| WIKI | FAQ | Tech FAQ | |
 http://csua.com/feed/ | |
| ||||||
| 2005/2/22-23 [Uncategorized] UID:36359 Activity:nil |
2/22 I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who's ever subcontracted through
SAIC--I have a few questions regarding their contracts. -John |
| 2005/2/22 [Reference/Languages] UID:36360 Activity:very high |
2/21 Do alumnis get email account from Cal these days? Used to
have http://calalumni.org. What's the status now?
\_ You can get an account at <DEAD>cal.berkeley.edu<DEAD>
\_ "Alumni" is already plural. Kids these days.
\_ We've been through this fucking song and dance like fifty
times already. Nobody cares. Even the fucking Romans didn't
speak like they wrote.
\_ Woah, where do we get these audio recordings from
ancient Roman times?
\_ If that was supposed to be a joke, it's not funny.
If you really don't know anything about the
development of Latin into modern day Romance languages
then I'd suggest you look it up on Wikipidedia.
You can also google the term "vulgar latin"
In addition, there are plenty of terms we use today
derived from latin which are incorrect, such as
we commonly say "the data" when "data" is plural for
"datum," or in the obverse we say things like "virii",
which doesn't exist. The closest correct term for the
plural of "virus" is "viruses". Anyway, language is a
constantly moving target. How we spell things now is
as arbitrary as how we spell and say things in the future.
If your really want to be anal about it, the title of
\_ Forget Latin. You can't seem to use basic English
correctly. "If you're..." or "If you are...."
\_ Err... neither of those make grammatical sense.
I think that person simply meant to type "you."
the "Cal Alumni Association" is technically grammatically
incorrect, since it probably should read "The Cal Alumni's
Assocation." Anyway, modern forms have all but dropped
the possessive in things like Students Association, so
it's acceptable nowadays...
\_ Now, write that a hundred times. If it's not done by
sunrise, I'll cut your balls off!
\_ The pluralization of latin is not something everyone has
studied even though everyone likes to throw around latin
words to make themselves look smart. For those studying
Italian, this whole alumn* bit is easy.
alumnus - masculine sing.
alumni - masc (or ambiguous) plural
alumna - feminine sing.
alumnae - feminine plural
\_ While we're on the subject of pluralization, here's a
101 on Italian words people tend to get wrong.
- spaghetti (p), spaghetto (s)
\_ When would you ever need to refer to spaghetti in a
singular sense?
\_ There is a dry spaghetto stuck up your ass.
\_ It snapped and now there is spaghetti stuck up
your ass. Hey, Latin can be fun!
\_ This joke would work better with the zucchino.
- pizza (s), pizze (p)
- capuccino (s), capuccini (p)
- biscotti (p), biscotto (s)
- zucchini (p), zucchino (s)
\_ - not (p), important (s)
\_ and alumnus?
\_ oops. corrected.
\_ <witty sarcasm deleted because I'm fascist like Bush>
\_ But what is the plural form of "fascist"?
\_ They're called Republicans. |
| 2005/2/22 [ERROR, uid:36361, category id '18005#3.0825' has no name! , ] UID:36361 Activity:kinda low |
2/22 Look for Swift Boat Guy to return with daily rants about the AARP.
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/004863.php
\_ Well, the AARP is pretty evil. |
| 2005/2/22 [Politics/Domestic/President/Reagan, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:36362 Activity:high |
2/22 See if you can spot the loaded questions and false dichotomies on this
"moral politics" test.
http://www.moral-politics.com/xpolitics.aspx?menu=Home
\_ Apparently I'm a socialist! I never knew. -jrleek
\_ That's "terrorist" to you, young man. Get with the new
terminology.
\_ Looks like a ripoff of http://www.politicalcompass.org
including the bad questions. -emarkp
\_ "These so-called ill-treatments and torturing in
concentration camps, stories of which were spread
everywhere amongst the people, and particularly by
detainees who were liberated by the occupying armies,
were not, as assumed, inflicted methodically, but by
individual leaders, sub-leaders , and men who laid violent
hands on them." -- Rudolf Höss, Commandant of Auschwitz
hands on them." -- Rudolf HM-vss, Commandant of Auschwitz
until 1943, in his post-war testimony
http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/iconochasms.php
\_ "The problem is, this kind of thing occurs in
prisons across the country and across the world. And
you have to know it's going to be a possibility. And
therefore the training and the discipline and the
doctrine has to be such that you anticipate that
risk. And clearly, that wasn't done to the extent it
should." -Don Rumsfeld, Feb 3 2005
\_ I consider myself liberal and I got:Economic Left/Right: -6.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.59
\_ I am a moderate social democrat. No American party represents
me. But I already knew that! |
| 2005/2/22 [Uncategorized] UID:36363 Activity:very high |
2/22 Poll for sysadmins: which mail server do you use?
sendmail: ..
\_ On work boxes where we use it for stupid historical reasons: .
qmail:
postfix: ..
\_ On my boxes where I have a choice: .
exim:
Communigate Pro: . |
| 2005/2/22-23 [Recreation/Food] UID:36364 Activity:moderate |
2/22 Dear sodans, I need to grind some chinese herbs into powder form.
They looks like roots and small wood chips. What type of
machine can I use for this purpose? I am fairly certain a
regular blender (I have one) will NOT work, as they are
typically used with liquids and I need them dry. Is a Food
Processor what I am looking for? (They are expensive but the
blades are horizontal and seems like they would cut it into
powder, are they strong enough to cut?) What about regular
coffee grinders? I've never used one, how strong are they?
They are much cheaper than food processors and if it works
it'll be great... Thanks!
\_ I've seen people use coffee grinders for this. should be okay.
\_ I agree. coffee beans are pretty hard, so it should
have no problem with your herbs.
\_ Mortar and pestle
\_ Oh this one looks funny.
http://amos.shop.com/amos/cc/main/ccn_search/st/Mortar%20and%20pestle/sy/productsx/ccsyn/260/prd/13447185/ccsid/329668713-8208/adtg/02140523
http://tinyurl.com/59ms3
\_ Get German Mortar, German Mortars are the best!
http://www.percongrp.com/pelikan/figures/mortar_rm.htm
Ein Reich Ein Volk Ein German John, HEIL!!! |
| 2005/2/22-23 [Finance/Investment] UID:36365 Activity:nil |
2/22 Has anyone used freetrade? It's run by ameritrade but
looks pretty sketchy.
This seems to explain some of the sketchiness -- but it's an old
article:
http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/05/18/ameritrade/index.html
\_ It's basic no-frills trading. Don't expect anything other than
free trades.
\_ I looked into it a few weeks ago - researched it pretty
thoroughly on the http://fool.com discussion boards, and it seems legit
and used by quite a few people, for what it's worth - no
complaints that I saw except some really old posts that worried
about their business model. |
| 2005/2/22-23 [Recreation/Humor, Reference/Religion, Science/Biology] UID:36366 Activity:very high Cat_by:auto |
2/22 Dear motd conservatives, what do you have to say about this:
http://tinyurl.com/45m4w (Scientific American on evolution).
We know who you are, please answer.
\_ Read this and then maybe you can start to reconsider some of
the assumptions implicit in your question:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/georgewill/gw20050106.shtml
\_ Einstein meant he wasn't an atheist in the crusading sense, but
he was an atheist in the essential, didn't believe in God sense:
"From the viewpoint of a Jesuit priest I am, of course, and
have always been an atheist ... I have repeatedly said that in
my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You
may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading
spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due
to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious
indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of
humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual
understanding of nature and of our being."
"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious
convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do
not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but
have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be
called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the
structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
\_ Einstein is going to hell! -Christian
\_ People are dumb, they believe all sorts of weird crap. Even on
the MOTD, Berkeley, etc. I've encountered people who believe
that evolution isn't a proven theory, or that quantum mechanics
is wrong, or that classical mechanics is wrong and therefore
invalid, or that a so-called "red state" is completely republican
or a so-called "blue state" is completely democratic, or that
tsunamis shouldn't cause deaths because people should be able
to swim out of it, etc. etc. Trying to convince them otherwise
is just a futile exercise in frustration because after a certain
age people's minds just calcify. I mean, if you think about it
seriously, doesn't the concept of a guy who can tell what's going
on 24/7 on a planet with over six billion people seem a bit
ridiculous? Or the fact that a bunch of migrant Jews would know
better than anyone else that their version of god is the true
version vs. all the others? If you think about it, it's somewhat
ironic that a minor cultish sect of judaism took over the
Western world. I bet if you were living back then in Roman times
you'd bet the farm that we'd all still be praying to Jupiter in
the next couple of milleniums. Of course, if you were talking to
a Born Again Christian they'd say it proves their faith. What
it really proves is that you can fool a lot of people a lot of
the time, and we as a human species like to be fooled a lot.
\_ See, I am not religious but I have a lot of problems with
evolution. For one thing, some evolution 'defenders' (it's very
odd that a theory would need defenders in the first place) have
taken on decidedly militant tones lately. It's very misleading
to talk about evolution as a 'proven theory,' firstly because
evolution is an empirical claim and as such isn't something you
prove, and secondly because there is no single 'theory of
evolution.' The theory, like many mature theories, undergone
evolution.' The theory, like many mature theories, has undergone
several revisions because it disagreed with the data, and as
such had to be fixed. Evolution as a theory has a lot of problems
that need fixing. I wish people would stop wasting time with
the fundies, and similarly stopped treating evolution itself in a
fundy way, and started fixing problems with it. Or finding new
ways to hunt fossils. On a related topic, I am very interested
in the current state of the art on the origins of life question,
which is the big unsolved gorilla you need to tackle if you
accept the 'western secular' interpretation of life. I would
also like to add my extreme scepticism towards current
explanations for certain events in the Earth's past, like the
advent of multicellularity, and the Cambrian explosion. -- ilyas
\_ I postulate God created the Universe! and left all those
fossils to lead the heathens to Satan
\_ You seem to have confused "conservatives" with "young-earth
creationists". I'm the former, but not the latter. (And Scientific
American proved itself as a rag in its attack on "The Skeptical
Environmentalist") -emarkp
\_ I really don't understand why people (on both sides) think
evolution contradicts God/relligion. What if God desgined
the principle of evolution?
\_ because the Bible is the "word of god", and evolution
directly contradicts most of the Bible's creation story. -tom
\_ Some people (why, it's beyond me) interpret the Hebrew word
'yom' which was translated to English 'day' to mean a
literal 24-hour period in the highly symbolic account in
Genesis. -emarkp
\_ Even if you accept the idea that Genesis doesn't
represent literal days, it is still completely wrong.
And things like the Great Flood clearly never happened.
-tom
\_ There's no historical evidence of the exodus, yet I
accept that as history. Some people argue for a
limited geography flood (rather than global) which
I'm objecting to less than previously. I know that
the scientific evidence strongly contradicts the
flood--but then it also strongly contradicts the
resurrection, walking on water, etc. I don't know
where dinosaurs figure in (or early hominids) but I
don't reject the scientific evidence, nor do I
dismiss the teachings of scripture. -emarkp
\_ yes, we're well aware of your ability to believe
mutually contradictory things. My original point
was just that people who are not so good at that
find science to be threatening, since the
implication is that their "Word of God" is just
a bunch of made-up stories. -tom
\_ It shouldn't be surprising that people can feel
threatened when their beliefs are attacked
on a regular basis by fallacious logic. The
hard part is separating the reasonable
arguments (no scientific evidence for global
flood) vs. the fallacious assertions (Jesus
wasn't resurrected) vs. fallacious logic (God
can't create a rock too big to lift, so he must
not be omnipotent!). -emarkp
\_ Well, it's not that hard; you can do what
you just did, which is put two red
herrings out there to deflect from the
fact that you've already lost the
argument. -tom
\_ Hewbrew? Some fundies have problems accepting the idea
that the King James version isn't the pure translation.
\_ There are problematic issues when you accept evolution and try
to reconcile it with Adam and Eve. Like, who were the birth
parents of Adam & Eve? Did they have souls, etc.? -emarkp
\_ what if the birth parents of adam&eve had slightly
different mitochondrial dna and rna.. the mutation in
eve's mitochondrial dna and/or rna resulted in a new
species (since mitochondrial dna and rna is only passed
down maternally.) (of course, this is assuming that
it was not literally adam's rib that resulted in eve.)
\_ That's the trouble with religion. You never know which
bits of nonsense are 'highly symbolic' (i.e. 'yom') and
which are literal truth (i.e. Adam and Eve). It's fairly
obviously to me Adam and Eve were not literally first
obvious to me Adam and Eve were not literally first
humans. -- ilyas
\_ But they appear to have been real individuals who made
an important decision. But then I believe that prophets
today clairfy sticky issues like that. -emarkp
\_ Wow. That's really cool. In my religion, prophets
get like, nailed to crosses, or beheaded or end up
wandering aimlessly in deserts for 40 years. What's
your current prophet's name? I'd like to send him an
email and get some clarifications. thanks.
\_ What makes you think they were real? Just because
there's a legend about them? Don't you see how
fucking retarded that is?
\_ I accept the Bible as a record of revelations. I
don't claim it to be perfect/inerrant, etc.
Reading that record strongly indicates there were
two people named Adam and Eve in Genesis. -emarkp
\_ You don't address my question. I ask you why
accept that. There's no basis for accepting it.
\_ You asked if I believed that Adam and Eve
were real just because there's a legend
about them. Reparsing that, my answer is:
no. -emarkp
\_ Well my further question is why you
accept the bible as a record when there
are obvious problems with that. Just
taking the Mormon stuff separately, you
are basing a huge set of beliefs on the
mere assertion of one man. I find that
to be ridiculous. And absurd that God
would operate in such a feeble fashion.
(Although I believe the same basically
goes for Christ, at least the claim there
is that various miracles were witnessed
by multitudes.)
\_ Along this thread, i've wondered why
the Stargate series hasn't touched on
christianity. seems a logical plot
path.
\_ One man? How's that? There were 11
witnesses of the golden plates that
the BoM was translated from. -emarkp
\_ Oh 11? I wasn't aware of that. See,
God's not too good at getting His
message across. Since 11 people
saw it I'll believe it now.
\_ Glad I could help.
\_ What would you do if somehow
something came up that proved
Mormonism was untrue? Would
be willing to accept that or
just have faith that it's
true anyway? I guess I'm
thinking like a verifiable
diary of the dude admitting
he cooked it all up in order
to reap the benefits of
ruling a cult.
\_"Religion is regarded by the common people as true,
by the wise as false, and by
rulers as useful." -- Seneca
by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful." -- Seneca
\_ Great quote, thanks. I also found this quote by the
same: "I don't trust liberals, I trust conservatives".
Heh.
\_ http://www.skinnypanda.com/pastepisodes/2005/05-02-21.gif
\_ This is hilarious!!! Best jotd, thanks for sharing this.
\_ how many death threats did the author get from this?
\_ Crap I laughed my ass off -- One of the more brilliant things
I've seen on the internet so far -- much better than "tubgirl"
\_ 1. Conservative != Religious. I'm sure there are plenty of
atheist conservatives. 2. You cannot reason with religious people
about their religion, especially if it's Christianity/Islam/
Mormonism, etc., religions that say "This is the way the Universe
works exactly even if your own eyes say otherwise", as opposed to
other religions that don't try to tell you exactly how the Universe
works but just try to give people a moral framework and some
philosophical insight. Like Governor Jesse Ventura said, religion
is mostly for people who cannot deal with the philosophical
implications of what happens when you die, when did the Universe
begin/was it always here/how will it end, etc. If you cannot
figure it out yourself, life becomes hard because it makes reality
harder to cope with. So you turn to religion to give you answers.
Or, you've been brought up with it or your country/community
encourages/forces it.
But trying to "reason" with religious people is hopeless since they
have already accepted conflicting information in order to gain the
above answers to the difficult questions of life, even if it does
seem silly to some to base your understanding of reality on texts
writting 2000+ years ago. Would you trust a surgeon from 2000 years
ago to operate on you? |
| 2005/2/22-23 [Politics/Domestic/Election, Politics/Domestic/President/Bush] UID:36367 Activity:high 66%like:36017 |
2/22 What is your career?
\_ Manager
\_ Software Engineer: .....
\_ Design Verification Engineer
\_ SysAdmin .
\_ Teacher .
\_ Consultant ..
\_ that's not a career. you have to say what you consult on.
\_ Actually, I agree. Maybe the original poster should delete
the Consultant line, and I'll move my dot somewhere else.
\_ Don't be dense. I get hired as Victor-Nettoyeur by
companies with annoying problems that they can't or don't
want to deal with by themselves, and which can't be
classified as purely "engineering" or "management" or
"astronaut" or whatever, even though it's usually something
to do with IT security. If it makes you happy I'll change
it to "Professionally adaptible tech whore". -John
\_ Well, "IT security consultant" would be a career I guess
but "consultant" says nothing. There are all kinds of
consultants even outside tech.
\_ Professionally adaptible tech whore .
\_ White male oppressor .
\_ Student .
\_ I'm a graduate student who takes YOUR tax money to advance my own
education while spending ~15hr/wk reading and writing motd. What
category do I fall into?
\_ I'd say the Not Funny category.
\_ It can't be the !psb category
\_ Might it be our favorite government funded "libertarian"?
-meyers
\_ And if you try to do something about it, your government
will punish you!
\_ your tax dollar (NSF, grant, DARPA, etc) soon to be gone:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/science/02/21/bush.science.ap
DAMN IT! Maybe We need to get real jobs soon. -grad student
\_ Bad troll. If you're just interested in number one,
our present totally broken visa system is in your best
interest, since it cuts down on competition from talented
foreign students. Bush's moronic, politically driven
science policy is bad for the nation, but it really
doesn't hurt you as a grad student.
\_ Actually, the NY Times last week printed an editorial
saying that the visa system for international students
and scientists has recently been greatly streamlined.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/16/opinion/16wed3.html
\_ Whatever. I'll believe it when I see it. I work in
a lab where about half of the scientists are non-U.S.
citizens, and dealing with the U.S. visa system
continues to be a total fucking nightmare.
\- The Economist says the opposite.
\_ Assuming you're talking about the article
"On the turning away", you need to re-read the
article. These two articles are talking in
different time frames. -jrleek
\_ Very true, thanks for pointing this out. By cutting down
savages and foreign competition, Manifest Destiny shall
be reborn. GWB is proclaiming a message of hope and
deliverance for White Christian America. God Bless GWB
and John Ashcroft. -conservative
\_ Are you a citizen? The military-industrial complex is in
dire need of software engineers, not as if you're probably
not already funded by it:
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=541
The funniest part is that this is true.
\_ Yeah, my PC hippie grad student tenant, who is married
to the peace activist grad school drop-out hippie wife,
just took a job with a CIA funded corp because they were
the only ones willing to hire a linguist in his field
of expertise.
\_ Scientist: ...
\_ Slacker: .
\_ Tax Payer:
\_ Music Industry: .
\_ Help Desk Specialist and Unix SysAdmin
\_ Help Desk pecialist and Unix SysAdmin
\_ Our company is the leading provider of ircII scripts for
Fortune 500 executives.
\- Gigolo -ok, thnk
\_ Househusband: . |
| 2005/2/22-23 [Uncategorized] UID:36368 Activity:kinda low |
2/22 In light of the topic below, are there motd'ers not involved in a
tech field?
\_ you mean science and tech? or tech? There are 3 scientists below.
\_ just tech. -op
\_ Does biology count? How about publishing?
\_ Does patent law count at "tech"? That's what I'll be doing when
I get out of LS.
\_ No. |
| 2005/2/22-23 [Reference/Religion, Recreation/Humor] UID:36369 Activity:moderate Cat_by:auto |
2/22 emarkp, does your baby have mad book?
http://www.users.muohio.edu/miyamadm/babygotbook512.mov
\_ That was pretty awesome.
\_ FUNNY! Best hilarious site of the year. I wonder how many death
threats this guy got from religious right fundamentalists though.
\_ Ummm... presumably none. Most fundies like this sort of
stuff.
\_ Yeah, I don't think this would offend many Christians.
\_ I don't go to URL's without descriptions. Especially from the motd.
And I'm done answering anonymous questions. -emarkp
\_ And you've had your sense of humor surgically removed, I see.
\_ Not that I'm all that sympathetic to emarkp, but don't be
fucking stupid. I don't think having all the anti-religious
trolls beating on you can reasonably be likened to a 'joke'.
Dumbass.
\_ Thank you, leave him alone. He's usually wrong, but at
least he sticks by his opinions and signs his posts, which
is more than I can say for most of the third-rate
repressed schoolyard bully types. -John
\_ It's a parody of the music video "I Like Big Butt." The title is
"I Like Big Bible," and it encourages people to read the Bible.
And thanks for answering anon questions, you're a brave soul.
You have a lot of guts standing up for your belief knowing
that you'll be ridiculed over and over again. It takes a lot of
guts & faith to do that, and I respect that a lot in a man. Most
people wouldn't have done the same. Emarkp, you're one fine man
in my book, and you're cool -emarkp's agnostic admirer
\_ I'll second that. -mice
\_ thirded. -- ilyas
\_ Fourthed (and I think this applies to jrleek too,
for that matter). Though, to the PP, the title of
the video is "Baby Got Book" and it's a parody of the
Sir Mix-A-Lot song "Baby Got Back".
- anonymous motd agnostic socialist coward
\_ Read this post out loud in a Stuart Smalley voice for hours
of fun. |
| 2005/2/22-23 [Computer/Networking, Recreation/Media] UID:36370 Activity:kinda low |
2/22 Any thoughts/opinions/experience with this product
to get cable-tv reception wirelessly?
http://tinyurl.com/3phtp (bestbuy.com)
\_ no opinion, but I've always had this dream of buying a cluster of
homes with my parents and friends so that we can wire cable modem
and premium cable services to each other without having to pay
duplicate costs. With this device and Apple's Airport
Express/Airtunes I can redistribute my MP3 files and cable and
EVERYTHING without having to wire anything.
\_ what a great idea, base the largest purchase of your life on
trying to save $25/month. -tom
\_ Actually that was yermom, and it didn't quite take $25
in quarters. -John
\_ Weak. Ordinarily I like the yermom jokes, but tom
had a good one. |
| 2005/2/22-23 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq] UID:36371 Activity:moderate |
2/22 http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/22/casualty.hoax.ap Does the suspect look Asian or black? I mean, this guy looks just like Mr. Mackey in South Park, with a big ass balloon head or something. http://www.southparkstudios.com/img/content/characters/49a.gif \_ http://www.southparkstudios.com/img/content/characters/49a.gif \_ Black. The sketch artist sucks donkey dick, but he drew crinkly hair. |
| 5/17 |