1/16    Life in China
        http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/international/asia/16cnd-china.html
        "'The police arrived at 8 p.m., and then started beating people from 9
        p.m., trying to disperse the crowd,' said a schoolteacher who spoke by
        telephone, giving her name only as Yang. 'When this happened, the crowd
        got very angry and lots of people picked up stones on the ground and
        threw them at the policemen. After being attacked, policemen were
        furious, they just beat up everyone, using their batons.'"
        \_"The police are not here to create disorder,
           they're here to preserve disorder."
        \_ "Indeed, demonstrating residents of Panlong village said their anger
           had been sparked by a government land acquisition program they had
           been led to believe in 2003 was part of a construction project to
           build a superhighway connecting the nearby city of Zhuhai with
           Beijing. Later, the villagers learned the land was being re-sold to
           developers to set up special chemical and garment industrial zones
           in the area."  This doesn't just sound like China...
           in the area."  When life (here) imitates China...
        \_"The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to
           preserve disorder."
        \_ "Indeed, demonstrating residents of Panlong village said their
            anger had been sparked by a government land acquisition program
            they had been led to believe in 2003 was part of a construction
            project to build a superhighway connecting the nearby city of
            Zhuhai with Beijing. Later, the villagers learned the land was
            being re-sold to developers to set up special chemical and
            garment industrial zones in the area."  When life (here)
            imitates China...
        \_ my friend in Beijing told me that he witnessed a protest
           turned mobs.  What he found amusing was that the mobs, with no
           appearent organization structure, burn the police station to the
           ground but left surrounding shop intacted.  No looting occured at
           all.
        \_ Sounds like the Volleyball Court riots.

1/16    Since X11 forwarding is gone ; my emacs key definitions no longer
        work. I was wondering if anyone could point me to a setup that would
        at least define basic functionality for emacs inside an x-term. Thanks
        \_ Maybe you could mail root and ask them to turn X11 Forwarding
           back on.
           \_ Or maybe not.
        \_ Just delete/rename your ~/.emacs and you'll get the default key
           binding which works the same in a text terminal and in an xterm.
        \_ Possibly your default xterm is lame (like on Solaris) and doesn't
           do Meta, which breaks all kinds of things for emacs. In that
           case, get a better xterm.
                \_ I am using freebsd 5.4/kde 3.5 and konsole/xterm.
           \_ Meta works fine in my xterm on Solaris.  --- !OP
              \_ Solaris 8. Maybe it's fixed in later versions.

1/16    What's the difference between the "announce" list and the "CSUA" list?
        I'm receiving the same mail from both lists.  Thx.
        \_ When was the last mail you recieved?  I haven't recieved anything
           from them since before break.  Also, announce is for making
           announcements and csua is for csua discussion. -mrauser

1/16    What do you need to do to set up a table at BART and
        start trying to prostelyze the masses?  The Scientology
        people have moved their table inside of the Powell
        BART station that is shared by the Nordstrom mall and
        Powell SF MUNI stop with their stupid FREE STRESS TEST
        signs.  Can I set up my own table behind them and
        offer FREE ANAL RAPINGS?  Do I have to get a license
        somewhere?
        \_ It is a public area. You can get away with a good amount, but
           setting up a table is something you'd need to get a license for
           (possible obstruction of a public walkway problems). You can
           carry a sign or something similar, but you need to watch your
           language (disturbing the peace, public nuisance). I think there
           are also provisions against for-profit advertising not approved
           for BART.
           \_ "FREE RECTAL FEVER CHECK WITH WARM POST-CHECK LOTION"
                    \_ LOWER GI MASSAGE ...
        \_ People might not make the connection as well as if you just stood
           there with a sign saying "Free Brain Washing" or "Free Cult
           Membership*"
           \_ When I see those bastards I usually jump around and shout
              "It's a cult!!!"  "Don't talk to them, they're a fucking cult
              and they'll brainwash you!!" at the top of my lungs and wave
              my arms around.
              \_ That should convince any sensible person.
                 \_ Well, it entertains me, and irritates the Scientologists,
                    and that'e enough for me.  Sensible people already know
                    to avoid them and don't need to be convinced.
                    \- the hari krishna activities have led to a lot of
                       free speech in public but functionally dedicated
                       spaces lawsuits. at one point there were inconsistent
                       standars between airports, bus terminals ferry terminals
                       railway stations etc. to the best of my knowledge these
                       distinctions were some what arbitrary and as far as i
                       know a higher court hasnt imposed a uniform standards.
                       note also, it's not as simple as "is it a public space"
                       because there is adoctrine about quasi-public. for the
                       nTH time in the motd, see pruneyard [yes from the
                       south bay] v. robins.
                       \_ Please stop bastardizing the language, while there's
                          still time.

1/16    CSUA motorcycle lawyers, is it true you do not need a
        special motorcycle driving license to pilot a motorcycle
        with a sidecar on California roads?  I keep seeing this
        snippet in newspaper letters to the editor.  yes
        this is Governor related.
        \_ http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d06/vc12804_9.htm
           Looks ambiguous to me:
           "Class C does not include a two-wheel motorcycle or a two-wheel
           motor-driven cycle."  With side car, that's not two wheels anymore.
           \_ Ah, the answer is, it is true:  "Class C--You may operate a
              motorcycle with a sidecar attached, a three-wheel motorcycle,
              or a motorized scooter."
              http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/dl655/dl665mcycle.pdf
              \_ Interesting.  I hear riding with a sidecar can be really
                 tricky because the balance is so wierd.
        \_ He regularly rides motorcycles without a sidecar attached.
           \_ this is true.  he even did that on TV.  I know he got the ticket
              for just that particular incident with his kid, but it's
              something to keep in mind.

1/16    Does anyone know how to query the maximum (or at least current) JVM
        heap size at runtime?  I'd like to be able to set the max JVM heap size
        (-Xmx512M) in a script and have my app sense that and use the number
        in sizing its caches.  Is there any good way to do this?
        \_ Runtime.{free,total,max}Memory() will give you the numbers you want.
           If this is for caches, you might also want to look into the
           SoftReference and WeakReference classes in java.lang.ref. -gm
           \_ Yeah, I've thought of WeakReferences for the next refactoring,
              but I'm worried about data I want to cache for a future similar
              query getting GC'd out from under me. -OP
              \_ Oh, yeah, thanks. -OP

1/16    Hi guys.  I remember having like 20 pieces of e-mail last night stored
        from Fri-Sun.  This morning, that mail disappeared, but I did receive
        my Monday e-mail.  Anyone else notice their mail disappear today?
        Maybe it was a glitch in my e-mail client or user error.

1/16    Some people have work today, others get the day off.
        \_ Some people have the day off, others take the day off. So what?

1/16    Okay, I have a technical question here. I administer a cluster
        of java webservers running jetty (not resin, sorry). They are behind
        a load balancer. They used to start up fine under "load" i.e. in
        the load balancer configuration. The latest code release
        broke this somehow and now they crash upon startup unless
        I remove them from the load balancer first. The programmers
        promised to fix this, but of course they did not and now
        they claim this is "industry standard." It is burdensome
        to me to have to remove them and then re-insert them every
        time I need to do a restart. Does anyone else run a java
        webserver cluster? Do you have to remove them from your
        load balancer everytime to start them up or restart them?
        I already STFW and could not find anything on the topic. -ausman
        \_ What I would do (I've been in similar situations):
           1) Escalate to CTO so he knows #2 is coming:
           2) "No, I can't bless this release because your P1 bug isn't
               fixed.  You'll have to explain to the CTO why this bug hasn't
               been foxed."  This will trigger a meeting where you can say:
           3) "This is an industry standard?  The code wasn't broken until
               release X.Y.Z on date MMDDYY which you said was going to be
               fixed.  Find me the IEEE, IETF or other industry standards
               body doc that says this is standard."
           If you don't push back hard on this you're only setting yourself
           up for even worse hassle down the road.  I've 'worked' with code
           monkeys like that before.  They're classic bullies.  Hit back hard
           immediately and be rude about it unless you want to be their ops
           bitch forever who has to kludge around their crap code.
           \_ Unfortunately, there is a tradition of kludging around bad
              code here that I am trying to change. Fortunately, we have
              a new CTO who supports my general philosophy on this.
        \_ Yes, and no. Since you didn't supply more information on how
           you're accomplishing load balancing, I have no idea how to
           fix your "problem".
           \_ Netscaler.
              \_ I assume it's something like a 9000 series. What's the
                 error you're getting when starting up resin? Can you get
                 a debug trace out of it?
                 \_ Yeah, 9000. All kinds of errors, untimately leading
                    to a server crash and restart which then crashes and
                    then tries to restart...
                    then tries to restart... I am trying to dig up the
                    exact error for you now. Actually, email me for details,
                    I don't want to post it on the motd.
        \_ That proves it isn't "industry standard".  Escalate and get the
           programmers whipped into shape.
        \_ They promised to fix it?  Do you have that in writing or in a bug
           tracking database?
           \_ No, but they promised in the code release meeting, where I
              have to sign off on code releases. I only agreed to let this
              code go live on the condition that they would fix it later.
              The CTO, who is in charge of both my group and programming,
              was there. So I definitely can push back if I want to, but
              I need evidence to make my case. It is probably true that it
              is less overall time to do the laborous restart than it is
              to fix the bug, at least in the short term.
              \_ Unless it's an architectural problem that will compound as
                 they continue to build on the existing architecture.
        \_ Sounds like an excellent opportunity to set up a script to handle
           updates.  Take node out of load balancing, restart it, test that it
           started cleanly, and then put back into balancing.   Been there,
           done that.
           \_ nonononononono!!!  do *not* *ever* kludge up something on the ops
              side because your coding team sucks.  Make them fix their code.
              If you want to tweak around with LB'd node status to maintain
              a 100% consistent site, for exmaple taking out half, updating
              them, putting them in a new pool, switching the VIP to that
              pool, then doing the remainder.  Ok, I guess.  You can be clever
              for stuff like that if there's some need.  But in this case, he's
              dealing with lazy code monkeys who are trying to force an ops
              policy change because they introduced a bug.  They need to be
              clubbed into submission.  This will not be the end of ops policy
              kludges to cover bad coding.  He'll regret covering for them.
              \_ bad coding happens.  you can deal with it and catch the
                 problem before you have your entire production cluster
                 spewing garbage, or you can let the bad code mess
                 everything up and get into a finger pointing pissing match.
                 OPS job is to keep stuff working.
              \_ bad coding happens.  you can deal with it and catch the problem
                 before you have your entire production cluster spewing garbage,
                 or you can let the bad code mess everythign up and get into a
                 finger pointing pissing match.  OPS job is to keep stuff
                 working.
                 \_ OPS job is to protect the site.  That includes making sure
                    crap code doesn't get pushed and pushing back hard on the
                    developers if it does.  His situation isn't finger
                    pointing.  The devs screwed the pooch and need to unscrew.
                    Slapping a condom on afterwards isn't going to fix
                    anything.
                    \_ What's wrong with doing both?  I assume he doesn't
                       have to TELL anyone he wrote the script. -!pp
                       \_ The short version: doing it right is better.
                          Don't lie about IT stuff.  Get busted once and your
                          already shakey credibility (you're in IT, right?)
                          is shot forever.
                          \_ I dunno, the exact details of how IT does its
                             job is not really usually that interesting to
                             engineering. I don't think you need to tell anyone
                             about all your little operations scripts, but
                             don't lie if asked either.
                             \_ what would you say if someone asked you how
                                long it would take to write a kludge script?
                                it's a very likely question.  also, in some
                                places OPS will be working with engineering
                                and be more aware of how long the different
                                steps are taking even if they don't know the
                                details.  i don't know if that's jim's case
                                but anyway, i wouldn't go out of my way to
                                be too helpful in a situation like this.  the
                                new CTO was likely brought in *because* the
                                board or CEO or whoever understands the code
                                base is broken.  C*O changes aren't common.
                                if so, then OPS can help the guy do his job
                                which will make OPS future much happier or
                                continue down the same path to piling more and
                                more madness on top.  my philsophy is this:
                                don't do anything you'd say was garbage if
                                someone else did it and you were the new guy
                                taking over that job.
        \_ What load balancer?  HTTP keep-alives work decently well for us.
           If it's not answering to the load balancer, it won't be in the
           pool.

1/16    "AP Poll: Blacks Likelier to Celebrate MLK"
        http://csua.org/u/emy (Yahoo! News)
        Excuse me.  We need a poll to know this?
        Tomorrow's AP headline:
        "AP Poll: People likelier to wear thick clothing during winter"
        \_ Define "celebrate".  Do they put up a tree?
        \_ "Jews more likely to celebrate Yom Kippur"
        \_ "Muslims more likely to celebrate Ramadan"
        \_ "Catholics more likely to feel guilty"
        \_ "Geeks more likely to do geeky things"
        \_ "AP most likely to put out stupid polls"
        \_ "Fox News run by twatfaces"
        \_ Real Daily Cal headline "scientist studies universe"
           \_ no. it's "multiverse".. ask jet li

1/16    My HP servers (blades and otherwise) have a nice blue indicator
        light that can be switched on from (bios) or by pushing it.  There
        must be some way to turn it on from linux, how?
        \_ If these servers have IPMI (all of my HP/Sun servers do), then
           you can install the OpenIPMI driver and use ipmitool to turn on
           the indicator light in Linux. If you set up ipmi properly you
           can even turn on the light remotely (which is what we do).
           the indicator light. If you set up ipmi properly you can even
           turn on the light remotely (which is what we do).