finally #I'm getting around to automating this, so bear with me -- there
#will be teething problems.
This month's Laundrette is somewhat generated (w00t!) using a silly
sed script. I don't think there are too many problems with this, and it has
certainly made compiling this easier.
One thing that every group of people I have had anything to do with has had
in common is a healthy collective sense of humour, and an appreciation for
the surreal. (I don't think I need to point out that the group of LG regulars
who have been mercilessly quoted here are no exception, but I guess I just
did).
#
#A common method to inject life into a dying conversation is the trusted
#formula "Hey, we started talking about /a/; how did we get to /x/?".
[[
[Dave Blackburn]
I appreciate your reply -- and so fast.
[Ben]
[grin] It happens sometimes, around here. Other times, nobody will say
anything until someone makes a comment a week down the road, and then -
oh, brother, take cover! We've been known to wander from rhubarb to US
history, taking a detour into European supermarkets and Cockney rhyming
slang along the way... but we usually get the question answered. Some
way or another.
]]
Because the off-topic threads tend to spawn other off-topic
threads, I've changed the format a little. Hopefully this will work out
better, as trying to find a way to show the different reply levels has been
a headache.
This means that the 'wacko topics' aren't cleanly separated from the humourous
messages: though I probably could move them around, I think it gives a bit
more of an insight into how our (twisted) minds work. Whether or not that's
a good thing is best judged in hindsight.
It does mean that our in-jokes are a little more transparent to any
unsuspecting newcomer; we can just throw out a link, and all is explained.
That's pretty important to us, because here at LG, the party is open to all
comers (just bring your own beer).
(That said, I'm tempted to throw in something baffling: monkeys, toasters,
squid, school uniforms, tractors. A few of my co-workers should be in tears
of laughter by now :)
#----
#In last month's laundrette
##http://linuxgazette.net/107/lg_laundrette.html#laundrette.morehurricanes
#I wrote that my Dad is on a waiting list for a kidney transplant; this,
#it turns out, isn't true.
#
!!links|Links!!
#
## Add to later mention
#There was some mention of the grocer's' apo'strophe last month -- there
#are some examples here:
#http://kylet.co.uk/pictures/grocer/
#
#Murphy's Law has been formalised:
#http://www.news.com.au/common/printpage/0,6093,11009375,00.html
##TeXify?
#{{
#((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))
#}}
#(where U=urgency, C=complexity, I=importance, S=skill, A=aggravation, and
#F=frequency; each is a value between 1 and 9, except A, which is set at 0.7).
#"There is, of course, a Sod's Law factor to the equation. If you judge your
#ratings wrongly, you might become too optimistic - and calamity will strike."
Danny O'Brien has been writing a column called "To Evil!". If you haven't been
reading it, you should start: '"To Evil!"'s house rule #1 states that
corporations don't wreak evil; people wreak evil. Blaming Microsoft for doing
bad is a bit like smacking your aluminum siding whenever your housemates
steals some toast. No-one feels guilty, no-one gets blamed. You just hurt your
hand.'
Evil of September 2004:
http://osdir.com/Article1765.phtml
Index of Evil:
http://osdir.com/News+index-catid-207.phtml
RSS feed:
http://osdir.com/backend2.php?cat=207
After last month's thread about "Grocer's":
http://linuxgazette.net/107/lg_laundrette.html#laundrette.grocers
thread, there was a similar thread on afp:
#http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&c2coff=1&threadm=pan.2004.10.10.20.21.31.994136%40news.affordable-prawns.co.uk&rnum=1&prev=/groups%3Fq%3DThe%2BGreengrocer,s%2Bcomma%2Bgroup:alt.fan.pratchett%26hl%3Den%26lr%3Dlang_en%26c2coff%3D1%26selm%3Dpan.2004.10.10.20.21.31.994136%2540news.affordable-prawns.co.uk%26rnum%3D1
#http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=lang_en&c2coff=1&frame=right&th=e4f7a02d417519d2&seekm=pan.2004.10.10.20.21.31.994136%40news.affordable-prawns.co.uk
which pointed to the Apostrophe Protection Society:
http://www.apostrophe.fsnet.co.uk/
as well as these photos:
http://kylet.co.uk/pictures/grocer/
Found while digging through my bookmarks:
http://parody.organique.com/
False Advertising - A Gallery of Parody
This month, we've got some links that other TAGsters sent. Enjoy.
----
[Brian]
I love this comic! Too bad about the site's expired digital
certificate, though :-(
https://secure.linuxports.com/TUX/
It's terrible that the author hasn't drawn any new releases since
2002, though - I would have loved to have seen how it was supposed to
end...
----
[Sluggo]
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/1001hydrocar01.html
Solar truck made by high-school physics teacher. It has a hydrogen fuel cell,
but it can also switch to conventional petrol power from the dashboard.
http://science.slashdot.org/science/04/10/07/1629200.shtml?tid=126&tid=134
Slashdot comments, including the history of alternative car research at
the high school (in Phoeniz AZ).
----
!!halloween|Halloween!!
[[
This was sent privately, but it has to be shared, what with Halloween
being so close to the publishing date, and the idiocy involved
]]
[Sluggo]
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/196371_spookban22.html
Puyallup school district bans most Halloween symbols, says they might
offend Wiccans, for whom Halloween is a religious holiday and some of whom
are witches.
[[
A few days later...
]]
[Sluggo]
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/196878_hallowed.html
Wiccans protest the ban against halloween costumes!
One site calls it, "The grinch who stole Halloween."
http://www.iamawitch.com/article.php?story=20041021215234185&query=grinch
"Despite a public appeal Monday night, school officials said the ban stands and
that kids who show up in costumes may be sent home."
#----
##Erm... what was I thinking? This is News Bytes fodder
#[Sluggo]
#http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020396,39170562,00.htm
#ZDNet UK article: "Microsoft advised to learn to love Linux".
#"A US management guru has advised Microsoft to acquire Research in Motion and
#pay closer attention to open-source projects on mobile devices, or face
#oblivion."
#
#http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/04/10/18/1114258.shtml?tid=109&tid=163&tid=218&tid=106
#Slashdot comments.
#
-----
#Was in Links. Spawned a thread. Now its own topic.
!!oom|Out of Memory!!
[Sluggo]
http://lwn.net/Articles/104179/
Linux's overcommitting of memory compared to an airline flying with just
barely enough fuel for the average situation.
[Brad]
Hmmmmm.
I'd pay money to watch people get forcibly ejected from a plane ;)
[Ben]
For a closely-related demonstration, run "swapoff" on your machine and
fire up Gimp, Mozilla, and a kernel compile. Should make a nice 'whOOM'
sound. :)
[Sluggo]
##Blockquote
It sounds like you've done this before.
[Ben]
Not me! It was, um, a friend.
##End bq
[Thomas]
No -- you have that all wrong. Don't look at seeing how much RAM
processes waste, just try running KDE and keep _adding_ more RAM until
it runs at a speed that is useable. :) [1]
#
#-- Thomas Adam
[1] This is known as the OverLooking Other Memory.
#
#[Brad]
##Move up?
#Hehehehe, I ought to try that ;-)
#
#You tend to get spoiled when you have 1.2GB of swap partition laying around...
[Ben]
#Re: Thomas
Once you've satisfied KDE's memory requirements (and the truck from the
memory vendor's has left), everything else will run without a hitch -
even your infinite loops will compute in one-tenth their usual time.
[Heather]
I've got a 90Mb gimp file with um... a *lot* of layers, that just might do
it on its own. But if you really want to do damage, have moz surf some
javascript developer archives and explore the working examples. (Whether
they actually work is immaterial.) That oughta do it. K isn't required
to play this game.
But it kertainly helps...
-----
!S!jokes|Spam Jokes!!
A group was touring London, marveling at the historic buildings, art
collections, and such. The group included people from many countries. During
the tour of the Tower of London, a man from Prague and another man from
Athens struck up a conversation about some point in history.
A small disagreement ensued, which rapidly became a large one. They decided
to settle the matter then and there using the historical accouterments at
hand. Donning armor and chain mail, they prepared for a battle to the death.
This attracted the attention of the rest of the tour group, who crowded
around for a better look. Inasmuch as the combatants were in period dress,
the people couldn't tell one from another.
"Is that the Czech wearing the armor?" asked one tourist. "No," replied another,
"The Greek is in the armor. The Czech is in the mail."
----
I got a new car radio yesterday. It has voice recognition. You shout "soul"
and it plays a soul station. You shout "rock" and it finds rock and roll for
you. You shout "country" and it finds country music.
I was enjoying this new technology when some children ran in front of my car,
causing me to swerve at the last second. I yelled out: "F&**king kids!"
And my radio started playing Michael Jackson songs
----
"Send someone over quickly!" the old woman screamed into the phone. "Two
naked men are climbing towards my bedroom window!"
"This is the Fire Department, lady," the voice replied. "I'll have to
transfer you to the Police Department."
"No, it's YOU I want!" she yelled. "They need a longer ladder!"
----
The CIA had an opening for an assassin.
After all of the background checks, interviews, and testing were done there
were three finalists - two men and one woman. For the final test, the CIA
agents took one of the men to a large metal door and handed him a gun.
"We must know that you will follow your instructions, no matter what the
circumstances. Inside this room you will find your wife sitting in a chair.
You have to kill her." The first man said. "You can't be serious. I could
never shoot my wife." The agent replies, "Then you're not the right man for
this job."
The second man was given the same instructions. He took the gun and went into
the room. All was quiet for about five minutes. Then the agent came out with
tears in his eyes. "I tried, but I can't kill my wife." The agent replies,
"You don't have what it takes. Take your wife and go home."
Finally, it was the woman's turn. Only she was told to kill her husband. She
took the gun and went into the room. Shots were heard, one shot after another.
They heard screaming, crashing, banging on the walls. After a few minutes,
all was quiet. The door opened slowly and there stood the woman. She wiped the
sweat from her brow and said, "You guys didn't tell me the gun was loaded with
blanks. So I had to beat him to death with the chair."
-----
!!succinct|Succinctly put...!!
[Brian]
...thus someone named Robert becomes the brother of my parent.
-----
!!gremlins|Gremlins!!
[[
Fixme: See 107#svn
]]
[Ben]
{{
It may well be that the bad experience I've had was due to that
particular unit and not the make/model/flavor/serial number/gremlin that
^^^^^^^
}}
[Jimmy]
{{
I'll say no more... for now. Remember - no bright lights, no water, and don't
^^^^^
feed them after midnight.
}}
[Ben]
I think you've spotted the problem. *That's* why there are always
gremlins on boats!
"Ve are gremlins/From ze Kremlin..."
-- from a wonderful WWII Warner Brothers cartoon
[Jimmy]
Aha. Water makes them multiply. D'oh -- I've got the theme music from the
movies stuck in my head now.
-----
!!netiquette|Netiquette!!
[Ben]
{{
On Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 02:13:16AM +0000, Muhammad Firdaus Muhammad Firdaus wrote:
>> To whom it may concern,
}}
Let's see - you've sent your email to:
#{{
#------------------------------------------------------------------
#To: [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail],
# [e-mail], [e-mail]
#------------------------------------------------------------------
#}}
[[
Several people
]]
Thanks for spamming me along with everyone else you could think of. I'm
sure other people will treat your "request" with the same amount of
individual attention you've shown in making it.
I'll quote someone who's made the point more calmly, politely, and
pleasantly than I presently care to (full credit to Rick Moen. Well
said, sir.):
----
#------------------------------------------------------------------
(You cross-posted your request for help to multiple newsgroups, or
mailing lists.)
I was going to help you, until I noticed your cross-post. Now, I'll
spend that time assisting someone else, who's not being a pain in the
ass.
A large and growing number of otherwise helpful people are ignoring you
in exactly this way. Watch and see. Unlike most, I'm taking the trouble
(through referring you to this text) to tell you what's going on.
I could advise you to avoid cross-posting because it's rude to the
on-line community, but saying that just conveys the message that the
Internet community rewards rudeness. No, I'm suggesting you should post
to a single forum at a time because you'll get more, better, quicker
answers -- because you won't be widely boycotted and ignored. Yes, it's
true that "other people do it". They're getting worse help and less
help. They just haven't yet figured it out.
Don't clean up your act to please me. Yes, I'd prefer that you avoid
acting clueless and rude on the Net, because I care about the Net, but
(like many others) can and will deal with the immediate problem by
disregarding your crossposted question.
#------------------------------------------------------------------
----
For more on [1] Netiquette, see any of thousands of resources on the
Net.
[1] You can stop wondering; yes, the wordplay is intentional.
-----
!!laptops|Laptop Juggling!!
[Kapil]
I would have said I would wait for the laptop that you give up on and
the retailers then sell at half price :-) --- but then I would also know
that it doesn't run Linux well, so that it wouldn't be worth a lot!
[Ben]
Nope. But you could wait until I find one that's hitting on all 12
cylinders, or at least runs smoothly, is fuel-efficient, and has nice
upholstery; I'll be reporting on every one I test. Hmm, maybe an
occasional article series...
[Breen]
Hmm. Jon Corbet's got the copyright on "Grumpy Editor", but maybe he'd
be willing to share...
[Ben]
[grin] We could always do a time-share on it. Say, why don't I email
10,000 of my closest editor (hm, typed 'closet editor' at first... makes
me *really* wonder) friends about this special, exciting one-time offer?
That'll get me on their spam lists, they'll never darken my email
gateway again. Hmmm, this may bear considering at some future point.
-----
!!pipe|The Crack Pipe!!
[Ben]
(Is it time for another hit on the crack-pipe yet? Oh, goody.)
[Vince]
You say your pipe is cracked?? A good friend of mine of the Lacota Nation
makes pipes that don't break <G> Made from stone... good pipe..
[Jimmy]
Reminds me of a Denis Leary riff, something like "Marijuana doesn't lead
to harder drugs -- it leads to DIY. Dude, we could make a great bong out
of your head".
I once read a magazine that had instructions for making a pipe out of
the ground :)
-----
!S!cute|Spam cuteness!!
[Ben]
Well, now - here's an interesting one. In one of my "Perl One-Liner of
the Month" articles, I predicted that spammers would eventually catch on
to the hex-encoding method I'd used to obscure email addresses. Didn't
take long, did it?
{{
---------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Smith Barney <[e-mail]>
#To: [e-mail]
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: *****SPAM***** Smith Barney Notification
Reply-To:
<html><p><font face="Arial"><A hREF="https://www.smithbarney.com/cgi-bin/login/confirm.cgi">
<map name="FPMap0"><area coords="0, 0, 639, 336" shape="rect"
href="http://%32%30%39%2E%31%32%2E%31%31%34%2E%31%33%39:%38%37/%73%62/%69%6E%64%65%78%2E%68%74%6D">
</map><img SRC="cid:part1.03030205.07080805@[e-mail]" border="0"
usemap="#FPMap0"></A></a></font></p><p><font color="#FFFFF3">Sterling Marlin in 1985 Dragonball in
1882 Cindy Margolis a collect call Just tell Jennifer Lopez Come on! Horoscopes cats and dogs I can't
get through in 1801 Gladiator Penthouse Bible pretty much. Dragonball in 1841 Sites Thanks for visit
Try to connect you Websites Windows 2000 Love Poems </font></p></html>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
}}
The above flips to "http://209.12.114.139:87/sb/index.htm", which
resolves to some company based in Arizona. I've become so used to these
things coming out of China that it seems, well, *weird* to see this.
What's even more interesting is the port they're using (87): Mozilla is
smart enough that it pops up an "Access to this port has been disabled
for security reasons", but Dillo and w3m go right to chewing on the
thing (anybody want to make a bet on IE behavior for this?)
It's quite cute; if it wasn't for their stupid little trick with the
random text, it would look fairly real (there's a GIF of an
official-looking, "Smith Barney wants you to click this" note attached
to the original email.) It just ain't safe to be gullible these days.
-----
!S!again|Again, regarding your request. Please reply.!!
[Brian]
{{
Corinne Vega wrote:
Hi again,
This is Corinne Vega. I am writing to you to confirm that we have
accepted your mortgage application.
}}
How thoughtful to accept my application from your future, in my past.
{{
Our office has confirmed that you can get a $220,000 loan for as low
as $352.00 per month payment.
}}
Now, is the mortgage for Ben's boat that I'm taking out, or is it for
the newly beach-front property in Florida, or perhaps that holiday home
I just built on the flanks of Mt. St. Helens.
[Sluggo]
Yeah yeah yeah, I couldn't let Ben and his hurricanes have all the fun.
[Brian]
Ooooo, errr... Now, with
those payments, you haven't specified a loan rate, so lessee here. At 0%
interest, that's a 52 year loan. Lucky for you my family tends to live
into the three digits, or you'd be SOL sooner or later.
[Ben]
Why, Brian! You missed the salient factor, the very fact that makes this
The Offer Of The Century: since they've reversed the flow of time, as
you noted above, the interest is *negative* - that is, they pay you for
taking out the loan.
[Jason]
So it's sort of like how you pay for a meal at the restaurant at the
end of the universe?
[Ben]
In fact - the calculations are a bit difficult, but
bear with me - eh, carry the 9, divide by the prime rate on 10/29/29,
subtract the number of polar bears in Zimbabawe, raise to the power of
the tea index in China, drop the first seven digits... there we are.
You'll have it paid off in about 1.03453464557 microseconds, give or
take a century.
[Jason]
Well, yes, but that figure is useless unless you perform a simple test
to see if the lender is running a scam. Just fill out the application
forms, and then look to see if the DOB given is yesterday.
[Ben]
Best of all, you can borrow the money for the payments
from Corinne - the interest from that second loan will easily pay for
the first one, and leave you enough cash to start a loan company of your
own!
Now, that's what *I* call high finance. Must have required snorting
several grams of funny white powder _and_ smoking a couple of pounds of
radioactive waste to come up with a "special offer" like that one...
[Brian]
{{
The approval process takes no longer than a minute, so please fill
out the form on our website:
}}
I'm sure that it's easier for you to just copy my data from the
application that I will fill out in the future and send back to you
somehow. Remit payment to the same swiss bank account that's been
flogged about in this mailing list recently. I'll find a way to get the
funds drawn from there, perhaps with the KIND ASSISTANCE OF ALL MY NEW
FREIEIENDS ON THE NIGERIAN INTERNET.
{{
http://rygig.jlfbkmne.info/?dqLwLxdeNhkK.xdYXQVY
}}
nice URL, did you pay much for it? I can sell you a better name, cheap!
{{
Corinne Vega
First Account Manager
}}
I'm not sure you're senior enough to represent your firm to this entire
list. Can we speak to a second account manager?
#
#***
Sigh. Isn't there more to life?
[Ben]
All right, congratulations! Maybe you won't have to take Corinne up on
her offer after all.
[Brian]
Oh, yes, there is. I just got a new gig.
I'll be the Sysadmin at (nfr)(security), starting later this month. That
makes up for the fall on the stairs two weeks ago, and the little dog we
own that laid open my lip to the tune of 5 stitches last Thursday. Her
new name is FaceBiter.
#
#having fun in DC,
[Ben]
OW! Gotta watch out for those little ratweilers. There's a tiny little
chihuahua-like critter over by my yoga studio that thinks it's bigger
and tougher than my motorcycle; just launches into the most
vicious-sounding, hysterical barking whenever it hears my engine. Even
revving to 10 grand doesn't discourage the damn thing (certainly drowns
it out, though. :) I might have to start carrying a water pistol.
-----
!!gouranga|Gouranga!!
[[
I'm including this because it's bizarre
#(and because I can, obviously)
]]
[NitaiGouranga]
Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ....
That which brings the highest happiness!!
#-----
#!W!colleges|More Colleges!!
#
#[Jimmy]
#I don't think colleges or universities have entrance requirements here -
#courses have, but not the college itself (though this might not be true
#for colleges that don't receive government funding).
#
#[Thomas]
#No no -- I meant that only from the viewpoint of a course, not a University
#per se. (You'd never go to University for anything other than a degree, or
#post-graduate course such as a PhD).
#
#[Sluggo]
#Universities here certainly do have entrance requirements. The
#difference may be that the courses are run by the universities, whereas
#in Oxford and Cambridge I understand the "colleges" have more autonomy.
#
#Community colleges don't require anything except maybe a high school
#diploma.
#
-----
!W!guns|Guns & Crime!!
[Sluggo]
I was talking with an NRA fan last night, and he said guns were banned
in the UK only a few years ago, crime has increased fourfold since then,
and London now has a worse crime rate than New York City. Sounds far
fetched but could there be some truth in it?
[Pete Jewell]
#[Pete Jewell] :1:
Sounds like absolute rubbish to me. There has been gun controls in place as
long as I can remember - perhaps there wern't any at the beginning of the 20th
century. Not sure where your fan got their crime figures - were they talking
about a particular type of crime, or overall?
If anything there has been a tightening of gun laws over the last two decades,
especially after the tradegy in Hungerford.
[[
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungerford_Massacre
]]
[Neil]
#[Neil] :1:
Someone is severely twisting the facts to fit an argument here. We've had gun
controls for as long as I can remember and OK they were tightened beyond what
I would consider reasonable in the wake of the Hungerford shootings, but
we've never had anything like the American gun culture.
A fourfold increase in crime in a few years? Hey, you'd think I might have
noticed, living in Britain as I do. Certainly there's been an increase in gun
crime over the last couple of decades, but that hasn't been affected in any
way by the change in the law AFAICT. The apparent size of the increase in
relative terms is probably down to starting from a very low base at least in
comparison to the USA. In absolute terms, I believe we still have a very long
way to go to catch up with the US in terms of murders/shootings per head of
population (that statement made without checking any facts).
[Ben]
#[Ben] :1:
Interesting. I'd imagine the peak of this has passed, but does the above
take into account 30 years (or so) of IRA battles? I would think that
the figures for the UK would be quite high as compared to New York - or
any other part of the US.
Just to keep parity, I haven't checked any facts either. :)
[Neil]
#[Neil] :2:
30 years or so of IRA battles didn't really amount to a fraction of what you
seem to think. ISTR that statistically more people are killed on the roads in
a year than were killed in the whole of "the troubles".
[Ben]
#[Ben] :2:
OK; I did say that I hadn't checked. However, comparing murder stats to
car accident stats is anything but complimentary to the former; there
are a HUGE number of car-related deaths. The fact that no one is going
to do anything about them doesn't make the number low.
[Neil]
#[Neil] :3:
OK. I was just trying to put the whole IRA thing into some kind of
perspective. I have the possibly mistaken impression that most Americans
believe that Britain during the troubles was a dangerous place and that
London was far too dangerous to visit.
[Ben]
#[Ben] :3:
I'm not sure about "dangerous" on an absolute scale, WRT that
perception; more dangerous by some small measure, surely, but lots of
people continue to visit Israel - which is in the middle of a war. I
don't think London lost much in a way of tourism due to it; a quick look
at Net resources says that it grew pretty steadily, up to 5 mil last
year.
IMO, most Americans see London as a romantic and historically
fascinating place; I doubt that anyone who had the time, the interest,
and the money to travel there would seriously consider that sort of
"danger".
[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :4:
People have visions of bombs going off every day in Northern Ireland;
most people would not even consider visiting it. However, I've never
heard of anybody putting off travel to Britian because of the few
isolated bombings there.
[Neil]
#[Neil] :3:
I grew up in London during that period and there were occasional bombs, I even
missed a couple by an hour or two, but really it had little impact on the
mainland, except for a few unlucky people who were in the wrong place at the
wrong time. The effects in Northern Ireland were far nastier and more
pernicious, even if the actual number of deaths were low.
#
#[Neil]
#[Neil] :2:
#And don't get me started on American funding of IRA terrorism and the current
#holier than thou American attitude on terrorism. Oops. Too late.
#
#[Ben]
#[Ben] :2:
#Say, is that a defensively-bristling /ad hominem/ argument I see coming
#toward me? I thought we were talking about comparing the number of
#murders in NY vs. London. No need to get upset; I'm certainly not
#interested in turning it into a "UK is bad, US is good" argument.
#
#[Jimmy] :2:
#Just FYI: there has /never/ been an incident of IRA sponsored gunfire in
#Britain. It has always been explosives. It's also highly naive to think
#that the funding for the IRA has come exclusively from America -- who,
#for instance, built Canary Wharf? For one example, I know one person who
#thinks himself a patriot for the work he did.
[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :2:
##I've really lost track of this indentation idea...
A lot of yanks viewed it in terms of British colonialism/imperialism;
that they were interfering in Ireland for their own advantage the way
they had meddled in our country. Of course, nobody stopped to ask what
exactly what the Crown would gain from such a policy; NI is not exactly
a financial powerhouse, nor does it export any goods not available
elsewhere. People viewed it as "having territory for bragging rights".
And of course, ppl couldn't really relate to terrorism before 9/11; it
was too abstract, too unimaginable.
[Jimmy]
#[Jimmy] :3:
A big part of the problem is that a lot of people in Ireland, North and
South, on both sides, have been fed a load of bullshit packaged as history.
I won't go into this in detail, because it's too tiring. I proofread part
of a very good (though more than slightly biased towards the British side)
account, written at the time that Irish Home Rule was being discussed, for
Distributed Proofreaders, which debunks several of the myths of Irish
"history". I'll send you a link when it's posted.
[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :2:
That's what I thought when I went to NI, but I left with a very
different impression, that it was a "made in Ireland" problem. I
visited Scotland and England immediately afterward and found the Brits,
rather than anxious about losing the territory and their prestige,
instead wishing the NI problem would just go away. As my friend in
Bristol (a British nationalist) put it, "I'd be happy to give Northern
Ireland independence *today* if it meant no more subsidies from our
treasury."
[Jimmy]
#[Jimmy] :3:
It's not really a made in Ireland problem, as such. There's a bit of the
same sentiment in Scotland.
[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :2:
Of course, these views would be obvious to anybody putting the Irish
and British newspapers side by side. However, most yanks have never
even gone into the foreign section of a newsstand, never heard the
BBC, etc.
[Ben]
#[Ben] :3:
*What* foreign section of the newsstand? It's you tofu-eating,
tree-hugging, Prius-driving, Kerry-voting West Coast liberal types that
have access to such things; the rest of America gets the Fox News
version ("OK, there's a country called Russia. And maybe another one
called Iraq. We'll let you know, once a week, whether they're good or
bad.")
[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :2:
After the Good Friday Agreement and subsequent events, there was more
of an acceptance in America that there's two sides to the issue.
Nevertheless, I continue to see disurbing graffiti in pub bathrooms,
"IRA all the way" and the like.
Regarding the forefold increase, my NRA friend said it was Australia,
not Britian.
Dunno if they excluded political crimes from the crime statistics, but
I think they should have. Whether location X was bombed doesn't tell
me anything about whether a mugger is likely to stalk me, which is what
I want to know.
#
#[Ben]
#[Ben] :3:
## Aha. This be why I want to toy with indentation
## Never mind.
#http://www.nationmaster.com/cat/Crime
#
#[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :4:
#Gosh, the US and UK are almost identical in terms of assaults,
#7.770 vs 7.50 per 1000 people. And the UK actually has more
#robberies, 1.58 vs 1.41 per 1000 people.
#
## IRA here.
[Jimmy]
Just FYI: there has /never/ been an incident of IRA sponsored gunfire in
Britain. It has always been explosives.
##Never? Am I sure?
[Ben]
#[Ben] :3:
Interesting. I wonder what the rationale behind it was. More bang for
the buck, probably - and the evidence mostly destroys itself, which
isn't the case with firearms.
[Jimmy]
#[Jimmy] :4:
#Oops. That should have said "mainland Britain".
#
I had an argument on Wikipedia once, with someone who wanted to remove the
word "terrorist" (to be replaced with "freedom fighter") from any articles
relating to the IRA (one of the oddities of Wikipedia's Neutral POV policy
- since then, the article on the Provisional IRA has had a footnote added
which justifies the use of that word at great length - see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Irish_Republican_Army#Footnotes
).
Basically, the P-IRA wanted to flex its muscles at the British government,
but did not usually wish to harm "civilians" - they used to phone ahead,
using a codeword, and give advance warnings so civilians could be evacuated.
#
#[Neil] :5:-2:
## There's already a message from Neil in this thread with :3:
## Do I try to show them as different messages, or just let the levels
## of indentation take care of it??
##
##Eeek! This got scarily far from the comment it replies to.
#Did anyone suggest that America was the _only_ source of funding for the IRA?
#I suggested that it was regarded as a major source of funding, but I did not
#imply any exclusivity. ISTR that the Eastern Bloc and Colonel Gaddafi also
#supported the IRA and one has to assume that there was a certain amount of
#support from both parts of Ireland.
#
#Wasn't Canary Wharf built by a Canadian?
#
#I'm a bit lost by the connection to IRA funding?
#
#[Jimmy] :4:
#Whoops. Two trains of thought collided there. What I meant to say was that a
#lot of the builders were Irish, and a lot of corners were cut.
#
#[Jimmy] :2:
#The current problem in Britain seems to be from the Jamaican "Yardies"
#-- who purchase their guns from American sources.
#
#[Neil]
#[Neil] :3:
##As did this.
#Sorry. I wouldn't want a "UK is good, US is bad" argument either. I have had
#problems in the past with ill informed American's lecturing us Brits about
#Ireland, which is a very complex issue with centuries of history behind it,
#but this isn't an appropriate forum, so I apologise for that.
#
#[Ben]
#[Ben] :3:
#Ye Ghods. You won't see it from me in any forum, I assure you. I know a
#bit about the history - in fact, some of the discussions here have
#prompted me to do a bit more reading - and wouldn't presume to lecture
#anyone, on either side of it. I know just enough to feel sorrow for the
#effects of the long-ago problems on the people today (even though I
#understand it's changed for the better, by quite a lot), but never to
#lecture. I know just how ridiculously stupid _that_ posture looks from
#having *been* lectured on The Evils Of America As Seen From Europe (I
#assure you that I granted the silly son of a bitch little mercy in
#straightening him out.)
[Ben]
#[Ben] :2:
I did become curious about the above comparison, though. Seems that,
according to your own Telegraph, the number _has_ at least doubled
recently.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2004%2F03%2F21%2Fnmurd21.xml
[Neil]
#[Neil] :3:
Interesting. It seems worse than I thought, but that particular statistic
could be a bit of a freak. I'd be interested in whether the full year figures
have doubled.
[Jimmy]
#[Jimmy] :4:
A friend, who has studied both Irish Law (heavily based on British Common Law,
even more so than American law) and History & Politics, tells me that British
law was changed in the past few years with regard to the reporting of crime --
if I were to report something stolen, for example, and then discover it had
merely been misplaced, it would still be reported as a crime -- so that even
minor crimes, even those that are /not/ crimes, are reported as incridents of
crime. With this in mind, it's not surprising that crime in Britain seems to
be on the rise.
[Ben Whyte]
#[Ben Whyte] :5:
Also mobile phone companies require you to report your phone lost to the
police which gets recorded as a crime even if you loose it.
Same applies to wallets, credit cards etc.
#
##This was a much earlier message... grr.
##I suck at this.
#[Ben] :5:
#Property crimes in the UK, AFAIK, have been higher than those in the US
#for quite a long time; not a recent phenomenon at all.
#
#http://www.nationmaster.com/cat/Crime
[Ben]
##Earlier still!
#[Ben] :3:
Not from what I saw; however, criminologists in the UK and the US both
are pointing out that murders are on the rise on your side of the pond,
while property crimes have long been higher than the US. The
conservatives (European ones, anyway) like to point to the influx of
foreigners and the formation of minority gangs. I don't know enough to
say one way or the other, myself.
#
#[Jimmy] :4:
#Well, as I said, there are a lot of Jamaican gangs in Britain at the moment.
#
#[Ben] :5:
#I've heard similar reports from Switzerland and France, as well.
[Neil]
#[Neil] :4:
Just looking back at the Telegraph article, the figures in it show a drop,
followed by a rise. Although it seems to have doubled over a 1 year period,
the rise over 3 years is 50%, still too much, but nothing like the 4 times
increase over a couple of years implied by the original message. The
statistics in the article are:
{{
Q4 2000: 40 murders
Q4 2001: 43 murders
Q4 2002: 31 murders
Q4 2003: 61 murders
}}
I don't think that establishes a definite trend.
[Ben]
#[Ben] :2:
Some commentators are indeed tying it to disarming the population, and
pointing out that, e.g., New Hampshire - where the average truck driver
carries more firepower than entire EU armies - has a _very_ low crime
and murder rate. Kennesaw county (Georgia) which had (and probably still
does) a *mandatory gun possession requirement* maintained a zero violent
crime count for many years. The Swiss probably don't do too bad either.
[Neil]
#[Neil] :3:
Well tying British changes in crime rate to disarming the population is
bullshit. The British population has never had much in the way of guns. I
don't think anybody I know has ever owned a more powerful weapon than an air
pistol. (Not quite true, I once knew someone with a crossbow.)
As for the wider issues the correlation between gun ownership and violent
crime just isn't there. You can find examples of high guns, high crime, high
guns, low crime and low guns, low crime. I'm wouldn't expect there to be any
low guns, high gun crime examples out there, but that may depend on what you
are counting. Illegal guns are ususally much harder to count than legal ones
and definitions of what constitutes high gun crime may vary.
[Ben]
#[Ben] :3:
There's a bit of circular reasoning in the above... no, you're not going
to have high gun crimes in a society with a low gun count. By the same
exact token, then, you can't tie the number of murders in, say,
Washington DC, to the availability of guns. The US, in places, is a
violent society; guns are certainly not a cause - although they may be
part of the effect.
"Fear no man, no matter what his sizei
Just call on me and I will equalize"
-- stamped on the first Colt models
[Ben]
#[Ben] :2:
Laws only affect the law-abiding.
[Neil]
#[Neil] :3:
Even criminals obey a lot of laws and laws may have indirect effects on
criminals. No doubt the NRA would argue that Kennesaw County was an example
of the latter.
[[
http://www.kennesaw.ga.us/CodeOfOrdinances.aspx
:
#
Gun Law Ordinances
#The City's most famous ordinance adopted in March 1982 reads as follows.
Sec. 34-1 Heads of households to maintain firearms.
(a) In order to provide for the emergency management of the City, and further
in order to provide for and protect the safety, security and general welfare
of the city and its inhabitants, every head of household residing in the City
limits is required to maintain a firearm, together with ammunition therefore.
(b) Exempt from the effect of this section are those heads of households who
suffer a physical or mental disability, which would prohibit them from using
such a firearm. Further exempt from the effect of this section are those heads
of households who are paupers or who conscientiously oppose maintaining
firearms as a result of beliefs or religious doctrine, or persons convicted
of a felony.
Crime statistics:
http://www.kennesaw.ga.us/PoliceDepartment_CrimeStatistics.aspx
#Crime statistics
]]
[Ben]
#[Ben] :3:
By definition, they do not obey the laws which make them into criminals.
A murderer may not have too many traffic tickets - but this does not
make him any less of a murderer.
We all live in societies that allow - in fact, reward - murder when it
is done under the auspices of the government, as warfare. If it is
moral then, why would it be immoral otherwise?... by such a model of
"morality", which has now been trained into thousands of young men and
women by Bush, Blair, and the rest, we've just created a large pool of
people who are restrained from murder by a very thin veneer of
civilization.
#
#Oh, a quick note from the battlefield: one of my friends here just had a
#brother-in-law, a Marine, visit from Over There. They've got standing
#orders to kill every Iraqui in sight in case of ambush or attack - kids,
#women, etc. He's seen his best friend get blown up in the jeep just
#ahead of him; his friend's hand hit his windshield.
As if we hadn't learned enough from Vietnam...
[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :4:
Egads, and a neoconservative told me recently, "The protesters think it's
still 1968 and never learned the main lesson of Vietnam: all dissent
STOPS when war is declared."
[Ben]
#[Ben] :5:
... well, no, that's not _the_ most stupid thing I've ever heard. I can
think of one that was worse. Two, if I concentrate really hard.
Dissent only exists and makes sense when there's something to dissent
*from*. Nobody needs to march in the streets and shout for the sun to
shine. And the *main* lesson of Vietnam was that our politicians are
perfectly willing and fully able to casually murder our young men and
women - as well as those of "the enemy" - based on outright lies, and
are perfectly capable of abandoning them after shoving them into an
inferno. Cam Ranh Bay, WMDs - the lie can change, but the basic facts
remain.
For that matter, I wish it _was_ the late '60s in political terms:
"In his inaugural address, President Richard M. Nixon asked the American
people to lower their voices, to search for unity instead of
divisiveness, for harmony instead of discord. The speech struck a
responsive note in an exhausted nation that had just lived through a
year of violence and turmoil..."
-- Collier's Year Book
[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :4:
Funny, I learned a completely different lesson from Vietnam. That is,
"Be suspicious of anything your government is doing."
[Ben]
#[Ben] :5:
Odd how you're not the only one who learned that lesson... to my sorrow,
not enough people have learned it, though. Although the current
administration is doing all they can to drive it home.
[Neil]
#[Neil] :1:
The source of the increases we have had is probably enormous quantities of
cheap weapons being exported from the the former Soviet Union. Changes in the
law have made no difference that I can see, other than closing down
legitimate shooting clubs, due to public hysteria.
Is London crime worse than New York? Well New York is supposed to have
improved enormously, but there are few areas of London I would feel unsafe
walking in at night. How about New York?
[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :2:
My totally subjective impression has been the following:
{{
- Menacing, as in watch your back:
- Moscow (1995/1996)
- London (1998/2000/2002)
- Los Angeles (2001)
- Safe:
- NYC (2003/2004, although I didn't venture into Harlem or the Bronx)
- Chicago (2002/2003, although I didn't venture to the south side projects)
- San Francisco (1998/2003/2004)
- St Petersburg (1995/1996)
- Rheinland in Germany, Liege in Belgium (2000)
- Portland, Seattle, Vancouver BC, Toronto, Halifax, and everywhere smaller
- England (Bristol, Manchester, Brighton, Blackpool, Cambridge -- 2002)
Although my mate has had trouble in Bristol.
- Scotland (1998/2000/2002)
- Ireland, N Ireland (2000)
}}
Daytime/nighttime doesn't seem to make much difference. The menace I've
felt is mostly in the daytime; e.g., in Hollywood and south LA you never
know when some tough might appear who wants to mug/gangbang you. London
has that same sense sometimes, or at least parts of it do.
#
#[Neil] :1:
#If you ask "could there be <em>some</em> truth in it?", I have to say in all
#honesty <em>some</em>, but the overall verdict is still <em>bovine
#excreta</em>.
#
#[Rick] :1:
#Not likely.
#
#Guns aren't banned in the UK, and both London and New York City are
#statistically pretty safe places to be. Now, Washington, DC and
#Baltimore, _those_ have high crime rates.
#
#[Jimmy] :2:
#Unlicenced guns are illegal in Britain. There was a gun amnesty passed in
#Britain a few years ago, after sisters were accidentally caught in the
#crossfire of a gunfight between rival Yardie gangs, but no specific laws
#relating to guns were passed in Britain since then. (Or, as my friend
#tells me, since World War 2).
!!fighting|Peaceful chat about fighting!!
[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :2:
... although I'd still list DC as a "safe" place. Never been to
Baltimore.
[Ben]
#[Ben] :3:
[laugh] Especially when the two of us ambled down the street, discussing
martial arts and such. Not that DC hasn't seen anything like that
before, but you can pretty much bet that some people were whispering
"ohshit, cops!" and fading into alleys.
[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :4:
And you said 'tis nobler to run away than fight, and one should fight
only if the person persues you and leaves you no other choice. That
blew my mind, even though I recognized the martial arts philosophy
behind it. The western (ahem, skinhead) mindset is quite different,
"Fight immediately and never run away."
My philosophy is somewhere between the two.
[Jimmy]
#[Jimmy] :5:
You know my philosophy on this: it's better to make them think they'd
rather not start a fight after all :)
[Ben]
#[Ben] :6:
"Listen, we can both walk away from this and go home - dinner,
girlfriends, quiet night's sleep, and so on. The other choice is where
one of us can go to the emergency room or the morgue, and the other one
gets hauled off by the Gardai for inhuman cruelty, vicious mutilation,
and possibly cannibalism. Let's just do the first one instead of ruining
each other's lives, OK?"
[grin] Something like that, Jimmy?
[Jimmy]
#[Jimmy] :7:
Something like that, except it's not so much what I say -- I like to be
more subliminal^Wsubtle than that.
[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :6:
Wanna elaborate for the benefit of TAG?
[Jimmy]
#[Jimmy] :7:
Sending conflicting messages with body language is a major part of it --
for example, when someone doesn't want a fight, they put their hands up,
palms open and facing outward to show that they're not a threat. I do
this, but move into a fighting stance. I also keep my hands at throat
height, fingers pointing at the throat -- if I only get one shot, it's
going to count, and I don't mind telegraphing that.
Another aspect is facial expression and voice tone -- with both, I try
to express surprise that someone wants to start a fight with me; my
words say "I'm sure we can work this out" while my face and tone of
voice say "because you /really/ don't want to fuck with me".
I don't want to give away *all* of my secrets though :) (There's at
least one thing that's hard to explain (I anyway only put the pieces
together a couple of days ago, and even harder to reproduce).
!!haircut|Jimmy's haircut!!
[Jimmy]
#[Jimmy] :5:
I cut most of my hair off Friday though, and it seems I won't have as
much need to use that set of mind tricks as frequently as I used to.
[Ben]
#[Ben] :6:
JPEG! JPEG!
[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :7:
Ben's beard is next....
##I can pretend they were the same e-mail. Why not?
#[Sluggo] :6:
It's about time. Get a haircut and get a job. Do we get to see a pic
of the new Jimmy?
#[Jimmy]
#[Jimmy] :7:
#I'm glad no-one asked me why; I've been lying to everyone who has asked,
#both for practise, and because there's no single, big reason, just lots
#of little reasons.
#
#[Sluggo] :8:
## Private, but...
#I knew it would be the wrong reasons and it wouldn't be short enough, so
#I didn't ask. :)
#[Jimmy] :6:
#http://www.flickr.com/photos/704475_eabc53b025_m.jpg
[[
See my bio picture, below
]]
[Ben]
#[Ben] :7:
Ye Ghods. Jimmy, did your son recognize you after, or did he start
crying when the strange-looking man showed up?
[Jimmy]
#[Jimmy] :8:
Nah. He was there while my sister cut my hair. He did let out a startled
gasp when he saw me with my beard cut off though.
[Ben]
#[Ben] :7:
Oh, and you're right about the above. Just think about the lovely side
effect, one I try hard to cultivate (with only indifferent success, I'm
afraid) - there are going to be a number of people out there who will
presume that your "corporate lawyer" appearance means that you're
*harmless* ... It's a nice advantage to have.
#[Jimmy] :8:
#Heh. Thanks to a friend, I know a bit of the lingo, and thanks to some
#dealings at work, I can cite a few sections of a couple of laws.
#[Ben] :5:
You've read my "combat mentality" rap; in fact, I wrote it when you
asked me for details. To be precise, my philosophy is more like "talk
until it's not an option anymore" - where the other person closes off
the option by showing unmistakeable signs of physical aggression - at
which point you take them down as hard as necessary. Running away isn't
an option for me: I'm not much of a runner.
[Jimmy]
#[Jimmy] :6:
Running away mentioned without a pTerry quote?
'Haven't you noticed that by running away you end up in more trouble?'
'Yes, but you see, you can run away from that, too,' said Rincewind.
'That's the beauty of the system. Dead is only for once, but running
away is for ever.'
'Ah, but it is said that a coward dies a thousand deaths, while a hero
dies only one.'
'Yes, but it's the important one.'
-- Terry Pratchett, "The Last Continent"
!!trolling|Bobbing for apples, trolling for traffic...!!
[Rick]
#[Rick] :1:
Mike, you wouldn't be trolling for list traffic, would you? ;->
[Sluggo]
#[Sluggo] :2:
Who, me?
[Ben]
#[Ben] :3:
You forgot the innocent [blink, blink] tag, Mike. After all, this is
text-mode communication, and the subtler shades of meaning are easily
lost; you wouldn't want people to assume you weren't being *sincere*...
#
#[Vince] :1:
#It is my understanding that gun ownership is in fact banned in the UK and only
#recently have the 'Bobbys' (police) taken to carrying weapons themselves...
#
#[Neil] :6:-4:
## Testing this with Neil again
## It doesn't work :(
#Again not totally accurate. handguns are totally banned. I believe you can
#still get a licence for a shotgun.
#
#Most of the police still don't carry guns.
#
#[Vince] :1:
#There is a certain amount of truth to the 'stock' statement that goes';
#
#"If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns'
#
#[Neil] :6:-4:
#True, but it's not relevant to the argument about the effect of gun ownership
#on crime in Britain. The general population has never had much in the way of
#guns and that hasn't changed.
#
#[Vince] :1:
#One of the main reasons that the U.S. will never be invaded by any army or
#radical group is in the fact that the U.S. is the most heavily armed country
#in the world... but terrorist are a different story...
#
#[Neil] :6:-4:
#The main reason is that it's a long way from anyone who might want to attack
#it.
#
#[Ben] :2:
#Not by much, it seems to me. If a single passenger aboard each of those
#aircraft on 9/11 had been armed, there wouldn't have been much to
#remember about that date. The problem there breaks down to _exactly_ the
#same terms as everywhere else: the criminals are armed, and will
#continue to be so despite any laws that can be passed; the only question
#is, is the non-criminal population to be disarmed or not (with obvious
#corollaries.)
!!blackmail|Guns and Blackmail!!
[Vince]
#[Vince] :1:
I do not like weapons but I live in the country and I must have two weapons...
a 22 cal. Springfield and an H&K 12 gauge shotgun... I do not hunt but from
time to time I have to dispose of an injured or sick animal... as a last
option...
[Ben]
#[Ben] :2:
[blink] A 12-ga is a hell of a mercy weapon. I've found that a 22
suffices for anything of that sort; back in the days when I hunted, I
used my Ka-Bar knife when a /coup de grace/ was necessary (only once, as
I recall; I'm quite a good shot.)
[Jimmy]
#[Jimmy] :3:
My guess is the 22 is the mercy weapon, and the shotgun is used to chase
away scavengers - a shotgun is a standard piece of farming equipment over
here too.
[Vince]
#[Vince] :1:
BTW none of my weapons are registered... both were bought many years ago...
the Springfield rifle was bought before WWII
[Ben]
#[Ben] :2:
Ahem. I presume you realize you've just announced that on a public list?
Not that we have any intention of publishing it... heh, heh, heh...
(I'll contact you later with the Swiss bank account number; you can
transfer the million dollars into it anytime during the next three
days.)
[Vince]
#[Vince] :3:
##Forgot this bit:
So I placed it on a public list... no biggie... local law enforcement know me
and know my weapons... I mean they were bought before the second world
war...
#
[Ben]
I'm picturing Vince with a 75-caliber blunderbuss.
##Fixme: blockquote??
#[Vince]
#You make that an MK18 MOD0 and you've got a deal!!!!
"Heck, Sheriff, these ain't *really* what you'd call dangerous weapons - I
mean, an Uzi, *that's* a dangerous weapon!"
*** BOOOMMM!!! ***
"Ooops. Spark from my cigarette musta fallen in the pan. You didn't need
that arm anyway, didja, Sheriff?"
[Vince]
As for the 12 gauge... I use a one once slug almost exclusively leaves less
to dig a hole for...
[Ben]
[nod] I always wondered about those folks who went deer-hunting during
the shotgun season. Sure, there are such things as sabots, but most of
the ones I'd talked to were just using slugs. What did they do, go
scrape the deer off the trees afterwards and freeze the puree for the
winter?
[Vince]
If you are in a situation of a screwed up bull moose or bear... a 22 don't cut
it... Generally I borrow my neighbors 50 caliber for that...
[Ben]
Nice. Black powder, I presume? I've seen a few firearms that would toss
the modern .50 a few miles, but those are pretty expensive and somewhat
unusual. Sure would stop a moose, though...
Speaking of meese, here's one from Russia - this is the kind of thing
they've got wandering around Siberia and such.
#<http://okopnik.freeshell.org/img/russian_hunter.jpg>
http://okopnik.freeshell.org/img/russian_hunter.jpg
[Vince]
As for the Swiss bank account <heh> glad your doing so well... unfortunately
I just paid my property tax ($6K) and I am broke... and don't expect to get
a landfall of much more than snow.... even my Linux box is made of throw out
parts from several sources...
[Ben]
Yeah, well - those imaginary Swiss accounts are pretty cheap. I can get
you a few hundred of them at a discount, if you want; I know the guy who
thinks'em up.
[Vince]
#vince
p.s. did I hear you guys might need proof readers??? I can read but I have
no proof...
#Put my name on the list if you like....v
[Ben]
I've got no proof either - at least when I'm not hanging out with my
Russian friends. Then, if I get cut, they have to call the fire
department.
[Jimmy]
#[Jimmy] :3:
Uh... Ben... Here's a writing exercise: construct a sentence using these
four words -- "advice", "your", "follow", "own".
[Ben]
#[Ben] :4:
Shhh! If you don't say it too loud, nobody will notice. At least I
*think* that's how this email stuff works, anyway. Besides, I didn't
publish the account number - I put it in a Micr0s0ft Wallet, where it'll
be secure forever and ever! They *SAID* so!
[John]
#[John] :5:
Hmm, what's the new name for Carnivore? The FBI should be contacting you
shortly. ;^>
[Vince]
Have you ever sat back and tried to create, hypothetically, a system that
monitors all Internet actions? And all individual actions on the internet?
Let's see... there are a limited amount of Cray computers in this world and..
<HEH>
[Ben]
Heck, _that's_ not the point. Who will watch and decide on the
information presented by those Crays? And, even more importantly, who
will watch *them?* It's an infinite progression.
As Thomas' recent .sig noted, it's not a new problem.
Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? (Who will watch the watchers themselves?)
-- Juvenal (Decimus Iunius Juvenalis, 55-127 A.D.)
#[Ben] :4:
#(Is it time for another hit on the crack-pipe yet? Oh, goody.)
#
#[Vince] :5:
#You say your pipe is cracked?? A good friend of mine of the Lacota Nation
#makes pipes that don't break <G> Made from stone... good pipe..
#
#[Jimmy] :6:
#Reminds me of a Denis Leary riff, something like "Marijuana doesn't lead
#to harder drugs -- it leads to DIY. Dude, we could make a great bong out
#of your head".
#
#I once read a magazine that had instructions for making a pipe out of
#the ground :)
#
#Nothing quoted. How???
#[Vince]
#Osiyo! (greetings)
#
#In reality it is a most moot point really...
#
#When old men send children out to be nothing more than a walking bomb what
#good is a mere rifle or side arm? Considering that the human bomb is most
#invisible...
#
#There very well could be standing armies of hundreds of thousands inside of
#the U.S. or U.K. and we wouldn't even know it... and considering the 'PC'
#politics of today I doubt highly that there are many of our citizens that
#have the will for the fight...
#
#But hey, I'm just an Indian ehhh???
#
#wado (thank you)
#Vince aka Wesa ('cat' in Cherokee)
-----
[Sluggo]
Testing my Lgang access.
[Ben]
We can't see you.
[Sluggo]
But we can build you.
(Allusion to Philip K Dick story title.)
[[
"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. ... Better than he
was before. Better, stronger, faster."
]]
-----
!!nuclearjava|Java should not be trusted with nukes, Microsoft says!!
[Jason]
I was looking through the Microsoft EULA[1] to see what kind of disclaimer
they had and found pretty much the standard stuff. (ie, "We could use
this software to kill your cat, and it wouldn't be our fault.") But
there was one clause that I found...interesting:
9. NOTE ON JAVA SUPPORT. THE SOFTWARE PRODUCT MAY CONTAIN SUPPORT FOR
PROGRAMS WRITTEN IN JAVA. JAVA TECHNOLOGY IS NOT FAULT TOLERANT AND IS
NOT DESIGNED, MANUFACTURED, OR INTENDED FOR USE OR RESALE AS ON-LINE
CONTROL EQUIPMENT IN HAZARDOUS ENVIRONMENTS REQUIRING FAIL-SAFE
PERFORMANCE, SUCH AS IN THE OPERATION OF NUCLEAR FACILITIES, AIRCRAFT
NAVIGATION OR COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS, AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL, DIRECT LIFE
SUPPORT MACHINES, OR WEAPONS SYSTEMS, IN WHICH THE FAILURE OF JAVA
TECHNOLOGY COULD LEAD DIRECTLY TO DEATH, PERSONAL INJURY, OR SEVERE
PHYSICAL OR ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE.
Interesting, no?
[1] Specifically, this was the EULA that Midtown Madness, a Microsoft
game, shipped under.
[Jimmy]
Actually, no. This is part of Java's licence. Microsoft licenced Java
from Sun, rather than writing their own implementation, which is why Sun
were able to sue them for making changes to their version of Java.
[Ben]
Amusingly, I wrote an article for Java Developer's Journal a couple
of years ago - "Java Under Linux: Ten Feet Tall and Bullet-Proof" -
that began with the very clause you quote, and made that very point.
Got quite a number of comments about it, too.
#
[[
http://okopnik.freeshell.org/articles/JDJarticle.html
]]
-----
!!moreandmore|More of... everything, really!!
# link to okopnik.html
[Ben]
*Back on the net, hi-ho!*
...at least for the moment. I can only hope that this machine will give
less trouble than the old one; it's scarcely possible to give _more._
[Jimmy]
And there you go tempting fate again. It's getting to be a hobby.
[Ben]
Where did you think pTerry got the idea of the guy standing on a
mountaintop in copper armor during a thunderstorm and shaking his middle
finger at the sky? I'm *the* original prototype.
[Brian]
You? YOU?!? Put these concepts together in a single brain: Toshiba 64M
laptop, Wireless PCMCIA card, Windows XP Home.
[Ben]
Ah. I *was* just wondering how they measured the length of, e.g., the
Mesozoic era. The above setup makes it trivial: turn it on, and when
it's finished booting - voila! - continental drift and such have
occurred in not only measurable but gross amounts.
[Brian]
Stir in one college age
owner of said box, coat evenly and scream. The gods TRULY are bastards.
[Ben]
And our capacity for self-torture is nearly infinite as well... Perhaps
I *am* getting a bit wiser as I get older, but I'm becoming rather aware
of the "tar babies" in my life, and am quite emphatic about shedding
them or even avoiding getting involved with them in the first place.
This, of course, presumes the ability to afford such solutions.
[Brian]
I had to come home, compile some software, then use gdb and strace to
try to get it working, just to get rid of the shakes.
Given that we had our tornado in California (anyone else remember the
Mary Avenue touchdown in Sunnyvale, about 4 years ago? Half a block
away!), earthquakes a-plenty, hurricane Isabel last year here on the
right coast ... Volcanos are next on the list, and after working on that
Windows box, I might welcome the change.
[Ben]
I find that hurricanes often suffice to put an end to nasty electronic
creatures that refuse to die in any other way; I've just replaced a
10-year old GPS that sang its swan song (reasons unknown) during the
last one. Oh, my hand-held GPS went along - misery loves company, I
suppose - and so did my iPaq handheld. They say that hurricanes are
necessary because they strip the coating of old, dead organisms off the
coral beds, which allows the coral to breathe and grow; I can assure you
that it strips old electronics off boats just as efficiently.
Presumably, this allows GPS manufacturers to breathe and grow...
#
#[Brian]
#OB Linux: I got Bluefish working finally, it was upchucking on the same
#config file that worked when I built it last time. Strace to the rescue,
#showing me what was happening when it segfaulted.
#
#[Ben]
#Sheesh, I wish I had "strace" on my Palm Pilot. Trying to reload it from
#backup (something I have to do whenever I change batteries - normally
#not a big deal) was causing a modal memory error: I couldn't do anything
#with it until it was fixed. Took some serious "divide and conquer"
#troubleshooting. It turned out to be a config file for the Graffiti
#(handwriting recognition) system, one of the last things I'd have
#suspected. I'm very, very glad that I had a CLI sync program (coldsync)
#which allowed me to experiment with this; doing it via the GUI (jpilot)
#would have taken days.
[Brad]
Maybe he can scare fate away with a Perl One-Liner that draws an ASCII
monster ;-)
[Jimmy]
Not Perl, but...
{{
$ cowsay -f daemon 'Boo!'
______
< Boo! >
------
\ , ,
\ /( )`
\ \ \___ / |
/- _ `-/ '
(/\/ \ \ /\
/ / | ` \
O O ) / |
`-^--'`< '
(_.) _ ) /
`.___/` /
`-----' /
<----. __ / __ \
<----|====O)))==) \) /====
<----' `--' `.__,' \
| |
\ /
______( (_ / \______
,' ,-----' | \
`--{__________) \/
}}
[Ben]
Excuuuuse me? Whaddaya mean, "not Perl"?
{{
ben@Fenrir:~$ file `which cowsay`
/usr/bin/cowsay: perl script text executable
}}
[grin] We Are Everywhere.
[Jimmy]
<backpedal>
erm...
I meant "not a Perl one-liner"
</backpedal>
Though if you really need one:
{{
perl -e 'print`cowsay -f daemon "Boo!"`'
}}
[Jimmy]
I had this in the Laundrette draft:
Murphy's Law has been formalised:
http://www.news.com.au/common/printpage/0,6093,11009375,00.html
((U+C+I) x (10-S))/20 x A x 1/(1-sin(F/10))
where U=urgency, C=complexity, I=importance, S=skill, A=aggravation, and
F=frequency; each is a value between 1 and 9, except A, which is set at 0.7.
"There is, of course, a Sod's Law factor to the equation. If you judge your
ratings wrongly, you might become too optimistic - and calamity will strike."
[Ben]
Just as it will if you base anything important on the above formula.
Never forget that Murphy's Law is _also_ subject to Murphy's Law.
[John]
I.e., it's recursive!
##bq
[Brian]
Thus a close relative of the GNU/Linux clan: A self-referential,
empirically reentrant and recursing formula. Yes, recursing.
[Ben]
*Precisely* the word that fits the situation, on occasion (when simply
cursing isn't enough.)
[Brian]
Wasn't there a whole section of Hofstadter's GEB devoted to this?
[Ben]
I need to pick up a copy; it's probably about time. Certain books should
be reread every few years. As an example, I've just reread Pirsig's
ZATAOMM - my fourth reading of it or so - and was struck, *again*, by
how much that book has influenced my life and attitudes in general since
the first time. More so with the passing years.
##end bq
[Jimmy]
Yep. That didn't stop me from trying to brush up my C with two versions of a
program to calculate that :)
[Ben]
Heh. Makes sense to play with with the simpler stuff before you dive
into the dark depths of Moria (watch out for that Balrog; he's still
wandering around somewhere down there.)
[Jimmy]
Here's the short version.
# murphy-simple.c
[Ben]
Let me give it a shot - I haven't done any Perl for a while now, too
bloody long.
#``
{{
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
@vals = qw/urgency complexity importance skill frequency/;
die "5 arguments required: (@vals)\n" unless @ARGV == 5;
for (@ARGV){
die "Each argument must be between 1 and 9\n" unless /^[1-9]$/;
}
# YANETUT
@v{ map chr ord, @vals } = @ARGV;
printf "%3.3f\n", ( ( $v{u} + $v{c} + $v{i} ) * ( 10 - $v{s} ) ) / 20 *
0.7 * ( 1 / ( 1 - sin( $v{f} / 10 ) ) );
}}
#''
There. I figure _that's_ the short version... :)
[Jimmy]
Or, the Perl NQ1L
{{
perl -e'@i=@ARGV;print((($i[0]+$i[1]+$i[2])*(10-$i[3]))/20*0.7*(1/(1-sin($i[4]/10))))' 5 6 7 8 9
}}
[Ben]
Oh. Well, heck, if we're going to do _that..._
#``
{{
perl -alne'print((($F[0]+$F[1]+$F[2])*(10-$F[3]))/20*.7*(1/(1-sin($F[4]/10))))'
1 2 3 4 5
2.42040302288669
#''
}}
Or we could just eliminate "print" altogether, just for fun - although
the first version is shorter:
#``
{{
perl -alpe's#.*#((($F[0]+$F[1]+$F[2])*(10-$F[3]))/20*.7*(1/(1-sin($F[4]/10))))#e'
1 2 3 4 5
2.42040302288669
#''
}}
#Ben again
...or, shortest yet:
#``
{{
perl -alpe'$_=((($F[0]+$F[1]+$F[2])*(10-$F[3]))/20*.7*(1/(1-sin($F[4]/10))))'
#''
}}
#Ben, yet again
Oh yeah - and we can get rid of all that LISP-looking stuff, too.
#``
{{
perl -alpe'$_=($F[0]+$F[1]+$F[2])*(10-$F[3])/20*.7*(1/(1-sin$F[4]/10))'
#''
}}
*Now* it's shortest. I think. :) It's somewhere around the 18th hole of
Perl golf, anyway.
[Brad]
I wonder if Woomert or Frink would ever alias this in their ~/.bashrc...
[Ben]
Woomert would probably spotted the tortured math stuff and made it even
shorter thereby:
{{
perl -pale'$_=($F[0]+$F[1]+$F[2])*(10-$F[3])/20*.7/(1-sin$F[4]/10)'
}}
Other than that, it could happen...
[[
Meanwhile, back in the main thread...
]]
[Ben]
Acer has replaced my previous lemon^Wlaptop with a newer model,
[Sluggo]
A computer that looks like a lemon... Maybe it'll be the next iMac
design. Bright yellow for lemon, bright green for lime.
[Ben]
Actually, I'd expect it to be "bright yellow for Golden Delicious,
bright green for Granny Smith", if anything. I mean, the company's
called _Apple,_ for Ghu's sake. The *last* thing they'd want to imply is
that they were selling lemons.
I've actually considered buying an Apple, primarily because of their
history (in my experience and reports from others) of reliability. On
the other hand, I understand that Linux on Macs still has a few rough
edges... and having seen the spindled, folded, and mutilated version of
BSD used by OS/X, I'm not willing to go that way, either.
(Yeccch. It was that much nastier because I actually _like_ BSD.)
[Ben]
an
Aspire 2012... although I'd be hard-put to say anything especially
exciting and wonderful about it. Yeah, the video controller is different
(an RV350/Radeon 9600 instead of the 9200 that was in it previously);
other than that, it's missing the LCD one-line display and the weird
"multimedia" setup that (theoretically) allowed you to play CDs, DVDs,
etc. without actually booting the machine (I've mentioned this; it was a
tiny Linux partition with "mplayer".) [shrug] No loss, AFAIC. On the
other hand, the Intel wireless 2100 interface has been upgraded to a
2200G - which handles A, B, and G, something I do see as an improvement.
They also seem to have resolved the extremely weird "key delay" problem
that the Aspire 2003 had (if you typed too quickly, pressing 'b'
immediately after 'a' would result in a second 'a'!) Otherwise, it looks
and acts much the same as the old gadget.
Let's see how this one holds up...
-----
!!recursion|Recursion!!
[Ben]
Searching the Net for recursion-related bits in the GEB, I found the
following:
#bq
If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer.
Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter
than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is.
-- Andrew Plotkin
#/bq
[Jay]
Recursion: see recursion. See also tail recursion.
Tail recursion: see recursion.
#
#[[
#That reminds me. Back in my first year of college, just as we were learning
#about recursion, we got the go ahead to set up a student-run Linux box.
#Shane, the guy who introduced us to Linux, brought in the Red Hat 5.0 box,
#and as he was going through the index, found:
#
#Recursion....................................................see Recursion
#]]
[Ben]
Both of the above are listed. :)
[Jay]
Yeah. :-) Where *did* you find that?
[Ben]
Google for 'Hofstadter GEB recursion', then grab the Wiki entry near the
top of the page. If this fails to satisfy, think of a better set of
search strings and... ooops, sorry, never mind. :)))
[[
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DouglasHofstadter
]]
-----
#!!untie|Not just "Not Linux"!!
#
#[[
#...but not computing!
#]]
!!system|Getting the system out of your system!!
[Kapil]
Failing this of course, you can go run a marathon, climb a mountain,
read a good book, play the flute, prove the Riemann Hypothesis --- in
other words do *anything* that will get the "need" out of your system.
#
#[[
#or, indeed, the system out of your need
#]]
[Ben]
I like the way you think, Kapil. :) Geeks of the world, untie! [1]
[1] Sure, the dyslexics too. However, they don't need the impetus of
Kapil's options.
-----
!!standard|Standard!!
[Thomas]
[1] While awk, perl, etc, reside in /usr/bin, they are not standard or
essential to get a system operating and working. They're simply a
convenience.
#
#[Jimmy]
#IEEE Std 1003.1, 2004 Edition:
#http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/idx/utilities.html
#defines awk, c99 (in place of cc), m4 etc.
[Ben]
Depends on the meaning of 'essential', I suppose. Perl is my OS of
choice; Linux just happens to be the best VM to run it under. :)))
-----
!!c_loops|C Loops!!
[[
Yep, something that's on-topic. Just for variety, y'understand
]]
[Jason]
{{
On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 15:34:00 +0100,
"Jimmy O'Regan" <[e-mail]> wrote:
<snip>
for (i=0,j=1;i<5,j<6;i++,j++)
in[i] = atoi(argv[j]);
}}
#[Jason]
Wouldn't be simpler just to say
{{
#``
for(i = 0; i < 5; ++i)
in[i] = atoi(argv[i+1]);
#''
}}
[Jimmy]
Yeah, but I'm trying to get my head around C again, and wanted to juggle
two variables in the for loop to see if I got it right.
[Ben]
## Find the thread on fenceposts -- I think it was a backpage?
##-> Issue 105
Beware the Fencepost Error, son -
The j's that bite, the i's that catch...
Me, I dislike even the idea of loops where you have to keep the index
manually; I think that the concept itself is broken (and yes, it's a
requirement in C, given its data structures - and the right thing to
practice if you're going to be using it.)
[Jason]
I agree; I really think it should be the compiler's job to figure where
something starts and ends, and how we can iterate over each element in
turn. It's not hard. But this is C we're talking about:
{{
#``
#
>> Beware: you could be talking to a minor. Some say that such immoral
>> material (C code) should be kept away from the impressionable minds of
>> The Children (tm).
#
#
That is why, when you mention the C language in front
of a child, you should *spell* the name...
-- Hal E. Fulton on comp.lang.ruby
#''
}}
:-)
[Ben]
This may or may not be
indicative, but I haven't used a loop of the above type - even though
Perl supports it - ever since I learned Perl, except to explain them
(and deprecate their use) to my students. If I *had* to use it for some
reason, I'd at least let the compiler handle the exit condition:
{{
#``
for (i=6; i;) in[i] = atoi(argv[i--]);
#''
}}
[Jason]
Just looking at this, I can't figure out what it's supposed to do. What
is the value of "i" when used as "in[i]"? Does it get the old value of
"i" or the new value? I think it's undefined how C should handle this.
At least gcc doesn't like it:
{{
#``
~/prog/c$ cat post-increment-operator.c
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
int i = 0;
printf("i: %d, i++: %d\n", i, i++);
return 0;
}
~/prog/c$ gcc -Wall post-increment-operator.c -o post-increment-operator
}}
#bq
[Ben]
[shrug] "-Wall" is a maiden aunt on the edge of a nervous breakdown.
IMO, most of what it complains about never comes to pass.
#
#[Jason]
#*nods* I've compiled software packages that spit out reams of warnings,
#only to have the program run flawlessly.
[Ben]
That's not to
say that it's not useful at times, but paying scrupulous attention to
every one of its hysterical pronouncements of doom isn't a good
strategy. As an example, I've _never_ seen a kernel compile that didn't
generate a stack of warnings - and yet, all but one or two worked fine.
[Jason]
Or, for that matter, compiling almost any large software project seems
to generate a pile of warnings. And, yes, most of the time, everything
works fine.
But a quick check over at the comp.lang.c FAQ reveals that such a
statement is indeed undefined:
http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/q3.1.html
http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/q3.2.html
[Brad]
I use -Wall because I can't stand streams of silly warnings; they
force me to write better code and more maintainable code. This, IMO,
is a Good Thing.
#
#[Jason]
#Same here.
[Ben]
Oh, I'm all for enabling warnings - I don't write Perl code (other than
Perl Golf) without "-w" or "use warnings", and anything over 10 lines
gets "use strict" as well. I just think that "-Wall" goes _way_
overboard... but I guess it's more of a response to the way that C
itself is rather than twitchiness on the part of the developers.
Whenever blowing your nose has a perceptible chance of destroying the
entire Universe, a bit of reticence becomes understandable.
[Jason]
{{
post-increment-operator.c: In function `main':
post-increment-operator.c:5: warning: operation on `i' may be undefined
~/prog/c$ ./post-increment-operator
i: 1, i++: 0
~/prog/c$
#''
}}
NOTE: The program "runs fine&q...