10/29   I fully expect this to make the front page of the NYtimes
        for the next few days
        EXPERT TELLS OF DESTROYING MOST OF SADDAM'S CACHE
        http://www.nypost.com/news/worldnews/31351.htm
        \_ If you watched CNN between 9-11pm tonight, you would find that
           CNN emphasized the part where both the Army guy and the Pentagon
           spokesperson said "I don't know" to whether any of what he exploded
           were the IAEA-secured explosives in question.  Aaron Brown and Paula
           Zahn both kept pounding this point.

10/30   You know, after watching the Bin Laden video, I couldn't help it
        thinking... wow, he's a pretty calm, intelligent guy with a pretty
        clear message, unlike our Chimp in Chief who loses temper and can't
        even speak English and construct clear ideas.
        \_ You're nuts or a troll.  OBL is a lunatic.
           \_ I don't think he's a lunatic in the sense of being a frothing
              at the mouth, raving mad kind of lunatic. I think he probably
              does have an understandable beef with the US, and he's not
              trying to be a terrorist just for the hell of it. Of course,
              his decision to take it as far as actively plotting to and
              then actually killing people is presumably what you think
              makes him a lunatic, but I think it's a rational and considered
              move, albeit one I disagree with.
              \_ I don't think it's rational in that it will ultimately prove
                 counterproductive to his cause.  Attacking the US historically
                 had not proven itself to be a smart thing to do. -- ilyas
                 \_ well the US gov historically does not negociate, period,
                    leaving the poor ppl with no choice but to resort to
                    terrorism.
                    \_ US should negotiate with whom?  For what?  What do you
                       mean 'no choice?'  Are you trolling? -- ilyas
             \_ Well he wants Islamic theocracy and thinks the USA stands in
                the way of that (which it does). His methods are rational in
                that desiring to achieve his goals by force they're probably
                the only possibility. But his goals are insane and evil.

10/29   Well, so much for the OBL tape having any big effect on the polls.
        http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=917
        \_ The tape only came out yesterday afternoon.  The effect of anything
           on the polls takes more than 8 hours in either direction.  The tape
           is also not the only thing going on.  Be realistic.
        \_ it has very little effect on the Christians because they do not
           listen to what's going on in the world (killing in Iraq, OBL,
           etc). They'll vote for the God chosen GWB no matter what.

10/30   There's a lot of interesting stuff in here about internal Jewish
        division and Israel politics and their relationship with Hamas.
        http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=3972
        \_ This is pretty frothing-at-the-mouth stuff.
           \_ What?  Did you read it?  Read the Hamas quotes.  What is frothing?
           \_ It's an international jewish conspiracy to kill jews!

10/29   More BushCo incompetence.  Enough other unsecured high explosives
        left sitting around to be looted to make 10s of thousands of roadside
        bombs.  How many more smoking guns will it take to get this chimp out
        of office?  4 more days!
        http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/10/30/international1256EDT0534.DTL
        \_ Oh yeah, it was far more important to get these french,
           russian explosives than it was to look for WMDs.
           \_ This is what I don't get.  HDX/RMX can be used as the compressor
              in a nuclear device.  The IAEA told us those stocks were still
              there under their seal.  Why wouldn't al qa qaa be one of the
              first locations secured?  This really seems like the highest of
              incompetencies.  How can you excuse it away?

10/30   Why is my twireless reception so bad?  Could it be the phone or is
        twireless just worthless around here?

10/30   http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,137163,00.html
        Bush over Kerry by 2 points, Kerry is fucked despite help
        from Clinton and OBL.
        \_ A Fox poll of Fox viewers thinks Bush will win?  That's insane.
           \_ No you moron.  An Opinion Dynamics poll.  Similar to ABC polls,
              etc.  however 2 points in one poll (inside margin of error)
              doesn't matter.  Basically it's a tie in many states and we won't
              really know until Tuesday (or Tuesday + a few weeks) who the
              winner will be.
              \_ *shrug*  Zogby (who nailed 2000, and has a very good track
                 record) puts Kerry up by 1 in a 3 day tracking poll.  Polls are
                 a useful tool, but you have to remember 1) the pollster may
                 be biased,and 2) polls are very coarse tools.   -mice
                 \_ Polls are not useful in this election, given that we know
                    it will be very close. -- ilyas
                    \_ Well, yeah -- I thought that was rather obvious from
                       the context, but thanks for clarifying.   -mice
                       \_ sheesh, sorry. -- ilyas
                 \_ Um, no.  Zogby did not nail 2000, according to the records
                    I've seen (multiple places).  Are you going to back that
                    claim up?
                    \_ Okay, you got me: He predicted Gore would win.  I think
                       I was meaning the popular vote.  You can google that
                       and find scads of links.  My bad.   -mice
                       \_ Last I checked Zogby polling at this time (a few days
                          before the election 2000) had Bush ahead in the
                          popular vote.
                 \_ 1) Yes and you can't ever know in which direction, 2) yes.
                    As far as Zogby goes, he did well in 1996 and "ok" in
                    2000.  However, in 2000, the other pollsters stopped
                    polling before the weekend when the DUI claims were made
                    so of course their polls don't catch that.  Zogby
                    continued polling through that period.  His numbers were
                    similar to everyone else's pre-DUI Surprise.  In 2002, his
                    predictions simply sucked.  He may or may not know WTF
                    he's talking about this time.  The likely voter numbers
                    are the most random ones between pollsters because they're
                    all using very different models to determine who is likely
                    to vote or not.  You, me, Zogby, and everyone else can
                    make a guess, but no one really knows and *can't* know,
                    that's why we have an actual election and don't just ask
                    some pollsters to pick the President.
                    \_ Good point.  Of course, if I was willing to let a
                       (potentially biased and coarse) pollster decide my
                       vote for me, I'd deserve to be shot.     -mice

10/30   http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=31&aid=73550
        ilyas, I guess next time just report aaron to the FBI.
        \_ Why does this story get so much milage?  The girl didn't just
           say "some things."  She said she wished someone would kill
           president Bush. ANY THREAT AGAINST THE PRESIDENT IS
           INVESTIGATED BY THE SECRET SERVICE. This has been true since it
           was made law in 1917!  Get over it!
           PS. and yes, if aaron says he wants to kill the president, he
           should be visited by the Secret Service as well.
           \_ No Bush = Hitler, Mao, and Stalin all rolled into one
                \_ You forgot Genghis Kahn, Lenin, George III,
                   Dr. Claw and Cobra Commander!
              \_ Yeah, Bush has killed 60 million people (that's the lowest
                 estimate for those 3 combined) Keep thinking this way,
                 it'll help with your therapy.

10/30   Moving to North Berkeley in a few weeks. Can anyone recommend a DSL
        or other high-speed provider? I'd like to do VOIP for phone,
        so I don't want to use PacBell (since it's expensive to get
        just DSL as opposed to DSL/phone).
        \_ If you sign up for Comcast Cable Modem it does NOT require you
           to sign up for TV cable.. you can buy one without the other. Also
           if you decide to get DSL you can sign up for Speakeasy (as well
           as a couple other providers) who will now provide DSL w/o you
           having phone service. It costs like $5 more but is avaiable. -shac
        \_ Comcast worked great when I lived there a year ago.
           \_ Does that require cable? I'd prefer not to get cable.
              \_ What price point were you expecting?
                 \_ My PacBell DSL right now is $26.95/mo. But I think that
                    requires I subscribe to their phone service too.
                    \_ No surprise. Well, here's one thing you can do.
                       Comcast has like a 24.95 deal for 3 months right now
                       (I think, or anyway, whatever their promotion is).
                       You can sign up for that, and then cancel. At least
                       in my experience, when you cancel, just act like
                       the reason you're cancelling is that, while you like
                       the service, you're poor or something and can't afford
                       their $59.99 a month regular price. They might continue
                       your promotion for a few more months. I got service
                       at $19.99 a month for a year doing that, but after a
                       point, they'll tell you that that's the last extension
                       they can offer you.
            \_ So you don't want cable, and don't want phone? I guess you'll
               have to get your internet access through the air. good luck.
               \_ Can someone like Speakeasy or Earthlink give you DSL even
                  if you don't have a phone? (They offer DSL; just not sure
                  if a telephone has to be enabled.)

10/30   In Java, how would classes in named packages use classes in
        unnamed packages? I'd like to do "import default" or "import unnamed"
        or something to that effect but it's not working. -ok thx

10/30   How hard would it be to fake something like the recent Bin Laden tape?
        Every time something like this happens, un-named "experts" declare it
        to be authentic or not, but how hard would it be with modern computer
        video equipment to fool people?  It seems odd to me that the media
        downplay this possibility.  I'm asking this as a *technical* question,
        not as some conspiracy theory question about what really happened  in
        this case.
        \_ So you agree with Walter Cronkite that Karl Rove is somehow
           involved in the creation and/or release of the OBL tape?
        \_ It's possible to fake things to arbitrary fidelity with enough
           money.  The technology is there.  Modern CGI is very powerful.
           -- ilyas
           \_ ok, that's interesting.  Does such technology exist anywhere
              outside hollywood?  Could a bunch of people with a lot of money
              in, say, Pakistan do something like this from scratch?
              \_ It is serious tinfoil hat territory to think that an OBL tape
                 would be faked with CGI.  If Pakistan were to try to fake it,
                 they would get a look-alike.  -tom
                 \_ I agree 100%.  The question is whether it's *possible*
                    technically for someone outside of hollywood to do this
                    convincingly.
                    \_ Tom is wrong.  It's true that no one will bother to
                       spend the money in practice, but the feat is not
                       technically out of reach.  Consider ff the movie.
                       They had essentially photorealistic quality, but the
                       faces/bodies moved in ... odd ways.  That movie was
                       a while ago, and it wasn't better then because square
                       had a fixed budget.  If a government commissioned a
                       fully photorealistic clip of someone, money being no
                       object, it would be done.  The entire clip would be
                       special cased, there would be an army of 'animators'
                       involved, the tag might run in the billions, but it
                       could be done.  The bottleneck is not the technology
                       but how far people are willing to go.  Ask any
                       graphics/vision guy. -- ilyas
                       graphics/vision guy.  Tom also needs help with reading
                       comprehension, as he seems to be answering a tinfoil
                       question, which op explicitly said he was not asking.
                         -- ilyas
                       \_ FF was *not* photorealistic.  It would be obvious to
                          anyone looking at it that those faces were animated.
                          It was an impressive feat, but one which would fool
                          only an audience willing to suspend its disbelief.
                          Humans are *very* picky about what we will accept
                          in terms of facial appearance and movement.  -tom
                          \_ FF faces certainly did not _move_ in a
                             photorealistic way, but the stills were quite
                             believable faces.  Anyways, I still think what
                             I said is possible with enough money.  -- ilyas
                             \_ yeah, if you just put billions of dollars into
                                inventing new technologies, in 10 or 15 years
                                you might be able to achieve the same thing as
                                $10K in plastic surgery.  And then you can
                                spend another 20 years working on generating
                                a plausible computer-generated voice that
                                sounds like a particular person.  Christ,
                                you're an idiot.  -tom
                                \_ So, John, how many examples do you need?
                                    -- ilyas
                                   \_ Well, I wouldn't call people names, but
                                      I don't know who's right or wrong, so
                                      I'll pass :-)  -John
                                   \_ examples of what?  you setting up a
                                      strawman that's totally unrelated to
                                      the original question?  There's no
                                      shortage of those.  -tom
                          \_ FF?  The Final Fantasy movie with the weird story
                             line about ghosts from an alien world on Earth?
                             Their big claim to fame was getting the character
                             hair to look right which I think they got 99%.
                             If someone is saying FF had photo realistic faces
                             then sorry, I'm with tom on this one.  They did
                             good facial expressions but not good faces if that
                             makes any sense.
                       \_ I wonder if you took FF-quality CGI actors, and then
                          ran the video through filters to degrade it to VHS
                          quality, if it would look a lot more realistic
                          because the small errors get blurred out.
                       \_ You're an idiot.  All of the movement was
                          motion-captured.
                          \_ Uh, so?  Why is that not a valid technique?
                    \_ With CGI?  No.  Nor in Hollywood.  -tom

10/30   Dear Secret Service Men who monitors motd, aaron@csua.berkeley
        says bad things about Bush and talks about killing and sodomizing
        him. Please visit aaron ASAP before something really happens.
        Thanks.                    -a concenred Patriotic conservative
        \_ hi ilyas
           \_ bullshit.  "men who monitors?" Ilyas at least speaks English.

10/30   A battery on Edward's plane exploded 10 min after take off,
        catching a seat on fire and filling the cabin with smoke.
        This incident was the second this month on Edwards' campaign
        plane. I tell ya, Republicans did it!
        http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/10/30/election.main/index.html

10/30   Prediction for the week of November 3-- there will be riots, lots of
        riots and we will not know who the president is until next year.
        \_ dude, just let Bush win. Let him handle 4 more years of mess.
           Let him fuck up so that there will be less ultra
           right wing religiously close minded fanatics in 2008.
           \_ I really doubt 4 more years of a bush administration will lead
              to fewer religiously closed-minded right-wingnuts.  What are you
              smoking?
              \_ A useful question to ask is what *would* lead to fewer people
                 following extremist religious ideology?  We need to solve this
                 problem in more than one country right now.  Electing leaders
                 that the wingnuts hate does not help.  So what does?
                 \_ Electing muslim wingnuts would help.  You are framing
                    the problem incorrectly. -- ilyas