4/28    To the guy who answered my question about FreeBSD/RAID--thanks.
        I'm not actually booting off the RAID array--was just wondering if
        it's possible to add disks later if I intend to do so.  Question
        answered though (haven't played with PC RAID before.)  -John
        \_ You're welcome.

4/29    I need help getting information off a web site.  A page presents
        information about an item in locations spread througout the page.
        Each page presents information about one item. What is a quick and
        easy way to go through several pages, capture all the information
        related to each item, and put them into a spreadsheet with a unique
        index?  I think this might be possible by scraping the screen, but how
        does one go about this from a Windows workstation (with no app
        servers)?  Would it be easier to record a bunch of copy and paste
        actions with automation / macro recording software and replay the
        macro?
        \_ On a windows machine with dotnet you can just simply write
           the whole thing in a couple lines of C Sharp. They've even
           got a snarf util in the O'Reilly book.
        \_ perl.  -tom
           \_ Typical Tom answer.  Tom, when you dont know much about
              something, why don't you leave it for others to answer?
              \_ what do you mean?  perl is a fine solution.  -tom
                 \_ WWW:Mechanize is a valid suggestion.  "Use perl" is a
                    step away from "write a prgrogam."  Sad you can't see
                    this.
                    \_ If you know anything about perl, you know
                       there's more than one way to do it.  I wouldn't
                       use WWW::Mechanize, though that's certainly a
                       reasonable approach.  -tom
           \_ more specifically, WWW::Mechanize is useful -dwc
        \_ Python's urlib module does this quite easily also. -scottyg

4/29    Perverts after 5 yr old kids
        Arrested father had point to make Disputed school's lesson on
        "diversity"
        http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1393428/posts
        \_ Dear EuroMotders, are Europeans more tolerant to gays and lesbians?
           Having been in Canada I can say that it is, but what about Europe?
           \_ Boston schools are also the ones that teach fisting.
           \_ About as consistently so as states/communities in the US.  -John
           \_ These Boston schools are the same one that teach fisting.

4/29    http://www.wingmusic.co.nz
        The next William Hung is a female singer
        \_ Did you miss the Southpark episode featuring Wing?
            \_ Just saw it, pretty hilarious. They should've had an episode
               with William Hung in it.
           \_ I swear.  SP gets more fucked up each season.  Did you see the
              erection episode?

4/29    Has anyone here used Propel for php persistence?  Thumbs up/down?

4/29    Rumsfeld, Spider-Man, and Captain America (work-safe)
        http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2005/04/29/snap6_gallery__550x391.jpg
        The Washington Post was good enough to crop the image.

4/29    A pedophile dream come true: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7668788
        \_ "Experts interviewed for this article could not cite a single case
           of a child predator hunting for and finding a child through a blog."
        \_ YOU MUST STAY AFRAID!  EVIL LURKS EVERYWHERE!  BUILD MORE PRISONS!
           \_ Plus pursue death penalty, and actually carrying them out.
           \_ Plus pursue death penalty, and actually carry them out.

4/29    "Two wealthiest men help guide Berkshire-- Bill Gates to join
         Buffett to take over the world"
        http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7670056

4/29    When I run winver.exe, it displays a string "Version 5.1 (Build
        2600.xpsp2.050301-1526 : Service Pack 1)".  Since it says Service Pack
        1, what does the "sp2" after "xp" stand for?  Thanks.
        \_ I have (Build 2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.050301-1519 : Service Pack 2)
        \_ http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/03/18/398550.aspx

04/29   New stem-cell procedure restore sight:
        http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1589642,00.html
        \_ sight at the cost of dead babies? it shall be evil sight.
           \_ Did you read the article? The stem cells uses are
              adult stem cells taken from the patients themselves.
              \_ Did you read the article?
                 "Tests on the patients after a year revealed no trace of the
                 DNA of the stem-cell donor"

4/29    How does data cracking work?  I guess someone intercepts some encoded
        data, and then try to apply many different conversions on the data to
        find the right conversion that yields the original data.  But then how
        does he know which conversion is the right one when he doesn't even
        know what the original data is?  -- newbie
        \_ Related question:  What were the problem(s) with SSH1?
           -- not-so-newbie
           \_ iirc, SSHv1 used the same dh key for both encryption and
              hmac w/o deriving separate keys for each.
        \_ Depends on application--some apps use poor randomness, insufficient
           keylength, static keys, re-used keys, etc.  Cracking can be done
           a couple of ways, including pattern analysis and just plain brute
           forcing--you're pretty unlikely to get, say, two different clear
           text tcp streams that both look "right".  Very often you're also
           not "cracking" anything, but rather relying on a buffer overflow or
           similar (as with the SSH CRC32 exploit.)  -John
        \_ What John said. Also, the TLA agencies do things like pattern
           and traffic analysis to try and look for information in the
           bitstream. A surprising amount of information can be figured
           just by looking at things like the frequency of certain
           sequences.
           \- hola, i do not know what "data cracking" means however, based
              on the followup comments, you may want to look at I GOLDBERG's
              [UCB] PhD thesis on the design of the "anonymized IP wormhole"
              which 1. presents a useful framework to think about "the problem
              space" 2. has an interesting discussion on confounding "generic
              traffic analysis". it may be more than you are looking for but
              isnt that long ... i image there is a shorter version of the
              "freedom" project [IG gaves some talks], but i dont know if
              there is something downloadable. --psb
              \- I note in passing IG uses the example of "you would never
                 expect the us govt and the libyan govt to collude!" which
                 is sort of funny given that MQ is now our good buddy.
                 is sort of funny given that MQ is now our good friend.
                 better add the north korean and syrian govts. the probabilty
                 of north korea becoming our friend = how many bits of crypto
                 strength? --psb

4/29    Why did Sun decide to implement SMF in Solaris 10? Was it just to
        piss off customers or is there some technical advantage?
        \_ Are you talking about the new way to start/stop programs,
           &c.?  If so, I must agree that the only purpose was to piss
           off customers and prove that Sun can do something stupid and
           different than Linux (chkconfig may not be great, but it
           mostly works and everyone knows how to write init scripts)
           BTW, SMF pissed off a lot of ppl inside sun who have to ship
           products on other *nix than Solaris.
           \_ I guess Sun should be on http://fuckedcompany.com if it isn't
              already.
        \_ Can someone give me a list of reasons why SMF is bad?
           \_ Complicated new way to do something that has already been
              done. Like I said, if there's some technical advantage then
              I'd like to know what it is. Maybe there is one. If not, it
              is just change for change's sake.
           \_ 1. SMF uses non-standard commands - you can't simply
                 start/stop a process by calling its init script,
                 you have to know what its SMF "name" is. Even if
                 you don't have to deal w/ other *nix, SMF makes
                 switching btwn S9 and S10 a pain.
              2. SMF enable/disable semantics are bizarre - you
                 can't just say enable/disable X like in chkconfig
                 and assume that the daemon is enabled
              3. SMF fails to provide adequate feedback re failures
                 of configuration. Often, you can't tell if a fault
                 needs to be cleared in order for it be enabled.
                 service can be enabled.
              4. SMF's files are non-standard and their contents
                 are not explained well - the purpose of SMF is
                 to make fault recover/mgmt easier, however if
                 most of your admins don't/can't figure out how
                 to fix config problems, faults will take longer
                 to remedy. Developers and Admins should not have
                 to read some guys blog on http://blogs.sun.com in order
                 to get details on how the system works.
                 \_ http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-1985/6mhm8o5n0?q=smf&a=view
                    \_ Yes there are docs, but the docs don't
                       really have anything useful in the. Ex.
                       tell me where in that page it specifies
                       how to use svcadm to disable a process
                       from being started or how to tell if
                       the reason a particular process is not
                       starting automatically is b/c SMF thinks
                       that the process is in 'fault' state and
                       must be cleared.
              5. The fault mgmt functionality provided by SMF could
                 easily have been provided through additions to
                 existing functionality (specific args to init
                 scripts, allowing apps to dump monitoring scripts
                 into a given directory, &c.)
                \_ Sounds like one of those numerous cases where Sun was trying
                   to solve the problem which has been already solved
                   by others and comes up with some terribly complicated and
                   non-standard way of doing things. *sigh*

4/29    From the official motd above:
        As of May 11 Soda will discontinue SSH 1 and secure telnet support.  We
        will also be discontinuing support for unauthenticated/unencrypted
        mail services in compliance with university security requirements.
        Please see your email for more information (assuming you're on
        csua@csua).  Questions, comments, complaints, and cheap floozies to
        root.
         \_ Does this mean that I will not be able to access csua using
            ssh, or simply that there will be no one to help with problems,
            or that I need to use a new secure version of ssh?  Also, can
            I still use pine on csua?
            \_ SSHv1 is the old insecure version of the protocol. Most
               ssh clients now support SSHv2. If you are using OpenSSH
               you should have no problems.
         \_ Does this mean we will be able to use soda as an smtp gateway
            when off of campus net?
            \_ From the email sent out a few hours ago:
                To comply with UC Berkeley departmental standards, we must
                terminate support for unauthenticated/unencrypted external
                access to all mail services. If you access Soda via POP, IMAP,
                or send mail through our SMTP server you MUST switch to use
                both authentication and SSL/encryption. These options should
                be easily found within most mailers,

                IMAP / http://soda.csua.berkeley.edu port 993 (w/ssl)
                SMTP / http://soda.csua.berkeley.edu port 465 (w/ SSL + login is
                user@soda.csua.berkeley.edu and password)
                POP / http://soda.csua.berkeley.edu port 995 (w/ auth + SSL)

        \_ Per request, a copy of the email has been saved to the following
           location: /csua/pub/SodaChanges0505
           - jvarga
                \_ As an aside, I've found that for some bizarre reason,
                   Mozilla mail doesn't like some SMTP AUTH/TLS authentication
                   setups, while SMTP AUTH/SSL is just fine.  This is with
                   Postfix/SASL2 & Dovecot/imaps under FreeBSD 5.3-R.  I just
                   went through some trouble setting this up, and if anyone
                   wants my configs I'm happy to share.  -John
            \_ I'm off campus-net and I can send mail fine using SSL on port
               25.
        \_ Does that mean the ssh client at
           http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/ssh will no longer work?

4/29    I used to be able to use ps2pdf (and Distiller 4) to convert PostScript
        files to PDF. After upgrading to Office 2003, I can no longer do that
        as Distiller complains "Error: undefined; OffendingCommand". What
        can I do to convert? -ok thx
        \_ http://www.pdf995.com
        \_ ghostscript.  Also check out
           http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator

4/29    Coburn and Tancredo for 2008!
        Senate plots to get rid of doc (Pork-buster Tom Coburn)
        http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1392923/posts
        \_ why do you hide the free republic links?

4/29    Got myself and  ipod 20GB and am installing itunes on my dell
        laptop. I want to use it in my car. I also want to listen to some
        marginally legal stuff on it too. Any problems? Also what is the
        reccomended port to use? I have USB  and i394 ports  only. thanks
        \_ Ain't that a bitch how you're forced to use iTunes? How stupid.
           \_ don't both foobar and winamp have plug-ins to support ipods?
        \_ Why would degree of legality be an issue?  I've had no probs
           using USB2.
           -- It turned out that I needed to buy a PCMIA USB2 card for
        things to work right on my Inspiron 8200.The legal thing I
        was thinking more in terms of songs gotten via p2p that I
        did not actuallly buy and was concerned with what type
        of reporting iTunes does.
           --Sucky things so far:
          1.  The sound loss from the FM transmitter  setup. It seems
        that I basically need to upgrade my car stereo (Honda with a
        CD plaer only) to get decent sound.
          2. The seemingly bogus claim that you will have room for
           20K songs. This is only if you  use the lowest
          quality level for importing your songs.

4/29    Aircraft mechanic, ship builder, and construction are jobs
        American's won't do.  Add to the list Dentist.
        Man arrested for pretending to be dentist
        http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1393979/posts

4/29    Anybody know why MacOSX started ignoring /etc/hosts since
        upgrading to tiger? Any way to fix that? Thanks.
        \_ Make sure FFAgent is in your Netinfo LookupOrder list.
        \_ On a related note, is there a way to repartition a hd in OS X
           w/o removing the existing files?

4/29    Anywere i can find a video clip of Airbus A380? thx
        \_ http://www.airbus.com/a380/seeing/discover/index.aspx
           Click on the Video's tab on the left hand side of the
           page. There are several videos.
           \_ Just out of curiousity, what are you hoping to see?
              \_ i am a geek who travels alot, happened to get excited
                 on any sort of new civil airliners :p  I am very excited
                 about Boeing 7E7/787 as well.
        \_ There will be plenty available after it crashes like the A330.
           \_ Nah Boeing will just bribe the US govt. to shoot one down. -John