1/27    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11062650/site/newsweek
        MSNBC and Newsweek both write trash for uninformed liberal readers.

1/27    http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/science/earth/29climate.html
        "The top climate scientist at NASA says the Bush administration has
        tried to stop him from speaking out ... was particularly incensed that
        the directives ... had come through informal telephone conversations
        ... leaving no significant trails of documents. ... relayed the
        warning to Dr. Hansen that there would be 'dire consequences' if such
        statements continued ... 'The inference was that Hansen was disloyal.'
        ... many scientists who routinely took calls from reporters five years
        ago can now do so only if the interview is approved by administration
        officials in Washington, and then only if a public affairs officer is
        present or on the phone."
        "If America shows uncertainty or weakness in this decade, the world
        will drift toward tragedy." -GW Bush (Sep 2, 2004)
        \_ oooh spoooookeeeey.... "informal telephone conversations" ....
           ... "no signnificant trails of documents" ....  "relayed the
           warning .... would be 'dire consequences'" .... "inference was
           that ... was disloyal" .... "and then only if a [agent representing
           the administration] is present" .......
           So has the NYT sunk to new journalistic lows or was it always this
           bad?  Wasn't there once a time when reporters actually went out
           and *investigated* allegations instead of writing single sourced
           propaganda like this?  I guess doing actual fact checking is
           *work*.  Maybe this is going on, maybe it isn't but we don't know
           from sensationalist junk like this.  Might as well read the Daily
           Cal.  Same quality and it's free.
           \_ What you are saying is completely false.
              \_ Uhm, yeah, you have totally convinced me with that well
                 supported statement.  If you have nothing to say, which
                 you don't, say nothing.  In the mean time, I'm going to go
                 find a Daily Cal so I can read something well researched
                 instead of the crap the NYT is spewing out.
                 \_ Most of your "points" are complete hokum.
                    \_ Most of your "points" are complete hokum.
                    \_ If you actually had a point or something to say, you
                       would have said so by now.  You're still hovering
                       around the "i no u r but wut am i?!" level.  The
                       Daily Cal quite most excellent even though it was
                       last week's Tuesday edition.  Very timely!  I look
                       forward to reading tomorrow's on Friday.
              \_ What you are saying is completely false.
        \_ Holy time travel, Batman.  Here's a Wapo story from 1/2005 about it.
           http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19162-2005Jan18.html
           Does he like pop up once a year to talk about how he's been
           pressured not to talk?  Any bets on his story on 1/2007?
           \_ Anyone who ranks lower would be hesitant to come out
              for fear of losing their livelihood.
              \_ Absolutely.  Come January next year, I'm sure we'll once
                 again hear about how he was pressured to keep silent.

1/27    Can anyone recommend a good open-source PDF creator for
        os x? Thanks.
        \_ File -> Print -> PDF -> Save as PDF?
                \_ Oops, sorry. I mean SERVER-SIDE PDF creator.
                   I need to create PDF documents for users of our
                   web site. -op
                   \_ Create them from what?  You can generate PDF directly
                      in perl with perl-PDF.  Or you can use htmlpdf to
                      convert HTML to PDF.  -tom
        \_ Create a CUPS printer with a PDF driver.
           On the Mac OS X machine go to <DEAD>localhost:631<DEAD>
        \_ If you don't have to produce too many documents, you could do this
           with AppleScript.  The performance is ass, but fine if your not
           trying to pump out many documents a minute.
                \_ I won't (I only need approx 1 document/day). How do I use
                   Applescript? I've never used it before. Thanks. -op

1/27    Is there a public list of companies that are known to use Yahoo's
        SpamGuard software? Does Earthlink use it?

1/28    "Actions Fail to Match Words in New Orleans --
        Four months from the next hurricane season, the Bush administration's
        promise to rebuild the Gulf Coast remains largely unfulfilled."
        http://tinyurl.com/aro3r (Wash Post)
        \_ Unfortunately, the politics make it impossible to have a real
           discussion on whether it is a good idea to rebuild New Orleans.
           \_ Why can't Dubya just say, "We love blacks, but we're not sure
              about rebuilding below sea level.  To show that I love blacks,
              I will ..."
              \_ Err... Politics?
              \_ What is there to rebuild?  The place is still below sea
                 level, the people who left have no reason to come back.
                 I don't see a point in *paying* them to come back.  NO will
                 be smaller than it was.  If there is a real reason for it
                 to grow, it will.  We don't pay people to move out to all
                 those little towns in the midwest that have been dying for
                 decades or build them free stuff.
                 \_ We also didn't destroy those towns through blatant
                    government incompetence.
                    \_ Who summoned the hurricane?  Is it always the
                       government's fault when something bad happens?
                       Do citizens have no responsibility for themselves?
                       I don't want to live in a Mommy State.  When Mommy
                       takes care of your needs She also gets to tell you
                       what to do.
                       \_ Control Weather is a 7th Level spell, no?  Maybe
                          the government is responsible.
                          \_ Some bald dude with sunglasses just explained to
                             me a couple days ago how rogue elements of the
                             former KGB and the Yakuza are controlling the
                             weather using technology developed by Nikola
                             Tesla which causes weather patterns to be square
                             instead of round, and which caused Katrina.
                             He said that the U.S. Government knows about it,
                             but is powerless to stop it.
                             \_ Whoa!  You met Picard on one of his time
                                travel episodes?  Did you get any trinkets or
                                his autograph?  That's so cool!
                          \_ Only Jerry Falwell has memorized the runes.  Or
                             is it Pat Robertson? One of those two can steer
                             hurricanes, I mix them up.

1/28    Ask a Republican!
        http://csua.org/u/etk (mac.com)
        \_ I don't get it.  Who is this guy?  (The Bio doesn't really clear
           it up)
           \_ wow, dense aren't you. He's a comic, and pretty damn funny
              \_ Yeah, I guess I am.  So why does he have bits that specify
                 specific years and make it look like he really was some sort
                 of elected republican?
                 \_ He's a comedian who impersonates a republican elected
                    official answering questions in the manner of a
                    stereotypical republican. It's satire. -!pp
        \_ hilarious. thx.
           \_ uh, if you say so. Colbert Report is the same basic idea but
              actually funny sometimes
              \_ when you get too far out there, the unfunny that agrees
                 with your core beliefes becomes funny.  humor is relative.
                 relatives are humor.  :-)

1/28    What's the debian package that has the man pages for the stdlib
        functions?
        \_  dpkg -l "*libstd*" | grep doc

1/28    Haha.  James Frey is now the top for links for the google search
        "disgraced author"
        http://www.google.com/search?q=disgraced%20author

1/28    Just switched to Comcast from SBC and generally happy with it.  But
        can someone please explain to me why they are constantly pumping
        ARP traffic through the network?  It seems harmless, but I'm curious
        as I didn't see it with DSL.  It's a little disconcerting to see
        constant traffic on your router, even if ARPs are harmless from
        a bandwidth perspective, and it makes the WAN send/receive light
        basically useless.  Is there a cable modem I can get that won't
        forward these stupid things?  From reading around the net, all I see
        are vague references to the fact that Comcast's network configuration
        is such that all of their customers on a particular link will see
        all customers ARP traffic.
        \_ Further searching turns up this from 8 Dec 2005:
           "I'm a relatively new comcast customer, and also a network
           engineer. I'm not sure how they have their routers configured,
           but I get upwards of 10-20 arp requests per second during the day,
           and from 6:00 to midnight I get so many that packets start getting
           dropped. I recieve the arps from at least 5 different source IPs
           that appear to be routers (they all have ips that end in .1, but on
           different /24 networks. This leads me to believe that they are
           using multiple virtual IPS on the same interface of a single
           router, or that they have something bridging data between parallel
           networks (which should not be happening). Regardless, I'm trying to
           get some resolution. I can't imagine what would create a requirement
           for this level of arp traffic; it has to be a misconfiguration
           somewhere."
           \_ Good luck trying to explain this problem to their technical
              support staff! -another comcast user
        \_ would you recommend SBC DSL or Comcast cable?  Is DSL really
           that much cheaper?
           \_ My brother is getting 2 mbps down off his Dslextreme line for
              $20/month on a yearly subscription.  I'm getting 2 mbps (yes,
              I know Comcast advertises more, but that's my roughly measured)
              from Comcast for $50/month on month-to-month (Comcast doesn't do
              annual).  I'd switch to DSL in a heartbeat if it were available
              at my house.  The only thing nice about my Comcast feed is the
              pseudo-static IP (infinite dhcp lease, keyed off my mac address
              and their equipment, and neither changes all that often).
              \_ For what it's worth, I'm getting 6 mbps downstream from
                 Comcast pretty consistently.  Oddly, using a Belkin router/
                 firewall in between the cable modem and my network cuts
                 it to about 5 mbps.  The Belkin's WAN activity light was how
                 I originally found all the frickin' ARP traffic.  Is it
                 possible the overheard of blocking the ARPs is slowing the
                 (admittedly very cheap) Belkin down?  --ARP traffic guy
                 \_ My segment get continuous arps but not *that* kind of
                    traffic.  I get 1 or 2 per second at most.  Sometimes it
                    fades off a bit to 1 every 3-5 seconds.  How many are
                    you getting?
                    \_ It fluctuates, but I'm seeing roughly 5 to 10 a second.
                       From what I've read, Comcast does configure it's
                       customers into very large LANs, and that you'll
                       tend to see more of the ARPs when some of the people
                       on your LAN are infected with something like Code Red.
           \_ I'm over 20,000 feet from the nearest DSL POP so cable is my
              only choice.  The pseudo-static IP changes about once every
              15 months which isn't too horrible and the service itself has
              been quite reliable overall.  It is pricey but when dialup is
              your only other choice....
              \_ Ha!  I'm only 13k feet from the nearest CO.  Of course,
                 according to SBC, I have steel pairs running to my house
                 instead of copper, and DSL will never happen till they
                 rip up the sidewalk to swap to copper.

1/28    My car needs a smog check, AGAIN! If I have a hybrid, will
        I have to go less often?
        \_ Why would you?
           \_ Possible incentive?
        \_ If a car needs to be smogged, it needs to be smogged every 2
           years.  My motorcycle, on the other hand, never needs to be
           smogged.  Niether does my bicycle.
        \_ Hybrid's are a crock.  Old (Insight, Prius, Civic) hybrids got their
           gains with aerodynamics, weight savings (in some cases) and low-
           resistance (i.e. less-safe) tires.  Newer ones get it on engine
           tweaks (and don't gain that much).  All of them win on paper because
           of an unrealistic EPA testing scenario.
           \_ Aren't gas-only cars also tested under the same unrealistic EPA
              testing scenario?
              \_ EPA numbers for cars are always a pseudo ideal that will never
                 be met in the real world but they *tend* not to be too far
                 off.  My last car was rated 26 highway, I got about 20-23
                 depending on how bad traffic was, so that's pretty close.
                 Traffic was bad enough to change jobs, so....
              \_ Yes, but it benefits hybrids more because of the
                 charge/discharge characteristics.
                http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-epa11jan11,1,7644604.story
        \_ You'll have to go "less often" because new cars don't have to be
           smogged for the first few years. And anyway, you have three months
           to get it done -- I've always been able to do it with regular
           service anyway (before this year, when I became Test Only).

1/28    http://zfacts.com/p/60.html