2/10    I have a scream speech, v 2.0 by H. Dean
        eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaarggggghhhh!!!!!
        starts at around 41 minute mark
        rtsp://video.c-span.org/mdrive/rwh031603.rm

2/10    Motd poll: have you used bittorrent or another P2P for an illegal
        download within the last 2 months?
          Yes: ..
          No : .....
        For a movie (if yes)?
          Yes: ..
          No : .
        \_ BT as a means for widespread piracy is pretty dead in the long run-
           it was never meant for it and only ended up being put to use for
           "illegal" downloads because it was available, worked well, and was
           pretty much under the radar.  The basic BT architecture isn't
           suited to the kind of untraceability you need for downloads.  There
           are more appropriate ideas for this sort of use out there.  -John
           \_ With a 'private' tracker and .torrent download site scheme it's
              a bit safer.  You need it to be truly private though.
        \_ Does d/l'ing eps of Atlantis/MI-5 that I missed count as illegal?
           If so, I have used bt to illegally d/l eps. Otherwise no. BTW,
           why would you want to d/l a movie when you can just netflix it?
           \_ I dunno. I never downloaded movies but I recently did get a
              few things off of torrents (SW "original laserdisc" DVDs, a
              couple of subtitled anime flicks, and hellboy of all things.
              I don't even really care about that stuff but now I'm probably
              on some FBI list since I got it from lokitorrent. The chances
              are slim but they could probably bust my ass to kingdom come
              based on the stuff I read lately. And yeah I've used it for a
              few missed TV shows and apparently that's just as illegal. But
              it's the movie guys seem the most interested in making a big
              hoopla about this right now.

2/10    Arthur Miller, RIP.
        \_ Why do you hate McCarthyism?

2/10    Is the coax cable that supplies our TV's digital cable the
        same one that plugs into our cable modem? I want to move our
        cable modem from upstairs to downstairs, and instead of
        dragging a long extension downstairs, I'd like to just splice
        our TV's cable.
        \_ Related question.  How well does the digital cable signal survive
           the splitting and patching of the coax inside the house?
        \_ Don't know what you have for cable modem.  To be sure, use a RG6
           cable.  Very likely your cable modem cable is RG6.
           \_ I'd follow above advice, since I don't know much about cable
              specs.  But at my gf's parents' house, the cable guy installed
              the cable modem using a simple splitter: the kind they sell at
              radio shack.  I added another splitter when they decided to move
              the computer upstairs, and it works fine.
        \_ It's similar but different ratings. Almost all digital cable
           uses RG6 right now. Splitting coax carrying satellite feed
           I don't think you can use the run-of-the-mill splitters.
           \_ Whether it's sattelite or not, digital or not, on the wire it's
              fundamentaly analog in the hundreds of megahertz range.  Any
              splitter rated for that frequency range will be fine.  The
              advantage of using a really high-end splitter is that you'll
              get exceptionally low signal loss, which shouldn't be a problem
              under normal circumstances.

2/10    Recommendation for a 19" LCD display.  Amazon has a good deal
        on the Princeton.  I'm also looking at Costco's Sharp 19" LCD.
        If you own one or use one at work, can you tell us what you have
        and how reliable is it?  Thanks.
        \_ Don't know who makes the ones for Dell, but have had only one
           failure out of probably 3 dozen+ at work.
           \_ I believe Samsung does.
        \_ Make sure to get DVI.  digital->analog->digital is bad.
        \_ tawei!!! whats up. get NEC MultiSync 19xxX series.
        \_ Jesus dumb fuck, this has been posted 100 times. Learn to STFK:
           http://csua.com/?entry=35371
           http://csua.com/?entry=32519
           http://csua.com/?entry=32303
           http://csua.com/?entry=10207
           \_ Don't blow a head gasket, man -- it's not that big a deal.
              Really.
                \_ no dude, people have to learn. I'm so sick and tired of
                   deleting trolls and politics on motd, and things that
                   repeat over and over again. FUCK YOU.
                   \_ Then, uhm, don't bother.  It's not like anyone cares
                      about you and your largely self-inflicted pain.  And
                      take a vacation -- your histrionics are annoying.
                   \_ Hey!  I'm your biggest fan!  I'd like to give you an
                      award! Please post your name so we know who deserves
                      it. -jrleek
                      \_ Fuck both of you.  Just the fact that there are real
                         live conservative censors out there getting annoyed
                         about it will make posting political trolls worth it
                         for at least another decade.
                         \_ This is getting confusing, who is the other
                            person in both of you, and are you pp? -jrleek
                            \_ The "fuck you" is directed at anyone who censors
                               anything in any context ever or who supports
                               censorship in any form.  Yes, you have every
                               right to delete whatever politics you dislike
                               from the motd; it's a world writable file.  And
                               I have the right to think you're an asshole for
                               it.  I realize you're not one of the main censors
                               here, but you get a "fuck you" anyway for
                               thinking it's cool.
                               \_ Heh, you're a moron, but you're the
                                  wrong one.  You see, if the censor had
                                  posted his name, we could squish him.
                                  -jrleek

2/11    I'm tired of you motd posters living in the past.
        \_ You will be eaten by a grue.  -John
        \_ It could be worse. We could be having flame wars about crap that
           happened five years ago...
        \_ We're using 1970's technology to communicate.  If you want to
           live in the present, go join a forum or blog or something.
           \_ Well, there is an RSS feed of the motd.
              \_ No shit?!?  That's nuts!  I can have the motd on my MyYahoo
                 page!??  That's just so FUCKING wrong!
                  \_indeed.
                    \_ It doesn't display too well on myYahoo.  It works fine
                       with SharpReader and looks ok in BlogLines, but that's
                       about all I've tried.
           \_ I don't know why I prefer the motd. I just do. Something to do
              with everybody building the same file and how it evolves
              constantly - even as certain people turn it into their own
              personal vanity piece.
        \_ Tell us what is going to happen tommorrow then Grasshopper.
           \_ The sun'll come out Tomorrow Bet your bottom dollar

2/11    Anyone have any experience with Clamp Meters to measure Amperage?
        Can they measure current through insulated wires, (e.g. on an
        extension cord) or do they have to be used at some particular
        location, or .. ?
        \_ There are 2 basic styles.  One plugs in in series with your stuff.
           This requires you to unplug your thing to put the meter in series.
           The other type goes around the wire and detects the magnetic field
           generated by the current.  This will not work on an extension cord
           because it's going around 2-3 wires and since it's catching the
           hot wire and the neutral (including the return current) the net
           flow through the device will be zero.  If you can split your
           extension cord or find an exposed wire in your wall, then you can
           use this type of meter.

2/11    A lot of people have the Linksys WRT54G router because of its Linux
        firmware.  I tried the new "Closed Source 'GPL'" firmware from
        Sveasoft (Alchemy-6.0-RC5a) and the QoS feature is very effective and
        powerful, but I've found the box is easily overwhelmed by too much
        data (like 50kB/sec) and starts dropping packets on the floor.
        Can someone reccomend a WRT54G firmware with good QoS which can handle
        QoS and NAT on a 3Mbit line without choking?
        \_ This won't answer your question (I have the AP version, and run
           the Sveasoft firmware, but that's not routing) but just for fun
           have a look at M0n0wall (http://www.m0n0.ch on WRAP
           (http://www.pcengines.ch -- it's tremendously mature and stable
           and does what you want.  -John
        \_ This isn't answering your question, too, but D-Link recently
           released a wired/wireless gateway that does some QoS (you can
           define priorities based on source/dest IP/port, or just leave
           the thing on "auto") and looks high performance.  $140+.  YMMV.
           http://games.dlink.com/products/award.asp?pid=370

2/11    What is the correct word in the phrase: "in a similar vein" or
        "in a similar vain"?
        \_ vein.
                \_ Thanks. -op

2/11    Any idea why my debian laptop would have this traffic. I'm on a
        wireless network in my house. connected to the internet via
        comcast. My laptop's iptables firewall is blocking all
        inbound ports
        14:18:55.194060 10.0.0.101.2622 > http://fatboy.paqnet.com.www
        \_ spyware, most likely
           \_ spyware on my laptop? shit.
           \_ crap. okay where do I start looking into this?
            \_ Spyware on debian?  I doubt it.  But I'd start by looking
               at full tcpdump output.  You can see what http requests
               are being sent and that will probably give you a better idea
               what is going on.
                \_ I use Opera 7.54 and there are a couple security
                   updates that I missed. Perhaps I visited a malicious
                   website.  I want to figure out what is really going on.
                   \_ If you are this paranoid and don't know how to see
                      the contents of the packets and what program has the
                      socket open, well, you sir, are a moron.
                        \_ the socket was changing with each run.
                           Thanks for the insult. That really helps.
                                \_ Don't mind him. He probably had no idea
                                   himself. Not everyone can deal well with
                                   their shortcomings.
        \_ Your computer is trying to connect to paqnet for something, but
           it could just as easily be some kind of automatic update feature
           as spyware. More likely the former, I think. paqnet is some kind
           of distrubution site for various kinds of software. See:
           http://www.paqnet.cz
           Did you install power quality monitoring software on your
           laptop???
           \_ No I haven't installed that sort of software. it also looks
              like http://paqnet.com is an ISP. they've probably got bad users.
              \_ Port 2622 is registered for MetricaDBC. I don't know
                 what that is, but maybe you do. Did you install anything
                 like that?
                 \_ Nope. It looks like the some of the http://paqnet.com users
                    are off-roaders. I wonder if they are good guys.
                    Maybe they would send me parts of http logfiles.
                    \_ Hmm, doesn't look so good to me. I don't know
                       of any rootkits that use 2622 to communicate,
                       but you might want to start considering that
                       could have been hacked.
                       \_ 2622 is the source port.  Has little or nothing to
                          do with what might be making this connection.  You
                          may want to run netstat -pa to see if you can track
                          down the process making such connections.  They're
                          probably brief, though, so you won't get much.  How
                          often are these connections happening? --scotsman
                          \_ I saw about 3 of them in 10 minutes or so,
                             but stupid me, I shut down my laptop to
                             make an image of the disk, but when I turned
                             back on, I don't see any more of the traffic.
                             \_ Someone may have rootkitted you and run a
                                proxy daemon, but not put it into startup
                                files.  Look for core files.  Look for things
                                like oddly recent timestamps on ls, netstat,
                                ps, etc.
                                \_ Thanks. I've left my laptop on for a couple
                                   days, and now after visiting http://cnn.com this
                                   afternoon, I'm seeing similar traffic
                                   again! Perhaps it is an Opera bug.  At
                                   least now I can start figuring it out.
                                   Thanks for all your help.

2/11    http://www.independentscientist.com
        Fascinating.  Doing science without federal funding.
        \_ what is fascinating about a wing nut?
           \_ I don't know, but it keeps me coming back to the motd.

2/11    Shock and Awe. Saudi candidate says that women should
        be allowed to drive:
        http://www.washtimes.com/world/20050209-113151-9154r.htm
        \_ Only in a religion as nutty as wahabism could this persist,
           and only because they've got oil. At least it keeps the muslims
           backwards and prevents them from developing their own tech.
           \_ It was less than 100 years ago that we didn't allow women to
              vote.
              \_ True, but 85 years is a pretty long time on the human
                 time scale.
                 \_ No... no it isn't.  In the past 20 years or so things
                    have changed enough so that 85 years is a long time
                    on the human time scale, but we haven't had those 85 years
                    yet.
                    \_ Whatever.  Since the industrial revolution 85 years
                       has become a long time.
           \_ We've got plenty of fruitcakes here in the US too, it's just
              that not enough of them are in positions of power (yet?).  They
              just run the show over there.
              \_ Aren't the Mormons opposed to women driving?

2/11    More links for Scrolling Trackpad iBook Dude:
        http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=245015
        http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/sidetrack/index.html
        \_ what is 2-finger scrolling?
           \_ Ask yermom, she likes it.
                \_ clever.

2/11    BIG BUNNY!!!! http://www.big-bunny.com (worksafe)

2/11    Jesus fucked on a crutch.  49% of americans believe Foreign Aid is
        one of the two biggest government programs.
        http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/sspoll020905.pdf
        (scroll down a bit)
        \_ Hey but it is down from 67% when Clinton was President!
        \_ 49% of Americans being complete tards? Sounds about right. That's
           the big peak of the bell curve right around that 50% moron point.
           \_ It's closer to 51%.

2/11    Anyone saying no one could have imagined terrorists using planes
        as weapons is not fit to dress themselves, let alone be SecState.
        I mean, c'mon, Tom CLANCY used it in Debt of Honor in '96.
        \_ I would argue that this is one reason we need a few more tech people
           at the top levels of government.  A future "failure of imagination"
           would be less likely if you had people who grew up reading/watching
           sci fi and who actually understand technology calling some of the
           shots.
           \_ But it wasn't a failure of imagination. That's just a stupid line
              of crap.
           \_ Forget tech people. They need hardcore SF writers and game
              designers. Hell, I'd love to do that kind of job-- spend all
              day dreaming up worst case scenarios for security people to
              debug.
                \_ Only a sci fi geek would think that's a good idea.
                \_ Wasn't this what Jerry Pournelle did/does?  -John
        \_ Do you people not understand that the real world works a little
           bit differently than the fictional world of books and tv shows?
           Sure someone could imagine that terrorist might fly planes into
           buildings but the people who write these books and create these
           TV shows also brought you Sam Fisher (where can I get one of
           those distractions cam for my P-90?) and Dana Scully getting
           abducted by Aliens.
           In the real world things are far more complicated than on TV.
           Think about that for a minute. These terrorist somehow managed
           to get past multiple security checkpoints and then on most
           planes managed to take control w/o meeting any resistance.
           How likely is that? What would you have done had you been on
           one of those planes? Sat idly by? Maybe try to take control?
           Think about all of the variables that are present and the
           behaviors of hundreds or thousands of people on 11 Sept and
           tell me you still think that it was imaginable in the real
           world.
           \_ It's not an issue with realism or what.  Of course things are
              more complicated in real life.  The issue is that you want
              people around who have the imagination to come up with the
              really odd, improbable shit--remember Sherlock Holmes?  "If you
              have discounted all other probabilities, whatever remains,
              whatever improbable, must be the truth"?  I'd welcome having
              people around who can think outside of some bureaucratic,
              limited, wingtip-shoe "it'll-never-happen-here" mentality.
              Just having people like this on the payroll doesn't mean you
              have to jump every time they predict an alien invasion or, god
              forbid, a tsunami, but it might help you react a bit faster if
              such a thing did come to pass.  -John
                \_ While I generally agree that quicker reaction may have
                   prevented considerable loss of life, the problem is
                   that the military largely lacked any basis for knowing
                   whether or not the crashes were due to terrorist activity.
                   Had these not been suicide attacks, but rather some
                   sort of mixup/malfunction and the military had reacted
                   by destroying the planes, it is highly improbable that
                   they could have justified the action by showing that
                   there was probable cause to suspect suicde airplane
                   attacks. In retrospect is it easy to say that the ptb
                   should have known, but one must consider that question
                   in light of what could they have reasonably done w/o
                   complete proof (which they did not have on 9/11) that
                   the situation was really as they believed it to be?
                   \_ This is the fundamental problem faced by people working
                      in corporate IT security--your very job consists of
                      coming up with unlikely-but-highly-destructive scenarios
                      and selling the most effective, least intrusive pre-
                      emptive measures or countermeasures capability to these
                      you can think of.  There are wide areas of risk analysis
                      devoted to coming up with exactly this sort of crap--you
                      take _all_ imaginable scenarios, then figure out how
                      feasible they are and rate them in terms of how urgently
                      (if at all) you should do something about them.  I'm not
                      just talking about 9/11 here, but referring to a seeming
                      inability or unwillingness to consider just this sort of
                      crackpot scenario (which apparently _was_ dreamed up by
                      some pretty competent and intelligent people) or even
                      something unlikely that a sci-fi writer might cook up
                      (massive earthquake + tsunami kills 150k, asteroid hits
                      NYC, whatever) and seriously attempt to determine (a) a
                      probability for it, and (b) what to do if it comes to
                      pass.  Blowing it off out of hand does not count as
                      responsible under ANY circumstances.  -John
                      \_ I agree w/ you that the way to deal w/ the
                         problem is (a) and (b), but I what I don't
                         agree w/ is that the ppl in charge blew
                         it off b/c a determination that the prob.
                         of the event is not very great can look, in
                         retrospect, to be blowing it off. I haven't
                         read about any evid that shows that a prob.
                         assessment of a 9/11 style attack prior to
                         9/11 was greater than miniscule in anyones
                         mind.
           \_ When I first heard the news, my first thought was, "They've
              finally done it." My next thought was, why the hell weren't
              there contingency plans drawn up by the military, etc. to
              handle just such a case. And then I heard they'd crashed into
              the Pentagon, and I knew, for real, that we as a govt. are
              crippled and screwed.
              \_ One further point which I omitted is the fact that prior
                 to 9/11 a military plan which involved the destruction
                 of civilian aircraft w/o a clear showing of terrorist
                 involvement would have been impossible to implement.
                 Let us suppose that the military had a plan to destroy
                 the planes based on a suspicion that terrorist had taken
                 control. Could they have implemented that plan? In the
                 pre-9/11 world the answer is NO.
                 If the 9/11 incident had turned out to be an accident or
                 a standard hijack rather than a terrorist suicide attack,
                 military action that destroyed the plane in the air would
                 have been characterized as trigger-happy extermism, &c.
                 No lefty senator would have accepted an explanation that
                 the intelligence services felt that the planes might be
                 used by suicide hijackers on the basis that such as
                 belief was completely implausible. Prior to 9/11 this
                 objection would have been perfectly reasonable b/c there
                 was no reasonable basis (prior acts, &c.) for holding
                 w/ a view that such an attack was plausible.
                 \_ Bullshit. The Pentagon could easily have established
                    a no-fly zone around it that would trigger an automatic
                    anti aircraft response. Almost no one would object
                    to that. Remember when the USS Vincennes shot
                    down a civilian airliner for straying too close?
                    Very few objected to that. The Pentagon is a far
                    more valuable target than a carrier group.
                    \_ iirc, the Vincennes incident is sufficiently
                       distinguishable from 9/11: (1) the ship was
                       engaged in surface action, (2) the iran air
                       flight took off from a civilian/military
                       shared airfield and (3) the radar aboard the
                       Vincennes could not accurately distinguish
                       a commerical airliner from a military jet.
                       The cmdr, who was already faced w/ hostile
                       surface action had little choice but to
                       assume that the inbound was hostile as well.
                       9/11 is different. The Pentagon was not
                       "engaged" in any action, it was located near
                       commerical flight paths, the plane was known
                       to be a commerical jet, &c. If the military
                       had made a mistake and shot it down when
                       no terrorist action was involved, there is
                       no way a congressional commission pre-9/11
                       would have accepted the pentagon's threat
                       assessement.
                 \_ Disagree. 9/11 changed things in the public consciousness
                    but I would have assumed there would be procedures in
                    place for this as applied to the pentagon. Shooting down
                    a civilian airliner would be a tragedy even if it was
                    100% clear it was in kamikaze mode. But even "lefty
                    senators" who hate America would accept it. It really
                    is common sense.

2/11    Are weird random pains in different parts of the body a symptom of
        excessive caffeine intake?  Does anyone have any experience with this?
        \_ Could be a heart attack.  Consider going to a hospital. e.g.:
          "Pain spreading to the shoulders, neck or arms. The pain may be mild
           to intense. It may feel like pressure, tightness, burning, or heavy
           weight. It may be located in the chest, upper abdomen, neck, jaw,
           or inside the arms or shoulders." --http://tinyurl.com/6xets
           \_ It's probably not a heart attack! Sheesh! Scare the hell
              out of the guy! He should see a doctor, though!
        \_ You probably just have the flu.
        \_ Why are you asking the motd?  ObSeeAFuckingDoctor.  -John
           \_ This would be a good time to remind the motd in general that
              most health plans offer free advice lines, where you can call
              (often 24 hours a day) to talk to an advice nurse.  They won't
              laugh at you for asking stupid questions -- their whole job is
              to tell you whether your problem is worth bothering a doctor
              for or not.  They're not doctors, but unlike the motd they do
              at least have some idea what they're talking about.
        \_ it's not random. stop whacking off so much.
        \_ Caffeine usually doesn't lead to pain; but it does lead to
           jitteryness. These pains are probably due to something else.
        \_ What do you mean random pain? Cramps?
        \_ It could be stress-related, and caffeine could enhance the effects,
           but that's just a guess. Go see a doc. When I had major stress, my
           right shoulder/arm use to have some numbness.
           \_ yeah.I took less caffeine, got some excersize and sleep, and spent
              some fraction of a day not working or thinking about work, and
              all symptoms are gone.  let this serve as a cautionary tale. -op
              \_ What, that you're a lazy slacker?