thx for the thoughts gentlemen (yes as someone said i use terms loosely) -
more than cool --->
quality: snobs only care about mpixels. this is about communications.  the
general public cares about speed not quality.  how is akamai doing these
days? not to mention any other QOS businesses that come to mind.
implementation: point about hooking to usb, wires, etc. AGREE 100%. these
implementations are super clunky, attachable camera needs to be integrated a
la nokia model.  basically useless until better handsets are released i
think.
adoption: ian brought up the 'fax' problem.  brilliant thing is, this is far
more personal than faxes so can be justified more easily and marketed in
family packs etc. but yes, the usual rules apply as MMS phones have network
efx.
content: who cares about content?  that no one can think of 'useful' content
is always the business persons mistake. the content is the users
communications.  its anything and everything.  avg person could easily send
half dozen pics to a dozen people a day.  mainly humorous i'd guess. who
cares if content is trivial in nature. picture speaks a thousand words.
display: why are dig camera displays better than cell phones?  does anyone
know who makes these small displays and what the trends are around them?
misc ramblings: i suppose you skeptical forkers would have said the same
thing about '1 hour photo' processing.  trivial, who needs it, i get better
resultion elswhere.  and yet, it had great decentralizing impact - the plant
had to be downsized and pushed to the retail operation - the digital camera,
and finally the integrated digital camera phone brings this cycle of
decentralization in photography to a logical conclusion (which will put the
photo giants to bed) and change the world in a meaningful way.  also, SMS
didn't take off because its easy, it took off because it costs less.  its
greatly ironic the carriers often trumpet the 'profitabilty' of their SMS
traffic over others because of its ratio of cost to bandwidth.  in reality,
SMS cannibilizes the voice rev's they bought their networks to handle.
ps:  it is relatively amusing that one 'low resolution' complaint dropped
just after Joe watched a CARTOON on his television..
You're right. Or at least, I don't. I saw an advert for it on TV last
night (can't miss Futurama :-) and I thought, "boy, that's dumb."
If I wanted to share pictures with someone, I'd email them to them,
where they could see them on a 1024x or 1600x display, instead of
rob
-----Original Message-----
From: Eugen Leitl
Sent: Monday, August 19, 2002 1:34 AM
To: Rob Shavell
Cc: fork@spamassassin.taint.org
Subject: Re: sprint delivers the next big thing??
On Sun, 18 Aug 2002, Rob Shavell wrote:
> down in the tech world than mobile visual communications.. and yet no one
> seems to give much of a damn that right now that 2 persons can take photos
> and share them instantly across space.  this is one of the biggest - and
The word "trivial" comes to mind.
> last - fundamental changes in human communications.  will be as big as the
> browser.
Remote realtime streaming video is neat, but sharing pictures? You invoke
big words rather readily.


right Mike,
i will agree to disagree but i take your comments to heart.  my opinion is
only that this is one of the last frontiers of communications ('instant
show') that we cross easily (though you are right as rain on pricing).  i am
mildly amused at the level of skepticism and innatention it is getting.
my premise is that the world will change in dramatic and unexpected ways
once there are a billion 'eye's' which can instantly share what they see
amongst each other.  that doesn't mean that people will stop talking on
their phones, or that people will spend more time w/images than voice.  just
that it is fundamental.  from news to crime to privacy to dating to family
life to bloopers and practical jokes, i believe there will be an explosion
of images unleashed specifically by cell phone integrated lenses because of
their utter ubiquity that dwarfs all pictures taken in the history of
photography by orders of magnitude and in short order. and yes, changes
things 'big time'.
rgds,
rob
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Masnick
Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 11:58 PM
To: Rob Shavell
Cc: fork@spamassassin.taint.org
Subject: RE: sprint delivers the next big thing??
Not to keep harping on this, but...
At 11:36 PM 8/20/02 -0700, Rob Shavell wrote:
>content: who cares about content?  that no one can think of 'useful'
content
>is always the business persons mistake. the content is the users
>communications.  its anything and everything.  avg person could easily send
>half dozen pics to a dozen people a day.  mainly humorous i'd guess. who
>cares if content is trivial in nature. picture speaks a thousand words.
This does nothing to answer my question.  I *do* care about content.  Hell,
if I could be convinced that people would send stupid pics back and forth
all day, I'd have a different opinion of this.  I just am not convinced
that they will (stupid or not).
While a picture may be worth a thousand words (and this is the same
argument the guy who works for me made), how many people do you know who
communicate by pictures?  Sure, it sounds nice to say that a picture is
such an efficient messaging mechanism, but how often do you actually find
yourself drawing someone a picture to explain something?
I don't buy it.
For most messages, text works fine and is the most efficient
mechanism.  For some messages, pictures do the job, but I would say not
nearly as often as words.  Why do you think Pictionary and Charades and
such are games?  Because images are usually not the most efficient way to
get a message across.
>misc ramblings: i suppose you skeptical forkers would have said the same
>thing about '1 hour photo' processing.  trivial, who needs it, i get better
>resultion elswhere.  and yet, it had great decentralizing impact - the
plant
>had to be downsized and pushed to the retail operation - the digital
camera,
>and finally the integrated digital camera phone brings this cycle of
>decentralization in photography to a logical conclusion (which will put the
>photo giants to bed) and change the world in a meaningful way.  also, SMS
>didn't take off because its easy, it took off because it costs less.  its
>greatly ironic the carriers often trumpet the 'profitabilty' of their SMS
>traffic over others because of its ratio of cost to bandwidth.  in reality,
>SMS cannibilizes the voice rev's they bought their networks to handle.
Again, this is the same argument my colleague made (along with "you just
don't understand kids today, and they'll run with this").  I wasn't saying
that MMS wouldn't take off because it wasn't high quality or that it wasn't
easy.  I was saying that I couldn't see why people would use it in a way
that "changed the face of communications".
I'm looking for the compelling reason (even if it's a stupid one) why
people would want to do this.  Sure, if they integrate cameras into the
phone, and the quality improves (even only marginally) I can certainly see
people taking pictures with their cameras and occasionally sending them to
other people.  But, mostly, I don't see what the benefit is to this over
sending them to someone's email address, or putting together an online (or
offline) photoalbum.
I don't think 1 hour photos are trivial.  People want to see their own pics
right away, and the quality is plenty good enough for snapshots.  That's
one of the main reasons why digital cameras are catching on.  The instant
view part.  I'm guessing your argument is that people not only want
"instant view", but also "instant show".  Which is what this service
offers.  I'm not convinced that most people want "instant show".  I think
people like to package their pictures and show them.  That's why people put
together fancy albums, and sit there and force you to go through them while
they explain every picture.  Sure, occasionally "instant show" is nice, but
it's just "nice" on occasion.  I still can't see how it becomes a integral
messaging method.
What's the specific benefit of taking a picture and immediately sending it
from one phone to another?  There has to be *some* benefit, even if it's
silly if people are going to flock to it.
I'm searching... no one has given me a straight answer yet.
The *only* really intriguing idea I've heard about things like MMS lately
are Dan Gillmor's assertion that one day in the near future some news event
will happen, and a bunch of people will snap pictures with their mobile
phones, from all different angles, and those photos tell the real story of
what happened - before the press even gets there.
Willing to be proven wrong,
Mike
PS If the wireless carriers continue to price these services as stupidly as
they currently are, then MMS is *never* going to catch on.


Hi Kragen,
This is an interesting analysis.  I think that there are a couple
of nits I might pick (for example, I don't expect that the market will
be well developed with highest bidders for while), I think that the
most important issue, which is that end users won't be able to fix
their systems, is almost passed over.  I know that you know this, and
you allude to it, but your essay is getting passed around, so you
might want to add to it bits about the sysadmin and others.
There's one other point which you don't make, which I think is very
important, which is that research into defining and addressing classes
of vulnerabilities can't happen without libraries of available
vulnerability code.  I can think of three researchers into automated
methods for addressing vulnerabilities who griped, uninvited, about
the quality of the existing vulnerability sites.  Doing research into
a set requires that you have enough examples, in the open, that you
can define a set, and that the set is added to from time to time so
you can make and test predictions.
I feel fairly confident in saying that without full disclosure, we
wouldn't have Stackguard, ITS4, Nissus, or snort.  And the security
admin's job would be a lot harder.
Adam
On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 08:42:12AM +0200, Eugen Leitl wrote:
| --
| -- Eugen* Leitl
leitl
| ______________________________________________________________
| ICBMTO: N48 04'14.8'' E11 36'41.2''
| 83E5CA02: EDE4 7193 0833 A96B 07A7  1A88 AA58 0E89 83E5 CA02
|
|
| ---------- Forwarded message ----------
| Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 00:24:54 -0400 (EDT)
| From: Kragen Sitaker
| To: fork@spamassassin.taint.org
| Subject: the underground software vulnerability marketplace and its hazards
|
| On August 7th, an entity known as "iDEFENSE" sent out an announcement,
| which is appended to this email.  Briefly, "iDEFENSE", which bills
| itself as "a global security intelligence company", is offering cash
| for information about security vulnerabilities in computer software
| that are not publicly known, especially if you promise not to tell
| anyone else.
|
| If this kind of secret traffic is allowed to continue, it will pose a
| very serious threat to our computer communications infrastructure.
|
| At the moment, the dominant paradigm for computer security research
| known as "full disclosure"; people who discover security
| vulnerabilities in software tell the vendor about them, and a short
| while later --- after the vendor has had a chance to fix the problem
| --- they publish the information, including code to exploit the
| vulnerability, if possible.
|
| This method has proven far superior to the old paradigm established by
| CERT in the late 1980s, which its proponents might call "responsible
| disclosure" --- never release working exploit code, and never release
| any information on the vulnerability before all vendors have released
| a patch.  This procedure often left hundreds of thousands of computers
| vulnerable to known bugs for months or years while the vendors worked
| on features, and often, even after the patches were released, people
| wouldn't apply them because they didn't know how serious the problem
| was.
|
| The underground computer criminal community would often discover and
| exploit these same holes for months or years while the "responsible
| disclosure" process kept their victims, who had no connections in the
| underground, vulnerable.
|
| The problem with this is that vulnerabilities that are widely known
| are much less dangerous, because their victims can take steps to
| reduce their potential impact --- including disabling software,
| turning off vulnerable features, filtering traffic in transit, and
| detecting and responding to intrusions.  They are therefore much less
| useful to would-be intruders.  Also, software companies usually see
| security vulnerabilities in their software as PR problems, and so
| prefer to delay publication (and the expense of fixing the bugs) as
| long as possible.
|
| iDEFENSE is offering a new alternative that appears far more dangerous
| than either of the two previous paradigms.  They want to be a buyer in
| a marketplace for secret software vulnerability information, rewarding
| discoverers of vulnerabilities with cash.
|
| Not long before, Snosoft, a group of security researchers evidently
| including some criminal elements, apparently made an offer to sell the
| secrecy of some software vulnerability information to the software
| vendor; specifically, they apparently made a private offer to
| Hewlett-Packard to keep a vulnerability in HP's Tru64 Unix secret if
| HP retained Snosoft's "consulting services".  HP considered this
| extortion and responded with legal threats, and Snosoft published the
| information.
|
| If this is allowed to happen, it will cause two problems which,
| together, add up to a catastrophe.
|
| First, secret software vulnerability information will be available to
| the highest bidder, and to nobody else.  For reasons explained later,
| I think the highest bidders will generally be organized crime
| syndicates, although that will not be obvious to the sellers.
|
| Second, finding software vulnerabilities and keeping them secret will
| become lucrative for many more talented people.  The result will be
| --- just as in the "responsible disclosure" days --- that the good
| guys will remain vulnerable for months and years, while the majority
| of current vulnerabilities are kept secret.
|
| I've heard it argued that the highest bidders will generally be the
| vendors of the vulnerable software, but I don't think that's
| plausible.  If someone can steal $20 000 because a software bug lets
| them, the software vendor is never held liable; often, in fact, the
| people who administer the software aren't liable, either --- when
| credit card data are stolen from an e-commerce site, for example.
| Knowing about a vulnerability before anyone else might save a web-site
| administrator some time, and it might save the software vendor some
| negative PR, but it can net the thief thousands of dollars.
|
| I think the highest bidders will be those for whom early vulnerability
| information is most lucrative --- the thieves who can use it to
| execute the largest heists without getting caught.  Inevitably, that
| means organized crime syndicates, although the particular gangs who
| are good at networked theft may not yet exist.
|
| There might be the occasional case where a market leader, such as
| Microsoft, could make more money by giving their competitors bad PR
| than a gang could make by theft.  Think of a remote-root hole in
| Samba, for example.
|
| Right now, people who know how to find security exploits are either
| motivated by personal interest in the subject, motivated by the public
| interest, motivated by a desire for individual recognition, or
| personally know criminals that benefit from their exploits.  Creating
| a marketplace in secret vulnerability information would vastly
| increase the availability of that information to the people who can
| afford to pay the most for it: spies, terrorists, and organized crime.
|
| Let's not let that happen.
|
|
|
|
| This is the original iDEFENSE announcement:
|
| From: Sunil James
| Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 12:32 PM
| Subject: Introducing iDEFENSE's Vulnerability Contributor Program
|
|
| Greetings,
|
| iDEFENSE is pleased to announce the official launch of its Vulnerability
| Contributor Program (VCP). The VCP pays contributors for the advance
| notification of vulnerabilities, exploit code and malicious code.
|
| iDEFENSE hopes you might consider contributing to the VCP. The following
| provides answers to some basic questions about the program:
|
| Q. How will it work?
| A. iDEFENSE understands the majority of security researchers do not publish
| security research for compensation; rather, it could be for any of a number
| of motivations, including the following:
|
|          * Pure love of security research
|          * The desire to protect against harm to targeted networks
|          * The desire to urge vendors to fix their products
|          * The publicity that often accompanies disclosure
|
| The VCP is for those who want to have their research made public to the
| Internet community, but who would also like to be paid for doing the
| work.The compensation will depend, among other things, on the following
| items:
|
|          * The kind of information being shared (i.e. vulnerability or exploit)
|          * The amount of detail and analysis provided
|          * The potential severity level for the information shared
|          * The types of applications, operating systems, and other
|            software and hardware potentially affected
|          * Verification by iDEFENSE Labs
|          * The level of exclusivity, if any, for data granted to iDEFENSE
|
| Q. Who should contribute to the VCP?
| A. The VCP is open to any individual, security research group or other
| entity.
|
| Q. Why are you launching this program?
| A. Timeliness remains a key aspect in security intelligence. Contributions
| to some lists take time before publication to the public at large. More
| often, many of these services charge clients for access without paying the
| original contributor. Under the iDEFENSE program, the contributor is
| compensated, iDEFENSE Labs verifies the issue, and iDEFENSE clients and the
| public at large are warned in a timely manner.
|
| Q. Who gets the credit?
| A. The contributor is always credited for discovering the vulnerability or
| exploit information.
|
| Q. When can I contribute?
| The VCP is active. You are welcome to begin contributing today.
|
| To learn more, go to  If you have
| questions or would like to sign up as a contributor to the VCP, please
| contact us at contributor@idefense.com.
|
| Regards,
|
| Sunil James
| Technical Analyst
| iDEFENSE
|
| "iDEFENSE is a global security intelligence company that proactively
| monitors sources throughout the world -- from technical vulnerabilities and
| hacker profiling to the global spread of viruses and other malicious code.
| The iALERT security intelligence service provides decision-makers, frontline
| security professionals and network administrators with timely access to
| actionable intelligence and decision support on cyber-related threats.
| iDEFENSE Labs is the research wing that verifies vulnerabilities, examines
| the behavior of exploits and other malicious code and discovers new
| software/hardware weaknesses in a controlled lab environment."
|
|
|
--
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
-Hume


On Thu, Aug 22, 2002 at 10:58:34PM +0200, Robert Harley wrote:
> An apparent quote from Dubya, from the Times (sent to me by my Dad):
>
>

Claim:   President George W. Bush proclaimed, "The problem with
the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur."
Origins:   Yet another French fried "George W. Bush is dumb"
story has been taken up by those who like their caricatures
drawn in stark, bold lines. According to scuttlebutt that
emerged in the British press in July 2002, President Bush,
Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair, and France's President
Jacques Chirac were discussing economics and, in particular,
the decline of the French economy. "The problem with the
French," Bush afterwards confided in Blair, "is that they don't
have a word for entrepreneur."
The source was Shirley Williams, also known as the Baroness
Williams of Crosby, who claimed "my good friend Tony Blair" had
recently regaled her with this anecdote in Brighton.
Lloyd Grove of The Washington Post was unable to reach Baroness
Williams to gain her confirmation of the tale, but he did
receive a call from Alastair Campbell, Blair's director of
communications and strategy. "I can tell you that the prime
minister never heard George Bush say that, and he certainly
never told Shirley Williams that President Bush did say it,"
Campbell told The Post. "If she put this in a speech, it must
have been a joke."
This is far from the first time Bush has been made the butt of
a jibe meant to showcase what some perceive as his less than
stellar intellectual abilities. Without straining our memories
too hard, we can come up with three other instances we've
chronicled on this site. In the summer of 2001, the joke of the
moment centered upon a supposed study that had resulted in the
ranking of Presidential IQs, with George W. Bush being pegged
as the Chief Executive who scraped the bottom of the
intelligence barrel. In December 2000 it was a fake Nostradamus
quatrain which pontificated that the "village idiot" would win
the 2000 Presidential election. And in the spring of 2002, it
was the story of Bush's waving at Stevie Wonder that set folks
to chortling up their sleeves.
Stories that illustrate this widely believed intellectual
shortcoming will always waft after George W. Bush because they
seemingly confirm what many already hold as true about this
public figure, that he's not the brightest fellow that's ever
been. It is human nature to revel in yarns that the hearer at
some level agrees with, thus tales of this sort will always
fall upon appreciative ears.
Barbara "ears of corn" Mikkelson
Last updated:   29 July 2002


With the increasing prevalence of web services (not that they are always a
good thing), I doubt that parsing XML will be something that will remain at
the Java application layer for long... Recent threads here on Fork
indicating the move towards hardware parsing or this code even become part
of the native implementation of Java on various platforms...
Reza B'Far
-----Original Message-----
From: fork-admin@xent.com On Behalf Of Adam
L. Beberg
Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2002 9:01 PM
To: Mr. FoRK
Cc: fork@spamassassin.taint.org
Subject: Re: Java is for kiddies
On Sun, 1 Sep 2002, Mr. FoRK wrote:
> > 6.  Hardware is getting so fast that I'm not sure if the performance
> > difference between Java and C/C++ are relevant any more.
>
> When out-of-the-box parsing & transform of XML in java is 25x slower than
> C++ on the same hardware then it does matter.
Yea, and that on top of the 100x of all the parsing engines over just
bigendian'ing it and passing the data (5x+++) in the raw. Then it REALLY
matters.
- Adam L. "Duncan" Beberg
~beberg/
beberg@mithral.com


-----Original Message-----
From: fork-admin@xent.com On Behalf Of
Robert Harley
Sent: Monday, September 02, 2002 2:55 AM
To: fork@spamassassin.taint.org
Subject: RE: Java is for kiddies
Reza B'Far wrote:
>This thread kind of surprises me... I started coding with C, then C++, and
>moved on to Java... And, I think that:
Robert Harley wrote:
>Looks like a case of "MY experience is comprehensive, YOUR'S is
>anecdotal, THEY don't know what they're talking about".
Well, I sure don't claim that... I think most people on Fork probably have
more programming knowledge than I do... There's lots of experience out
here...
Reza B'Far wrote:
>1.  The people who pay the wages don't give a flyin' heck what programming
>language you write things in... they just want it to work.
Robert Harley wrote:
>In my experience, they do care.  It has to work certainly, and in
>particular it has to work with what they've already got, and it has to
>work on client's systems.
>My limited experience of Java started a few years ago when support on
>Linux was so terrible that I ran away screaming and haven't come back yet.
Well, I think until recently, support for most things on Linux was kind of
shady... Things have got much better... You're right in that the JDK used to
suck on Linux... But then, IMHO, Linux is still maturing.... or at least
development tools for Linux are maturing... I've been developing a few
server side apps that run on Linux recently with JDK 1.3.x and they've had
no problems with great performance.
Robert Harley worte:
>Microsoft has announced that they plan to remove Java from Windows.
>They took it out of XP already and it has to be installed with a
>service pack.  Somehow, I can't imagine them removing the ability to
>run C programs.
Hmmm... Do you really think that MS is pulling out Java because it's a "Bad"
programming language or application platform?  You don't think this has
anything to do with .NET being a competitor to Java do you?  Or that MS has
basically copied Java (with some additional features) and called it C#?
Isn't that alone an indication that they actually DO think that a VM is the
right way to go for most high level applications?
Reza B'Far wrote:
>2.  C and C++ forces the developer to solve problems such as memory
>management over and over again.
Robert Harley wrote:
>Can't say I spend any noticeable amount of time on memory management
>issues, apart from the fact that I frequently need > 4 GB.
Hmmm again.... You're telling me that you've never had a nasty bug that took
you a couple of days to track down that had to do with a memory leak?  I am
not the best C/C++ programmer... not even close... But I've known really
good ones... and even they have nasty bugs that have to do with memory
management, however occasional they may be.
>It's about design patterns, architecture, high level stuff...
Robert Harley wrote:
>If your problem just requires application of a "design pattern" to solve,
>then it's trivial anyway irrespective of language.
Wow!  So you're telling me that unless the application involves
bit-counting, it's trivial?  What about the application itself?  What about
high level problems such as task distribution, work-flow, etc.?  Aren't most
high level problems solved with high level solutions like design patterns?
Or do you solve high level problems by writing optimal C/C++ code?  For
example, do you think that most people working on collaboration frameworks
(there are lots of them on this list), are working on writing an operating
system with assembly that provides for a collaborative environment?
>I am amazed by the amount of time wasted by people talking about low
>level problems that have been solved 10 million times over and over
>and over again...
Robert Harley wrote:
>You appear to be gratuitously asserting that C programmers waste time
>on irrelevant low-level problems and Java programmers don't.  Depends
>entirely on the programmer, not the language.
I can see how you could infer this. However, what I believe to really be the
case is that Java is one of the best languages for writing large
applications with many components that involves the collaboration of more
than three programmers.  In those cases, it's always very hard to get the
programmers to agree on API's, memory management techniques, etc.  With
Java, the JCP takes care of the discussions so that you don't sit around in
a long meeting trying to decide what API to use to hook up to a database
(JDBC) or a messaging bus (JMS).
>3.  Java is not just a programming language! It's also a platform...
Robert Harley wrote:
>Buzzword.
YIKES!  Have you written db code with C/C++ for different databases (just an
example)?  Tried porting a persistence layer from Windows to Unix?  Say you
have Informix running on Solaris and you want to port to Windows with MS SQL
(bad idea...but for the sake of the example), would you rather deal with
JDBC port or C/C++ port that uses Informix drivers and now you have to use
ODBC?
>a monolithic set of API's or a crap load of different API's slicing
>and dicing the same problems 50 different ways?
Robert Harley wrote:
>Unsupported assertion.
So, are you saying that there is a standard set of API's for C/C++ for
everything? (aside to the minimal ANSI stuff).  Is there a standard way of
dealing with C/C++ applications for various domain problems (messaging,
database persistence, etc.) that rivals Java?  I'd like to know if there is
one accepted by everyone who writes C/C++... In that case, I claim
ignorance...
Not suggesting that Java is the golden hammer.... Just that C/C++ is
overkill for most things... I even coded in VB... But VB is a true disgrace
to programming... It's just lame... Java is Object Oriented... (no
flame-mail from the anti-OO people please... that is a religious
discussion...) and relatively clean... And I don't think that every "Kid"
can write a well designed Java program.  Kids typically don't understand
various design patterns and principles... To my experience, they actually
tend to think more of the low level problems, wanting to rewrite and
reinvent the world... a tendency that is much more possible, IMHO, in C/C++
than in Java due to existence of standard API's.


Thanks for this information.  I gave Alsa a try, couldn't figure out how
to enable digital out, although I'm sure if I put enough time into it,
could have gotten it working.  Also when playing mp3s in analog mode,
every time I switched between mp3s there was a bit of static.  Noticed a
new distribution geared towards audio applications, AGNULA
( uses Alsa as well.  Seems though the latest
open source emu10k1 drivers (SBLive! 5.1) work fair enough.  Anyone else
experience these problems with Alsa?  Are there alot of people on this
list using Alsa?
Regards,
Lance
On Sat, 2002-08-24 at 17:45, Angles Puglisi wrote:
> FYI, This is how I make my ALSA rpms ... some people on the (null) list did not
> realize it was pretty easy.
>
> btw, I do this lot since I've upgraded from RH7.3 to Limbo1 to Limbo2 to Null all in
> a week (probably).
>
> forward - original mail:
>   From "Angles Puglisi"
>   Date 08/24/2002 - 06:38:03 pm
>   Subject Re: When are we going to get....
> ----
>
> From:  Angles  Puglisi
> To: limbo-list@spamassassin.taint.org
> Subject: Re: When are we going to get....
> Date: 24 Aug 2002 22:40:40 +0000
>
> OK, I do this every time I update a kernel.
>
> The 1st time I added ALSA, I tried a non-root rpom build but the DEV things were not
> made. Other than that, I bet you could do non-root. The following can be scripted
> easily.
>
> 1. get (a) alsa-drivers, (b) alas-lib, and (c) alsa-utils tarballs (if upgrading the
> kernel then you probably have them from your last install).
> 2. unpack them somewhere.
> 3. for each of them, go to the top directory of the unpacked tarball, and do
> ../configure, then look in (I'm going by memory) TOPDIR/utils/* you should see a spec
> file there. Do this for the 3 tarballs and you get 3 spec files.
>
> 4. put the source tarballs in SOURCES and the spec files in SPECS, go in order from
> a, b, then c, doing
>  "rpmbuild -ba SPECS/alsa-[X].spec; rpm -Uvh RPMS/i386/alsa-[X].rpm"
>
> 5. do that in order for the 3 spec files and you have just installed the alsa
> drivers on your system. The 1st time you do this you need to put the correct stuff
> in your modules.conf file (may take some research) then you get the alsa driver and
> OSS compat capabilities, or you can choose not to use the OOS compat stuff.
>
> Script making the spec, then building and upgrading, as above, and you have
> "no-sweat" ALSA.
>
> NOTE: the (null) rpmbuild did take some tweaking, it does a check for files in the
> buildroot that you don't specify in your files section. In this case there is an
> extra file (going by memory) "/include/sys/asound.h". Add a line at the end on the
> "install" section of the spec file to delete that file and you are good to go.
>
> Gordon Messmer (yinyang@eburg.com) wrote*:
> >
> >On Fri, 2002-08-23 at 03:41, Matthias Saou wrote:
> >>
> >> Probably when Red Hat Linux gets a 2.6 kernel ;-) Until then, a few places
> >> provide good quality alsa packages, but indeed you still have to patch and
> >> recompile your kernel.
> >
> >Not so.  Alsa is build-able independently of the kernel.
> >
> >> Maybe some day I'll try ALSA (never done it yet), and that day you can
> >> expect all needed packages to appear on freshrpms.net :-)
> >
> >I'd be interested in working with you on that if you want those
> >packages.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Limbo-list mailing list
> >Limbo-list@redhat.com
> >
>
> --
> That's "angle" as in geometry.
--
:
####[ Linux One Stanza Tip (LOST) ]###########################
Sub : Extracting lines X to Y in a text file         LOST #261
Use sed ... Syntax: [$sed -n 'X,Yp'
textout.fil
####
####################################
:
_______________________________________________
RPM-List mailing list


Manoj Kasichainula wrote;
>
>
>Claim:   President George W. Bush proclaimed, "The problem with
>the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur."
>
>Status:   False.
>Lloyd Grove of The Washington Post was unable to reach Baroness
>Williams to gain her confirmation of the tale, but he did
>receive a call from Alastair Campbell, Blair's director of
>communications and strategy. "I can tell you that the prime
>minister never heard George Bush say that, and he certainly
>never told Shirley Williams that President Bush did say it,"
>Campbell told The Post. "If she put this in a speech, it must
>have been a joke."
So some guy failed to reach the source, but instead got spin doctor to
deny it.  Wot, is he thick enough to expect official confirmation
that, yes, Blair is going around casting aspersions on Bush???
It's an amusing anecdote, I don't know if it's true or not, but certainly
nothing here supports the authoritative sounding conclusion "Status: False".
R


I used Async IO on System V in the '87, '88 time frame.  I did it that
way cause I thought it was cool to see if I could keep the tape
spinning.
I can believe Linux is catching up to this, but some ability to do async
IO already existed in the UNIX world.
John Hall
13464 95th Ave NE
Kirkland WA 98034
> -----Original Message-----
> From: fork-admin@xent.com  On Behalf Of
Adam
> L. Beberg
> Sent: Saturday, August 31, 2002 7:35 PM
> To: fork@spamassassin.taint.org
> Subject: Gasp!
>
> "Red Hat Linux Advanced Server provides many high end features such
as:
> Support for Asynchronous I/O. Now read I/O no longer needs to stall
your
> application while waiting for completion."
>
> Could it be? After 20 years without this feature UNIX finally catches
up
> to
> Windows and has I/O that doesnt totally suck for nontrivial apps? No
way!
>
> OK, so they do it with signals or a flag, which is completely ghetto,
but
> at
> least they are trying. Keep trying guys, you got the idea, but not the
> clue.
>
> - Adam L. "Duncan" Beberg
>   ~beberg/
>   beberg@mithral.com


--- begin forwarded text
From: A guy who models plasma all day...
To: "R. A. Hettinga"
Subject: Re: Electric car an Edsel...
Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2002 22:49:20 -0600
Bob,
This capacitor drive idea isn't completely stupid, but neither is it well
thought out.
Maxwell (www.maxwell.com) makes and sells high energy density capacitors,
called ultracapacitors.  They deliver them in an air-cooled, voltage
regulated module that will charge to 42 V and hold 128 kilojoules -- roughly
the energy in 2 teaspoons of sugar or a bite of a donut -- and weighs 16
kilograms.  If that electrical energy could all be converted to kinetic
energy, there's enough to get the capacitor module up to about 200 mph -- in
a vacuum.
Suppose you take the entire power density of the capacitor module -- 2.8
kw/kg (~4 hp/kg!) --  and punch it through an electric motor.  How much does
the 64 hp electric motor weigh?  If it were as little as 50 kg -- and I bet
it isn't -- that capacitor and motor would have a top speed of 100 mph --
the speed at which their energy is the 128 kJ that was initially stored
electrically in the capacitor.  And it's not at all obvious that the torque
vs. speed characteristic of 42 V DC motors will support this, or how they do
it without wheels, drive train, etc.
But if they can, they can only do it in a vacuum where there is no drag!
On to the Lunarnationals?  Or would you prefer the bite of donut?
----- Original Message -----
From: "R. A. Hettinga"
To: "Vinnie Moscaritolo"
; "Randolph Elliott"
;
; "Duncan Goldie-Scot"
; "G. Gruff"
;
Sent: Monday, September 02, 2002 11:15 PM
Subject: Re: Electric car an Edsel...
>
> --- begin forwarded text
>
>
> Status: RO
> Delivered-To: fork@spamassassin.taint.org
> From: "Adam L. Beberg"
> To: RossO
> Cc:
> Subject: Re: Electric car an Edsel...
> Sender: fork-admin@xent.com
> Date: Mon, 2 Sep 2002 21:24:47 -0700 (PDT)
>
> On 2 Sep 2002, RossO wrote:
>
> > John Waylan (who was interviewed in Wired a few years back) pulled out a
> > 14.4 second run in the quarter mile (91mph), on a battery pack that
> > hasn't been broken in yet. He expects to break his record next year
> > topping his 13.1sec/99mph run a couple of years ago. He's shooting for a
> > 12 second run.
>
> Battery pack, huh what???
>
> You dont use batteries for a 1/4 mile run, you use capacitors. MANY times
> the energy density, and you can get the energy out fast enough. Note that
> the battery packs are fully swapped out for recharging after each run
> anyway, just like a gas dragster is refueled, so this wouldnt be cheating.
> 200 MPH should be no problem.
>
> - Adam L. "Duncan" Beberg
>   ~beberg/
>   beberg@mithral.com
>
> --- end forwarded text
>
>
> --
> -----------------
> R. A. Hettinga
> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation
> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
> "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
> [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
> experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
>
--- end forwarded text
--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'


Misc rants about finding jobs, java vs C, what makes a good programmer, etc.
Okay, hmm, I thought twice about this, but what the hey, jobs are hard to
come by. There's a company hiring in Mountain View, looking for a few good
hackers, no Java, no GUI, not even C++ -- just C and Linux and networking
and good old stuff like that. They just raised a wad of money and they're
looking for a few "really good programmers", says the CTO. I know him --
very smart guy. Drives too fast, though, for what that's worth.
Joe Bob says "check it out". I'd be happy to pass on your resume, or you can
send it straight to them. Probably won't matter if I pass it on, since I
don't know you guys anyway...

-- Sherry.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joseph S. Barrera III
> Sent: Tuesday, August 27, 2002 8:58 AM
> To: Adam L. Beberg
> Cc: fork@spamassassin.taint.org
> Subject: Re: Java is for kiddies
>
>
> Adam L. Beberg wrote:
>  >>> Forwarding me stuff from a list is hardly handing me a job.
>  >>
>  >> I was talking about the open reqs at Kana (the company I
> work for).
>  >>  Oh, but programming in Java is beneath you.
>  >
>  > Nope just lacking years and years of it. For some silly
> reason people
>  > always want things to be reliable, fast, and
> cross-platform so all my
>  > employers have forced me to code in C :)
>
> C is more reliable than Java??
>
> As for cross-platform, C exists on more platforms, but a Java program
> is much easier to move from one platform to another. So I'm not sure
> what you mean.
>
> I'm not trying to fight a language war, but I'm puzzled by the depth
> of your anti-Java hatred.
>
>  > I know lots of high school
>  > kiddies with plenty of Java tho, not having to teach people about
>  > pointers or optimization or anything shaves years off the
> coder boot
>  > time. I'll send them your way when they graduate.
>
> Pointers. So a language has to have pointers to be real? And
> references
> don't count, I gather. What's so great about pointers? Why do you
> miss them? If your doing embedded stuff, fine, yes, you need the
> performance and control over memory that C provides. Probably.
> But if your implementing tier N-1 of a tier N system, and pounding
> against a database, then Java is OFTEN a very reasonable choice.
> Especially if you want that system to run without leaking memory.
>
> Optimization. Who says you can't optimize Java? I can and have,
> and there are good tools that allow you to do it (I use OptimizeIt).
> But usually I find myself optimizing (reducing) database accesses
> instead. I sped one part of the system up by a factor of ten by
> grouping more operations into fewer transactions.
>
> But this is beside the point. If you have decent C++ experience, and
> have poked around in Java, you should be able to convince most
> employers that you can be trusted writing Java. That's what I did --
> I mean, I joined Kana from Microsoft, and I didn't exactly write
> a lot of Java code at Microsoft.
>
>  > I'm not displeased you're trying to help, just frustrated that
>  > employers can demand such rediculous combinations of skills with
>  > insane years of experience.
>
> I don't think I've ever interviewed at a place where I actually
> met all the prerequisites. Do you just give up when you don't?
>
>  > Interview tommorow with Kodak, doing I have no idea what as the
>  > recruiter isnt even sure, but cross your fingers it wont require 10
>  > years of Java and 5 years of Windows/IA-64's device driver
> experience
>  > (both common requirements).
>
> I wish you best of luck, and I apologies for being a bitch.
> But God DAMN, you piss me off sometimes. My son occasionally
> displays your "can't-do" attitude and I do my damnest to
> get him to reverse course.
>
> - Joe
>
>


> -----Original Message-----
> From: fork-admin@xent.com On Behalf Of Karl
> Anderson
> Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 3:50 AM
> To: bitbitch@magnesium.net
> Cc: 'fork@spamassassin.taint.org'
> Subject: Re: Re[2]: Java is for kiddies
>
>
> bitbitch@magnesium.net writes:
>
> > SL>
> > SL> Misc rants about finding jobs, java vs C, what makes a good
> programmer, etc.
> > SL>
> >
> > SL> Okay, hmm, I thought twice about this, but what the hey,
> jobs are hard to
> > SL> come by. There's a company hiring in Mountain View, looking
> for a few good
> >
> >
> > I give Adam an hour or so to come up with an adequate number of
> > excuses as to why -this- job isn't worth it.  :)
>
>
>
> >* Along with your resume, please answer this question: What does
> this C statement do? #define XY(s, m) (&((s *)0)->m)
>
> Besides provide job security?
This is more useful...
#define CONTAINING_RECORD(address, type, field) ((type *)( \
(PCHAR)(address) - \
(PCHAR)(&((type
*)0)->field)))
Bill


Someone has taken it.  Mostly newtel users.  I think we can take the.
C
--
"I don't take no stocks in mathematics, anyway" --Huckleberry Finn


Adam Beberg writes:
> Shouldn't a politician know not to tell the truth? Odds he's impeached by
As the article you forwarded explained in the second line of text,
this politician is a woman.
> next Monday? [ob: no-clue-how-they-remove-mayors-in-italy]
ob: no-clue-full-stop, as in nearly all Adam Beberg posts.
--
Kragen Sitaker
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra died in August of 2002.  The world has lost a great
man.  See  and
 for details.


On Thu, 5 Sep 2002 bitbitch@magnesium.net wrote:
> Again, these situations are great, provided everyone is aware that the
> relationship is a contractual one -- he wants a maid, a dog and a
> prostitute he doesn't have to pay, and she wants a country that isn't
> impoverished and teeming with AIDS.
You assume that they just match people up and marry them off, and neither is
attracted to the other, which is not the case. Even this has arranged
marrage beat by a long way.
Males gets: A wife for a while, and if they actually like each other, for a
long time.
Female gets: Into Britan, out of a country with no real rights for women, no
opportunities for her or her children, out of the polution, AIDS, and an
uncountable number of scary tropical diseases. Not to mention in most cases
living conditions that us spoiled Americans cannot even comprehend.
Yea, the women is definately getting tha bad end of the deal here.
You're so easy to taunt :)
- Adam L. "Duncan" Beberg
~beberg/
beberg@mithral.com


Adam Beberg writes:
> On Tue, 3 Sep 2002, Kragen Sitaker wrote:
> > Unix acquired nonblocking I/O in the form of select() about 23 years
> > ago, and Solaris has had the particular aio_* calls we are discussing
> > for many years.
>
> select() "scaling" is a joke at best, and I know you know that. poll() is
> only a bit better.
Not only do I know that, the post to which you were responding
explained that, with somewhat more detail than "a joke".  As you
should know, but evidently don't, poll() isn't even "a bit better" ---
in fact, it's about an order of magnitude worse --- for dense file
descriptor sets, which is the normal case.  (Except on operating
systems where select() isn't a system call but a library routine that
calls poll().)
> > Very few applications need the aio_* calls --- essentially only
> > high-performance RDBMS servers even benefit from them at all, and
> > most of those have been faking it fine for a while with multiple
> > threads or processes.  This just provides a modicum of extra
> > performance.
>
> Wrong, it makes a huge difference in even what I consider small programs.
Why don't you explain this in more detail?
> > Although I don't have a copy of the spec handy, I think the aio_* APIs
> > come from the POSIX spec IEEE Std 1003.1-1990, section 6.7.9, which is
> > 13 years old, and which I think documented then-current practice.
> > They might be even older than that.
>
> Yes, SGI has a patch to the linux kernel to implement the aio_ interfaces,
> but it's still not built in, who knows when it will be. The point is it's
> not portable in either case.
You originally said:
Could it be? After 20 years without this feature UNIX finally
catches up to Windows and has I/O that doesnt [sic] totally suck for
nontrivial apps? No way!
The point --- my point, the point I was discussing; please don't try
to tell me you were trying to make a different point, because I don't
care --- is that you had no clue what you were talking about; Unix
hasn't been without this feature, and in fact has had it since you
were in elementary school, and operating systems without it don't
"totally suck for nontrivial apps".
For what it's worth, glibc has actually implemented the aio_* calls
for a while, just in a way that doesn't scale to large numbers of
concurrent I/O requests.  I find references to the glibc
implementation as far back as 1999 and glibc 2.1.1, and I could
probably find much earlier references if I had time:

(more details at

details on the SGI patch are at

> > Unix has been multiprocess since 1969, and most Unix implementations
> > have supported multithreading for a decade or more.
>
> And most UNIX is still kinda-sorta supporting the pthreads (POSIX)
> interface, each in their own 7/8 implementation. You're safe if you
> stick to the basics.
Your original complaint was that Unix didn't do multithreading or
multiprogramming well.  Now that I've pointed out how obviously
idiotic that claim is, you've amended your complaint: now, although
individual Unixes do these things well, you complain that their
implementations are not entirely conformant with the POSIX threads
specification.  Well, that's probably true, but I haven't written
pthreads programs in C much myself, so I can't confirm it from my own
experience.  But, even if it's true, it's not a very good reason to
prefer Windows.
I'm sure you can provide examples of bugs in particular threading
implementations.  Spare us.  Just shut up.
--
Kragen Sitaker
Edsger Wybe Dijkstra died in August of 2002.  The world has lost a great
man.  See  and
 for details.


On Thu, 5 Sep 2002 bitbitch@magnesium.net wrote:
> Yet another case where 'marriage' is actually an inappropriate word
> for these guys.  What they want is 'housekeeper' 'dog' and
> 'prostitute'.
So, you're saying that product bundling works? Good point.
And how is this any different from "normal" marriage exactly? Other then
that the woman not only gets a man, but one in a country where both she and
her offspring will have actual opportunities? Oh and the lack of
"de-feminized, over-sized, self-centered, mercenary-minded" choices?
- Adam L. "Duncan" Beberg
~beberg/
beberg@mithral.com


Hello Adam,
Thursday, September 05, 2002, 11:33:18 PM, you wrote:
ALB> So, you're saying that product bundling works? Good point.
Sometimes I wish I was still in CA.  You deserve a good beating every
so often...  (anyone else want to do the honors?)
ALB> And how is this any different from "normal" marriage exactly? Other then
ALB> that the woman not only gets a man, but one in a country where both she and
ALB> her offspring will have actual opportunities? Oh and the lack of
ALB> "de-feminized, over-sized, self-centered, mercenary-minded" choices?
Mmkay.  For the nth time Adam, we don't live in the land of
Adam-fantasy.  Women actually are allowed to do things productive,
independent and entirely free of their male counterparts.  They aren't
forced to cook and clean and merely be sexual vessels.   Sometimes,
and this will come as a shock to you, no doubt, men and women even
find -love- (which is the crucial distinction between this system) and
they marry one another for the satisfaction of being together.   I
know, far-fetched and idealistically crazy as it is, but such things
do happen.   I can guarantee you, if my mother was approached by my
father, and 25 years ago, he commented on her cleaning ability as a
motivator for marrying her, we would not be having this conversation
now.
If guys still have silly antequated ideas about 'women's role' then
their opportunities for finding women _will_ be scarce.   Again, these
situations are great, provided everyone is aware that the relationship
is a contractual one -- he wants a maid, a dog and a prostitute he
doesn't have to pay, and she wants a country that isn't impoverished
and teeming with AIDS.  A contract, versus a true love-interest
marriage.
Egh.  I really need to stop analyzing your posts to this extent.   I
blame law school and my cat.
-BB
ALB> - Adam L. "Duncan" Beberg
ALB>   ~beberg/
ALB>   beberg@mithral.com
--
Best regards,
bitbitch                            mailto:bitbitch@magnesium.net


Ah yes..
Yet another case where 'marriage' is actually an inappropriate word
for these guys.  What they want is 'housekeeper' 'dog' and
'prostitute'.
All I can say, is I hope these girls come out, take the men for what
they have, be glorified housekeepers for as short a term as possible,
and enjoy the free travel.
Love my arse.
-BB
ALB> ...an alternative to the "kind of de-feminized, over-sized, self-centered,
ALB> mercenary-minded lady available on the British singles scene,"
ALB> Glad to see American culture is making it's way into the British bars too :)
ALB> God bless us uncivilized bastards, every one.
ALB> Still, definately something not right about the below. People are now
ALB> cheaper then a decent laptop? (ok, so we knew that already)
ALB> -------------
ALB> Selling Wedded Bliss Big Business in Thailand
ALB> Thu Aug 29,10:19 AM ET
ALB> By Andrew Marshall
ALB> BANGKOK, Thailand (Reuters) - English dentist Ken Moylan came to Thailand
ALB> looking for a wife. It took two hours to find her.
ALB> "The first day I went out with Wan, she came back to my hotel and hung all
ALB> my clothes up and tidied the room. I thought it was marvelous," he said. "I
ALB> knew then there was something special."
ALB> Moylan, 49, is one of thousands of men who use introduction agencies to meet
ALB> -- and marry -- Thai women. He lives in England now with 28-year-old Wan,
ALB> who is expecting their first child.
ALB> Critics of marriage agencies say they exploit the grinding poverty of women
ALB> in developing countries, offering dreams of a new life in the West that
ALB> often turn sour. But Moylan says he has no regrets about coming to Thailand
ALB> in search of a wife.
ALB> "I got to Thailand at 2 p.m., and by 4 p.m. I'd met Wan," he said. "I knew I
ALB> found her attractive. I could tell straight away that she was very caring."
ALB> Moylan spent a week in Thailand, and after returning to England kept in
ALB> touch with Wan by phone and mail. Six months later she came to England and
ALB> the couple married.
ALB> MR. MARRIAGE
ALB> Lawrence Lynch, 49, runs Thai Professional Introduction Services, the agency
ALB> Moylan used to meet his wife. Lynch, who calls himself "Mr. Marriage,"
ALB> started the company after also marrying a Thai woman through an introduction
ALB> agency.
ALB> Since then he has helped set up hundreds of marriages.
ALB> "In the last five years we've done about 400," he said. "To the best of my
ALB> knowledge, they have all been successful."
ALB> Male clients pay $2,213 for the service, although men from countries that
ALB> require them to handle some of the visa work on their own get a discount.
ALB> Clients then get to view catalogs and videos of hundreds of Thai women
ALB> looking for a husband. If they like what they see they come to Bangkok.
ALB> Clients are introduced to several women in chaperoned meetings in Lynch's
ALB> office -- encounters that can often be awkward given mutual shyness and
ALB> language problems.
ALB> "We find that the gentlemen are usually just as nervous as the ladies,"
ALB> Lynch said. "But once they start meeting the ladies they soon relax."
ALB> After the first meeting, couples can decide to go on dates to get to know
ALB> each other better. Within two weeks of arrival, Lynch says, almost every
ALB> client has found a potential wife.
ALB> "At the end of a fortnight it's very, very rare for a guy to go back and
ALB> think he hasn't made his mind up," he said. In most cases, marriage follows,
ALB> usually within the next year.
ALB> Roongthip Kamchat, managing director of Thai No. 1 Connections, a
ALB> Bangkok-based agency, says she has introduced about 1,000 couples, and less
ALB> than 10 percent have broken up.
ALB> Roongthip says she sometimes has a difficult time calming men who have just
ALB> arrived in Bangkok looking for a wife.
ALB> "Sometimes they are very nervous," she said. "And sometimes they are very
ALB> impatient and say 'Give me a lady, I want to get married now.' I say: 'Calm
ALB> down, OK, we'll talk."'
ALB> But if men are really in a hurry, Roongthip says, she can find them a wife
ALB> and get them married within a week. Lynch says clients he has found wives
ALB> for include a blind man, a man with one leg and a man with post-traumatic
ALB> stress disorder.
ALB> WHY?
ALB> Similar marriage agencies can be found in many developing countries. Critics
ALB> say they thrive on the neediness of lonely Western men who are unable to
ALB> form relationships in their own country, and on the desperation of
ALB> impoverished women who believe they can find a better life in the West.
ALB> But Moylan says that if the arrangement makes both partners happy, there is
ALB> no reason to object. "If you talk about people who are needy, I think
ALB> everybody wants someone to love them, and wants someone to love, so yes, I
ALB> need Wan," he said.
ALB> "Thai women are dissatisfied with life in Thailand. I think there's no
ALB> secret there. They are looking for a better life. I don't have a problem
ALB> with that. In return they are willing to give a lot of love and care to
ALB> their future husband."
ALB> Lynch says men are dissatisfied with Western women too, and that is why they
ALB> choose to use his agency.
ALB> His brochure promises an alternative to the "kind of de-feminized,
ALB> over-sized, self-centered, mercenary-minded lady available on the British
ALB> singles scene," and says he can make dreams come true even for men who are
ALB> not "God's gift to women."
ALB> Roongthip said many Western men found it difficult to meet women in their
ALB> own countries -- and found Thai women attractive.
ALB> "They don't know how to meet women. Even if they go to pubs or discotheques
ALB> or restaurants or department stores, how can they ask people to marry them?
ALB> Impossible," she said.
ALB> "Many Thai girls are slim, have long hair, black eyes, small nose. They are
ALB> good at taking care and joking and laughing, not strict. Different from
ALB> ladies from other countries."
ALB> Although many couples married through agencies have a considerable age gap,
ALB> the agencies say this is not a problem. They say language problems are also
ALB> not a major obstacle.
ALB> "Thai ladies are not ageist, and they have no qualms whatsoever about having
ALB> a husband who is significantly older," Lynch said. "When I met my wife she
ALB> couldn't speak a word of English. We muddled along with a phonetic
ALB> dictionary. The ladies are very keen to learn English and they pick it up
ALB> very quickly."
ALB> Many agencies also offer tuition for woman on what to expect when they move
ALB> to the West.
ALB> "We have kitchens, we have study classes," Roongthip said. "We teach them
ALB> how to eat, and when to make tea."
ALB> PITFALLS
ALB> But not all dreams come true. "Bee" is a 26-year-old Thai woman who went to
ALB> Switzerland two years ago with a man she met through an agency. Now she is
ALB> back in Bangkok, sad and angry.
ALB> "He had no friends, and I was so lonely," she said. "I tried to make him
ALB> happy but he just wanted sex and somebody to keep his house clean. He never
ALB> spoke to me."
ALB> Bee came back to Bangkok earlier this year. "I thought I would be happy
ALB> there," she said. "But it was the worst time of my life."
ALB> Lynch says that while some agencies are badly run, he makes checks to ensure
ALB> unsuitable candidates are weeded out.
ALB> "We are ethical and professional," he said. "We will not take on all
ALB> comers."
ALB> Moylan says that despite possible pitfalls, his own marriage is proof the
ALB> arrangement can work. Wan's sister has just signed up with Lynch's company,
ALB> looking for a foreign husband.
ALB> "Perhaps there are cases of women being exploited. I'm sure there are,"
ALB> Moylan said. "But in the majority of cases the women get a good deal."
--
Best regards,
bitbitch                            mailto:bitbitch@magnesium.net


Ouch.... hooooo....
Cheers,
RAH
--- begin forwarded text
Date: Thu,  5 Sep 2002 09:17:13 -0700
From: Same Guy
Subject: Re: Electric car an Edsel...
To: "R. A. Hettinga"
Bob,
This guy's an idiot.
I design loads for systems with the 50 kV capacitors.  One of those has 864
of such capacitors and stores only 10 megajoules, which means 11 kilojoules
each.  They weigh 125 kg.
You need high energy per unit mass, and the capacitive system I picked
maximizes that.
It is precisely the system that Maxwell is touting for electrical braking
and power augmentation for regenerative use in automobiles.  You also need
voltage you can use in a DC motor, which is why though the actual
capacitors in the system are charged to 2.5 volts, the system has them
arranged in series to boost the voltage.
Ignore him.  He's a waste of my time.
------------------------
From: "R. A. Hettinga"
Subject: Re: Electric car an Edsel...
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 15:31:39 -0400
To: Some people...
--- begin forwarded text
Date: Wed, 4 Sep 2002 07:59:10 -0700 (PDT)
From: "Adam L. Beberg"
To: "R. A. Hettinga"
cc:
Subject: Re: Electric car an Edsel...
On Wed, 4 Sep 2002, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
> Maxwell (www.maxwell.com) makes and sells high energy density capacitors,
> called ultracapacitors.  They deliver them in an air-cooled, voltage
> regulated module that will charge to 42 V and hold 128 kilojoules -- roughly
> the energy in 2 teaspoons of sugar or a bite of a donut -- and weighs 16
> kilograms.  If that electrical energy could all be converted to kinetic
> energy, there's enough to get the capacitor module up to about 200 mph -- in
> a vacuum.
Since the energy you can pack into a capacitor is something like
1/2*C*(V^2), you want to design your system with the lowest voltage possible
to fully exploit that V^2 ;) So yea, a 42V system will only be useful for
accelerating insects, not cars. That must be why 40kV is standard not 42.
(the joke of putting 42 into goggle to find that model was not missed BTW)
Most production systems use a mix of batteries and capacitors, as very few
real world applications run for less then 10 seconds like the car we were
talking about originally. Even 10 seconds is pushing the "capactior is the
wrong choice" limits. Thats why the landspeed record model is a battery one,
it's got to run for a much longer period of time and needs a steady
discharge curve.
But it should be safe to say that most people want the Indy 500 version, not
the 1/4 mile sprint version when they are looking for a vehice :) For those
you dont want a battery or a capacitor, you want to take advantage of whole
atoms, not just electrons. Then you can suck off the electrons you need with
a fuel cell. However, you will use both capacitors for the braking/accel,
and batteries to not just dump excess energy in the design.
- Adam L. "Duncan" Beberg
~beberg/
beberg@mithral.com
--- end forwarded text
--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
---------------End of Original Message-----------------
--- end forwarded text
--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'


...an alternative to the "kind of de-feminized, over-sized, self-centered,
mercenary-minded lady available on the British singles scene,"
Glad to see American culture is making it's way into the British bars too :)
God bless us uncivilized bastards, every one.
Still, definately something not right about the below. People are now
cheaper then a decent laptop? (ok, so we knew that already)
-------------
Selling Wedded Bliss Big Business in Thailand
Thu Aug 29,10:19 AM ET
By Andrew Marshall
BANGKOK, Thailand (Reuters) - English dentist Ken Moylan came to Thailand
looking for a wife. It took two hours to find her.
"The first day I went out with Wan, she came back to my hotel and hung all
my clothes up and tidied the room. I thought it was marvelous," he said. "I
knew then there was something special."
Moylan, 49, is one of thousands of men who use introduction agencies to meet
-- and marry -- Thai women. He lives in England now with 28-year-old Wan,
who is expecting their first child.
Critics of marriage agencies say they exploit the grinding poverty of women
in developing countries, offering dreams of a new life in the West that
often turn sour. But Moylan says he has no regrets about coming to Thailand
in search of a wife.
"I got to Thailand at 2 p.m., and by 4 p.m. I'd met Wan," he said. "I knew I
found her attractive. I could tell straight away that she was very caring."
Moylan spent a week in Thailand, and after returning to England kept in
touch with Wan by phone and mail. Six months later she came to England and
the couple married.
MR. MARRIAGE
Lawrence Lynch, 49, runs Thai Professional Introduction Services, the agency
Moylan used to meet his wife. Lynch, who calls himself "Mr. Marriage,"
started the company after also marrying a Thai woman through an introduction
agency.
Since then he has helped set up hundreds of marriages.
"In the last five years we've done about 400," he said. "To the best of my
knowledge, they have all been successful."
Male clients pay $2,213 for the service, although men from countries that
require them to handle some of the visa work on their own get a discount.
Clients then get to view catalogs and videos of hundreds of Thai women
looking for a husband. If they like what they see they come to Bangkok.
Clients are introduced to several women in chaperoned meetings in Lynch's
office -- encounters that can often be awkward given mutual shyness and
language problems.
"We find that the gentlemen are usually just as nervous as the ladies,"
Lynch said. "But once they start meeting the ladies they soon relax."
After the first meeting, couples can decide to go on dates to get to know
each other better. Within two weeks of arrival, Lynch says, almost every
client has found a potential wife.
"At the end of a fortnight it's very, very rare for a guy to go back and
think he hasn't made his mind up," he said. In most cases, marriage follows,
usually within the next year.
Roongthip Kamchat, managing director of Thai No. 1 Connections, a
Bangkok-based agency, says she has introduced about 1,000 couples, and less
than 10 percent have broken up.
Roongthip says she sometimes has a difficult time calming men who have just
arrived in Bangkok looking for a wife.
"Sometimes they are very nervous," she said. "And sometimes they are very
impatient and say 'Give me a lady, I want to get married now.' I say: 'Calm
down, OK, we'll talk."'
But if men are really in a hurry, Roongthip says, she can find them a wife
and get them married within a week. Lynch says clients he has found wives
for include a blind man, a man with one leg and a man with post-traumatic
stress disorder.
WHY?
Similar marriage agencies can be found in many developing countries. Critics
say they thrive on the neediness of lonely Western men who are unable to
form relationships in their own country, and on the desperation of
impoverished women who believe they can find a better life in the West.
But Moylan says that if the arrangement makes both partners happy, there is
no reason to object. "If you talk about people who are needy, I think
everybody wants someone to love them, and wants someone to love, so yes, I
need Wan," he said.
"Thai women are dissatisfied with life in Thailand. I think there's no
secret there. They are looking for a better life. I don't have a problem
with that. In return they are willing to give a lot of love and care to
their future husband."
Lynch says men are dissatisfied with Western women too, and that is why they
choose to use his agency.
His brochure promises an alternative to the "kind of de-feminized,
over-sized, self-centered, mercenary-minded lady available on the British
singles scene," and says he can make dreams come true even for men who are
not "God's gift to women."
Roongthip said many Western men found it difficult to meet women in their
own countries -- and found Thai women attractive.
"They don't know how to meet women. Even if they go to pubs or discotheques
or restaurants or department stores, how can they ask people to marry them?
Impossible," she said.
"Many Thai girls are slim, have long hair, black eyes, small nose. They are
good at taking care and joking and laughing, not strict. Different from
ladies from other countries."
Although many couples married through agencies have a considerable age gap,
the agencies say this is not a problem. They say language problems are also
not a major obstacle.
"Thai ladies are not ageist, and they have no qualms whatsoever about having
a husband who is significantly older," Lynch said. "When I met my wife she
couldn't speak a word of English. We muddled along with a phonetic
dictionary. The ladies are very keen to learn English and they pick it up
very quickly."
Many agencies also offer tuition for woman on what to expect when they move
to the West.
"We have kitchens, we have study classes," Roongthip said. "We teach them
how to eat, and when to make tea."
PITFALLS
But not all dreams come true. "Bee" is a 26-year-old Thai woman who went to
Switzerland two years ago with a man she met through an agency. Now she is
back in Bangkok, sad and angry.
"He had no friends, and I was so lonely," she said. "I tried to make him
happy but he just wanted sex and somebody to keep his house clean. He never
spoke to me."
Bee came back to Bangkok earlier this year. "I thought I would be happy
there," she said. "But it was the worst time of my life."
Lynch says that while some agencies are badly run, he makes checks to ensure
unsuitable candidates are weeded out.
"We are ethical and professional," he said. "We will not take on all
comers."
Moylan says that despite possible pitfalls, his own marriage is proof the
arrangement can work. Wan's sister has just signed up with Lynch's company,
looking for a foreign husband.
"Perhaps there are cases of women being exploited. I'm sure there are,"
Moylan said. "But in the majority of cases the women get a good deal."


On Thu, 5 Sep 2002 bitbitch@magnesium.net wrote:
> If guys still have silly antequated ideas about 'women's role' then
> their opportunities for finding women _will_ be scarce.
What is silly and antiquated depends a lot on which country you live in.
I don't have statistics on the love half life, but it seems long-term
relationships use something else for glue.
Clearly our non-silly non-antiquated ideas about relationships have
resulted in mostly short-duration relationships and single-parented,
dysfunctional kids (not enough of them too boot, so to keep our
demographics from completely keeling over we're importing them from places
with mostly silly and antiquated ideas).
At least from the viewpoint of demographics sustainability and
counterpressure to gerontocracy and resulting innovatiophobia we're doing
something wrong.
Maybe we should really go dirty Tleilaxu all the way.


i agree with rob. i think if the phones (and mms is building traction in europe in handsets), this might be interesting. bottom line is will it a) help sell phones and b) bill enough time on the wcarriers networks?
anyone remember the polariod photo sticker fad? low quality, small in size. but kids totally dug that stuff. seems like every adolescent girl had that stuff at one point. and it never replaced or aimed to replace digital cameras or normal photographs. i don't think mms photos will be a substitute for other photography - developed at the local 1 hour joint or digital photos on your pc. i think it expands the market and forms a new category. the extent of the category size is the big question (will it be a fad or will it a sustained market). that's consumer behavior and marketing. but i don't think the technology adoption will follow a substitution of another product on the market (in this case, digital photos or normal photos). europe's the one to watch - more teenagers have wireless phones and if the pricing and marketing is right, they'll figure out what to do with it once the carriers how to figure out how to market it to them.
-h
>From: "Rob Shavell"
>To: "'Mike Masnick'"
>Cc:
>Subject: RE: sprint delivers the next big thing??
>Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 01:10:50 -0700
>
>right Mike,
>
>i will agree to disagree but i take your comments to heart.  my opinion is
>only that this is one of the last frontiers of communications ('instant
>show') that we cross easily (though you are right as rain on pricing).  i am
>mildly amused at the level of skepticism and innatention it is getting.
>
>my premise is that the world will change in dramatic and unexpected ways
>once there are a billion 'eye's' which can instantly share what they see
>amongst each other.  that doesn't mean that people will stop talking on
>their phones, or that people will spend more time w/images than voice.  just
>that it is fundamental.  from news to crime to privacy to dating to family
>life to bloopers and practical jokes, i believe there will be an explosion
>of images unleashed specifically by cell phone integrated lenses because of
>their utter ubiquity that dwarfs all pictures taken in the history of
>photography by orders of magnitude and in short order. and yes, changes
>things 'big time'.
>
>rgds,
>rob
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Mike Masnick
>Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2002 11:58 PM
>To: Rob Shavell
>Cc: fork@spamassassin.taint.org
>Subject: RE: sprint delivers the next big thing??
>
>
>Not to keep harping on this, but...
>
>At 11:36 PM 8/20/02 -0700, Rob Shavell wrote:
>
>>content: who cares about content?  that no one can think of 'useful'
>content
>>is always the business persons mistake. the content is the users
>>communications.  its anything and everything.  avg person could easily send
>>half dozen pics to a dozen people a day.  mainly humorous i'd guess. who
>>cares if content is trivial in nature. picture speaks a thousand words.
>
>This does nothing to answer my question.  I *do* care about content.  Hell,
>if I could be convinced that people would send stupid pics back and forth
>all day, I'd have a different opinion of this.  I just am not convinced
>that they will (stupid or not).
>
>While a picture may be worth a thousand words (and this is the same
>argument the guy who works for me made), how many people do you know who
>communicate by pictures?  Sure, it sounds nice to say that a picture is
>such an efficient messaging mechanism, but how often do you actually find
>yourself drawing someone a picture to explain something?
>
>I don't buy it.
>
>For most messages, text works fine and is the most efficient
>mechanism.  For some messages, pictures do the job, but I would say not
>nearly as often as words.  Why do you think Pictionary and Charades and
>such are games?  Because images are usually not the most efficient way to
>get a message across.
>
>>misc ramblings: i suppose you skeptical forkers would have said the same
>>thing about '1 hour photo' processing.  trivial, who needs it, i get better
>>resultion elswhere.  and yet, it had great decentralizing impact - the
>plant
>>had to be downsized and pushed to the retail operation - the digital
>camera,
>>and finally the integrated digital camera phone brings this cycle of
>>decentralization in photography to a logical conclusion (which will put the
>>photo giants to bed) and change the world in a meaningful way.  also, SMS
>>didn't take off because its easy, it took off because it costs less.  its
>>greatly ironic the carriers often trumpet the 'profitabilty' of their SMS
>>traffic over others because of its ratio of cost to bandwidth.  in reality,
>>SMS cannibilizes the voice rev's they bought their networks to handle.
>
>Again, this is the same argument my colleague made (along with "you just
>don't understand kids today, and they'll run with this").  I wasn't saying
>that MMS wouldn't take off because it wasn't high quality or that it wasn't
>easy.  I was saying that I couldn't see why people would use it in a way
>that "changed the face of communications".
>
>I'm looking for the compelling reason (even if it's a stupid one) why
>people would want to do this.  Sure, if they integrate cameras into the
>phone, and the quality improves (even only marginally) I can certainly see
>people taking pictures with their cameras and occasionally sending them to
>other people.  But, mostly, I don't see what the benefit is to this over
>sending them to someone's email address, or putting together an online (or
>offline) photoalbum.
>
>I don't think 1 hour photos are trivial.  People want to see their own pics
>right away, and the quality is plenty good enough for snapshots.  That's
>one of the main reasons why digital cameras are catching on.  The instant
>view part.  I'm guessing your argument is that people not only want
>"instant view", but also "instant show".  Which is what this service
>offers.  I'm not convinced that most people want "instant show".  I think
>people like to package their pictures and show them.  That's why people put
>together fancy albums, and sit there and force you to go through them while
>they explain every picture.  Sure, occasionally "instant show" is nice, but
>it's just "nice" on occasion.  I still can't see how it becomes a integral
>messaging method.
>
>What's the specific benefit of taking a picture and immediately sending it
>from one phone to another?  There has to be *some* benefit, even if it's
>silly if people are going to flock to it.
>
>I'm searching... no one has given me a straight answer yet.
>
>The *only* really intriguing idea I've heard about things like MMS lately
>are Dan Gillmor's assertion that one day in the near future some news event
>will happen, and a bunch of people will snap pictures with their mobile
>phones, from all different angles, and those photos tell the real story of
>what happened - before the press even gets there.
>
>Willing to be proven wrong,
>Mike
>
>PS If the wireless carriers continue to price these services as stupidly as
>they currently are, then MMS is *never* going to catch on.


LOL!  They're not doomed at all.  Thousands of men wear cb2000s to work
every day (along with other chastity devices).    They are not just
decorations.  You will not get a woody or have an orgasm until your
keyholder allows you to.  Anyhow, I know better than to have this
type of conversation with a 'nilla, but these men wear these happily, and
consensually.  (:  There is little power struggle in the lifestyles of the
people who use these.  There is power exchange instead.  Lots of
variations on the definition, but this one's from Gloria Brame's site:
Power exchange: the consensual transfer of power by the submissive to the
dominant. The exchange takes place when the returned energy from the
dominant empowers the submissive.
Anyhow, there are tons of informative sites out there for anyone who cares
to read them, but I assure you, the chastity device business is doing very
well, and it is illegal to force someone to wear one.  It's not coercion,
it is creative sensuality.  (:
Cindy
On Thu, 5 Sep 2002, Eirikur Hallgrimsson wrote:
> On Wednesday 04 September 2002 10:59 pm, CDale wrote:
> > Someone needs to tell the mayor about this:
> >
>
> "Chastity" technologies were doomed from the start, and I'll add chemical
> ones to the trash heap.  (Yeah, Cindy, these are decorative toys for the
> subculture, but....)
>
> Generally,someone is attempting to preserve a relationship with this
> nonsense, when quite plainly the the relationship is in a state where
> preserving it is of little value.  Hardware is of no real use save for
> playing the power-struggle game.   I don't want to see the future of this.
> "Invisible Fence" for your mate.   "Must wear" location transponders and
> endocrine monitors.   More movies like "Minority Report."
>
> It seems so automatic for people to reach for coercive solutions.   So
> surprizing given the low absolute effectiveness of coercion in the absense
> of overwhelming force advantage.
>
> Eirikur
>
>
>
--
"I don't take no stocks in mathematics, anyway" --Huckleberry Finn


On Wednesday 04 September 2002 10:59 pm, CDale wrote:
> Someone needs to tell the mayor about this:
>
"Chastity" technologies were doomed from the start, and I'll add chemical
ones to the trash heap.  (Yeah, Cindy, these are decorative toys for the
subculture, but....)
Generally,someone is attempting to preserve a relationship with this
nonsense, when quite plainly the the relationship is in a state where
preserving it is of little value.  Hardware is of no real use save for
playing the power-struggle game.   I don't want to see the future of this.
"Invisible Fence" for your mate.   "Must wear" location transponders and
endocrine monitors.   More movies like "Minority Report."
It seems so automatic for people to reach for coercive solutions.   So
surprizing given the low absolute effectiveness of coercion in the absense
of overwhelming force advantage.
Eirikur


On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, Eugen Leitl wrote:
> On Thu, 5 Sep 2002 bitbitch@magnesium.net wrote:
>
> > If guys still have silly antequated ideas about 'women's role' then
> > their opportunities for finding women _will_ be scarce.
>
> What is silly and antiquated depends a lot on which country you live in.
It also depends on what the fad is or what is in style.  (:
> I don't have statistics on the love half life, but it seems long-term
> relationships use something else for glue.
>
> Clearly our non-silly non-antiquated ideas about relationships have
> resulted in mostly short-duration relationships and single-parented,
> dysfunctional kids (not enough of them too boot, so to keep our
> demographics from completely keeling over we're importing them from places
> with mostly silly and antiquated ideas).
Actualy our silly antiquated ideas about relationships and love have
resulted in the bleedings of many upon many a page (and musical  instrumnet,
and canvas)  What's the problem if we dash a little Mrs. Dash on them?  (:
Or cayenne.  Or ginger. (mm ask me about ginger root play).
And let me tell you this: just because a child happens to be
single-parented (what a word), does not mean that child is dysfunctional
or lives in a dysfunctional home.  The govt/media/church has tried to make
it look like there is a disintegration, when in fact, there is a coming
together of other family members and friends to raise children.  It's not
decaying -- it's changing.  Nothing wrong with change.
> At least from the viewpoint of demographics sustainability and
> counterpressure to gerontocracy and resulting innovatiophobia we're doing
> something wrong.
>
> Maybe we should really go dirty Tleilaxu all the way.
>
Maybe y'all should buy m-w some more bandwidth.
C
--
"I don't take no stocks in mathematics, anyway" --Huckleberry Finn


This is preaty neat.
- Adam L. "Duncan" Beberg
~beberg/
beberg@mithral.com
Pitch Dark Bar Opens for Blind Dates
Thu Sep 5,10:09 AM ET
BERLIN (Reuters) - Diners at Berlin's newest restaurant cannot see what they
are eating and have to be guided to their table by blind waiters because the
bar is pitch black.
The restaurant, which opened Wednesday, aims to make guests concentrate on
senses other than sight.
Holding on to one another, the first visitors followed waiter Roland
Zimmermann, 33, into the dining room. Although the PhD student has been
blind since childhood, he is the only one able to point out chairs, cutlery
and drinks.
"I'm putting your plate right in front of you," Zimmermann said. "I can't
find my mouth," one voice replied out of the dark. "I wonder what this dish
is -- Lasagne? Or some casserole?" another invisible guest said.
In the "unsicht-Bar," which means invisible in German, diners cannot choose
complete dishes from the menu but can only indicate whether they would like
a fish, meat or vegetarian option.
"We want people to have an extraordinary experience of tasting, feeling and
smelling," said Manfred Scharbach, head of the organization for blind and
sight-restricted people, which is running the bar.
"People are surprised that their tongues and taste senses are taking over
and are sending signals, which their eyes would normally have sent," he
added.
Of the 30 staff, 22 are blind.
An average meal lasts about three hours and the waiters are always around to
help, Scharnbach said.
And at the end of the night, they will even reveal what customers have
actually been eating.


On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, Kragen Sitaker wrote:
> Adam Beberg writes:
> > Shouldn't a politician know not to tell the truth? Odds he's impeached by
>
> As the article you forwarded explained in the second line of text,
> this politician is a woman.
>
> > next Monday? [ob: no-clue-how-they-remove-mayors-in-italy]
>
> ob: no-clue-full-stop, as in nearly all Adam Beberg posts.
posts, or pouts?
in rare webster form,
C


On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, CDale wrote:
> It also depends on what the fad is or what is in style.  (:
DNA's idea of fads is on the 100 kiloyear scale, unfortunately. As long as
current fads don't involve in-vivo rewrite of the genome, homeoboxes
including (now there's a problem for you, homeoboxing the adult), they're
not all that smart an idear.
> Actualy our silly antiquated ideas about relationships and love have
> resulted in the bleedings of many upon many a page (and musical
> instrumnet, and canvas)  What's the problem if we dash a little Mrs.
Art is sure nice. However, if art is our first priority we're kinda
fux0red, if we've set our sight on a sustainable culture.
> Dash on them?  (:  Or cayenne.  Or ginger. (mm ask me about ginger
> root play).
>
> And let me tell you this: just because a child happens to be
> single-parented (what a word), does not mean that child is
> dysfunctional or lives in a dysfunctional home.  The govt/media/church
Our firmware is not built to be single-parented. You can counteract that
somewhat by exposing the kid to a community of close friends, but not too
many do that.
> has tried to make it look like there is a disintegration, when in
> fact, there is a coming together of other family members and friends
> to raise children.  It's not decaying -- it's changing.  Nothing wrong
> with change.
I don't know what exactly is wrong, but something is definitely wrong.
This is way too important to be left to just our intuition of what is
right and what is wrong.
> > At least from the viewpoint of demographics sustainability and
> > counterpressure to gerontocracy and resulting innovatiophobia we're doing
> > something wrong.
> >
> > Maybe we should really go dirty Tleilaxu all the way.
> >
>
> Maybe y'all should buy m-w some more bandwidth.
m-w?


these are being advertised all over the UK/ Chief come-on seems to be to the
same people who use phones for text messaging--i.e. teenagers. "Hi, we're at
the beach and I met this awesome guy--here's his pic"
Tom


Eugen Leitl:
>Clearly our non-silly non-antiquated ideas about relationships have
>resulted in mostly short-duration relationships and single-parented,
>dysfunctional kids ..
Don't swallow too quickly what you have read about
more traditional cultures, today or in the past. Do
we have any statistics on the poor man's divorce from
centuries past? Are you so sure that the kids in 18th
century England were any more "functional" than those
today? What about 20th century Saudi Arabia?
>At least from the viewpoint of demographics sustainability and
>counterpressure to gerontocracy and resulting innovatiophobia we're doing
>something wrong.
Granting your first two points, I'm skeptical about
the last. Do you see ANY signs that America specifically
or the west generally are suffering from lack of
innovation, vis-a-vis youth nations such as Iran? The
last I read, the third generation of the revolution all
(a) want to move to America, and (b) failing that, are
importing everything they can American.
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On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, Russell Turpin wrote:
> Don't swallow too quickly what you have read about
> more traditional cultures, today or in the past. Do
I don't swallow ;>
I was just offering anecdotal first-hand experiences from a number of
cultures indicating 1) we apparently have a problem 2) which requires more
than ad hoc hand-waving approach (it's trivial! it's obvious! all we have
to do is XY!).
> we have any statistics on the poor man's divorce from
> centuries past? Are you so sure that the kids in 18th
That's easy. Divorce didn't happen. The church and the society looked
after that. Only relatively recently that privilege was granted to kings,
and only very recently to commoners.
> century England were any more "functional" than those
> today? What about 20th century Saudi Arabia?
Is Saudi Arabia a meaningful emigration source?
> >At least from the viewpoint of demographics sustainability and
> >counterpressure to gerontocracy and resulting innovatiophobia we're doing
> >something wrong.
>
> Granting your first two points, I'm skeptical about
> the last. Do you see ANY signs that America specifically
I wasn't talking about the US specifically. (Though the demographics
problem exists there as well, albeit not in that extent we Eurotrash are
facing right now).
> or the west generally are suffering from lack of
> innovation, vis-a-vis youth nations such as Iran? The
1) I'm seeing lack of innovation, and -- more disturbing -- trend towards
even less innovation by an autocatalytic process (gerontocracy favors
gerontocracy).
> last I read, the third generation of the revolution all
> (a) want to move to America, and (b) failing that, are
> importing everything they can American.
My point was that the west, US first and foremost, importing innovation
carriers and working against bad trend in the demographics by large scale
import. While this kinda, sorta works on the short run, this is not
something sustainable.


Hi all,
We're looking for an experienced IT support person in the School of
Engineering at UC Santa Cruz -- please foward to anyone who you think might
be interested.
- Jim
-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Perrone
Sent: Thursday, September 05, 2002 12:31 PM
To: techstaff@cse.ucsc.edu
Subject: Recruiting for PAIII-IV Supervisor
Dear SoE Community,
Forgive the spam, but I wanted to make sure that everyone is aware that
we are recruiting to replace the position vacated by Gary Moro.
This is a technical position with supervisor responsibilities. The focus is
on Solaris and Linux systems administration with Veritas and Irix experience
a plus.
The posting is here:

Regards,
Michael Perrone


Related anecdote:
I was eating in a restaurant in chinatown in Boston.  The place was empty.
The only other customer was a white guy reading an asian-language
newspaper.  The guy asked the waiter for help translating a word.
Eventually his story came out.
He had married an asian woman through one of these introduction services.
after about a year of marriage she had charged him with assault and left
him, leaving no contact information.  He was hanging around in Chinatown,
asking random asians for help finding her.
I obviously don't know if he did assault her, but what struck me was that
the possibility of mutual exploitation is high.
Anecdote number two:
In college I had a job as a street vendor.  There was a guy I worked with
who was a lifer in the job.  He was a noticably messed up guy.  Among
other odd characteristics he fawned on women customers, doing stuff like
offering them flowers.
I asked him about it.  He said that he'd never had sex with a woman who
wasn't a prostitute, and his dream was to save up enough money to get a
mail order bride.
I was really moved.  The guy was a loon, but he wanted a companion as much
as anyone else and he was realistic about his chances.


>>From the Hoax or Hack Dept:
Digital Needle - A Virtual Gramophone , a reported method to scan yourr
old LPs on a flat bed scanner and then use the resulting images to make
MP3's of the fine playing conatined therein. Its all still sketchy to the
point of possible hoaxdom, but the idea is dang interesting.
~springer/


Turpin:
>>Do we have any statistics on the poor man's divorce from centuries past?
Eugen Leitl:
>That's easy. Divorce didn't happen.
You seem not to know what a "poor man's divorce" is.
It is an old term, from the time when divorce was
difficult, but walking was easy, and identity was
not so locked down as it is today. Not every widow
had a dead husband.
>I'm seeing lack of innovation ..
That doesn't tell us anything except what is
happening in Eugen Leitl's life. The more common
observation is that the rate of change is increasing.
Do you have any data that might persuade us that what
you see is more telling than what others see?
>gerontocracy favors gerontocracy.
I would have thought that gerontocracy favors biotech
research and plenty of young workers to pay taxes.
Note that the fertility rate doesn't result from
decisions made by the old, but by the young. If we
want more kids, we have to convince people who are
in their twenties to become parents.
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On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, Russell Turpin wrote:
> You seem not to know what a "poor man's divorce" is.
I know very little in general. I hope you can excuse me for that.
> It is an old term, from the time when divorce was
> difficult, but walking was easy, and identity was
> not so locked down as it is today. Not every widow
> had a dead husband.
Yeah, you could always run away, strangle your wife, your wife could
always poison you, scooby dooby doo. It wasn't the rule, and I don't feel
like desintegrating into a nitpicking orgy. You win.
> >I'm seeing lack of innovation ..
>
> That doesn't tell us anything except what is
> happening in Eugen Leitl's life. The more common
Yeah, I happen to live in a small hole, under the roots of an old oak
tree. You don't, so innovation is a global phenomenon.
> observation is that the rate of change is increasing.
> Do you have any data that might persuade us that what
> you see is more telling than what others see?
>
> >gerontocracy favors gerontocracy.
>
> I would have thought that gerontocracy favors biotech
> research and plenty of young workers to pay taxes.
So thought I, but apparently all it favours is a lot of whining about good
old times, the inability of youngn's to pay for your pension and the
health insurance, and the generic influx of uncouth furriners, which must
be stopped, Somehow.
> Note that the fertility rate doesn't result from
> decisions made by the old, but by the young. If we
Uh, I'm kinda aware of that.
> want more kids, we have to convince people who are
> in their twenties to become parents.
Now we're talking. Got a plan?


Originally linked by Dave's Scripting News:
#000194
We've got Googlewhacking, Googlebombing and now we can add Googlecooking to
our lexicon. My mother types whatever ingredients she has on hand into
Google and then picks the most appealing recipe returned in the results.
What a good idea!
- Jim


(Shows a picture of a wheel within a wheel galaxy).
The universe is a strange and wonderful place.
- Jim


On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, Russell Turpin wrote:
--]want more kids, we have to convince people who are
--]in their twenties to become parents.
--]
Hey give me a break, I was working on finding the right mate. Once I did,
boomsky theres a puppy and if you would kindly not put on So much preasure
there culd well be another.
3 is a magic number...yes it is , its a magic number


> Clearly our non-silly non-antiquated ideas about relationships have
> resulted in mostly short-duration relationships and single-parented,
> dysfunctional kids (not enough of them too boot, so to keep our
> demographics from completely keeling over we're importing them from places
> with mostly silly and antiquated ideas).
>
> At least from the viewpoint of demographics sustainability and
> counterpressure to gerontocracy and resulting innovatiophobia we're doing
> something wrong.
There was a fascinating article in the Economist 1-2 weeks back (the issue
with a pregnant-looking Statue of Liberty on the Front) that stated that
even for the native US population, fertility had jumped in the last decade
and a half. I think the current figure for the US is a little over 2, but
not quite the ~2.1 of replacement rate. Combined with the very fertile
non-native population, the article implied the US was going to have a
significant increase in population over earlier predictions. As well, the
population would overall be more youthful, with associated implications for
being able to fund social programs, military spending, consumer spending,
etc.
Europe did not show the same increase in fertility.
Some actual data for the US are here:

Part of:

- Jim


In a slightly old news story, it turns out the Chinese government has banned
all access to the Google and AltaVista search engines.

The reason appears to be the Google cache feature. I can only imagine the
Internet Archive will soon follow, if it isn't already blocked.
Seems that governments do have some power over the Web, after all.
- Jim


On Fri, 6 Sep 2002, Jim Whitehead wrote:
--]We've got Googlewhacking, Googlebombing and now we can add Googlecooking to
--]our lexicon. My mother types whatever ingredients she has on hand into
--]Google and then picks the most appealing recipe returned in the results.
--]What a good idea!
Dude, this is at least two years old and probably older. Of course we had
a more catchy phrase for it, we call it Iron Chef Google.
When the garden was in full bloom a few summers back Dawn and I would
google the ingrediants we just grew to come up with tasty recipes, or more
often ideas from recipes from which toi make our own.
Fight the hypebuzzword war, be an army of one:)-
-tom (iron che tempah)wsmf


> Wrong, [VMS-like async io] makes a huge difference in even what I
> consider small programs.
So it sounds as if, to your thinking,
most useful apps are also trivial.
Unless each key on my keyboard were
(to the apps) distinct event sources,
I can't think of any of my usual job
mix that would need hundreds, or even
tens, of async requests; perhaps you
can explain how nontrivial apps will
be compellingly useful?
> but it's still not built in, who knows when it will be. The point is it's
> not portable in either case.
Does that lack of portability imply it
isn't generally useful?  (When it was
apparent that TCP networks were useful,
berkeley sockets could be found even
on VMS and Win 3.1 boxen)
Why would early Unix have run with the
idea that, if one wishes to do multiple
things at the same time, one can use a
group of processes to do them?
- they had Multics as a counterexample?
- in the days of tiny memories and tapes,
people were more accustomed to writing
programs that didn't run entirely in a
single address space?
- one is a great number for an interface,
as log(1) is 0, and specification can
be implicit?
- some combination of the above?
Now, as Hoare says:
> There are two ways of constructing a software design.  One way is to make
> it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies and the other is to
> make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies.
As programmers, we've been able to make
our lives complicated for at least half
a century; the hardware interrupt gives
us the rope.
Part of Dijkstra's inspiration for THE
was the counterexample of IBM's multi-
programmed boxes (were these the same
ones that inspired Mythical Man Month?)
and I suppose he would say the question
is how not to make a mess of it -- how
should we structure computations so if
we try to do ten times as many things
at the same time, reasoning about the
resulting system is at most ten times
more complex -- not one hundred, and
certainly not three and a half million
times more.
Compared to that project, the prospect
of writing a driver library for various
vendors' aio implementations seems to
be truly trivial.
-Dave
(Oracle, in their quest for portability,
used to use raw disks for the database.
This finessed the filesystem issue; did
it also allow them to roll their own set
of async drivers?)