2/4     2:21AM According to my script, in the past 24 hours, ilyas locked
        /etc/motd.public 51 times, ecchang 29 times, and erickred 15 times.
        Congratulations motd warriors!
        \_ ....must....troll....harder....
        \_ Must script harder. Apart from leaving a more process running, I
           haven't touched motd.public in 48 hours. --erikred
           \_ All of the motd is really me talking to myself, anyways,
              if the spy scripting community is to be believed. -- ilyas
              \_ This sounds like the ending of a bad novel.  "But in the
                 end, the motd was all just inside ilyas' head...."
                 \_ on the motd/ilyas head, no one can hear you scream...

2/4     Gays w/ Guns in SF:
        http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/02/03/BAGMTB4NTL1.DTL
        \_ 'Edward, a self-described "libertarian, anarchist, socialist" with
            a "small arsenal" of guns at home, didn't want to give his last
            name.'  Uh... libertarian, anarchist sure... then add socialist?
            How does that work?
            \_ Wow, sounds like most of our motd posters!

2/4     Proof Enron turned off the lights in California:
        http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/04/national/04energy.html
        \_ uh DUH, everyone already knows that, what good is proof gonna
           do for Californians now? It's like the Clinton scandal, everyone
           knows that the dress has his sperm, what good is the DNA test
           gonna do? It's like the Bush war scandal, everyone knows that the
           war's a dumb & hasty decision, but what good is it to prove that
           it's bad via all the numbers? Shit. You're pissing me off.
        \_ what exactly do you expect companies to do when the PUC buys
           daily all of their energy on the spot market and even anounces their
           intentions?  It is called a free market for a reason.  This game
           sure had a big effect on LA, not.  You might as well
           rename the article "Company acts in a manner to maximize
           shareholder profit that is legal under existing system".
           \_ Except it wasn't legal.
              \_ it was unethical, but sadly, legal at the time.
                 \_ You are an idiot.
                 \_ It was illegal. Hence the billion dollar judgements
                    against them. Do you understand the difference between
                    criminal law and civil law?
                 \_ the government is the law and can change the law
                    as it sees necessary, including to retroactively
                    sue companies such as the tobacco industry.  Its funny
                    that none of the california legislature members never
                    returned the hundreds of thousands given by Enron during
                    the '90s, nor did Davis ever return the hundreds of
                    thousands he received.  The California taxpayer was
                    in fact screwed by its government.
                    \_ Which is why we recalled Davis.

2/4     I want to add a "glossary" page to my website (for stuff related
        to a current project). I know I could just write the html myself,
        but is there some sort of utility for creating glossary pages,
        which, for example, would make it easy to add or delete entries?
        Thanks.
        \_ Use a Wiki.
                \_ Thanks. Is there any other solution?

2/4     Does anyone have a Treo600? I'm trying to decide if I should
        go w/ the brand new flashy 650 or if the 600 would be sufficient
        for grad student w/o a real need for BT. tia.
        \_ I have a 600.  I don't like the screen.  The 650's is so much
           better.
        \_ I'm getting a 650.  From what I understand from people who have
           one, the only downsides are the crappy camera (but hey, who cares,
           don't use it) and no wifi (ditto.)  -John
           \_ There's a hack that lets you use wifi.  Checkout http://treocentral.com
              or search on google for "Shadowmite"
        \_ BT is the least of the differences between the 600 and 650.  I
           evaluated the 600 many, many times but could never justify the
           price.  It was kludgy and just "not quite there".  But the 650
           is amazing.  I setup my personal email account to forward emails
           to my sprint account so now I'm alerted immediately of new email,
           which I can then retrieve.  I can surf the web easily and quickly,
           I can take pictures (still crappy, but better than most camera
           phones), I can take video, I can record audio, I can use SD IO
           for storage, GPS, etc, I can ssh into the csua and read the motd
           in it's 80-wide format (requires good eyesight), it plays mp3's,
           videos, you can play video games, etc, etc, etc.  It's awesome.
           The integration of all the components is great and it's very
           easy to use, very intuitive.  Check out http://treonauts.com
           for more information.  (Also, just in case you don't have
           connectivity through 802.11b you can use BT for fast dial up
           on your laptop).
           \_ all treo650s ship w/ bt dialup disabled. I've heard that the
              hack that enables it is very unstable.
              \_ Check out the forums on http://treocentral.com for more on the
                 BT dial up.
           \_ I'm probably going to go w/ Cingular. Is there a particular
              plan that I should get? (I usually use less than 200 mins
              a month, but I might use more w/ the 650 b/c it can connect
              to the internet).
              \_ I have a 600, and I like it quite a bit.  If you're buying
                 new, get a 650.  In my case, I can't justify the cost of a
                 650 because I bought my 600 when it was fairly newish.  Your
                 minute usage should not be tied to your internet usage.  Get
                 a flat rate all you can eat data plan, you'll be thankful for
                 it. -dans
              \_ You can get unlimited data for something like $10 - $15
                 per month.
                 \_ I meant to ad that this is for Sprint.  I don't know
                    about Cingular's bandwidth pricing.

2/5     I thinking of installing Debian Linux because a friend of mine says
        it's much easier to deal with when you install programs. For example,
        during an insntallation the installer will check for ALL dependencies
        and automatically download the right .so files you need. The claim
        is that RPMs are not as thorough and that there's more work involved.
        Has anyone tried both RH and Debian and have comments on this? ok thx
        \_ I've tried both. apt is definitely an advantage over just using rpm
           (as much as it is over just using dpkg).  However, I don't see any
           significant advantage over yum, which is easy to set up for redhat
           or any other rpm based distro.   I wouldn't use Fedora for
           anything important and I wouldn't pay for linux, so I'd say there
           are other reasons to ditch redhat.   -crebbs
           \_ yum seems to have more dependency resolution issues than apt-get
              YMMV
           \_ You seem to imply that Fedora is the only way to have free Red
              Hat. This is false.
           \_ I really like being able to install new packages with apt since
              it gives me a list of zillions of uninstalled products.  When I
              used yum it seemed like you could only upgrade existing packages.
              How do you use yum to search for and install packages not on your
              system?  Thanks.  -!op
              \_ yum search <glob>
                 (at this point you discover yum doesn't have shit you want
                  in the default repositories, now google around for a while
                  until you find a repository, add that to your list, then:)
                 yum install <package-name>
        \_ I currently have Fedora 2 installed on my home machine, and I
           installed Debian on my father's machine.  The current version
           of debian solves all the problems I had with it before.  It's
           is now easily superior to Fedora.  The only thing Fedora has
           that's better is better Korean support. -jrleek
        \_ Debian's package management superiority is a myth. Maybe four
           years ago it was better but now most Linux distributions come
           with utilities like up2date, yum, apt, etc that will take care
           of package dependencies and such. In addition, I'd like to point
           out that Debian suffers from extremely slow release cycle. The
           current stable version of debian comes with more than three-year
           old software. Debian geeks will tell you that the testing or
           "unstable" versions of Debian are just good enough, but do you
           really want to use a distribution that's changing all the time?
           I suggest to try Fedora Core 3.
           \_ I was right there with you till that last sentence.  Fedora
              has the opposite problem as Debian, the release cycle is too
              fast, and you basically HAVE to upgrade because if they are
              working on Fedora X+1 they will not fix issues in Fedora X
              they just say "upgrade to the latest fedora".  That is just
              not acceptable for anyone running more than 1 box. -crebbs
              \_ I am in complete agreement with you about Fedora. Those
                 guys are nuts in terms of releasing bleeding edge stuff.
                 It's great if you want to try out the latest/greatest
                 and you've got time to burn, but treat it as a research
                 or test box and not a production machine. For production
                 machines get RHEL or the free derivatives like White Hat,
                 etc. As for Debian and old software, well, that's the
                 character of Debian. Unfortunately some of us aren't so
                 lucky to be able to run the latest/greatest versions of
                 software so Debian makes sense for the hordes of IT shops
                 that need to remain backwards compatible. -williamc
           \_ Have you looked at Ubuntu? Supposed to be a more up to date
              Debian.
        \_ apt's dependency checking and conflict resolution is better
           than rpm's, but you don't need to install debian to use apt.
           apt can be built to handle rpms and run on RH. We use this
           at work in order to do dependency checking of RPMS on both
           RH and SuSE.
           \_ you seem to be comparing apples and oranges (apt vs. rpm)
              apt is supposed to be running on TOP of a low-level package
              manager, such as rpm or dpkg. You can't use apt without rpm on
              rpm based system. A more appropriate comparison would be apt vs.
              yum vs. up2date vs. other similar tools.

-- Motd purged by some free-market hating communist.  Order restored
   -- ilyas #1 fan

2/5     Poll, Stupor Bowl:
        definitely watching:
        I hate it, don't care: ..
        Not interested, don't care: ....
        Everything I know about football I learned from Alan Dundes's class:.
        \_ Hehe, that last one is revealing.
        \_ As if anyone on this motd has an interest in anything
           pop culture.
           \_ There must be at least one person who is broken up over
              the Enterprise cancelation.
              \_ I'm kinda annoyed that Enterprise sucked so hard.  They
                 got a good actor for the captain, but the writing was teh
                 suk.
                 \_ Yeah, I pretty much knew it was only a matter of time
                    after watching just the first few episodes.  But I'm
                    a die hard Trek fan, so I watched them all and I'll
                    miss the show.
                    \_ Blasphemer! Enterprise is not Trek. No true fan
                       would dirty himself by watching it.

2/5     Can someone recommend me a good junkyard for Toyota parts?
        I have a 84 pickup I need to find some stuff for.  -maxmcc
        \_ There are a few pick-n-pull places. What are looking for?
            \_ Winding mechanism for driver's side window.