the Linux box I log into to do all my work appears to have crashed, leaving me with nothing to do for a few minutes while it gets rebooted. The error message (that showed up on every window I had open) from the kernel said assertion failure at some line in the kernel while I attempted to do the simplest of things - an ls.

This is only the second time I've seen a linux box crash, but the first that was the actual kernel. The other was a few months ago courtesy a file descriptor leak led to a lack of available descriptors. Someone had forgotten to close() a file before opening a new one using the same file pointer in his code, progressively leading to everyone being unable to do anything that involved file access, which included running executable files.

Story at CNN: Hours past an early morning strike deadline, sources told CNN that a collective bargaining agreement between Major League Baseball players and owners was reached.

Simply put - Will they be playing ball by the end of the day? Or on the picket line? Last night's Nightline examined the issue [click on the video link], apparently it's not all about player's wanting a higher salary, as are typical for most union strikes. It's mostly about getting smaller market teams (Kansas City, Tampa, Montreal vs. New York, Boston, Chicago) a fair shot at money that will enable a balance between teams that allows those smaller market teams to get better players, and hence, a real chance at a championship.

Among the key ideas: Better cut of ticket sales to visiting club. Currently, the visiting team gets something like 5% of ticket sales. Teams that are performing badly hence receive poor attendance, leaving them a lot less income compared to good teams, like the Giants. For comparison, the NFL gives the visiting team a 40% cut. Hence, in the NFL, a bad team can still generate significant revenue from the road.

Adding a salary cap: Currently there is none, meaning any team can run up their total player salary without limit. Placing a limit restricts larger market teams from granting incredible player salaries, unless they want to end up shorthanded on the bench. The NFL has had it for years, I think the NBA also has one, the NHL does not. Chances are good no cap will be instituted, though many feel it's a good idea.

Revenue sharing: The critical point on whether a strike happens, but is most likely to be implemented. Not entirely sure of the details on this one. Last night I saw on my local news that the owners want a limit of $112 million for revenue sharing between teams. The players union wants that number to be $120 million.

So? Will there baseball played this evening? Your thoughts, opinions, feelings, rantings, whatever, are welcome.

Really simple yes/no question that seems to have no easy-to-find answer:

Do threads in Perl take advantage of multiple CPUs?? It's 5.6.1 on an i386-linux.

I've done countless google searches and the like, looked through the camel book, and have had no luck. I posted this to comp.lang.perl last week and the only response I got was "upgrade to 5.8," which is not an available option.

This has to go into a list of dumb crooks or something. Basically, some computer security company out there broke into army computers via Internet then bragged about it to the Washington Post, who published a story last Friday. On Saturday/Sunday, it was raided by the FBI. Lesson: If you do something illegal and wish to brag, dont use your own name, or dont brag at all.

Last night there was a story about banning use of cell phones in NYC theaters. I've been to a good number of (non-broadway) performances in my life, and have performed in a few shows, short of actual acting on all counts.

Last April I was in the pit orchestra for the Drexel musical (Fiddler on the Roof). We had seven performances. I noticed that on nights when the announcement was made to not take photos (flash or not) and to turn off pagers, cell phones, etc., people actually did (you also see them all going through purses/etc when the announcement gets made). On nights when the announcement was not made (for whatever reason), you'd hear clicking cameras, beeping phones, see flashes, the works.

I know that on NYC Broadway, they make announcements indicating prohibition of cameras by law, and so on. I dont know how often people are caught using cameras during a performance, but I'm sure it's not many, unlike cell phones which appear to be causing performers to interrupt the performance to scream at someone. I'm surprised that production companies are in need of an actual law to ban phones, instead of adding a simple "check your phones/pagers" announcement before the show. It may be all that's needed for a significant improvement. If that dont work, then lobby for the legislation.

I just went through my metamod queue for the night. I kid you not: all ten were Funny mods.

ok, we're discussing the moderations to this post

currently, it's score 2, funny. Yet i've gotten two messages about it -- one for the funny, and a Redundant. Redundant was certainly undeserving, as it was the second +1 or better post in the article, and the first was unrelated to mine.

Now here's the interesting part -- the redundant is not there! The mod was supposed to put it back at 1, yet the moderation has disappeared.

I wonder if the moderator used all Redundants, and the system snagged him as an abuser and revoked the moderations he handed out (and maybe even $rtbl'd him), or if an editor saw the 'Redundant' and removed it directly from the database before I saw it. Interesting things to say the least......

Update, about 2 minutes later: Got the following message after posting the above:
Undo Moderation of "ah yes..."
sent by Slashdot Message System on 03:46 PM August 16th, 2002

A user had given a Redundant (-1) moderation to your comment, ah yes..., attached to LWCE Wrapup. That moderation has now been undone, probably due to the user posting in the discussion after moderating in it. Your comment is currently scored (2).

Ok, here in the lab we have our firewall running off OpenBSD. We added a scrub rule to defrag incoming packets at the firewall. It crashed the box. The box then crashed again on reboot. Disconnect network at the switch config. Box still crashes on reboot. Physically disconnect the network. Boots ok. We have officially determined why OpenBSD is the so-called "most secure OS" out there. YOU CANT FRIGGIN USE IT!!

The kicker - one of our profs is a big OpenBSD guru and it was his decision to put OBSD on the firewall. We took a picture of his lovely page fault :-)

ok, so there's a story about making filenames be case insensitive in UNIX. Two posts in the same thread get modded down in the same minute. Both attempt the argument that such an idea is best implemented in the filesystem, not an application. One makes a particularly (i think) convincing argument for why that's a good idea over individual applications. One was Overrated, the other Troll. CmdrTaco, is it you who says moderation is not in need of overhaul?

* Moderation of "Re:Application implementation" 02:54 PM August 12th, 2002
* Moderation of "Re:Application implementation" 02:54 PM August 12th, 2002

I think this goes back to the argument that people's complaints over moderation were not about achieving high Karma, but rather correctness in the moderation system.

Wish I could submit Internet sites to Jay Leno....

Bridge Work Delayed by Turtles in Love

I-95 reopens after french fry spill

At home I have a compilation book of funny baseball quotes. Things like "I've never questioned the integrity of an umpire. Their eyesight, yes."

I think I need to pencil in ESPN's Jayson Stark, who, in this ESPN article was describing Harry Kalas's (Phillies broadcaster) induction into the Hall of Fame yesterday: "He has a voice so perfect, he could read the phone book and you'd listen for hours."

Well, it's Registration Season. We do our registration via an online database, all seats are first-come fist-served, but each class of students gets their own time ticket. All the seniors not graduating this fall got their tickets this morning at 8am, and with me having to take 3 CS classes this fall, all with limited seating, I had to make sure I got into the necessary classes.

Problem is that most of every upper-level class has limited seating, meaning everyone goes online right at 8am, causing a flash crowd on the server. After logging in at 7:58, it took a while for the menu screen to appear, and finally a minute or two to finally reach the registration area. Not quite 8am yet, as when loading the registration screen I was told my ticket time has not yet arrived. A few minutes later a screen with 10 textboxes appeared, in which I was to place the CINs for the 5 classes I'll be taking this fall.

I had gathered up those numbers already from the offerings catalog, and had them written down. I verified them at about 7:30 this morning on a static webpage generated by the database every few days, making sure they were correct, that the times didnt conflict, etc. Good. Everything checked out ok.

Punch the numbers in, hit submit, wait. wait. Picture Kent Brockman broadcasting that soccer match "Center holds it. [pause] Holds it. [more pause][sigh] Holds it..." Success! All five classes turned out ok. Maybe my anxiety of having to be fully registered by 8:01 is a bit extreme now that I'm a senior, as I've had the problem once in the past where I could not get into a key course. An experience that made me want to be at the site ASAP to register. Even though I think the dept realized their error (they allocated 40 seats for a course that needed 70, thankfully they made room), it has made me not want to chance it.

So ... This fall, I'll be taking Computer Networks (to close out the OS track), Theory of Computation (a pre-requisite for Compilers I, which I took last Winter, same prof, should be easy), Data Structures/Algorithms I (I'm told the guy will scare the sh*t out of you each lecture, thank god for co-workers/grad students who took that class already), Criminology & Criminal Justice (a Sociology course, being used as a free-elective), and History of WW II (for my second HIST class).

Something new this year, no more double sectioned classes. To save money and such, they used to mix upper-level undergrad courses with lower-level grad courses. The Algorithm and the Compiler tracks were among them (the OS track was separated for some reason). This meant that class was held one day a week in the evening, typically 6-9pm. My Compiler I course last Winter was like this. The teacher taught the EXACT same thing to both sections, same HW's, same exams. Only thing he separated were the curves. Thank god for the switch that separated the sections. This allows Thy Comp and DSA to be held during the daytime multiple days/week, allowing me to better digest the material being taught, and helps the grad students from being held back by us undergrads.

At least the server didnt crash this morning. Several years ago when it was first installed, it crashed the night before classes started from everyone trying to look up classroom assignments. The school's IT dept learned the lesson, and started using automatically generated listings and statically placing them on a different server, lightening the load. Not everyone understands this, despite the explanation on the static pages, they get confused as to why the static page (generated at 9am) shows 3 available seats for a class while the database rejects registration at 4pm.

(Note: If you're wondering ... My school follows a quarterly semester schedule, meaning four 10 week terms + 1 week of finals per year. I'm down to my last 3 terms. Picture Homer Simpson's "wahoo!")

Well, yesterday I received good news from Amazon.com regarding that book that was gonna take 2 months for delivery. It left the warehouse yesterday, and is on the way. Amazon.com's website still lists the delivery estimate as Aug 14-Sept 2, but it cant possibly take UPS that long to get a package from New Castle, DE to South Jersey. Looking at their shipping status page, it's already at the Lawnside NJ distribution center, which probably means the book will arrive Monday.

I'm wondering now -- Does Amazon intentionally overestimate their shipping/delivery times, similar to a restaurant wait time?

This story was posted 8:56pm my local time (Eastern Daylight). It's now almost an hour later -- there are a whopping 3 posts that are score 1 or better. The rest (24 posts score 0 or -1) are all crapfloods.