12/8    Is it known who would replace Rehnquist when he dies? Would
        a current justice become chief and a new justice appointed,
        or would they appoint a new chief justice directly?
        \- the president could do either. rhenquist would probably resign
           before dying. even thurgood marshall resigned inspite of saying
           "i was appointed to a life sentence and i intend to serve it".
           if the chief is out of comission for a while, the senior justice,
           john paul stevens, would assume some responsibilities. oconnor
           would be a fine chief but is probably too close to retiring herself.
           people keep talking about scalia being elevated, which seems crazy
           to me, but that certainly hasnt stopped bushco. even worse would
           be putting ashcroft on the supct. the other people being discussed
           you would probably not be familiar with unless you follow this
           closely. --psb
           \_ http://www.theonion.com/opinion/index.php?issue=4049
        \_ Bush will probably nominate Posner (7th Circuit) for the the
           vacancy rather than promote any of the existing justices.
           \- Posner would be cool. Easterbrook would be ok. But the names
              I've been hearing more are nutjobs. Where did you hear the
              Posner rumor? Posner wrote some well publicized stuff on
              intelligence reform and is very much the opposite of a
              stealth justice, so that may alienate some right wing
              support. i think the democrats may go for him because
              he is not totally crazy, and in this climate he looks
              pretty good. --psb
                \_ Not sure where I heard the Posner rumor, but he
                   seems like the best overall choice to take over
                   as CJ b/c (1) he is widely regarded as the
                   smartest judge in the federal judiciary (sort of
                   like a modern Cardozo or Holmes), (2) he would
                   face the least opposition in the senate, (3) the
                   rest of the USSC would likely accept him as CJ
                   w/o reservations.
                   Easterbrook (also 7th Circuit) would probably
                   not be as easy a nomination b/c he has made
                   some crazy decisions in the past.
                   \-i was suggesting resistance to posner would come
                       from the right, not the left. "best choice" !=
                       "likely bush nominee"...q.v. bush41 & "clarence thomas,
                       the best qualified man for the job" --psb
                        \_ Just to keep the record straight, C.T. was chosen
                           only after a qualified justice was rejected by the
                           congress.
                           \_ Who?
        \_ just chedked out the bios of the justices online, they all either
           went to harvard law or stanford law. what, are those schools
           that much better than all other law schools? or is this also a
           good ol' boys club?
           \_ Yes, we need one from Boalt.  And I know the perfect guy:
              (future) Supreme Court Chief Justice John C. Yoo!
              (and Dubya's future new favorite justice)
              Both Yoo and Thomas strictly interpret the Constitution, not
              legislate from the bench! </troll>
           \_ You are not seriously this naive, are you?
                \_ I realize its kind of a naive question but it is an
                   interesting observation still to me. and I wasn't
                   implying that someone from boalt should be chosen.

12/9    Would you fly into space if you had a 5% chance of dying?
        \_ Why?  I don't understand why people would want to go to space
           under the current circumstances(no ftl travel, no inhabitable
           planets, no space stations with any real life or industry.)
           I can see the excitement of space *science*, done by robots,
           but I just don't get the appeal of being the monkey in the can.
           \_ It's an experience that few people in history have had. You
              obviously have no sense of adventure.
           \_ Yeah there's not much up there anyway. I mean, it's called space
              for a reason. If they get a moon base I'd want to go there.
        \_ http://zoom.cafepress.com/6/1540286_zoom.jpg
           \_ where can i get this shirt?
              \_ http://tinyurl.com/6m6jp
        \_ driving is?
           \_ ...not very useful for getting into orbit.  Just so ya know.
           \_ Apples to oranges...
        \_ 5% per trip
        \_ once?  sure!  20 times?  uhhhh.... no.
        \_ If I'm single and the trip is free, maybe.
        \_ depends on what that 5% is.  probably yes, though   -sax
           \_ Wow, you are crazy. -- ilyas
        \_ Hell yeah! When do we go?
        \_ What's this 5% based on?  If number of fatal missions out of total
           missions flown, then this is somewhat misleading; cf. the number
           of fatal flights out of total flights flown versus number of fatal
           flights this year out of total flights this year for air travel
           safety parallels.
           \_ I don't think it's based on anything.  You're reading far too
              deeply into a hypothetical question.  You're not very fun at
              parties, are you?
              \_ Feh.  This is what you do for fun at parties?  Dinner parties,
                 perhaps, but odds are good you spend a lot of time getting
                 pantsed at keggers.
                 \_ I think you just proved my point about not being fun at
                    parties, Mr Painfully-Literal Dorkboy.  Train harder,
                    grasshopper.
           \_ actually, it is more like 2%:
      http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2003/030204-space01.htm
              http://tinyurl.com/46g4g (global security)
        \_ Every man dies, few men truly live.
           \_ Every man lives. Few men win the lottery.
              \-at 5% i'd go. however i dont think i'd pay $5000
                for a day in orbit. if you guys would subsidize
                to bring the out of pocket costs to say $2500,
                i'd go. probably if you die, you die pretty fast.
                i think the odds of a horrible death are lower.
                i probably wouldnt tell my mom until i got back
                however. in case you are interested, in about
                50yrs of everest climbing, <1500 summiteers, >150 deaths
                on the mountain. peak fee i believe is $USD 18,000.
                my guess is, the moment you cross 7000meters you have
                more than a 2% chance of dying in the next 48hrs ...
                although maybe i am underestimating the number of
                deaths in the Khumbu Ice Fall. --psb
                \_ Yeah, but on Everest, your intestines don't bubble out
                   of your eyes while your skin explodes and your lungs turn
                   to jelly, just before the space monster comes and eats
                   you.  -John

12/9    Garriage in Canada: http://tinyurl.com/4w7bo

12/9    link:tinyurl.com/4fl33
        Banner program, very appropriate...

12/9    Use of a laptop might interfere with male fertility (not
        that procreation is a big issue for the average motd reader):
        http://tinyurl.com/6v84t

12/9    It seems like my socket application is more prone to zombie sockets
        (dead connections that the program thinks are still alive) than
        general network applications.  How does the good stuff handle
        a connection that dies suddenly without notice?  Is it detecting
        something out of band, or what?  tia.
        \_ By default TCP sockets are held open for quite a while after
           being closed just in case.  This is true even after a program
           exits.  There is a way you can set a socket to close instantly
           but I forget what it is.  Hint, pick up the Stevens TCP/IP book
           and read it.  It is very readable and you will learn a hell of
           a lot.  You shouldn't even think about writing a program that
           does networking without understanding the basics.
        \_ Not sure this is the right/best way but I've used select/poll
           with a short timeout. If the socket was not readable within
           the timeout, then I would close the connection. Other things
           to do are to look at errno after a read/write and to have a
           signal handler for SIGPIPE.

12/9    I have an existing, not checked out file that is newer than
        the latest file in the rcs repository.  Is there a flag I
        can give to 'ci' that just checks it in, or a flag I can
        give to 'co' to *just* create a lock without overwriting
        the file.  I want to avoid:  cp file file.tmp; co -l file;
        mv file.tmp file; ci -u file
        \_ rcs -l file

12/9    What does the Sig in Sig Heil mean? I can't find it on Babel, ok thx
        \_ 'Sieg' misspelled.
           \_ "Sieg Heil" means "Hail Victory", right?

12/9
                       \_ Uh huh.  If it's so damn tiring, then don't post to
                          motd -- a simple solution for a simple problem.  I'm
                          surprised you haven't figured it out yet, son.  Pot,
                          Kettle, black, etc?
                          \_Okay.  Thread nuked.
                 \_ Are you angry about your past relationship(s)?
              \_ Sort of.  "Heil" means "well-being" (also "intact" or
                 "healthy").  I think it's originally a literal translation
                 of an Italian fascist greeting itself taken from the
                 Roman "ave" (Partha?)  Most nazi shit like that doesn't make
                       \- "Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale."
                                               --Catullus
                 sense, if you think about it--that's why they lost.  -John
                 \_ uh...They lost because they abused the German language?
                    I hope those rules of winning/losing don't apply to
                    the English language or we may be in for a big loss.
                    \_ The weird pseudo-religious obsession with teutonic
                       mythology, over-investment in wonder weapons, very odd
                       racial "science" and some other minor quirks helped.
                       \_Poor use of language: check
                         Religious obsession: check
                         Over-investment in wonder weapons: check
                         Pseudo-science: check
                         We're on our way! Woo-hoo!
                         \_ Hitler had a wonderful use of language (poor
                            writing ability though). -- ilyas
                         \_ Hitler used language very well, he just
                            wrote poorly. -- ilyas
                         \_ You're missing the "snappy dresser" element:
                            link:tinyurl.com/3ujpy  vs.
                            link:tinyurl.com/6ruxf
                            You can't be an evil tyranny if your supremo looks
                            like a schlub surrounded by a bunch of pimply
                            semi-literate goons.  -John
                            \_  I'll be damned.  So dressing like a slob is
                                all that's saving us from tyranny?  Now I know
                                the real reason all those fuckers in jesusland
                                fear homosexuals.  And I thought they were just
                                bigoted assholes.
                                \_ That, and the goons.  Oh, and the Hun
                                   had better evil militaristic tyranny
                                   music.  Compare and contrast:
                                   link:tinyurl.com/69hyd vs.
                                   http://tinyurl.com/3okp6  (you may want to
                                   consider not blasting Boche marching tunes
                                   at work.)  -John
                    \_ According to Dave Barry, the importance of good grammar
                       can be overstated.
                 \_ You mean like 'hale' in english? -- ilyas
                    \_ For what it's worth, this is where the English "hail"
                       comes from as well.  --mconst
                    \_ Same basic idea and word root, but I don't think the
                       concept translates very well.  Like "waidmann's heil"
                       is an old saying to wish someone health/luck/success.
                    \_ Hale Dubya, my Leader!
                    \_ What is with all the abuse of my last name?  You are all
                       meanies! -phale

12/9    I find XP's sorting of active applications bad (the order when you
        press alt-tab), is there any way to adjust this behavior? I constantly
        find applicatiosn I just used at the end of the fucking list.
        \_ Try alt-shift-tab (move backwards/leftwards in the alt-tab list)
        \_ It's not "bad" it's just not what you want.  If you minimize an app,
           it goes to the end.
           \_ I'm guessing you're an engineer or sys admin unfamiliar with
              the concept of "reasonable defaults".
              \_ Where "reasonable defaults" is defined as "read my mind?"
                 Yeah, I'm familiar with dumbfucks like you.
                 \_ By your hostile tone, I'd guess your answer to be 'yes'.
                 \_ Are you angry about your past relationship(s)?

12/9    c++ question: is this supposed to trigger a catch?  Or do I
        have to explicitly throw an exception for there to be something
        to be catch'ed?  My own testing shows that it doesn't throw
        any exception on its own, not sure if I'm doing something wrong.

        try {
                ....
                char*c = new char[1000000000];
                strcpy(c,"blahblahblah.....");
                ...
        }
        catch (...)
        {
                cout << "Out of memory or null ptr exception?" << endl;
        }
        \_ g++-compiled programs will automatically throw an exception;
           VC6, no.
           \_ VC6 was released before the C++ standard was ratified.  In the
              standard, when new fails, it throws an exception.
           \_ Ah, I'm using Watcom C, which probably isn't up-to-date on the
              recent standard changes.  Thanks! -op
              \_ Uh, the standard was ratified in 1998 IIRC.  Not exactly
                 recent.  However, many compilers allow 'nothrow' by default
                 for backwards compatibility.
                 \_ By compiler standards 1998 is probably still "the future".
                    \_ Actually, are there ANY C++ compilers that are
                       fully compliant with the standard?  I remember
                       there weren't when I checked a year ago.
                       \_ You were wrong then.  Comeau C++ has been compliant
                          for at least a year (using the EDG frontend).  MS C++
                          7.1 (.Net 2003) is very compliant, missing only
                          export and exception specs.

12/9    Hale my Leader Dubya!
        link:csua.org/u/a9h (Yahoo! photo)
        http://www.farshot.com/images/stories/Articles/george_bush_fly_web.jpg

12/9    What is the option for gcc to allow C++ style comments for
        C files? -TIA
        \_ They're allowed by default.  You can disable them with -ansi, if
           you want.  --mconst
           \_ oh. the wind river gcc must have -ansi on by default.

12/9    "...troops would funnel Fallujans to so-called citizen processing
        centers on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their
        identities through DNA testing and retina scans. Residents would
        receive badges displaying their home addresses that they must wear at
        all times. Buses would ferry them into the city, where cars, the
        deadliest tool of suicide bombers, would be banned."
        http://csua.org/u/a9s (boston.com)
        Hmm...required to wear badges.  Remind anybody of anything?
        \_ at least they pay a flat tax
        \_ Well, it's not like the Fallujans are missing anything.
           It was much worse under Saddam. Anyway, Mr. Liberal Troll,
           do you actually have a point? See, the problem with you is
           that you say "blah blah blah, U.S. is acting very badly
           in Iraq." But the problem is that Iraq was much worse
           during Saddam, so your argument doesn't hold. It's like
           like saying "Oh, the Americans are evil because they
           interred the Japanese." Well, the Japanese killed over 8
           million Chinese, so out goes your argument.
           I mean, seriously, are you brain damaged?
           \_ damn. There's that argument again.  At least we're not as
              bad as Saddam.
              \_ I think it's the same guy.  His knee likes to jerk.
                 \_ He also doesn't seem to understand that people of a non-
                    liberal bent can disgree with him, too.  Poor fellow.
           \_ let me explain why you might be brain damaged instead, ok?
              suppose you're a civilized human being, which implies that
              you must not exude offensive smell.  if you go around saying
              "i don't smell like shit. i smell a little bit better than
              shit," you're not going to get people to say "oh yeah, you do
              smell good." now, here's the tricky part. think of this, except
              replace smelling like shit with "acting like a nazzi". And see
              if the little lightbulb in your head lights up. ok?
              \_ Let's imagine this situation.  Say a bunch of people in
                 Compton, CA, decided to stop killing each other, organize,
                 and start regularly setting off bombs in major metropolitan
                 areas in the US.
                 Now what do you suppose the appropriate course of action is,
                 for the US gvt?  (No acting like Nazis now!)

12/9    I have a "friend" who needs to convert ~100 .bmp images to jpg.
        Is there a free Windows program that can do this in some kind
        of batch job?
        \_ irfanview
        \_ ImageMagick for Windows
           \_ imagemagick rocks - available also as part of the cygwin
              package.
        \_ Why do you need to quote "friend"? I mean is it a 'friend'?
           \- it is for my drug dealer; but i get a discount aka
              friend price.
           \_ Don't ask questions like that. Explaining it kills it.
              \_ It's probably the same guy that didn't get the 5% question
                 yesterday.
           \_ could be a former coworker, someone you don't hang out
              with outside of work and don't really know outside of
              a former job.
              \_ that's an associate, not a "friend"
                           \_ not all of us got a 500 on the vocab
                              section of the GRE
                              \- big up yourself.

12/9    I've heard a lot of talk about stuff like "Cal got jobbed" and
        stuff about football.  What happened?
        \_ Cal football has had a great season, 10 wins, 1 loss, and that
           loss to top-ranked USC in LA by 6 points. Cal is ranked 4th in
           the country currently by both the sportswriters and the coaches.
           Traditionally, the Pac-10 champion (Cal is in the Pac-10, a
           conference of 10 west coast schools) goes to the Rose Bowl to play
           a final game on Jan 1. The Rose Bowl is part of a 4-bowl coalition
           called the Bowl Championship Series (BCS). This year the top two
           teams from college football will play in the BCS championship game
           in Miami in the Orange Bowl. Thus Cal could go to the Rose Bowl, a
           goal of long desire for Cal fans (who haven't been since 1959).
           The Rose Bowl also wanted Cal to preserve its traditional matchup.
           However, Cal was not selected by the BCS because in the final BCS
           rankings (involving computer, coaches, and sportswriters polls),
           Texas barely passed Cal, and Texas got an automatic BCS bid because
           of their final 4th-place finish. Thus Cal was left out of the BCS.
           Many feel that the extra votes that Texas got in the last week
           that made the difference were the result of Texas allies among the
           sportswriters and coaches, and also the Texas coach's campaign for
           votes vs. Cal's non-campaigning and non-running-up-the-score.

12/9    What interesting activities could I undertake in Las Vegas
        other than gambling, or going to strip or comedy clubs?
        I'll be staying there for one weekend with a car.
        \_ Rent a MP-5 full auto. http://www.thegunstorelasvegas.com
           or a SAW
        \_ There are some good art exhibits, like the Guggenheim. There
           are great restaurants. There is great shopping. You could go
           to Red Rocks or the Hoover Dam. You could go to a dance club.
           Then there are things like the Star Trek Experience and
           whatever the convention du jour is. You cannot possibly be
           bored in Las Vegas, even if you do not gamble.
           \_ Its hard to do anything cheap in Vegas, since everything
              costs money.
        \_ last time I went there I spent a lot of time doing statistics
           on Keno, Chug-A-Luck, Craps, etc. I even brought my lap-top
           to program simulations and run them to verify the house
           edge, etc. Doing statistics and simulating programs for
           verification is a lot of fun, and it cost me nothing.

12/9    Has anyone had experience with using a file under NFS as basically
        a region of memory shared between separate machines? I.e., the
        machines lock the file and read/write it to communicate. Speed is
        not a huge concern, but can this be done reliably? Are there
        caching issues? Will fsync work properly over NFS? This doesn't
        seem ideal, but thanks for any advice.
        \- you may be interested in RDMA, which is something i am intrested in.
           however, here this issue is speed and offloading from the processor.
           if you are interested, you can send me a note, however i am a little
           busy these days so i may not have a lot of time to discuss.
           jeff mogul's paper on tcp offloading has some decent references
           for background. --psb
        \_ for extra bonus points, use mmap() to get a truly shared memory
           region over the network.
        \_ I've done something like this before. If you are not on the
           same switch (best to make a vlan w/ just two machines) you
           may have problems. If nfsd is setup to do caching you might
           run into issues. You will most likely have problems between
           Linux (b/c linux nfs sux) and any other os. Try and stick to
           Solaris and FreeBSD (or MacOS X) if you really want this to
           work. BTW, why are you even thinking about this?
           \- oh it finally ocurrs to me what you are trying to do ...
              you are trying to use a file as a way of talking between
              processes ... in this case the processes are on different
              machines and the file happens to be nfs mounted. oh jesus.
           \_ Sucks as of when? I know Linux NFS used to be pretty bad, but
              I've heard it has improved a lot in recent years. Does anyone
              know of other approaches used successfully in distributed
              processing sort of applications (yes, I will STFW, but
              corroboration is nice too)? It needs to be portable
              across modern Unixes, and be able to handle moderate lock
              contention (say, up to a couple hundred or so processes
              vying for the lock -- essentially, the shared data is just
              a job number though, so it's pretty small). Thanks. -op
              \_ Have you looked at MPI or PVM?   -tom
                                    \- MPI (MPICH, LAM/MPI) is the standard.
                                       Get with the program. You could use
                                       JavaSpaces. I think you get a free
                                       "I am an idiot" tshirt with every
                                       download. --psb
              \_ Linux NFS has sucked and continues to suck, even with
                 2.6 kernel (esp. if you stick to a kernel that comes
                 with RH or SuSE, b/c you want support &c.).  I have
                 to deal with Linux NFS on almost a daily basis b/c
                 we have a unified Jumpstart/KickStart/AutoYAST server
                 as part of our product and whenever anyone tries to
                 boot systems (more than 1) using NFS, Linux starts
                 having problems with NFS (both userland and kernel
                 nfs have problems).
                 NFS v3 has problems talking to most other NFS v3
                 implementations. You will start seeing weird file
                 corruption, hanging mounts, blocking reads and stuff
                 after a while.  You could try NFS v2, but Linux has
                 problems doing TCP and NFS v2, and for this sort of
                 thing you really want TCP.
                 If you are trying to do some sort of parallel clustering
                 thing, take a look at something like GridWare.
                 [ Sorry, if it sounds like I'm babbling, but I just
                   got done with a 3+ hr final and I'm a bit tired ]
                   \- nfsv4 opensrc implementation is being mainly done
                      on linux by umich/citi which has some pretty clever
                      folks so the v4 implementation may be bounded non-ass.
                      the connectathon results look decent. by "bounded"
                      i mean "as good as something can be on AssOS". --psb
                        \_ I agree that NFSv4 will probably be pretty
                           good, but AFAIK only Linux and Solaris 10
                           have a working version right now and he
                           said modern Unices by which I assumed he
                           ment stuff like HPUX 10, 11, AIX [4?],
                           FreeBSD 4.x-5.3, Linux 2.[2-6], Solaris
                           2.6-10 and MacOS X (NetBSD and OpenBSD
                           don't make my list b/c hardly anyone
                           uses them for general purpose stuff).
                           \- i think there are some connectathon
                              summaries from about a month ago on
                              one of the citi WEEB sites ... nothing
                              dramatic there but if you are really
                              interested in the details about the
                              state of affairs.
                \_ Why on the same switch/VLAN? Any idea why that makes
                   a difference?
                   \_ [ It was been a little while, so take this with
                        a grain of salt ]
                      The switch has to forward all broadcast traffic
                      to every port active port on a VLAN.  By default
                      every system plugged into the switch is on the
                      same default VLAN (1 for Cisco, iirc). If you
                      have lots of other machines on the same switch
                      a the two systems that are using NFS, then the
                      extra broadcast traffic can affect your network
                      performance. By making a separate VLAN you are
                      removing this potential problem.
                      \_ What does NFS have to do with broadcast traffic?

12/9    I good overview of what has been happening in Ukraine during the
        last month:
        http://www.exile.ru/2004-December-10/feature_story.html