5/16    Good old World Net Daily.
        global warming!!        "Not only will it work, but one can easily estim\
ate how long it would
        take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of
        6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated
        into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years
        to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English
        and are not integrated into American society."
        http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50198
        \_ hello? queueing jblack to say something informative
           \_ make the illegals build a border wall, train them in civics
              and military tactics, equip them with AR16s and send them
              back.
              \_ Very nice. What about the blacks and the Asians?
                 \_ Crispus Attucks was the first casualty of the
                    Revolutionary War.
              \_ There has never been an "AR16" in service. Obvious no sign
                 of military training.
        \_ Not just Jews, but lots of others, too. So we start rounding
           up all brown people and ask for their papers. If they don't
           have them (or we just don't like the way they look/act) they
           go into the ovens, huh? Deporting them isn't going to cut it.
           You have to give them a reason to abandon everything they have
           here and never come back.

5/16    Not only our planet's getting warmer, but also dimmer. Watch
        Dimming the Sun on NOVA/PBS:
        http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/dimming.html
        Almost everyone agrees that the greenhouse effect traps heat. But
        in this episode, we see that the counter effect of visibile pollutants
        that cuts 10-20% of light (and causing Global Dimming in the past 50
        years), which ultimately cool the temperature of the earth. For
        example few days post 911 saw a lack of contrails from airplanes
        and scientists observed more sunrays passing through, which raised
        as well as lowered global temperatures at a bigger swing than ever
        seen. Interestingly, if we keep producing heat and but cut pollutants
        that block sunrays that cool the earth, we may actually accelerate
        global warming.
        \_ Operation Dark Storm!  -John
        \_ Global warming actually raises temperatures before it lowers them.
           -- John Kerry
           \_ ...and your point is?
                \_ most people are too stupid to understand global warming.
                   by showing that the issue is complicated, you reduce the
                   ability to convince the average public that GW is real.
                   you should watch this preview on MBP/GW:
   http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount_classics/aninconvenienttruth
                   \_ Interesting.  Okay, I'll check it out after work.
                   \_ the embedded quicktime movie wasn't working for me.
                      here's an alternate source:
                      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUiP6dqPynE

5/16    Blue Security gives up:
        http://csua.org/u/fvo

5/16    http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060517/ap_en_ce/people_bill_cosby
        Crosby being a good Republican.
        \_ Crosby? Denise or Bing?
           \_ David
        \_ This isn't about partisan politics, it's about being honest to a
           community that has mired itself in a culture of victimization.
           Bill's over the top sometimes, but most of what he says are things
           the black community needs to hear and act on.
        \_ Man, the far left-wing trolls are really out in force today.

5/16    Some interesting numbers at the end
        http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/postpoll_051606.htm
        See:  what's your religion, are you liberal/conservative/moderate
        \_ Wait, if the early 80s was strongly Dem, why the fuck did Reagan
           win? Reagan is a charming guy but his policies totally suck.
           And look at Q909, "what was the last grade of school you completed"
           21% attended some college and 21% attended grad school, and 10%
           attended post-graduate. How can you have as many grad school as
           college when the % of people going to grad school is much less
           than college? And 21+21+10 or 52% of the people who did the poll
           have college degrees or higher. This is totally not representative
           of our redneck Jesus loving Americans that mostly voted for
           rednecks like themselves. The survey methodology is flawed.

5/16    Hey boys and girls! Do you have time? Do you want to be productive?
        Do you want to be a better person? Then learn something new today,
        like gdb, ddd, strace, nc, gprof, and valgrind! With these new
        skillsets, YOU can make the world a better place!
        \_ So, um, I've monkeyed with all those tools, except nc, what's
           nc?
           \_ Netcat, likely.  -John
              \- you forgot xargs, mapcar and apply
                 \_ these are really basic, "small steps" skillsets
                    like ls, man, less. -op
                 \_ He didn't ask about tools.   He asked about nc. -John
        \_ Knowing gdb is a lot more important than ddd

5/16    Sowell on the Duke rape case
     http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/thomassowell/2006/05/17/197673.html
        \_ I don't see anything wrong with any of his points; they just come
           down to the truth of what really happened.  That opening quote from
           the "young man at NCCU" really is reprehensible.  Whether this is as
           much of a shared attitude as Sowell claims is another matter.
           \_ I guess you've read "Bonfire of the Vanities"  -John
           \_ I like how he conflates one idiotic statement by one stupid
              college student with the attitude of the entire civil rights
              leadership.
                \_ that's a pretty common pundit tactic these days.
        \_ When I get bored I leap to the defense of scummy rich white
           guys from Duke who run around raping black women.
           \_ allegedly raping... or maybe we should skip the whole trial?
              \_ Was the victim attractive?
                 \_ She was dressed in a provacative manner!
                    \_ Remember, strippers' testimony isn't worth as much as
                       that of "normal people"
                       \_ No, but getting your story straight is important.

5/16    Where can I find a good knish in the Bay Area?
        \_ Try East Coast West on Polk in SF--if they don't have any, they
           can probably tell you where to go.  -John

5/17    Case against Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay of Enron goes to jury.
        Predictions?  Skilling faces 31 counts, Lay faces 7, including
        securities and wire fraud (fraudulent SEC reports and financial
        constructs, lying to analysts and employees about health of company),
        insider trading (Skilling only, selling $62.6 million in shares after
        he quit when he allegedly knew it was a house of cards), and false
        statements (to Big5 companies and banks).
        http://csua.org/u/fw4 (usatoday.com)
        \_ chance of a Bush pardon?
           \_ With extremely low approval ratings and the midterm elections
              coming up, is he really that dumb?  Wait, don't answer that.
              \_ But..but approval polls *have no relevance whatsoever*!
                 MOTD told me so!  Waaahhh!
           \_ I'll be $10 against a Bush pardon, anyone wanna take it?

5/17    Wow, I'm reading Windows Media Player 11 will be able to ID MP3 files
        by an audio fingerprint.  It will generate a rough fingerprint of MP3
        files without ID3 data, and compare it to a database, and attempt to
        label the MP3 with song title / album / etc.
        Any other software have this feature?
        \_ gracenote has been working on this for a few years, ever since
           they realized that people will stop dealing with whole albums /
           tapes / cds at a time and move towards individual tracks. doesnt
           WMP just use gracenote? -shac
        \_ I can't imagine anyway this feature could be abused by the RIAA.
           \_ The companies they have working for them have much better software
              than this.
              \_ Do you have experience in this area? When are we gonna see a
                 bittorrent crackdown?

5/17    I recorded some movies with a Casio EX-600 camera.  Uploaded them into
        Picassa.  Then I realized that I forgot to change the date on the
        camera which was set to some date in 2005.  I changed the .AVI files
        to the current dates but picassa still sorts them according to the
        2005 date.  It must be reading dates embedded in the AVI file itself.
        I know that JPEGs hav EXIF header which I can change.  What do I
        use to change the embedded dates inside an AVI file?  I believe
        it's mpeg-4 inside.  Any FREE tools I can use to do this?  Thanks!
        \_ Are you sure Picasa isn't caching metadata?  AFAIK AVI files
           don't have any such date field.

5/17    Max Boot of the L.A. Times on the surveillance controversy
        http://csua.org/u/fw8 (latimes.com)
        "So far there has been no suggestion that the NSA has done anything
        with disreputable motives. The administration has nothing to be
        ashamed of. The only scandal here is that some people favor unilateral
        disarmament in our struggle against the suicide bombers." [and a nuke
        going off in a major American city]
        He is a Cal alum, graduating in '91 with a B.S. in History at the age
        of 20, and from Yale a year later with a M.S. in Diplomatic History.
        \_ Basically he's saying "why do you hate America"
        \_ I don't care what his credentials are; he's still a fool.
        \_ Max Boot used to write a column for the Daily Cal when he was a
           student that was SO conservative, most people on campus thought
           he was actually a liberal troll.
           \_ Uh no.  What they did was storm the DC offices and demand the
              editor sack him.  She refused on grounds of free speech, etc.
              Something along the lines of, "Even though I disagree with
              everything he writes, he still has the right to say it".
        \_ Another great credential: Boot is a signatory of the Project for
           a New American Century.  -tom
        \_ weird i thought he would have been much older
        \_ Why do I find the Equifax "finding out if you're good" ad that
           came with that article terrifying?  -John
           \_ Some webmaster must think it's hilarious.
              My ad was AT&T Unlimited nation-wide calling, 1st month free