherboards, etc, are cheap.
              \_ so are lots of >700 Mhz processors...
        \_ Here is a very fundamental question. Is CSUA more CPU bound
           or disk space bound? I would say definitely the latter because
           of all the h0zers storing email and never cleaning them up.
           Secondly, it's easy to do "ps aux" and see who should get
           squished, but it's not so easy to do "df -k /users/*" because
           of file permissions, so we don't have a clear idea on who to
           target. My point is we need an alumni who works at Western
           Digital to donate free space more so than an alumni who works
           at AMD/Intel to donate a powerful space heater that will most
           likely be underutilized.
           \_ Why not both? Haven't you seen soda's load a 8?
              \_ Before spamassassin, soda didn't have any shortage of cpu.
                 Faster/multi-spindle disk would help with that, but that's
                 about the only thing that cpu would help.
           \_ I'm sitting on a few terabytes I have no use for but I can't
              imagine donating them if I'd get the same treatment as the
              op for this thread.
              \_ Har har har.  Troll.

3/8     anyone else having problems with the java ssh applet?
        (http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/ssh - the window dies after I enter in
        my password, I'm not certain if it was a change in my setup or
        in the system...  Thanks!
        \_ java ssh applet is pretty dependent on your jvm.  Try updating.
        \_ Yeah it dies for me, too.
        \_ Related question:  With all versions of mindterm, I am able
           to run it both on a client as a jar file, or load it off
           a web page and run it from a browser.  For some reason, for
           all versions, I can't get them to use an http proxy when running
           from a browser...anyone else see this?  -John
           \_ i don't think the browser will allow you to open a network
              connection to anywhere besides the host where the applet
              came from, unless the applet is signed (in which case it
              would popup messages asking whether you want to allow full
              network access, etc.).
        \_ java ssh applet is pretty dependent on your jvm.  Try updating.
        \_ Can't get it to work on XP or 2000, but it's fine on '98.
           Same JRE version.  Mozilla's java console gives this:
           java.lang.VerifyError: (class: b7, method: lx signature: ()Z) Incompa\
tible object argument for invokespecial
           java.lang.VerifyError: (class: b7, method: lx signature:
                ()Z) Incompatible object argument for invokespecial
               at b5.ld(JAX)
               at bq.run(JAX)
               at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
           --scotsman
           \_ do you happen to know how old the mindterm ssh install is?
              \_ /csua/www/htdocs/ssh  Looks like it's from 2000. --scotsman

3/8     http://www.pfir.org/meltdown
        PFIR announcement of an "emergency" conference aimed at
        preventing Internet meltdown.

3/8     Where can I find the definitions of the 3 timestamps associated
        with a file on a linux system: "Access  Modify  Change"
        \_ On most OS's that informaion is in the ls man page. Or do you
           need something more detailed?
           \_ Yes, I need to know the exact technical definition
              of "Changed" in this context. I'm trying to track down
              when/how my /usr/bin/perl file got changed from the debian
              "stable" version to the "testing" 5.8.2 version. Thanks.
              \_ is man 2 stat sufficient?
                 \_ Yes siree. Perfect. Thank You!

3/8     How do I make google search my new domain name?
        \_ google is dead.
           \_ long live google.
        \_ http://www.google.com/addurl.html
        \_ google does not search domain names. it searches websites.
           put a website on your domain and point some links to it.
           The Web != The Internet.

3/9     Did anyone ever come up with a url for a recording of that
        Chapelle segment "if the internet was a place" ?
        \_ yes, i did.  should be in the archive
           \_ Any change of getting a local copy in /csua/tmp ?
              -- streamng-impaired
        \_ That was a miserably stupid bit.
           \_ The number of humor-impaired people on motd never cease to amaze.
                \_ humor is subjective.  That bit was only very mildly funny.
                   \_ yeah, certainly not among his funniest bits

3/9     Yahoo! News - Study Examines STD Rates of Teen Virgins
        http://csua.org/u/6cw
        "The study found that the STD rates for whites who pledged virginity
        was 2.8 percent compared with 3.5 percent for those who didn't pledge.
        For blacks, it was 18.1 percent and 20.3 percent. For Asians, 10.5
        percent of virginity pledgers had STDs compared with 5.6 percent of
        non-pledgers. For Hispanics, it was 6.7 percent and 8.6 percent."
        Casual non-scientific thoughts:
        1. The less horny an Asian claims, the more horny (s)he is.
        2. It's safer to screw a seemingly horny Asian chick then a seemingly
           non-horny one.
        Also, "88 percent of pledgers have sex before marriage."  Most pledgers
        are liars.      :-)
        \_ 3. You're safer with whites than anyone else.
           4. statistics tell you about averages, and if you base your
           decisions on the averages of large numbers of people, you're a
           fucking idiot (and you're probably fucking an idiot as well.)
           \_ but as long as idiots are monogamous, they're not getting stds!
           \_ Does that make me an idiot-fucking idiot?  Oooh.
              \_ Actually that would be an idiot-fucking fucking idiot. Or
                 fucking idiot-fucking idiot. We have rich vocabularies.
        \_ This seems to go hand in hand with the Canadian study finding that
           huge swaths of kids don't think oral sex is sex, don't think it's
           sex if you pull out, don't think it's sex if you shower afterwards,
           etc...
           \_ Do they really think it's not sex, or are they simply in denial?
              \_ They just learned well from their hero, Clinton.

3/8     Ashcroft surgery a success!  Blessings to him and his family.
        http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A42534-2004Mar9?language=printer
        \_ However, giant stick in up ass thought to be inoperable.