5/9     Is there a stat somewhere that shows you political affiliation
        with the sports you play? For example what % of the golf players
        are Dem/Rep, what % of the basketball players are Dem/Rep, etc?
        \_ http://www.slate.com/id/2121377
           Golf, the ultimate symbol of Republican corruption.
        \_ Bigger balls = Democrats

5/10    Russian speakers:  Can someone tell me what "Istrebitelnaja
        Samokhodnaya Ustanovka" literally means?  It's Russian for self-
        propelled gun/artillery or something, but I'd be interested in the
        word-for-word translation.  -John
        \_ demolishing self-propelled systems -shac
        \_ demolishing self-propelled systems. im also told it has a
           shorter nickname of kat'yusha -shac
           \_ Katyushas, or Stalin Organs, were the big trucks with lots
              of artillery rockets on the back.  ISUs were self-propelled
              guns (dunno if they also called rocket launchers by that
              designation.)  Thanks!  -John

5/10    How a regular person can give Dubya good advice (on Medicare Part D)
        http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/05/20060509-5.html
        Look for the first "Applause" line in response to a questioner.

5/10    Mary Cheney on John Kerry:
        "What was offensive was that he was obviously trying to use me and my
        sexual orientation for his own political gain."
        ... on Edwards:
        Sitting in the studio audience when Edwards mentioned her sexual
        orientation, Cheney said she looked at [him] and mouthed the words
        "Go f--- yourself."
        ... on Dubya:
        "I think he's a very good man.  On [gay] issues, he hasn't caught up."
        \_ The election has been over for a very long time, man.  Maybe you
           should speak with williamc about relocating to canada if this
           still bothers you....
           \_ who said it bothered me?  I thought some sodans might find it
              interesting, in the sense they're not blindsided "oh I didn't
              know she said that"

5/10    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12721154
        Bush: Brother Jeb would be 'great president'
        \_ If you can't keep the White House in order, might as well keep it
           in the family.
        \_ Didn't he say something similar about Porter Goss? Michael Chertoff?
           Tom Ridge? Harriet Miers?

5/10    Can we get kais motd intellidiff back now that cgi is re-enabled?
        \_ No. "suexec" is not enabled so it is run as "nobody", which means
           I need to make EVERYTHING world readable, including the index.cgi
           in which I embed mysql password. I am not enabling anything
           back till suexec is added. Until then, soda is insecure, and
           I'm not going to risk security for convenience.    -kchang
           \_ root: Can we get suexec set up? -intellidiff #1 fan
           \_ Mysql has fairly granular permissions.  Why not set up an
              account that has read-only access to the appropriate tables?
              \_ Because it also needs to write to certain directories/files.
                 In the end it's a lot of trouble and I don't have
                 time to code a workaround now. Look. Enabling suexec
                 takes 30 seconds, so it is a solution that has a much
                 higher work/time ratio. I'm no no hurry. I can wait. -kchang
                 higher work/time ratio. I'm in no hurry. I can wait. -kchang
              \_ How can we access mysql from soda?
                 \_ I compiled my private copy on a separate port and
                    not sharing it                              -kchang

5/10    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1629936/posts
        Freepers respect power.  Dubya has lost substantial amounts of it.
        \_ Bush is a "moderate" according to freepers.

5/10    Why is the troop death toll in Iraq so low? Technology! If someone's
        gonna die, just stick in a feeding tube. Voila! One less death.
        http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/05/10/iraq.medics
        \_ so it is worse than Vietnam then.. our technology today
           is just lowering the kill count
           \_ "If you look at the overall death rate ... the case fatality
              rate is cut in half from Vietnam to now. And again I think that's
              due to better training, tactical combat casualty training,"
              I dunno about worse or better.  But to think about it: 2500 US
              soldiers have died in about 3 years, the senior surgeon above
              says that could be double without the better training, so it
              potentially could have been 5000 US dead.  We were in Vietnam
              for ~13 years, so 4 times longer than Iraq so far means:
              5000 * 4 = 20,000 hypothetical fatalities vs. ~50,000 in Vietnam.
              \_ Yeah, but there are many reasons why the fatality rate
                 is so much lower; medical technology, training, night vision,
                 more effective body armor, etc.  Lacking context, the
                 comparison doesn't really communicate very much.
              \_ take into account the terrain.. the jungle was much
                more difficult to spot.. in iraq it should be much easier
                ... we need tech to detech roadside bombs...
                \_ Err, comparing the Vietnam era, draft military to the
                   current day armed forces is meaningless.
        \_ traditionaly, we count casualties, not death.
           casualties ~= death + injured + captured.  By that account, we
           have close to 20k casualties out of 110k+ force.  The ratio is
           relatively high due to the small total force committed.
        \_ "Traditionally" "voila" - take any battle from any pre-vietnam
           war. Learn what casualties really mean.
        \_ so it is worse than Vietnam then.. our technology today
           is just lowering the kill count
           \_ "If you look at the overall death rate ... the case fatality
              rate is cut in half from Vietnam to now. And again I think that's
              due to better training, tactical combat casualty training,"
              I dunno about worse or better.  But to think about it: 2500 US
              soldiers have died in about 3 years, the senior surgeon above
              says that could be double without the better training, so it
              potentially could have been 5000 US dead.  We were in Vietnam
              for ~13 years, so 4 times longer than Iraq so far means:
              5000 * 4 = 20,000 hypothetical fatalities vs. ~50,000 in Vietnam.
              \_ Yeah, but there are many reasons why the fatality rate
                 is so much lower; medical technology, training, night vision,
                 more effective body armor, etc.  Lacking context, the
                 comparison doesn't really communicate very much.
              \_ take into account the terrain.. the jungle was much
                more difficult to spot.. in iraq it should be much easier
                ... we need tech to detech roadside bombs...
                \_ Err, comparing the Vietnam era, draft military to the
                   current day armed forces is meaningless.

5/10    have you heard about Blue Frog securities?  Apparently it is a good spam
        fighting engine (body). http://list.windowsitpro.com/t?ctl=299E7:53FC2

5/10    http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060509/sc_space/isntitionicairpurifiersmakesmog
        Isn't it Ionic? Air Purifiers Make Smog
        \_ Yeah, I really do think...

5/10    I just received a bounced email saying I was trying to send an email to
        some account that deos not exist.  Examining the attached original email
        I am sure I did not send out or compose that email.  Does that mean someone
        has cracked in my account and used it for emailing?
        \_ No. It's spam spoofing your email address. Send out a note to people
           you care about (but who are generally clueless about the IntarWeb)
           telling them to ignore strange messages like that if they say
           they're from you.

5/10    I'm trying to port a small project from builsing with MS Visual Studio
        to GCC in MinGW on windows.  Only 1 line is having a compile error.
        Using STL, the line
        if(hashmap->find(key)!=0)
        Has the following error:
        no match for `std::_Rb_tree_iterator<std::pair<const std::string, int>,
                                            std::pair<const std::string, int>&,
                                            std::pair<const std::string,int> >&
        != int' operator
        Does anyone have any ideas?  I'm just trying to compare to see if a
        pointer to an iterator is null and in compiles fine in MSVC.
        \_ For gcc, you have to say: if(hashmap->find(key)!=hashmap->end())
           It's more annoying, but it will work with Visual C++ too.  --mconst
        \_ Unfortunately, gcc doesn't have null iterators; you have to say
           if(hashmap->find(key)!=hashmap->end()).  You could also change it
           to if(hashmap->count(key)).  --mconst
           \_ mconst is my savior. -OP, not author of problematic code.
        \_ Did you try == NULL?
           \_ Yeah, slightly different error message. -OP
        \_ mconst is right, but I'll also note that hashmap is not part
           of the STL.
           \_ my bad, its actually a map named hashtable. -OP, the benighted
              maintainance programmer

5/10    The H Prize approved by the House:
        http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12722581
        \_ Here's a revolutionary idea! Let's create new cities that
           have built-in mass transit and have walkable stores, schools,
           libraries, and shops. That way we don't even have to waste
           energy on moving objects (vehicles that weigh over 3000lbs)
           from one place to another all the time, save time, and ultimately
           reduce dependency on foreign energy source which is what this
           prize is all about in the first place. Do I win anything for
           this revolutionary idea?

5/10    The Bush Administration's War on the Laboratory
        "I never thought that now, in the twenty-first century, we could have
        a debate about what to do with a vaccine that prevents cancer"
        http://www.wesjones.com/specter2.htm
        \_ This raises a huge question: HPV and cervical cancer aside, would
           the Abstinence-Only people object to vaccines for any STD? How about
           mononucleosis?
           \_ People who get vaccinated against STDs will go out and have
              unlimited amounts of sex.  At least I think that's how their pea
              sized brains see it.
           \_ Of course they would.  What's the ratio of people who are pro-
              abstinence-only for reasonable, scientific, health-related reasons
              to people who are _really_ behind it for religious reasons?
              \_ Zero.  -tom