4/8     I love Conservative logic:
        "The less virtue we have in our society, the more the need for
        government to control our lives, to govern our lives." -Santorum
        In other words, government needs to enforce virtue in order to
        keep government out of our lives.
        \_ Sounds like some hippie needs their virtues l'arned again!
        \_ What's wrong with the above statement?  It's just another way of
           saying, the more enlightened a society, the more each individuals
           regulate themselves, and the less you'll need a government.
           \_ Because there's an implicit "^virtue^of my particular values"
              that I, at least, read in that statement.  -sax

4/8     Whao, what happened here? Did we even enter?
        http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/Finals/Standings.html
        \_ Uh, let's just say '04 was not a good year for us.
        \_ The US restrictions on foreign students are, predictably, improving
           the student pools at universities in other countries.  How long
           will it be before the US's cultural and business dominance of the
           world are just a historical footnote?  -tom
           \_ US restrictions on foreign students have almost zero effect on
              any undergraduate population in the US. I share your concern
              about grad populations, but the ICPC is mostly undergrad.

4/8     Just out of curiousity, has anyone tried eBooks (Adobe reader,
        Microsoft reader)? What is it like? eBooks are a lot cheaper
        than regular books and they don't take up any space and allow you
        to do quick searches. However, I'm wondering if they're
        transferable between computers. Any comment on this? -ok thx
        \_ They're transferable between computers if you remove the DRM.
           Remember Dmitry Skylarov?

4/8     California campers attacked and robbed by Mexican Nationals (Illegal Aliens)
        http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1380571/posts

4/8     Free Trade killed the Neanderthals:
        http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7221

4/8     To save power I set my laptop to shut down HD after 1 min of
        inactivity. However, my laptop always does something to the HD
        and I know this because it keeps clicking and clicking. I've turned
        off Norton Realtime Anti-Virus thing, Firefox/IE, MS Word, and
        pretty much everything I can think of, but it just never turns off.
        What could be causing this? BTW I have 1.5G of RAM and XP and
        apps only about 0.5G.
        \_ Modern OSes will premtively copy memory to/from the swap file if
           the system is fairly idle.  That way if you do need to swap out
           those pages you don't have to wait for the data to be written.
        \_ Well, you could be running applications that save or backup their
           state or config files or whatever every x minutes, and the swap
           file is a possibility too. If you have that much RAM, you probably
           don't need one. I have 1 GB and I don't even need one.
        \_ XP will defrag/index files when idle by default.
           \_ What? Is this for real? That is just brain dead. How do you turn
              this off?
              \_ right-click the disk, General tab, uncheck "Allow indexing
                 service to index this disk for fast file searching"
                 \_ This shouldn't be necessary, unless you enabled the
                    indexing service -- it doesn't run by default.
                    \_ I concur.  For XP, the drive option is on by default,
                       but the service is off by default.  This is unlike
                       2K, where the service is on by default.
                       Also, defrag != indexing.  Duh.
        \_ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Dfrg\BootOptimizeFunction
           set "Enable" to N and reboot. -ray

4/9     "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie is bad.  Really bad.  You
        just won't believe how vastly, staggeringly, jaw-droppingly bad it is."
        http://www.planetmagrathea.com/shortreview.html
        Sorta spoiler-ish, but not as spoilerish as the long review available
        within the page above, a list of things NOT in the movie:
        http://www.planetmagrathea.com/notinthefilm.html
        No guide entry on towels?!
        \_ I did not read the longer spoiler-full review, but from what I did
           read I don't trust this guy.  So what if the story has been
           drastically changed?  If you want to just see an on-screen version
           of the radio show, the BBC has already done that.  I'm not going
           to predict whether the movie will suck, but I'm not going to listen
           to the rantings of the kind of angry nerd who ends up on slashdot.
           \_ Better yet, the BBC's TV version is radically different from
              the Radio Version, and the book version deviates even farther
              from there. Douglas himself was an inveterate last-minute editor.
        \_ Comparing the original book to the movie adaptation is the classic
           nerd exercise in mental masturbation.  Movies are simply a different
           medium, get over it.  Some things that work in books just don't
           translate well to movies.  Also, not everything in the book can
           be included in the movie due to time constraints.
           \_ Douglas Adams wrote very cinematically because he worked in the
              medium.  His books are filled with dialogue and scene description.
              Yes, time constraints are an issue, but if they did indeed simply
              cut out the punchlines, that would be just stupid.
           \_ Didn't read the review, did you?  He address all above
              points.  His main point is that they've taken out the jokes
              and replaced them with lame ones.
              \_ As someone who did read the review, I agree with the pp.
                 \_ His point is still valid.  The _story_ of the book is
                    not it's strength - it has virtually no story.  If you
                    take out the jokes, there's no point.
                    \_ Took out the jokes that *he* liked. I'd have to see
                       it before I assumed that it was totally devoid of
                       humor.
                       \_ Yeah, I heard they changed the meaning of life
                          to 137.  Now that's just stupid.  Totally ruins the
                          joke.
                          \_ But that's approximately one over the fine
                             structure constant!
                          \_ This is funny 'cause if they really did that it
                             wouldn't change the joke at all, and yet, I'd
                             be REALLY annoyed, despite being completely ok
                             with them changing random stuff around.

4/9     I received a letter from Cal saying my name was stored on that stolen
        laptop.  Should I really place a "credit alert"?  And would doing so
        hurt my credit rating?
        \_ it can't hurt to place a credit alert. and I don't see how/why
           it would affect your credit rating.
        \_ Yes.  File the report.  Not filing if the threat proves real
           could devastate your credit for decades.  Filing when you don't
           need to will hardly matter.
           \_ Should I file the 90 day initial alert or the extended alert,
              which requires a police report?  Should I refile the 90 day
              alert every 90 days for the rest of my life?  This is a serious
              question.  If it makes sense to file an alert now, and one can
              never predict when the stolen information will (no longer) be
              used, it seems to make equal sense to keep the alert on forever.
              BTW it seems that an alert will show up on the credit report.
              \_ Depends how vulnerable you feel.  90 day alert is simple
                 to place so you might as well do that asap.  Policy report
                 may or may not be a hassle to get.
                 \_ Jeesh, it is a bunch of cal students isn't it?  Someone
                    should get the police report and put it up on the web.