4/15    http://turtle.dereferenced.org/~nenolod/linode/linode-abridged.txt
        linode hacked. Change your credit cards if you use them.

4/27    I wrote a little shell script to collect iostat data:
        #!/bin/bash
        DATE=`date +%m%d`
        DATADIR=/var/tmp/user
        OUTPUTFILE=$DATADIR/$DATE.out
        while true
        do
        date; /usr/bin/iostat -x 1 > $OUTPUTFILE
        done

        Is there a better way to do this? Open source tool perhaps?
        \_ It's the easiest way. If you want to go fancy, Graphite is
           pretty nice for app level stuff.
           \_ Wow, this Graphite?
              http://graphite.wikidot.com
              Do you have it installed?

1/24    http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html
        Amusing "history" of computer science.
        \_ Where's the mentioning of Al Gore the inventor of AlGorithm?

7/29    Happy Sysadmin Day
        \_ our "sysadmin" today deleted /home. When we asked her why
           she said she didn't do it. When I checked the sudo logs,
           I found these two commands in order:
               COMMAND=/bin/rm -r /home testuser
               COMMAND=/bin/rm -r /home/testuser
           oops.
           \_ Remember, following has very different behavior when
              executed directly vs. when executed as part of a script:
              rm -rf /home/#somefilenamewithhash
           \_ um are you trying to be funny? this is a well known bug
              in a git commit.   please try to be original.
              \_ I am completely serious that exactly this happened.
                 what is the git commit bug you're talking about?

5/19    If script A runs, and calls script B ..... is it possible for me to exit\
        script A based on results of script B and not continue?
        \_ assume any shell
        \_ Yes.
           \_ without passing the result to some stupid temp file?
              \_ It sounds like you want "scriptb || exit", which will run
                 scriptb and then exit if scriptb failed.

5/25    The warranty that the 2pir and Syzygryd code will ship with.
        It's hilarious: http://bit.ly/bqowSx
        -dans

4/22    In Linux is there an easy way to rename the scripts in /etc/rc?.d ?
        For example I want to set all the /etc/rc?.d/S91apache to S100apache
        so that it'll run the ramdisk BEFORE going to apache.
        \_ Sure, just move them.
           \_ I mean is there a script that will rename all of them
              for me? Like: setrc apache2 0 0 1 1 1 1
              instead of the following 6 times:
              mv rcX.d/S99apache rcX.d/K99apache
              mv rcX.d/K99apache rcX.d/S99apache
              mv rcX.d/K99apache rcX.d/S99apache
              ...
           \_ Yes.  "S100apache" won't work, though -- they're sorted
              alphabetically, not numerically.  Stick to two digits.
        \_ ideally the rc script order numbers are set by a comment line in
           the /etc/init.d version of hte file.  If you are managing the things
           with chkconfig, chkconfig the init script off, change the line in
           the init.d script, and then chkcnofig it back on.  The comment line
           looks like this:
                # chkconfig: - 60 20

1/23    http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/library/CONTROVERSY/LAWSUITS/SEA/katzbio.txt
        Old story from 2000 but goodie. PKWare/Zip Phil Katz's death.
        \_ Now that technology is mainstream, the culture seems to lack the
           kind of bright but socially maladapted kids like Katz and Reiser
           (not to mention rms and various others) who we knew in the late
           80s/early 90s.  Where are those kids now?  -tom
           \_ They get shipped to 'boarding school' reeducation camps and
              have the programming meme beat out of them.
           \_ Doped up on Ritalin or Prozac.
           \_ adjusted fine and well to <Elitist Jerks> guild on WoW.  I'm
              not even making that name up.

1/20    Did Chinese come up with new way of quicksort?
        http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/technology/20cyber.html
        Joe Stewart, a malware specialist with SecureWorks, a computer
        security company based in Atlanta, said he determined the main
        program used in the attack contained a module based on an unusu
        al algorithm from a Chinese technical paper that has been
        published exclusively on Chinese-language Web sites.
        \_ I think the Chinese were paying more attention in CS60C than I
           was
           http://www.secureworks.com/research/blog/index.php/2010/01/20/operation-aurora-clues-in-the-code
           \_ RACIST!!!
              \_ Kill a commie for mommy.
        \_ What does that have to do with quicksort?

1/20    Watch out for these Chinese hackers!!! Project Aurora has
        infiltrated into the U.S.
        http://www.secureworks.com/research/blog/index.php/2010/01/20/operation-aurora-clues-in-the-code

12/26   Hey you stupid web developers, stop making web sites with
        CONSTANT FONT SIZE and CONSTANT WIDTH/HEIGHT. Dumb ass
        graphics artist... please learn something about computers
        and usability!
        http://browsersize.googlelabs.com
        \_ "Stupid web-developers" is redundant. "Stupid" or
           "Web-developer" suffice. UI work is reserved for
           fresh out of college kids or non-computer science
           people. It is not computer science.
        \_ Interesting you feel that way. I prefer it.
           \_ Interesting you feel that all web sites should
              have constant size. I use 4-5 different browsers
              at work (I'm a dev) all with very different
              monitor sizes and web sites are either too big
              or too small to view. Ever tried browsing on
              an iPhone and then on a 30" monitor? Pain in
              the ass.
              \_ I like the content to look the same no matter which browser
                 is used. I find things like variable width fonts and
                 autoscaling annoying, because they sometimes don't render
                 correctly.
                 \_ Ah yes, HTML is stupid, everyone should have
                    embraced eternal constant pixel formats such
                    as PDF. You said it brother, you are brilliant,
                    just brilliant. 1024x768 ought to be enough
                    for everyone forever!!!
                    \_ HTML's not stupid, but there is a lot to be said for PDF.

3/26    Anyone here uses Heritrix?  I'm trying to read the Intro document at
        http://crawler.archive.org/An%20Introduction%20to%20Heritrix.pdf but
        both Adobe Reader 8.1.3 (Win32) and gv 3.6.5 (cygwin) display error
        messages and show me blank pages.  Adobe displays:
        "Cannot extract the embedded font 'FTXWSG+TimesNewRomanMS'.  Some
        characters may not display or print correctly."
        "An error exists on this page.  Acrobat may not display the page
        correctly.  Please contace the person who created the PDF document to
        correct the problem."
        "Too few operands."
        Is anyone able to read this file?  Thanks.

3/11    I have a potential gig at a large(ish) magazine that wants to setup
        a system like this to put a digital edition of their issues online:
        http://www.exacteditions.com
        There are many services out there that do this, and in fact they are
        currently using one. But they'd like to save money by moving this
        in-house. They're starting with PDF files and want to display them
        as images in the browser. That part is easy (convert them server-
        side). But they also want highlighted search results on the images,
        a la google books. I turn to the mighty motd for advice on how to
        do this. use a pdf manipulation library to highlight search terms
        and then convert to jpg? convert pdf to svg and highlight in svg
        before converting to jpg? drop the job cuz its too hard?
        sorry for the long post. thx.
    \_ I suspect drawing a rectangle or something would be the easy way to do
       it, but that doesn't solve the problem of finding the location of the
       text in the pdf...
        \_ I suspect drawing a rectangle or something would be the easy
           way to do it, but that doesn't solve the problem of finding
           the location of the text in the pdf...
        \_ How are you rendering these?  HTML --> PDF or using some sort of
           reporting service (Crystal/SSRS)?  If the former, I'd just set up a
           regular expression and drop in a custom CSS tag before and after
           the desired text that deserns what needs to be highlighted.  Then
           render the HTML to PDF.
           \_ well the starting point is InDesign. They export PDFs and send
          that to their print shop. is there some library out there
          to manipulate PDFs so that I could just like "highlight
          search terms" in the document?
          \_ InDesign has a development forum.  I found this there:
http://blogs.adobe.com/acrolaw/2007/12/highlighting_multiple_words_in_a.html
          \_ Probably not, if you mean have it automatically highlight the
             text for you.
        \_ http://www.devdirect.com/all/PDF_MAnipulation_PCAT_2070.aspx

1/20    I've been using tcsh as shell program tool (i know, bad shell to
        do scripting).  One thing I've noticed when I extract xml file
        is that the variable type automatically change from
        integer/string to... almost an array-like data structure when
        the output of the xml key/value is more than one (it's more
        like a string separated by space, but I was very impressed as
        it is).  1. since *WHEN* did this happened?  or shell variable
        always behave this way?  2. I've notice that the first element
        of this "array" started with index of [1] instead of [0].
        This is rather different from c/java type of syntax.  is [0]
        reserved for something? or it's just a different convention?
        \_ I don't understand question 1. Tcsh is not strongly typed.
           It does have integers and strings, but that's about it.
           Are you talking about $FOO = "this is my string" versus
           $FOO = (this is my string)? For question 2, the convention is
           different, yes.

1/13    I want to extract a couple integer from an xml file, mainly,
        xml file from http://weather.com so I can put it on my xplanet marker
        file. has anyone done similar things (parse and extract data
        from xml) using shell script instead of python/perl?
        in the world of perl, it make sense to dump things into a hash
        which i can easily extract key/value pair.  can i achieve similar
        things with xmllint/xmlcatalog?  thanks
        \_ xmlstarlet lets you do xpath/xslt stuff via the command line
           \_ didn't know this existed... Thanks
           \_ thanks again for telling me about xmlstarlet.  this is
              wonderful and easy to use tool.

12/1    Goddamnit stop stomping the motd.  Half the time I post here some
        idiot who is deadly afraid some motd stalker might FIGURE OUT WHO
        THEY ARE OH THE HORROR hand some stupid homemade motd editing script
        and the nukes my changes.  Stop it already you dumbasses.
        \_ Just FYI, today is 12/2
         \_ I like to live in the past

11/28   http://www.tiobe.com/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
        why is ruby going down so fast?
        \_ Because everyone's finally realizing how much it sucks? Not the
           language, necessarily, but the interpreter. Also, Zed Shaw.
        \_ mongrel_rails start -p 80 -e production -d
           thus: way too easy to start a rails server
        \_ yah the bytecode rev is in the next release.
        \_ Pascal is up!  It's coming back!
           \_ COBOL #1 fan
        \_ Java #1!!! Followed by C.

10/31   I guess this idiot feels so disenfranchised with the implosion
        of his ideology that he has to spam completely unrelated forums
        with his drivel.  But since he's clearly doing it via some sort
        of script, can root please block him and squish the account?
        \_ Is this an example of the new liberal political order? -emarkp
           \_ no, it's an example of how it's not cool to post 300 lines of
              drivel to the motd.  -tom
        \_ what are you talking about
        \_ Hey, I remember some pretty crazy shit from the lefties on the
           motd back in the day. I might have even posted some of it myself...

10/30   The Empire Strikes Back is such a great movie
        \_ we're not at that movie yet, dude!
           Luke's ship streaks through the trench of the Death Star.
           \_ ob this is annoying, you are not funny/clever
            \_ At all.  It's like watching some pathetic nerd trying
               to hit on the hottest girl in the room, but without
               even having that amusing "watch someone fail miserably"
               factor.
               \_ dans gets laid ALL OF THE TIME
                \_ He isn't the most pathetic nerd in the room.  He's
                   just the most slapable nerd in the room.
           \_ did you get any of those things from the actual script,
              or was it all from memory?

10/14   2 apache 2.0.52 servers running on Linux boxes.  Identical httpd.conf
        files (except for ServerName).  But on one, if a CGI script takes
        longer than 300 seconds, it times out.  The other, not.  Why is that?
        \_ Perhaps network equipment configuration. Or try comparing settings
           in /proc/sys/net.
           \_ I ran /sbin/sysctl -a | grep tcp, all settings are the same.
              The only difference I've found so far is that one httpd binary
              is 32 bit, the other 64 bit.
              \_ That's a huge difference. Why is that? Your systems
                 aren't even close to similar. Start with that thesis
                 instead of the "identical" thesis. Is one of them a
                 Pentium Pro and the other one a quad core P4, too?
                 \_ They are two separate systems.  But the question still is
                    why does one time out, while the other one does not.
                    \_ Could be lots of reasons. What are the differences?
                       Why is one running a 64bit binary, for instance?
                       As it stands your systems don't seem similarly
                       configured or spec'd at all so it's not surprising
                       they behave differently. So what are the differences?
                       Answer that and you have your answer. Also switch
                       network ports (A<->B) and IPs to eliminate that
                       from the equation.

10/8    Fossil shows how turtles evolved their shells:
        http://preview.tinyurl.com/4dqlhk [new scientist]

9/7     I want to learn Design Patterns without having to buy the famous
        book. Is there a place online where I can learn and study it?
        \_ http://c2.com/cgi/wiki/wiki?DesignPatterns
        \_ I'll sell you my copy in near mint condition for $25. -abe

8/14    someone messed up their svn motd branch merge script

7/28    Wired on War Games:
        http://preview.tinyurl.com/6xw36r [wired]

7/28    Python question:  I have a Python helper script/class that I want
        to use interactively.  The class needs a few path variables defined
        so that it runs on the correct files.  I may want to use different
        files, so I certainly don't want to hard code them.  There are also
        enough files that I don't want to pass them in as arguments.  I thought
        I might be able to have a file that defines them and import it.
        so, file test_config.py defines "foo_path = 'blah'"
        >>> import test_config as foo_config
        >>> print foo_config.foo_path
        blah
        >>> foo_run()
        in the script file I have: print foo_config.foo_path
        I get: 'NameError: global name 'foo_config' is not defined'
        Why does my script file not get the 'global name' foo_config?
        \_ Is foo_run in a different module? Did you do something like
           'import foo_run from foo_run_module'? I'm guessing it would
           work if you imported foo_config from within foo_run_module.
           \_ Yes, that works, but I would prefer to be able to interactively
              load different modules as foo_config.
              load

7/8     is there a RBL proxy or something I can run that will magically
        automatically know the addresses of all tor exit nodes,
        and that I can run my application behind?  I need to block
        tor traffic.  thanks!
        \_ http://www.torproject.org/tordnsel     -ERic
           \_ that doesn't do exactly what I want.  maybe nothing does.
              I used this script:
              http://blog.vorant.com/2008/06/tor-server-lists-revisited.html
              to generate a list of tor nodes that other tor nodes know
              about, 8600 in all, and blocked all of them with iptables.
              maybe it'll work.

5/28    dreamhost tells customers to quit complaining about email and just
        use gmail
        http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2008/05/huge_web_hostin.html
        \_ search for dreamhost on motd. sucky suck.
        \_ http://csua.com/?entry=45409
           http://csua.com/?entry=45383

4/3     Solaris experts: I've never played with ZFS. Does it have a native
        dump command a la ufsdump?
        \_ This might be what you are looking for:
           http://preview.tinyurl.com/2xqkda [sun - bigadmin]

4/2     Code Pink puts on a bizarre April Fools day stunt where they appear
        to be the butt of their own joke.
        http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=3
        \_ They obviously have a better sense of humour than the confused
           and enraged zombietime bloggers.

3/28    Possibly the first computer attack designed to cause physical harm
        to the victims
        http://www.wired.com/politics/security/news/2008/03/epilepsy
        http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/5548

2/7      \_ Run in Strict or Traditional mode if you want it to throw an
            error instead of a warning:
            http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/server-sql-mode.html
              -tom
                \_ thanks. -crebbs

1/18    http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/h3/Current
        Can someone tell me what the "Table 2" -1387 number means for
        January 16, 2008?  It's not a big deal right?
        \_ I don't know, you tell me. What does that even mean?
           \_ All bank cash reserves are borrowed from the Fed as of Jan 16?
           \_ All bank cash reserves were borrowed from the Fed on Jan 16?
              ... since the banks did something else with their cash reserves?

12/13   Why are many new hires today obsessed with Design Patterns?
        \_ I think it's the CS fad/perceived silver bullet of the decade, much
           the same way as OOP was supposed to solve everything in a decade
           past.  Lack of experience + impressionable young minds = sycophancy
           -dans
           \_ why are you up at 5:02AM? are you actually hoping your hardwork
              will pay off if/when your company ever goes public?
              \_ I'm up writing.  I try not to pull two double-shifts in a row
                 for work if I can avoid it. -dans
                 \_ writing about what, startups? Like what Philip Greenspun
                    wrote a while ago?
                    \_ A bunch of things actually.  At the moment, I'm
                       focusing on a talk I'm doing on the performance
                       benefits of JSON vs. XML for justin.tv's HackerTV
                       series in late February.  I think the talk will be
                       titled: Rise of the Stupid Data Exchange Format:
                       JSON vs. XML, when all you have is a hammer, everything
                       looks like a nail. -dans
                       looks like a nail.  I'm curious, what's your take on
                       Phil Greenspun?  It's indisputable that ArsDigita
                       detonated in part due to severe mismanagement.
                       Nonetheless, based on his writing, Greenspun seems like
                       a pretty clueful guy. -dans
                       \_ dear dans:  SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP
                          YOU FUCKING MORON.
                          \_ Dude.  You're really hostile. -dans

11/6    What's the easiest way these days to get a simple website set up?
        I want to build a simple page, with just static text and graphics,
        without needing to learn HTML or any sort of markup language; a
        drag-n-drop interface would be nice. Basically a Geocities with a
        modern editing backend. Any suggestions?
        \_ Word has an option to save to HTML.  That should work, or you can
           use one of the 150 WYSIWYG editors out there (Dreamweaver).

10/19   I'm the op who threatened to delete dog posts using my super
        script. I didn't actually write one, but I did trick you guys
        into posting dog shit amonst others. Boy, that was fun!!!
        \_ POODLE!  (super script?  It's a few lines of perl... ARF!)  Maybe
           you need a nice lab: someone who can keep up with you.

10/17   Would people mind cleaning up their old job postings in /csua/pub/jobs?
        Thanks. -ausman
        \_ I suggest a cron'd script that erases anything more than $x days
           old.
           \_ How about nuking anything older than 2 years?
              \_ Sure, but I don't have root.

9/7     Would the person running the auto url shortening script please
        go fuck himself with much vigor?  Thank you.
        \_ Yah, especially if there isn't a way to preview.
        \_ Or, you know, it actually destroys the url. -- ilyas
        \_ Or, you know, if it actually destroys the url. -- ilyas
           \_ Can someone track down who the url shorterning script guy is?
              \_ Yes but it would be better if they just fixed their regex.
                 If I "outted" them what would you do?  Show at the next PB
                 meeting asking for a squishing?  It's only the motd.  Please
                 chill.
                 \_ Except this person isn't fixing his regexp, he ran it
                    AGAIN after it was known it didn't work on an existing
                    url currently on the motd.  A wise man once said
                    "don't be a hoser."  The threat of a squishing may actually
                    prompt this person to not be a hoser.  Clearly his own
                    bug isn't doing the job. -- ilyas

8/4     The real Da Vinci Code:
        http://urltea.com/1536 (telegraph.co.uk)

8/2     We're using python optparse to parse arguments to a python script
        that then calls another program.  The usage is supposed to be:
        script [options] program [program_options]
        The program_options are supposed to be passed to the program directly,
        optparse should not try to parse them.  Unfortunatly, it does, and
        crashes in a case I just found.  Does anyone know how to get it to
        not parse anything after program?

6/3     I find myself having to reinstall WinXP sp2 every 1 to 1.5 year
        due to sluggishness and problems (yes I've tried every single
        trick that you can Google for). I'm at a point where I think I
        should just install a fresh image and save the image so that I
        can just restore it. What's a good FREE *Windows* based software
        that can save and restore an entire disk image? Thanks.
        \_ Fry's periodically sells Norton Ghost in a bundle with Partition
           Magic and some internet security thing for $70 with a $70 rebate.
           Not exactly free, but it might be close enough.
        \_ I recommend Ghost as well. I've been told there isn't anything
           free for Windows that works well w/ XP.
        \_ Use VMWare and save the image after installing.
           \_ I'm actually planning this exact setup, but in addition to
              saving the image, I can also use the snapshot feature and
              revert back. - !op
        \_ Trick?  These things aren't magic.  There are no tricks.  Defrag,
           de-virus, uninstall all the stupid web toys.  The only time I've
           ever reinstalled my home machine was when I was upgrading to all
           new hardware and tossing the old one out.
        \_ DriveImage XML. http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm
           \_ Nice program. How reliable is it? No corruption? Is Disk
              to Disk copy still buggy?
           \_ XML? XML!?! Oh dear god, WHY....
              \_ Exactly what I thought before I tried it. The raw
                 data is in a bin file, the xml file describtes the
                 content of the bin file in detail, such as disk info,
                 boot sector, file list, etc. This makes it possible
                 to recover the data without having access to the
                 source program. A nice use of XML.
        \_ Nobody mentioned Acronis TrueImage? It's pretty good and not
           expensive. I just pirate these things of course. Their Disk
           Director is also a good alternative to Partition Magic.
        \_ If you have at least one detectable Seagate or Maxtor regardless
           if you actually copying to-from it, then Acronis' tools are free
           to download (DiscWizard includes TrueImage I think):
  http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard/discwizard-eula

4/6     I got a url that looks like
        http://www.whatever.com/祢.mp3
        How should I encode this link so that every browser (including lynx)
        can understand it?
        \_ If your file really is named 祢, you should encode it as
           http://www.whatever.com/%26%2331074%3B.mp3 (replace each weird
           character with a percent sign and the character's ASCII value in
           hex).  If your file is actually named with a Chinese character,
           it's more complicated.  With a modern server and browser, you can
           just put a Chinese character right into the URL.  If you have a
           modern server but you want to support old or non-Chinese browsers,
           convert the characters to UTF-8, break them into bytes, and
           percent-encode each byte -- for your example, that would become
           http://www.whatever.com/%E7%A5%A2.mp3  If you have an old server,
           do the same thing, but instead of UTF-8, use whatever encoding
           the server uses for filenames (probably Big5 or GB).  --mconst
           \_ Yes, that's what I am looking for.
           \_ Yes, that's what I am looking for.  Can you show me code example
              of your conversion?
        \_ Is the 祢 literal?  That is, is that the file name on disk,
           or is that already an HTML entity?  If it's an HTML entity,
           every browser should recognize it, although if you try to type
           it in on the command line, the shell will freak out.  That's
           not a lynx issue and there's nothing you can do about it.  -tom
           \- er why should the shell "freak out" if you quote it properly?
             lynx -dump http://www.whatever.com/\&\#31074\;.mp3 > /dev/null
              \_ Obviously you can quote it in the shell, but it can't be
                 both quoted for the shell and a valid URL at the same
                 time.  -tom
                 \_ single quotes are your friend.

3/4     So I'm new to AJAX and I have a few concerns. Let's say I include
        an iframe to a completely different website, say, one of the Yahoo
        or Google plugin (game, fortune) or something. Isn't it possible
        that we'll have variable name space collision between the different
        iframes? My understanding is all iframes and frame variables
        are shared but then again my understanding sucks.
        \_ Yes, this is a problem, though it's a smaller problem in practice,
           than you might expect.  By and large, it's solved the same way
           that the problem of name space collisions in C code is `solved'.
           See: http://www.google.com/apis/gadgets/gs.html and search for
           __MODULE_ID__ for an example.  There are actually some clever
           things you can do with scope in Javascript to more or less
           eliminate this problem.  If you're playing around with Javascript,
           you might want to check out IGMonkey, a library I wrote to make it
           easier to do web mashups:
           http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~dans/igmonkey
           It's largely targeted at the Google Gadgets API, and I haven't had
           time to work on it in months, but there's still some useful stuff
           in there. -dans

2/16    Google is so annoying nowadays.. keep having to type in a
        word every 3 searches for them to weed out automated searches
        \_ Offer an alternative.
        \_ switch to yahoo
           \_ I decided to do this for now. I have no loyalty to google
              and they're overhyped anyway.
        \_ Did you have a point, or were you just crying out at the motd like
           some doomed Greek hero who cries out against the gods? -dans
           \_ It's the motd.  He doesn't need a point, but there was the
              off chance a real conversation could have started.
              \_ I know he doesn't need to have a point, but I'm generally
                 more interested in people that have a point that people who
                 are just trolling or wanking.  Curious, what real
                 conversation would start?  The OMGLOLBBQ Google is big now
                 let's bash them conversation?  What an insightful and telling
                 conversation.  I'm sure we'd get exposed to all sorts of new
                 information from unbiased sources! -dans
                 \_ There was the 'off chance' that one of the google staff
                    who is on the motd might tell us what they're doing to
                    improve search or something we don't know about how to
                    use it better or any of a number of things that don't
                    involve knee jerk attack or defense of random search
                    corporation.
                    \_ There are google staff on the motd?  None of the CSUA
                       alumni I know at google follow the motd. -dans
                       \_ There were at one time.  How do you know they still
                          don't?  How do you know ex-employee's don't?  How
                          do you know that someone from another search
                          engine or working in the field doesn't?
                \_ Gmail's adsense just showed me an ad entirely in Persian
                   followed by an add for doughnut recipes, neither of which
                   followed by an ad for doughnut recipes, neither of which
                   were at all relevant to me or my email content.  I'm
                   guessing the people who paid for the Persian ad or the
                   doughnut recipe ad would probably be pretty bummed
                   if they knew I was seeing their ad.  Maybe this is the sort
                   of thing that pisses people off about Google these days?
                   --not the op
                   \_ I'm curious to know how you could tell Farsi from other
                      languages that use the same script.  Would you feel
                      better about google if it advertised to you in Urdu?
                      \_ I only click on Urdu ads.
                      \_ Interesting.  I didn't know that Farsi and Urdu use
                         the same script.  Curiious, what is the Farsi script
                         called (i.e. Russian uses Cyrillic)?  How similar or
                         dissimilar is the Farsi script to written Arabic?
                         -dans
                         \_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farsi#Orthography
                            \_ Thanks! -dans

2/4     Help UNIX experts. I setup a crontab and it keeps outputing
        crap. The cron is as follows:
        0 4 * * * /bin/sh -c "cd mydir; tryit.pl 2>&1 > /dev/null"
        The error/email I keep getting is as follows, what does this mean?
        "stdin: is not a tty"
        \_ Check to see if "mesg y" is set anywhere. Disable that.
        \_ Instead of mushing about running /bin/sh to get a 'cd', I would
           put the 'cd' as part of the perl script and run that directly
           with a full path: 0 4 * * * /myhome/tryit.pl 2>&1 > /dev/null.
           Also, since this appears to be new code you might want to let
           cron mail you any output instead of devnulling it, at least for
           the first few runs.
        \_ This suggests your script is doing something that looks at stdin.
           Normally when you run the script from commandline, you are on a tty.
           Things run from cron arent.  One way to test the different operating
           environment is to ssh into soda without a tty, and test.  Try
           'ssh soda /bin/csh -i' and try running your command.  That will
           start a tty-less shell. -ERic

12/14   Does anyone know how to get python to return an exit status
        at the end of a script?  The only way I seem to be able to get it
        to work is to use sys.exit(), otherwise I always get 0.  Seems
        kinda lame to end all my scripts with sys.exit though.
        \_ Use sys.exit.  See:
           http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=4829
           -dans

11/30   I remember people complaining about http://dreamhost.com on the motd in
        recent months.  What were the complaints?
        \_ You can't run ANY script for over 20-30 seconds or else ALL of
           your processes will get killed, rendering cron and cgi
           useless. Mysql quota may be unlimited but is overloaded so
           takes SECONDS for each simple query. It has been hacked into
           over and over and over again this year, with down time of over
           10 days this year. The servers are way over subscribed (100X
           worse than soda) so keyboard response time lags by seconds.
           You like constant reboots? Every two days if you're lucky.
           Low price, low quality hosting. I'm surprised there hasn't been
           a class action lawsuit yet.
                http://csua.com/?entry=43853
                http://csua.com/?entry=43934
                http://csua.com/?entry=43865
                http://csua.com/?entry=43868
                http://csua.com/?entry=42931
        \_ search on google and you'll see (dreamhostsucks site)

11/30   For some reason after soda rebooted the motd defaulted to the Debian
        motd.  I've fixed the motd stuffs.  I really don't know what is going
        on with NFS locking.  Just as an FYI, mail is local and home dirs are
        remote mounted, so any locking issues would be if you have a procmail
        or similar script handling your mail. - jvarga
        \_ I removed my .forward, deleted a lock file, and it just
           reappears.  Mail sent to myself still apparently goes to
           /dev/null.  -asb
           \_ mrauser and I are having a horrible time figuring out what is
              going on here.  root@ is not getting delivered and you say your
              mail is being dropped on the floor.  Ugh!  - jvarga
              \_ It seems that most mail that seemed to be going nowhere has
                 now been delivered.  Thanks for fixing everything!!  -asb

11/28   Now that soda is most likely going to be p0wn3d every six
        months, can someone recommend a professionally maintained
        unix account where I can do my scripting, web hosting, and
        other stuff. One of my friends recommended hostrocket but
        what else do you guys recommend?
        \_ http://csua.com/?entry=43884
           http://csua.com/?entry=43360
           http://csua.com/?entry=43868
           There are others out there just stfm yourself. At any rate, do NOT,
           I repeat, do NOT use DreamHost. They are really NightmareHost.
        \_ Just run your own box.  If you know me personally, email me, and
           I'll see about setting you up on one of mine. -dans
           \_ What kind of connection do you get?
              \_ Like I said, if you know me personally, email me. -dans

11/10   I modified a page in my html directory.  When I go load the page
        at work, it shows the old version of the page.  The permissions
        are set right.  I tried deleting cookies and internet files, etc.
        I tried to reload the page.  It only shows the older version.
        I tried this with a 2nd file.  Same thing.  What might be causing
        this?
        \_ you looking at a cached file.  Is there a proxy cache you go through
           at work?  Also clearing the cache in your browser.
             \_ Is that the same as deleting temporary internet files?
                If so, I already did that.
                If so, I already did that.  The version that is coming
                up in the browser was modified weeks ago.  Also, someone
                else at work on the different computer had the same problem
                with my page.  However, espn and cnn show up to date
                versions of their pages.  What makes csua different that it's
                not showing the latest version of my page?  -op
                \_ Probably some meta tag that indicates how the page
                   should be cached.
                   \_ <meta name="description" content="My pictures"> is
                      the only meta tag in the file.  -op
                      \_ I assume you mean in your file?
                         http://www.i18nguy.com/markup/metatags.html
                         Caching hints also can be specified in the http
                         header.
        \_ As the poster suggested above, are you using a web accelerator
           and if so, if you disable it do you still get the same behavior?
        \_ What is the URL? That might help.

11/7    A lot of XML documents contain things like:
        xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude"
        Isn't it bad practice to have an IT infrastructure depend on a
        resource hosted on a machine that may have down-time?
        \_ That's not a "real" URL, it's what's called a URN.  Basically it's
           just a unique string to say "this is the unique namespace which 'xi'
           will be an abbreviation for."  Common convention is that it point at
           the DTD or something that links to the DTD, but in general that
           URL is never actually fetched.  --dbushong
           \_ I say this because I have a document that is dependent on
              files hosted on http://docbook.sourceforge.net I didn't
              notice that the site had gone down until I looked at the
              stylesheet I was using and realized why xsltproc was hanging.
              \_ Ah, that's different.  That's <?xml-stylesheet, which DOES
                 require that it be fetched.  You should definitely have a
                 local copy of those referenced.  --dbushong

11/02   What is the best way to implement this?  I have a queue where jobs
        are submitted for processing, and multiple worker threads
        asynchronously pull the front job from the queue to process it.
        I also have N (N=3)
        priority classes.  Normally I would just implement this as N FIFO
        queues and that would be fine.  But wait, there's more!  Some jobs
        cannot be processed until other jobs (their dependancies) have been
        completed.  A job and its dependancy may have different priorities.
        Then, certain jobs may require the exclusive use of a resource being
        used to process a different job in a different worker thread being
        fed from the same pool of jobs (think dining philosophers problem).
        Any ideas?
        \_ Classic priority inversion problem.
        \_ Is this your 162 homework assignment?
           \_ Nah, extending an existing system for work. -OP
             \_ This sounds amazingly similar to some of the job queueing stuff
                handled by Sun's N1 Grid Engine.  You might be able to adapt it
                to your use, or if not, grab the source -- Sun publishes this --
                and see how they solved the same problems. (We use N1GE and
                our users are pretty happy with it) -ERic
                \_ Grid computing? NOOOOOOOO!!!!
                   \_ and in spite of the name, it is not really Grid
                      computing,  it is more of a batch job submission /
                      processing engine.  A great way to distribute tasks
                      across many systems.  SUN Marketing FTL -ERicx
                      across many systems.  SUN Marketing FTL -ERic
                \_ Here is a link to the source:
                   http://gridengine.sunsource.net/servlets/ProjectSource
                   GridEngine is a decent piece of code written by fairly
                   good engineers. I worked on a interdepartment project
                   w/ the N1GE team while at Sun and they were very nice
                   responsive people.
                   I used to work w/ the N1GE group when I was at Sun, if
                   you need a contact, I can find out who is currently
                   working on queue mgmt.
                   \_ and in spite of the name, it is not really Grid
                      computing,  it is more of a batch job submission /
                      processing engine.  A great way to distribute tasks
                      across many systems.  SUN Marketing FTL -ERic
        \_ Would it be an acceptable solution to have multiple threads
           processing the jobs that have no dependencies, but have only
           one thread process jobs with dependencies? That thread could
           then do a topological sort on the elements in its queue when
           it goes to read from the queue. I guess after sorting, the
           job entire dependency graph could be handed to a worker thread...
             - ciyer
           \_ There may be a high fraction of jobs with (relatively simple)
              dependancy graphs.  I'm thinking when a job with dependancies
              gets queued, it's dependancies can get (upwards only) priority
              inheritance.

10/26   Periodic Table Shower Curtain:
        http://www.thinkgeek.com/homeoffice/gear/8a2f
        \_ Screw that.  I already know as much of the periodic chart as I
           need.  I think it makes more sense to have a shower curtain with
           plastic slots to put viewgraphs of relevant data in that you print
           out yourself.  That would be cool.
        \_ "Jog those brain cells with some steaming hot water, and a giant
           six-foot tall periodic table."  Nope, can't read it in a shower when
           it faces outward like in the picture.
           \_ you don't get it.  you jog your brain cells trying to read
              it in reverse.
              \_ Ah!  I see!
        \_ That is so fucking cool
        \_ this is cool too http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/science/76c9
           "have patience friends, the blood-curdling plant-on-insect action
           will be worth the wait"

10/25   LaTeX question: How do I scale a tabular envornment or a table to
        an arbitrary height and width? Using \resizebox seems to work if
        one of the dimensions is !, but it doesn't seem to work right if
        I specify both dimensions. Thanks in advance.
        \_ Explain more? "Resize"? Smaller/larger? Scale what's inside?
           Put more white space in?
           \_ I have a tabular environment that I would like to scale to
              a size of exactly x inches wide and y inches tall.
              \_ scale fonts or not? If not, where do you want the
                 whitespace?

10/18   When NOT to respond to a job posting when the poster is clearly
        an idiot or a typical MBA who thinks a computer science
        degree is all about creating HTML pages:
        Job Description:
        Design, developement and implementation of HTML for XXX.
        The current website for XXX is, to put it mildly, decrepid.  We
        need an organized, motivated student (previous web design
        experience preferential) to revamp our HTML. The web site needs
        to allow users to sign on, put in credit card information,
        allow shopping carts, update and sync inventory automatically,
        generate work flow, print out shipment labels, optimize
        operation flow, and provide statistics for analysis.
        We need the HTML immediately. Pay: $10-15/hour depending on
        experience.
        \_ I had an interesting conversation with a Haas guy who thinks
           computer science is all about setting up Linux servers, creating
           HTML pages, and working for http://Amazon.com/eBay and creating pages
           and such.
           \_ That is what most CS grads end up doing. Some don't even
              do that well.
        \_ well.. all web app server code spews html so what is the diff?
        \_ Doesn't matter if it *is* all abut creating HTML pages. They
           want all of that work for $10/hour??!?!?!
           \_ You realize this is pretty good for a starving student, yes?
              \_ I was making $13.75/hr as a co-op 15yrs ago, and I wasn't a
                 hot-shot.
              \_ No, it's not. As the above person said, I was making $8+/hour
                 as a mail courier 15 years ago at UC. For someone to
                 basically build this guy's entire web site which does
                 all of that backend shit... good luck to him! I am not
                 sure $20 or even $30 per hour is fair. The market rate is
                 probably twice that. I hope no student decides to do it
                 out of desperation.
           \_ $15/hour is sort of ridiculously low for arguably
              professional work, that's true.  "Credit card information"
              means you better get someone who knows WTF they are doing.
              \_ The fun part is after they fail to get *any* resumes even
                 remotely useful they'll just say all tech people suck and
                 that justifies the low rate.  Hopefully they'll go out of
                 business soon.
                 \_ Well I figure they'll either give up, or else ask for bids
                    from real web design places (and hopefully realize how
                    much this sort of thing really costs).

10/11   How do you save youtube vidoes?
        \_ search with ^vidoes^videos
        \_ When I put that into google, I got tons of useful links.  Maybe you
           should...STFW.
        \_ I know how to save it.  I just don't know how to play it back.
        \_ how do i save it in my browser?  there's a lot of ways
           tha tdepend on external websites.
        \_ I figured it out.  In Firefox, use this bookmarklet:
           http://1024k.de/bookmarklets/video-bookmarklets.html
        \_ http://keepvid.com
        \_ Uses external website.  above bookmarklet better solution

10/10   Is there a One True XML Capitalization Style?
        \_ xml tags are case sensitive
        \_ XHTML is all-lowercase.  I'd probably recommend that for other
           XML DTDs.  -tom

9/2     in http://csua.org, if I type http://csua.org/u/, the script
        recognizes <something>. How do I configure apache to do that? BTW
        great service it is!
        \_ mod_rewrite
        \_ It depends on your app.  Originally I did it with an HTML::Mason
           dhandler (which basically said "there is no <something> file, so
           run this code"), but since the Rails rewrite I did a few months ago,
           it now uses Rails builtin routing handler, which is awesome.  At
           its heart, though, it's using mod_rewrite to direct things into the
           routing system.  --dbushong

8/29    Any recommendations for windoze software for backing up files to an
        external hard drive? I'd prefer that the backup isn't one huge .bkf
        file a directory? Is this possible with the ntbackup.exe that comes
        with windows XP.. Also I'd like the software to be a GUI that normal
        non-technical people could run. THanks.
        \_ Not for windows but if you're running any flavor of Unix, just
           add a daily crontab
           > rsync -az --rsh=ssh <src dir> <remote dst dir>
        \_ Not sure if you're looking for freeware or not. I 'borrowed' a
           program called Second Copy from a friend and I think it does a
           good job (but it costs $30 to buy). http://www.centered.com
        \_ Probably not what you're looking for, but I use the following
           batch script (where z: is the backup drive):
           xcopy /e /c /d /y /f c:\to_back_up z:\
           Recursively copies files with newer modification times, overwriting
           without prompting, displays what was being copied, and will recover
           from network hiccups if the drives are network shares.
           \_ Thanks.. those are just what I was looking for -op

8/23    In Ant, is <target ...> a task?  I can't find any description for it in
        the 1.6.5 manual.  Thanks.
        \_ http://ant.apache.org/manual/index.html
           look under the "Using Ant" link
           \_ Got it!  Thanks.
        \_ I'm sorry, but any build system that requires this much work to
           understand sucks.
           \_ you are sorry.  How much documentation did it take you to
              learn Make?  More, I'd wager.  Or you had someone teach it
              to you.
           \_ E_TOOSHORT
              \_ Eh?
        \_ I find Ant documentation to be severely lacking.  But otherwise
           it isn't that hard to do simple things.
           \_ But it can be a serious pain in the ass to do complicated things
              if you don't want to write custom java code.  Unix shells are
              amazingly powerful, that's why make is nice.  Oh and when you
              have a bug in your make scripts ant is painful to debug.
              \_ Along the same lines, a system like rake is just a DSL
                 in ruby.  Need to do something that "the make system" doesn't
                 do?  Easy... you're already in a real programming language,
                 not in some let's-reinvent-the-wheel XML atrocity.

8/18    Ant qn.  Is there a way to set new environment variables?  I want to
        pass something from the .xml script to an .exe that it calls.  I have
        no problem read environment variables in the script.  I just can't
        seem to set new ones.  Thanks.
        \_ I just figured out how to use <env ... /> to pass new environment
           variables during <exec>.  But what about setting new ones in
           general?  -- OP

8/16    Having some trouble with jhead, maybe someone has an idea:  I have
        a large number of pics with no EXIF creation date, but a correct
        file modification date.  jhead lets you set the modification time
        to the same as the creation time, but I can't figure out how to do
        it the other way around--any ideas?  Thanks.  -John
        \_ Doesn't look like it'll do it.  I wrote a script to do this:
           ~dbushong/bin/filedate2exif
           \_ Many thanks, I'll try this.  -John
        \_ for i in ...
           do jhead -ts perl -MPOSIX -e "print strftime(\"%Y:%m:%d-%H:%M:%S\", l\
ocaltime((stat(\"${i}\"))[9]));" ${i}
           done
        \_ Embed the timestamp into the filename, YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_nnnn.jpg.

8/14    In XML scripts in Ant, I can use the value of a variable by doing
        "${foo}".  How do I use the value of an environment variable?  Thx.
        \_ http://ant.apache.org/manual/CoreTasks/property.html
           under Examples, search for environment
        \_ <property environment="ENV" />
           <includepath path="${ENV.JAVA_HOME}/include/" />
           \_ Thanks!!!  I'm new to Ant and I have to guess my way through some
              existing script.  --- OP

8/1     Dreamhost has a really generous quota but the service is horrible.
        In addition you can't run any script longer than 30 seconds.
        Otherwise, they will kill ALL of your processes. They were unwilling
        to negociate this. They subscribe hundreds of power hungry users
        on each machine and the load is always consistently above 100,
        and slow. You can't even run sa-learn and grep because their monitor
        script will kill all of your processes. Also they do a reboot
        every other day because they don't know how to keep their system
        up. Last week they were down for 2-3 days. At $8.99/month for 20G
        quota, it is theoretically good, but practically and utterly useless.
        I hate dreamhost. Any advice on other affordable co-lo services?
        Thanks so much.
        \_ How about this little ISP called AOL? -proud American

7/20    Anyone know if it is possible to share your Google Calendar with
        other people?
        \_ Funny, I was just on this topic because I was trying to link
           iCal with google calendar. To answer your question, click on
           the link that says "Manage calendars". Click on the tab that
           says "Calendar Details" and their should be a link to the
           XML, ICAL, and  HTML versions of your calendar. By the way,
           if you want to link iCal to your yahoo and evite accounts,
           one of my friends created this site: http://www.icalify.com
           XML, ICAL, and  HTML versions of your calendar.
           \_ I clicked on Manage Calendars and I see the Calendar Settings
              page with General, Calendar, Notifications, and Import Calendar.
              However I don't see Calendar Details. What am I missing? -op
              \_ Nevermind, you need to click on the triangle thing next
                 to your calendar name, then select Calendar Settings.
                 http://www.google.com/googlecalendar/event_publisher_guide.html
                 Thanks motd! FYI to see other people's calendars you do:
                 http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=%40gmail.com
                 Replace <login> with the gmail login and voila!     -op
                 \_ Another neat thing you might want to try is to go to
                    http://icalify.com
                    You can then link your yahoo! calendar and evites to
                    google calendar by going to Calendar -> Add Other
                    Calendar -> Public Calendar Address

7/13    Painful .pdf conversion question deleted by op.  I've decided to just
        be a man and edit the LaTex code the way I should have done in the
        first place.  Thanks to those who attempted to help.

6/28    Overheard in the elevator today:
        A: I watched The Intrepeter last night.  Y'know, the one with Nicole
           Kidman, Sean Penn, ...
        B: Oh, what role does he play?
        A: CIA, FBI, I forgot ... something like that.
        B: Really?  I thought he would be a terrorist.
        [Awkward silence]
        \_ actors always play roles that are opposite their real life
                \_ oh yeah?  I was just at a neighborhood Chinese
                   restaurant.  The daughter of the owner was eating
                   lunch with her new bf at the table behind me.
                   White Dude:  Yeah I'm studying computer science
                     and stuff.
                   Asian Chick:  Let's go home and watch pornography.
                   White Dude: .....
                   \_ http://www.wordsoverheard.com
                      \_ Haha, that's some good shit.
                      \_ http://www.overheardinnewyork.com is WAY better.
                   \_ she actually said "pornography"?
                      \_ She's Asian, after all.
        \_ http://inpassing.org was good for a while circa 2001.

6/22    How do I make rsync exclude any directory containing
        a file named NOBACKUP ?
        \_ see --exclude in the man page.  and really you should have been
           able to find this yourself.
           \_ I did read the man page.  I really don't think it's that simple.
              I can easily exclude a DIRECTORY named 'NOBACKUP'.
              I can exclude a file named 'NOBACKUP'.  I don't see
              an easy way to exclude all files in a directory
              that contains a file named 'NOBACKUP'
              \_ That's a bit more complex. You will need to write a find script\
                 to generate a list of files, and exclude from taht list all
              \_ That's a bit more complex. You will need to write a find scripti
                 to generate a list of files, and exclude from taht list all
                 files that meet your criteria. Then have rsync use rsync's
                 --files-from=  option.  That or make a exclusions list
                 (Again with a find script) and use the --exclude-from option.
              \_ I want this feature too, maybe we should add it.

6/19    Oh motd, help me get a new job. What does this mean?
        ORUGKIDBNZZXOZLSEBUXGIBUGI
           \_ Quick google search says YouTube
        \_ Tried pasting it into a browser?  -John
        \_ Have you no honor?  Stop discussing this.
           It's like lying on your resume.  This is
           what makes hiring hard cause you can't
           tell the posers from the hackers.
           \_ laugh
        \_ Who gave that to you?
           \_ Quick google search says YouTube
        \_ Been trying to figure this out--any clues?  I've tried various
           number and substitution combos... -John
           \_ As it's not a simple rotation:
              ORUGKIDBNZZXOZLSEBUXGIBUGI
              PSVHLJECOAAYPAMTFCVYHJCVHJ
              QTWIMKFDPBBZQBNUGDWZIKDWIK
              RUXJNLGEQCCARCOVHEXAJLEXJL
              SVYKOMHFRDDBSDPWIFYBKMFYKM
              TWZLPNIGSEECTEQXJGZCLNGZLN
              UXAMQOJHTFFDUFRYKHADMOHAMO
              VYBNRPKIUGGEVGSZLIBENPIBNP
              WZCOSQLJVHHFWHTAMJCFOQJCOQ
              XADPTRMKWIIGXIUBNKDGPRKDPR
              YBEQUSNLXJJHYJVCOLEHQSLEQS
              ZCFRVTOMYKKIZKWDPMFIRTMFRT
              ADGSWUPNZLLJALXEQNGJSUNGSU
              BEHTXVQOAMMKBMYFROHKTVOHTV
              CFIUYWRPBNNLCNZGSPILUWPIUW
              DGJVZXSQCOOMDOAHTQJMVXQJVX
              EHKWAYTRDPPNEPBIURKNWYRKWY
              FILXBZUSEQQOFQCJVSLOXZSLXZ
              GJMYCAVTFRRPGRDKWTMPYATMYA
              HKNZDBWUGSSQHSELXUNQZBUNZB
              ILOAECXVHTTRITFMYVORACVOAC
              JMPBFDYWIUUSJUGNZWPSBDWPBD
              KNQCGEZXJVVTKVHOAXQTCEXQCE
                ...
              LORDHFAYKWWULWIPBYRUDFYRDF
              MPSEIGBZLXXVMXJQCZSVEGZSEG
              NQTFJHCAMYYWNYKRDATWFHATFH
              that suggests it's a cryptogram.
              But without word boundaries, that makes it tres dificil.  The
              BUXGIBUGI should be a good hint, but I haven't been able to
              make much headway.  --scotsman
           \_ The string is the same length as:
              YOUTUBE BROADCAST YOURSELF
              YOUTUBETMBROADCASTYOURSELF
              But the letter count from neither string matches the
              encoded string. -peterl
              \_ Maybe a Vigenere cipher with one of the above as key?  But
                 that just seems way too complicated.  I wonder if there
                 are any other clues in the job ad?  The ZZs also could be
                 something.  I also tried fiddling with the ascii values as
                 aspo suggested but no dice.  -John
           \_ In theory it could mean anything. It could mean "FOOD".
              ORUGKIDBN = "F", ZZ = "OO", XOZLSEBUXGIBUGI = "D". I win!
              Hasn't somebody written some kind of decoding program yet?
              Something that would run a bunch of decode possibilities and
              compare results against a dictionary and spit out a sorted list
              of possibilities? Brute force ftw!
                 \_ Yeah, maybe it's a Vigenere cipher.  The job ad mentions
                    TLA's (three letter acronyms), so maybe that's a clue.
                    \_ 26 letters is really small for a crackable Vigenere.
                       Assume a 5-letter key ... that's only 5.2 letters per
                       key-letter to try to break it ... that'd be real tough.
                       It's not Playfair; having 26 letters argues against
                       any sort of 3-letter code.
                       \_ You couldn't use a Kasiski crack on it because it's
                          too short, but that's why I was trying to look for
                          clues in the job posting itself to supply the key.
                          They wouldn't just post a cipher without some
                          bearing on the posting, subject, company, job,
                          what have you.  And the TLAs are a good idea, I
                          tried various ones.  Other possibilities are a
                          straightforward jumble.  -John
                          \_ dunno if it's related, but the html has
                             this at the top:
                             <!--
                             QXJlIHlvdSBhIHN1cGVyc3RhciBzeXN0ZW1zIGFkb
                             WluaXN0cmF0b3I/ICBXZSB3YW50IHlvdSEgIEFwcG
                             x5IGF0IGh0dHA6Ly9odHRwOi8vd3d3LnlvdXR1YmU
                             uY29tL3Qvam9icyNzeXNhcmNoIGFuZCBtZW50aW9u
                             IGhvdyB5b3UgZm91bmQgdGhpcyBVUkwu -->
                             [my wrapping, they have it on one long line]
                             \_ Only problem:  The original string is purely
                                numbers, while this one is alphanumerical.  I
                                also wonder whether the whole 26-letter thing
                                is a red herring.
                                \- that long string is also embedded at:
                                   http://www.youtube.com/t/explore_youtube
                                   Look at the TLAs.
                             \_ Which base64 decodes to:
                                "Are you a superstar systems administrator?  We want you!  Apply at http://http://www.youtube.com/t/jobs#sysarch and mention how you found this URL." --dbushong
        \_ Maybe keyword is related to: "YOUTUBE BROADCAST YOURSELF" ?
           \_ using what decryption technique?
           \_ partial KEY:
              Y = O U
              O = R Z X
              U = U K G
              T = G E
              B = I N
              E = D U
              blank = B B
              R = Z I
              A = L L
              D = O
              C = Z
              S = S B
              L = G
              F = I
              \- part of the message is "Yes?" --nsa@soda

6/17    dbushong and php xml gurus, thanks so much for your help! I don't
        know what I'd do without you guys. Google and http://php.net are clearly
        _insuperior_ than the motd. Anyways I have just a few more question.
          What's the proper way to embed text and binaries into XML? Should
        I simply call htmlspecialchars() on each item or just HEX it? Second
        question is, if I let users do "SELECT *" and want to return as
        XML how do I check the mySQL type for each field(column) name? I
        tried using mysql_field_type(...) but when it sees a TEXT field, it
        returns it as a BLOB, wtf?
        \_ "insuperior than"?
        \_ Putting binary data in XML sucks.  You'll have to basically &#NNN;
           every out-of-charset byte.  Probably best to just base64_encode() it
           and throw that into the entity.  TEXT columns are BLOB columns, they
           just are searched differently, essentially (case insensitive, respect
           charset, yadda).  I don't know the PHP way to do introspection on
           your table, offhand, but you could always parse the result of
           DESC table or SHOW CREATE TABLE table.  --dbushong

6/16    Is there anyway in Ant to change/append the value in java.library.path
        before starting the script?  I'm trying to use Ant to generate a DLL
        and then call a Ant task which needs native libraries in that DLL.
        I'd rather not have to modify my system path to include libraries
        before they have been generated...
        \_ Use perl.  Wait, sorry, nevermind.  :-)
        \_ Use ruby (rake).  Wait, sorry, nevermind.  :-)

6/14    Need php assistance. Let's say I have the following XML:
          <xml><hello>&ltHello&gt</hello></xml>
        Then I parse it as follows:
          $xml_parser=xml_parser_create();
          xml_set_character_data_handler($xml_parser, "my_function");
        My problem is my handler function "my_function" will parse it as
        <, then Hello, then > separately instead of one line!  How do I make
        the XML parser parse the <hello> content just once? Thanks.
        \_ Don't forget it's &gt; and &lt; not &gt and &lt
           I'd recommend using the domxml functions:
           http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.domxml-open-mem.php
           $x = domxml_open_mem('<xml><hello>&lt;Hello&gt;</hello></xml>');
           $d = $x->document_element();
           $hs = $x->get_elements_by_tagname('hello'); $h = $hs[0];
           $hs = $x->getElementsByTagName('hello'); $h = $hs[0]; //stupid php
           $hs = $x->get_elements_by_tag_name('hello'); $h = $hs[0];
           $h->get_content();  // == "<Hello>"
           --dbushong
           \_ How do I access deeper levels? Repeated
              $x->get_element_by_tagname('aa')->get_element_by_tagname->('bb')
              ->... doesn't seem to work
           --dbushong
              \_ note that it's get_element*s*_by_tagname.  it returns an
                 array.  note the $h = $hs[0] above.  PHP sucks and you can't
                 do $obj->method()[0]->method()[0], etc. so you have to keep
                 assigning to variables.  I actually made a function at one
                 point to make this a little easier:
                 function first($arr) { return $arr[0]; } so then you can say:
                 $h = first($x->get_elements_by_tagname('hello'));
                 If you want to access a specific deep thing, consider using the
                 xpath functions that API provides.  --dbushong

6/12    I am running into problems with http://dreamhost.com. They're cheap, but
        they're very restrictive as to the things you can do there. For
        example, they don't allow a script to run for over 30 seconds
        (they have an auto kill script and are unwilling to be flexible,
        so my sa-learn always gets killed). They don't allow X11 forwarding.
        They don't allow many things. What are other hosting alternatives
        you guys have tried and recommend? Thanks.
        \_ Question seconded.  My only experiences are self-hosting or something
           really "heavy-weight" like johncompanies.  --dbushong

5/20    Is there a format that's a "cross" between a wordprocessor
        (e.g. Word) and LaTeX? I want something that's higher quality
        than Word but a little easier to work with than LaTeX.
        Thanks.
        \_ lyx?  gui frontend to LaTeX
        \_ You might like TeXMacs http://www.texmacs.org .
        \_ i really like lyx.  its very nice

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.

5/9     Running httpd as nobody isn't that secure. If one asshole decides to
        do a DoS (fork script) as nobody, there's no way to track down the
        perpetrator. This is why "suexec" is highly recommended, plus
        users don't need to chmod a+rx script.cgi.
        \_ Uh, it's totally trivial to track down the perpetrator with or
           without suexec.  httpd should run as something other than nobody,
           but that's only because nobody is over-used, and whether httpd
           runs as nobody is orthogonal to the question of whether suexec
           should be on.  -tom
           \_ Ok fine. I gave a bad example, but we both agree that nobody
              is good.

5/8     I noticed the posting about about CGI being enabled again, but
        my CGI files don't seem to work.  Has the setup changed in some
        way, are others also still having problems?  Thanks
        \_ CGI scripts don't seem to be working for me either. --jameslin
        \_ They were enabled, but due to a misconfiguration, i.e. choice of
           user/group for CSUA home page, someone used a random hoser's badly
           written cgi to deface the CSUA web page.  Thus, they were disabled.
           -dans
           \_ ouch!  thanks for the info.  So is CGI not going to be available
              any more, then?  Should we be using PHP or something else instead?
              \_ I'm not on soda root, I'm just filling in folks on current
                 history.  As tom indicates, PHP suffers from similar
                 problems.  My understanding is that they are working on it,
                 but, being students, have lots of other obligations that
                 supercede making improvements to our little playground. -dans
           \_ The solution to that is to do a find and fix files owned by
              nobody/www, not disable CGI.  You can do the same thing w/ PHP!
              \_ Yes, and now the web server is running as "nobody", which I
                 think is not ideal practice ("nobody" is used by too many
                 things; the web server user should be unique to the web
                 server), but should remove the concern about CGIs (which
                 are no more problematic than PHP).  -tom
        \_ Ed claims he just enabled CGI's. -dans
           \_ Okay, now I'm getting "Premature end of script headers" errors,
              but these scripts worked fine on the old FreeBSD iteration of
              soda.  I'm basically just doing:
                 #!/bin/sh
                 echo "Content-type: text/html"
                 echo ""
                 echo "<html><body><p>blah</p></body></html>"
              Also, are the permissions on the apache logs going to be changed?
              It's sometimes useful to be able to read the error log to figure
              out what's failing.
              \_ It's really hard to say without seeing your script.  Maybe
                 your path to echo is not set properly?  I'm not root, and as
                 far as I know, root doesn't read the motd (at least not as a
                 source of the more things to do).  Why don't you try mailing
                 root? -dans
              \_ Perl cgi is working fine. Most likely, path is not set
                 properly.
                 \_ No, it's not a path problem.  The problem went away when
                    I made the script world-readable instead of just
                    world-executable.  Why should that matter?
                    \_ because the web server can't read the script if it's
                       not readable.  duh.  -tom
                       \_ You're begging the question.  Why does the web server
                          need to read it?  It doesn't need to read it to
                          execute it, and it did it fine in the previous
                          incarnation of soda, so I'm still curious what the
                          rationale is.  Does the web server do some analysis
                          of the script beforehand to see if it does unsafe
                          things?
                          \_ It's a *script*.  You need to be able to read
                             a script to execute it; how else will the web
                             server see #!/bin/sh?  -tom
                             \_ not only that, scripts are INTERPRETED.  You
                                can't read shit out of them unless they're
                                read.
                             \_ Yes, that makes total sense.  I'm an idiot.
                                I guess I was misled by it working before, but
                                I suppose that's because soda used to use
                                suexec?
                                \_ yes, probably suexec was su'ing to the
                                   user before it tried to read the script,
                                   therefore it was using the user permissions
                                   instead of the world permissions.  -tom

4/24    I finally got to scan some of the old photos for archive purpose.
        The problem is these scanned photos carry no EXIF data.  I want
        to add 'Date Picture Taken' information en masse.  I tried several
        tools that claim to do EXIF batch update but none could batch
        insert 'Date Picture Taken' information.  Does anyone have any
        suggestion for a batch EXIF editor? Thx.
        \_ jhead
           \_ Thanks.  I will try it out tonight.  The editor I have tried
              all lacked the ability to mass add new header information.
              Some could mass edit, but not mass add.  I hope jhead does
              what I want.
            \_ Just tried jhead, like other editors, it can update date
               fields but not add them.  Thanks anyway.
               \_ d'oh. do you have photoshop?  I've seen some exif tags
                  in jpgs saved by photoshop.
        \_ On a side note, while we're on photos, is there a way to remove
           a shadow (smudge on a lens) common to a large number of different
           jpgs?  -John
           \_ I doubt there's a really satisfactory way, but you might be
              able to do something with an adjustment layer in Photoshop.
                -tom

3/27    Howdy, I just released the first beta of iGMonkey, a powerful
        javascript framework designed to make it easy to query, retrieve,
        manipulate, transform, and compare HTML and XML documents.  Right now
        iGMonkey targets the Google Homepage API
        platform (http://www.google.com/apis/homepage but I plan to extend
        it to support others, such as Firefox's Greasemonkey
        plugin (http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org  If you hack javascript or
        Google Homepage Modules, please check it out and let me know what you
        think:
        http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~dans/igmonkey
        P.S. OB Dieter says, ``Touch my monkey!  Touch him!  Love him!''
        -dans
        \_ Re: map() and foreach(): did you ever look at prototype.js?  A lot
           of this sort of functionality is in there already.
           \_ Yes, I have.  I plan to push some of my code back to
              prototype.js.  prototype.js' map function is a crippled map that
              only takes a one argument function and one list.  iGMonkey's
              map is a true generalized map that takes an n argument function
              and n lists.  Don't get me wrong, I like prototype.js.  Also,
              prototype.js' goal seems to be to make javascript work like
              ruby, which is fine, if that's what you want.  Furthermore,
              prototype.js is monolithic, as far as I know, there's no way to
              pick and choose just the bits of functionality you want from it.
              I am working on a real #include function for javascript to make
              iGMonkey more component based.  Hopefully the prototype.js folks
              will find this useful. -dans
        \_ That's it?  That's your "I'm going to change the world" project?
           \_ I don't believe I said I was working on a world changing
              project.  That said, most change is a gradual thing.  Sure, if
              you're the leader of a major world power you can demolish a
              country on the other side of the world for shits and giggles
              (oh and because its leader was a bad man), and do it in days.
              Notably, the real change, i.e. the reconstruction effort usually
              takes longer.  If Linus declared that the aim of Linux was total
              world domination in his original 1993 usenet announcement, I'm
              sure you'd have written him off as a kook.  But here we are 13
              \_ You've already been written off as a kook.
              years later, and Linux has changed the world.  To me, starting
              small is the only sensible way to single-handedly launch a
              project.  With hard work and a lot of luck, ambitious small
              projects grow up into big world-changing projects, which is to
              say that big projects and big ideas don't pop out of people's
              heads fully formed like Athena.  And to respond to the snark in
              your comment, what have you written lateley? -dans

3/17    Satellite photo experts, what is this http://csua.org/u/fad
        \_ Uhm, Photoshop?  Paintbrush, maybe?
        \_ The site of the birth of christ's second coming.
        \_ Overexposure due to the sun reflecting off something.  -tom

3/17    I think somebody has a big mirror in their yard http://csua.org/u/fad

3/14    I think someone's using an auto script to add the moroni big boob
        post. Anyone else would like to confirm it?
        \_ why do you care?
        \_ Moroni (if that's her name) is hot.
           \_ url?
              \_ http://myspace-784.vo.llnwd.net/00565/48/79/565859784_l.jpg
                 <DEAD>i23.photobucket.com/albums/b373/remember-this<DEAD>
                 000_1220.jpg
           \_ Eh. -dans

2/23    How come mainland Chinese people say number 1 as "eo1" instead of
        the standard "ee1"? Also why do they say "we" as "zhai2 men"
        instead of the standard "wo3 men"? Are there subtle semantic
        differences?

        [bad merge script was here, but maybe that was a good thing!]
                       for a better quarterly compensation (not real,
                       seasonally compensated) picture.
                       \_ what are the beginning and ending quarters you are
                          talking about?
                          \_ Epi compares 2004q4 to 2005q4.
                             \_ you mean the most recent annual data, or is
                                that beginning of Q4 to beginning of Q4, and
                                perhaps government fiscal quarters?
                                \_ One year hardly a pattern forms.
                                   \_ do you think that that's the most recent
                                      annual data?
                                      \_ 1995 was slighly worse and 1996
                                         slightly better than 2005, according
                                         to the bls graph.  It would be pre-
                                         mature and silly in 1997 to scream
                                         doom and gloom also.
                                         \_ I think we need data pre-'89
                                            ... not kidding.  Something from
                                            1970 to now.

2/21    Silly poll: What is your favorite design pattern?  Gang-of-Four or not.
        \_ Template method: .
        \_ Houndstooth: .
           \_ Is that structural or creational?
        \_ POLKA DOT: .
        \_ I've never seen a really good reason to use design patterns other
           than the fact that some of their concepts are built into the
           language (i.e. Java Swing, etc.). I suppose it makes sense on
           a language level (better designed, more OO languages, etc.), but
           I've never seen a very well designed piece of code using
           the concepts as described by the GOF. In fact, I've seen over
           designed projects, especially when someone decides to drag in
           Rational Rose and they go UML crazy. I suppose it works on
           Really Large Projects (TM), but it certainly holds no place
           in mid or low level projects, at least not in my experience.
           I think there's a major disconnect with academia's concept of
           software engineering and what really goes on in the nitty gritty
           real world (big surprise). The whole concept keeps on
           reminding me of the chapter "no magic bullet" from The
           Mythical Man Month.

2/14    Related to the gaming thread below.  What made you/inspired you to
        take CS?  Computer gaming as a kid?
        \_ Hott CS women.  I was obviously misled.
           \_ Isn't karen hot?
              \_ Note that the comment is plural.
              \_ If you're CS, yes.
        \_ I liked computers and liked the idea of controlling them.  I guess
           I got started with LOGO and a toy robot that could be given simple
           programs like "go forward, turn left, go forward, flash lights" etc.
        \_ When I was 7 years old I used a Heathkit computer that my uncle had
           bought.  Just seeing some of the retarded games on it got me
           interested.
        \_ Anthro 193 survey form filled out by 200+ undergrads: all but a
           trivial number said "money" or "parents made me for money".
           \_ must have been during the boom years.  I liked CS because it
              was interesting.
              \_ Early 90s.  Definitely pre-boom.  It was a recession.
        \_ Writing really simple games in basic/pascal.
        \_ Writing really simple but cool graphics code on an old Atari.
           Pixels and sprites 4 life!
        \_ Writing machine code on Apple II with no assembler to read some
           hardware switches, and interfacing it with BASIC, was fun.
           \_ Fuckin' a.
           \_ Reminds me of when I wrote machine code to access the sectors of
              a disk directly so I could read the Ultima IV map off the disks.
              Then I remapped the character set of my dot-matrix printer to
              match the game.  The map was 256x256 squares.  Ah, those were the
              days of hand-assembled 6502.
              \_ Just goes to show that practical application is a powerful
                 motivator; I learned ResEdit just so's I screw around with
                 hex code in Prince of Persia.
              \_ We made our own maps on Ultima IV & III once we learned what
                 all the codes stood for.
        \_ My mom was a ai researcher.

2/6     Maybe I am missing the obvious; but what do you need to do to ensure
        a bourne shell script, that does nothing more than start some other
        programs and send some status messages to stdout, continues to run
        after you logged out the t-shell from when started it. Thanks
        \_ nohup ./yourscript.sh &  --dbushong