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| 2004/4/16 [Recreation/Pets] UID:13226 Activity:nil |
4/16 Last night while out walking my dog I had my first ever encounter with
a pitbull. Idiot head teen actually let the thing off leash as I went
by with my dog on leash. The pitbull beelined for my dog from about
20 yards away and attacked. I kicked at it many many times and nailed
it hard half a dozen times but it ignored blows hard enough to lift it
into the air and drop it 2 feet back. Eventually the stupid owner
finally stepped in and grabbed it while it was trying to latch onto my
dog. I was about half a second away from grabbing the collar and
gouging its eyes out with my fingers at that point. I'm a dog person
closely involved with dog raising and training for many years but I've
never met a pitbull before. After last night I now firmly believe the
entire breed should be destroyed. If you're considering buying or
raising a pitbull you should know that in CA as of this year you are
now legally responsible for the full damages your pitbull inflicts.
If your pitbull kills or injures another dog, the monetary penalty is
no longer the replacement street value of the victim but you can be
sued blind for the standard array of emotional damages, loss of
companionship, full medical bills, funeral costs and everything else.
If you know someone with a pitbull let them know how the law works now
and how much someone like me is going to enjoy utterly destroying
their life when their pitbull attacks. In my case, I was able to beat
on it long enough to keep my dog from being physically harmed which
was *very* lucky for everyone involved. The other group left the park
immediately but I expect them to return. When they do, I'll be
sending the cops or animal control there to pick up their dog for
behavior testing. When it fails and is determined to be a vicious
dog, it will either be destroyed or at a minimum the owners will be
required to spend thousands on fences and special locks and not be
allowed to take their dog out in public ever again for any reason. If
I see that thing off leash again I'm going to kill it on the spot and
then call the police. Pit bull owners: fuck you. The rest of you
please be alert and aware when around them. These creatures are not
misunderstood. You, your dog, or your child *will* be attacked if the
dog can get to you. [restored several times]
\_ My dog was attacked by a psycho poodle, and had several stitches.
Even the "nice" breeds can be mean. It's all in how they are raised.
\_ Poodles are responsible for more bites than any other breed.
Poodles and chows are not nice. They are mean!
\_ get a less wussier dog , aren't dogs suppose to fight for you?
not vice-versa
\_ no, my dog is a pet. if i wanted a weapon, i'd carry a weapon.
is it now necessary for everyone to get a pitbull so we can
safely walk our dogs without being attacked?
\_ let me guess, you have a cocker spaniel (which is more prone
to biting people than pit bulls are) which provoked the attack
\_ I'm not the person you are responding to but I've seen two
pit bull attacks. Both times the pit bill suddenly bolted
and went straight for the neck of the dog/child in
question. Once was a kid, other time was a little fluffy
white thing. Both times the pit bull started from a
distance of about twenty yards or more away. I don't see
how these attacks were provoked.
BTW, I also know of a pitbull
that is so docile it simply hides behind it's master's legs
when new dogs appear. I'm not in the pit bulls=evil crowd.
There does seem to be something about them that requires
more care taken by the owner is all. One of the above
attacks took the pit bull owner completely by surprise.
\_ Your post is poignant to me but you may want to do the psb thing and
summarize with a link to an off-motd fuller text. -- ulysses
\_ I have owned and trained dogs my whole life, and I agree with you.
Perhaps some day they AKC will destroy the killer instincts of the
pit bull through the same kind of breeding they've used to destroy
the good qualities of other breeds, but the problem is a lot of pit
bulls come from the ghetto, where they're still bred to be vicious.
One side effect of the vicious ghetto dog phenomenon is that if
you live in the ghetto, all the hoods will be terrified of your
sweet, harmless border collie because they all figure it's another
kind of pittbull.
\_ Yikes! A close friend has a 6-yr-old female pit bull. Gracie's
the sweetest dog I've ever encountered (during my friend's
divorce, the only point of contention with her husband was
over the dog), but it took *hours* of training & reinforcement
to reign in her baser instincts. Getting a pit bull should be
like buying a handgun, with required background checks,
psychological testing, etc., etc., -elizp
\_ that would be a great analogy if all handguns were required
to run buggy AI software written by Microsoft, which are
connected to the internet and have as a default that they
can be fired by romote users or by the AI on its own in
certain modes.
\_ God, I would hate to see you robbed and beaten. You will probably
then call for genocide of the ... breed in question, no doubt
invoking the 'killer instincts'. -- ilyas
\_ You understand the difference between poor breeding and the
problems in society, right? A bad dog in a good home is still
a bad dog. Or were you just trying to be funny? It can be hard
to tell on the net sometimes.
\_ Did you miss the brilliant 'my dog was attached by a pitbull
therefore all pitbulls must be destroyed' argument in the
original post? -- ilyas
\_ are you saying it's hard to tell funny from stupid on the
motd? |
| 2004/4/16 [Uncategorized] UID:13227 Activity:nil |
4/15 Well, that japenese magnet motor guy made /.
\_ http://csua.com/?entry=13123 |
| 2004/4/16 [Computer/SW/WWW/Browsers] UID:13228 Activity:nil |
4/16 My lynx (non-soda machine) doesn't save cookies, whats up with that? |
| 2004/4/16-17 [Transportation/Car] UID:13229 Activity:nil |
4/16 Anyone know of a good tire balancing place around south bay/SF area?
For some reason my car is pretty sensitive to it and my steering wheel
shakes slightly at 80+ speed. I am fairly certain it's the balace, but
the place I went to does not seem to want to put the effort to iron
out the last bit of imbalance. They just claim the computer says its
balanced. the car is fine at 60mph. thanks.
\_ Is it worse when you hit the brakes? if so, then your brake rotors
might be warped. Also, it's more likely to be your alignment
than your tires being balanced.
\_ alignment can cause shake too? I just recently got an alignment
done at the dealer.
\_ Does the shaking stop at any point beyond 80? I've heard of
something like that happening with some cars, and it wasn't
tire balance, it was something to do with an unbalanced
driveshaft.
\_ no, the faster i go, the more shake i got. smooth roads does help
a bit.
\_ It could also just be that the tires are worn unevenly. Anyway,
I like the service of America's Tire Co. You can find the locations
at http://discounttire.com. They do free rotation and flat repairs as well. |
| 2004/4/16-17 [Academia/Berkeley, Science/Electric] UID:13230 Activity:nil |
4/16 What's the website that lets you see how full classes are? I graduated
a few years ago but need to sign my sister up for her classes (she
\_ RIDE BIKE!
gave me Power of Telebears, similar to Power of Attorney).
\_ daily - http://schedule.berkeley.edu, click the "current enrollment" to
get realtime? from course web system |
| 2004/4/16 [Recreation/Pets] UID:13231 Activity:nil |
4/16 Tom, please stop deleting my dog post. Thanks.
\_ yea, I like the dog post. please stop deleting it!
\_ yeaH, EVEN I didn't read it, please stop deleting!
\_ If tom really is the guy who deletes stuff, I find that interesting,
since tom always comes down on 'anonymous cowards,' but deleting
entries anonymously is in some sense the ultimate anonymous
coward reply to a post. -- ilyas |
| 2004/4/16 [Uncategorized] UID:13232 Activity:nil |
4/16 Drivel is poorly formed thoughts, without context or relevance. An
occasional long post is just fine. -- not the dog guy below.
\_ Not to mention it is somewhat informative. -jrleek
\_ It's a good post, just long. Whoever it is deleting, just frikin'
stop! -- ulysses |
| 2004/4/16-17 [Uncategorized] UID:13233 Activity:nil |
4/16 Any interesting Cal Day events going on tomorrow that are worth
checking out? -- alum
\_ Kind of speaks for itself, eh? When you're white haired and
dragging your wrinkled carcass around campus with your grand kids
in tow, then you'll appreciate some of the special co-ed events
available. Other than that, no. -- other alum |
| 2004/4/16-17 [Computer/SW/Languages/Functional] UID:13234 Activity:high |
4/16 So, here's a question. I'm learning Python, and it seems to me that it
includes a lot of the power of Scheme or Lips, with out the wierdness.
Would Python make a better introduction to CS language than Scheme?
\_ Dunno, why don't you just ask Ping, he taught a 61A style course
in python at Cal. He claims it was good. I still haven't yet
found a good dollar Return on Investment for the time I spent
using scheme. ping's URL : http://zesty.ca/bc/info.html -pst
\_ We had a similar thread on this involving sysadmins. If you
want ROI on your time, get out of CS and leave it to people who
want to be doing it. Go do banking or something. -- ilyas
\_ you seem to be forgetting all about systems. systems people
probably almost never use scheme per se, though granted,
competent ones probably make use of concepts/techniques from
the functional languages.
\_ Did you actually read what my objection was? At any rate,
plenty of 'systems' people use functional languages, if
not necessarily scheme itself. -- ilyas
using scheme. - pst
\_ Read Norvig's essay on python. Languages which don't understand
lisp are forced to reimplement it, badly. I find python a lot
less intuitive than either lisp or scheme. YMMV. -- ilyas
\_ Link? All I could find was Python for Lisp Programmers.
\_ That's the one. It compares python to lisp in various ways.
\_ Link? All I could find was Python for Lisp Programmers.
-- ilyas
\_ Agreed. What's so weird about Scheme? There are almost no
syntax rules in Scheme; the language is very self-consistent and
uniform. Python seems to have a lot of extra, unnecessary
syntactical baggage that doesn't improve language
expressiveness. I also can't understand why Python has such
crippled lambdas. As for the original question about it being
a better intro language than Scheme, until Abelson and Sussman
rewrite SICP to use Python, I'd say no.
\_ Well, yes SICP would be the problem. But imagine we're
in fairy land where SICP is available for EVERY lanugage...
in fairy land where SICP is available for EVERY lanugage...
\_ python sicp: http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy - pst
\_ There's nothing really "weird" about Lisp. I don't understand why
people think Lisp is any "weirder" than Prolog, Eiffel, Modula-2
or any other language. Just because it's not an ALGOG derived
language doesn't mean it's more or less difficult to learn.
-- williamc
\_ Ok, I like prolog, and use it frequently, but even I admit it's
'weird.' It has a whole different programming paradigm all to
itself. -- ilyas
\_ I haven't used it much, but it seems to be a very or perversely
specialized kind of FP.
\_ Prolog is not functional programming, although you can sort
of think of it that way if you squint and don't look too
hard. Prolog programs are statements which are true, and
prolog flow of control is a proof search. I found I
couldn't really grasp prolog by just pretending it's scheme
without parens, you really need to think about statements
and proofs to program prolog well. -- ilyas
\_ You can write in FP so that all your functions return
boolean and the only operator you use is AND with early
termination. And then adjust the eval loop so it takes
falsehood as failure rather than falsehood.
\_ ... and you still wouldn't get prolog. You would
need OR, and cuts, and superlogical features of
prolog like setof. And you would need to implement
the non-local prolog failure (which to do properly
requires non-trivial messing around with exceptions
or continuations). Like I said, you could sort of
do it, but you wouldn't be a very good prolog
programmer. Doing prolog properly in FP would just
entail implementing a prolog interpreter.
Look at
\_ python sicp: http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/thinkCSpy - pst
couldn't really grasp prolog by just pretending it's scheme
without parens, you really need to think about statements
\_ There's nothing really "weird" about Lisp. I don't understand why
people think Lisp is any "weirder" than Prolog, Eiffel, Modula-2
or any other language. Just because it's not an ALGOG derived language
doesn't mean it's more or less difficult to learn. -- williamc
requires non-trivial messing around with exceptions
stuctures is pretty odd. As Norvig points out "Python seems to be
easier to read than Lisp for someone with no experience in
and proofs to program prolog well. -- ilyas
http://www.bushong.net/david/comparisons/powerset.html
or continuations). Like I said, you could sort of
do it, but you wouldn't be a very good prolog
programmer. -- ilyas
\_ Oh, I don't know, the whole pair/cons/list way of building data-
and think about why the prolog is algorithmically so
different from the others. -- ilyas
\_ Oh, I don't know, the whole pair/cons/list way of building data-
either language."
\_ I can agree with that. Lisp's parentheses explosion is not
as easy for me to read anyway. Personally I found Ruby to be
very easy and elegant, although the block-passing syntax
can get a bit odd. It has very easy-to-use classes
\_ Ruby is closer to smalltalk than Python.
\_ Oh, I don't know, the whole pair/cons/list way of building data-
stuctures is pretty odd. As Norvig points out "Python seems to be
easier to read than Lisp for someone with no experience in
either language."
and objects too, unlike scheme. Python's a bit messier but
has the same stuff (Python's "len()" bothers me.)
stuctures is pretty odd. As Norvig points out "Python seems to
be easier to read than Lisp for someone with no experience in
either language."
\_ I can agree with that. Lisp's parentheses explosion is not
as easy for me to read anyway. Personally I found Ruby to be
very easy and elegant, although the block-passing syntax
can get a bit odd. It has very easy-to-use classes
and objects too, unlike scheme. Python's a bit messier but
has the same stuff (Python's "len()" bothers me.)
\_ And processing lists (which is actually very intuitive
for anybody who has taken introductory set theory) is
somehow stranger than processing
while (<>) { if ( $_ ~=/foo/) { s/bar/baz/}}? I don't know
but it took me about 30 minutes to learn scheme, whereas
it took me a solid week to just learn the basics of C,
and another month to do something useful with it.
\_ are you replying to the right person? I mentioned Ruby,
not Perl or C.
\_ Personally, I think Smalltalk, which Python is closely based on,
is better than both Lisp or Python. Lisp has a lot of great things
but the problem is that there is no syntax to the language. The
human has to be the compiler (and, when debugging, the decompiler).
Dylan on the other hand...
\_ Ruby is closer to smalltalk than Python. |
| 2004/4/16-17 [Politics/Domestic/Election] UID:13235 Activity:nil |
4/16 And the scary part is, he's the smart one:
"If the Democratic policies had been pursued over the last two or
three years, the kind of tax increases that both Kerry and Edwards
have talked about, we would not have had the kind of job growth
that we've had." -- Vice President Dick Cheney, on http://pogothemonkey.com
\_ Yep, smarter than you apparently.
\_ He's right; if we'd had the Kerry/Edwards tax plan, we'd've had
less hoarding by the rich and more money in the market, meaning
a significantly higher job growth.
\_ Huh? Who are you replying to, and what are you trying to say?
\_ The point is that most people know that the Bush admin is
the first since Hoover to lose jobs during the term. If
Cheney claims that that is "job growth" it's comical.
\_ And like Hoover they're taking flak for an economy
that couldn't possiably be their fault.
\_ No one is talking about taking flak for an economy.
This is about Cheney believing that job LOSSES is
Job GROWTH. It's really simple.
\_ They're responsible for some part of it, and the
policies chosen to address it. They can't dodge the
deficit.
\_ You know the great depressions depth and length
is largely due to FDR, right? Also, Cheney's
point is that it would have been worse (if
approached in an FDR like fashion.) Not
to meantion, the unemployment rate is pretty
friggin' low.
\_ But implying that Kerry/Edwards policy == FDR is
just flat false, plus referring to "job growth"
when jobs were lost is also false.
\_ I'm just saying that we've seen "tax in
time of need" style econ, and it don't
fly. As for job growth, why does Cheney
have to be refering to exaclty the time
from when Bush took office, and not, say
from the depth of the recession?
\_ "tax in time of need" = red herring
\_ How did FDR prolong the great depression?
\_ "couldn't possiably [sic] be their fault" is extreme
and likely incorrect, with the monetary cost of the
Iraq war and psychological effect on the nation --
and with the increasingly supportable position that
the Iraq war was not necessary.
\_ Ok "couldn't possibly be their fault in a world
where time passes in a linear fashion."
\_ I'm sure you're making a point here, but I
don't understand what you're trying to say.
\_ Sorry, I'm saying: The bad economy
preceeded the Iraq war, and there is no
evidence to show that the economy
was affected by it.
\_ It goes without saying that the Iraq
war had no effect on the economy before
the Iraq war was started.
You are saying there is no evidence
to show that today's economy has been
affected by the Iraq war?
\_ Why do you HATE AMERICA??? |
| 2004/4/16-17 [Computer/SW/Unix] UID:13236 Activity:nil |
4/16 Is there a version of sort that keeps only one copy of identical lines
on the output, or some other cmd that does that?
\_ uniq
\_ sort -u -- op after reading the man page for a 3rd time.
\_ sort -u doesn't exist on all systems. cat foo | sort | uniq
should be universally portable among *nix systems.
\_ so that's why I never knew about sort -u ... -uniq poster
\_ yep. IIRC it was a linux introduced bastardization. I
don't see why they needed to make sort do something that
another ancient program already existed for as if
eliminating "| uniq" was such a great time saver or
radical improvement to the core unix utilities. -tom
\_ sort -u is not a linux bastardization. It has
has been a standard option to sort since System V
and BSD4.1. Steve Bourne mentions it on pgs 193,
194, 196 and 266 (the sort(1) man page) in "The
UNIX System" (1983).
\_ that's easy to discount. both freebsd (e.g., soda) and
solaris offer a sort with -u option.
\- Which unix version doesnt do "sort -u"? I will bet
you this is not a "linux bastardization" ... by which
I assume you mean this is a GNU sort option.
re: "time saver" ... the time being saved isnt the
time to type "|uniq" but the run time. Have you
done any system programming? Why dont you time the
difference between the two on a large data file with
some repeats. Gee why does wc have the -l option?
That is so misleading. Is it so hard to do
grep -n ^ file | sed '$!d' | cut -f1 -d: ? --psb
\_ If I cared about runtimes I wouldn't be using the
default system utilities. Yes, I meant GNU since
sort is obviously not part of the kernel, which we
both know.
\- What would you use if you cared about runtimes?
You can write a faster grep? GNU != linux so
calling it a linux bastardization is 1. stupid
2. wrong. --psb |
| 2004/4/16-17 [Computer/SW/OS/Windows, Computer/SW/Unix] UID:13237 Activity:nil |
4/16 Anyone use 'Speak Freely'. For Unix or Windows? What was your
experience like? |
| 2004/4/16-17 [ERROR, uid:13238, category id '18005#2.31432' has no name! , ] UID:13238 Activity:high |
4/16 So the Air America "bounced check" story turned out be a load of crap.
Drudge is now 0 for 2. Wasn't someone claiming he was "usually right?"
\_ Load of crap? URL? My local communist newspaper has yet to declare
anything but the original AP/Reuters story Drudge linked to. Air
America bounced a check. Where's the update that says otherwise?
\_ http://csua.org/u/6xs (Chicago Tribune article, requires free
registration)
\_ Yes and they're still off the air in LA because they bounced
the LA check for $1m. Thanks for the URL backing my point.
\_ Thanks for not reading the article very closely.
Multicultural pulled the station for unknown reasons.
The "bounced check" story fell apart under the scrutiny
of the court in Chicago, which is why they were ordered
back on the air there, and it surely will be in Los
Angeles.
\_ He quoted someone, the quote was accurate and he attributed it;
so what's wrong with that?
\_ He should have followed up, of course.
\_ Very, very early on he had a link to Air America's web site,
where they presented their side of the story.
\_ I never lie. I always quote someone else who does.
\_ How's that Intern story working out for you guys?
\_ You do realize that you're not necessarily looking at a
representative sample, right?
\_I think someone claimed he had only been wrong once, ever.
\_ Rush Limbaugh repeated the lie:
http://csua.org/u/6xl |
| 2004/4/16-17 [Recreation/Humor] UID:13239 Activity:nil Cat_by:auto |
4/16 Please god make it stop:
http://members.chello.nl/rwestdorp/fun/soundrecorder.swf
\_ That's incredible. I will kill you now. |
| 2004/4/16-17 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:13240 Activity:nil |
4/16 Time To Give Ritter His Due:
http://csua.org/u/6xn
\_ send the twink to Syria and find the WMD
\_ I'm can't find any relevant mention of Ritter on the page but I
enjoyed the message board. Thanks.
\_ Hackworth gives the most honest assessment of the Iraq
situation from the "grunts" point of view that I have
been able to find.
\_ honest assessment? How would *you* know? Have you been there
to compare and evaluate or does "honest" really mean "the guy
who most agrees with my axe grinding opinion"? This clown
says we should put Ritter, a known liar and bribe taker, on
the WMD probe in Iraq because we can count on Ritter to tell
us the truth. Yes, this makes a lot of sense in some
universe.
\_ At LEAST you could have said Ritter was a known sex
pervert. But you just had to use labels ("liar",
\-prevert
"bribe taker") that are not well known at all, if true.
Sounds like a right-wing radical to me!
\_ Go do your own searching for how Ritter made $300k
direct from Saddam's pocket. Your ignorance is not my
problem, it's yours.
\_ Even supposing this is true (and I'm not convinced
by far) if misses one key bit. RITTER TOLD THE
TRUTH. See how that works?
\_ No. There's a subtle but important distinction
between the truth and what Ritter said. Ritter
said what he was told to say which changed
substantially between the last time he was on the
ground in Iraq and when he got $300k in bribes.
The truth is something that doesn't change based
on income. See how that works? The information
is easily available. I'm not going to spoon feed
you things that you can find in seconds that have
been discussed at length on the motd before.
Ritter has zero credibility. There are plenty of
others you could choose from that are actually
honest, not paid off, and consistent in their
words; Ritter is not one of them. He's a fool and
a Hussein pawn at best and a traitor and criminal
at worst. Find a new hero.
\_ whatever his motives, his statement that Iraq
was not a threat to the US has proven to be
true. Well, at least it would have been true
if we didn't go over there like we wanted to
remake "Blackhawk Down" and get ourselves
involved in local politics we don't understand.
\_ His statement? Which statement? The one
before or after he got bribed by Hussein?
It's almost sad how you completely miss and
seem to intentionally ignored this key
point. Ritter is on record with multiple
statements regarding Iraqi WMD. That's a
fact. He was paid ~$300k by Hussein after
he left Iraq: fact. His statements
regarding Iraqi WMD changed after he was
paid off: fact. You need to find a new
hero. There are many honorable men and
women, both foreign and domestic who agree
with your agenda who have impeccable
reputations and whom I and others hold in
the highest regard. Ritter is not nor ever
will be one of those. Your feeble attempt
to change the subject to anti-Bush rantings
about his cowboy approach to the world are
irrelevent and ignored. |
| 2004/4/16-17 [Computer/SW/Languages/C_Cplusplus] UID:13241 Activity:nil |
4/16 What C++ programs out there (with source code freely available) do you
guys think are particularly well-written, elegant, etc.? That is, what
would you read to improve your understanding of what constitutes good
C++ code? Thanks.
\_ Anything not written by M$.
\_ LEDA
\_ the source doesn't seem to be freely available for that one.
at least, not if those hoops i see over there are for jumping
through. |
| 5/19 |