From stryker at tpgi.com.au Sat May 6 14:32:26 2006 From: stryker at tpgi.com.au (Chris Bobridge) Date: Sat, 6 May 2006 14:32:26 +0800 Subject: [lore] [ucc] Ask Doctor Murphy In-Reply-To: <20060428044218.GJ16539@shikita.rcpt.to> Message-ID: <00a501c670d6$d7218bd0$9701a8c0@Imoen> Dear Doctor Murphy, I can't seem to meet any girls. Some people have suggested joining UniSFA, but that would require showering and the use of deodorant. What should I do? Signed, Sleepless in Wombley > -----Original Message----- > From: ucc-bounces at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au [mailto:ucc-bounces at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au] > On Behalf Of David Basden > Sent: Friday, 28 April 2006 12:42 PM > To: ucc at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au > Subject: [ucc] Ask Doctor Murphy > > Hi everyone, > > As part of Murphy's Lore, there will probably be a column simply > entitled 'Ask Doctor Murphy'. The good Doctor just needs your > questions. > > Ever wanted to know how to meet squishy people of the same/opposite > sex? Got an obscure RS422 <-> G.703 conversion problem that's been > worrying you for years but have been too embarrased to ask? Addicted > an MMORPG but no matter how hard you try with your favorite character > you just can't manage to level it up? > > Doctor Murphy is standing by, waiting to take your emails[0]: > > ask.doctor.murphy at ucc.asn.au > > > -- > [0] Emails go to a public mailing list and may not actually be anything > resembling confidential. For those REALLY embarrasing RS422 problems > you might want to use a throw-away gmail account. > > From zanchey at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed May 10 00:26:23 2006 From: zanchey at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (David Adam) Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 00:26:23 +0800 (WST) Subject: [lore] Submission: From the Archives In-Reply-To: <1146373247.5289.157.camel@frobisher.madeley.id.au> References: <1146373247.5289.157.camel@frobisher.madeley.id.au> Message-ID: On Sun, 30 Apr 2006, Davyd Madeley wrote: > On Fri, 2006-04-28 at 17:27 +0800, David Adam wrote: > > Adrian pointed out to me our copy of Zen and the Art of the Internet, so I > > thought I'd submit an excerpt for historical value... > > Do we have permission to reprint this? Hard to say. ---- Zen and the Art of the Internet Copyright (c) 1992 Brendan P. Kehoe Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this guide provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this booklet under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this booklet into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the author. ---- I'm unsure as to whether excerpts count as verbatim copies. It's available on Project Gutenburg, FWIW. [DAA] From harrymc at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au Wed May 10 09:28:39 2006 From: harrymc at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au (Harry) Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 09:28:39 +0800 Subject: [lore] All thumbs Message-ID: <446141C7.7010707@ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au> Dear Doctor Murhpy Being a USB thumb drive newbie, I'd like to know how long you think they would last ? I've heard some UCCans brazenly use them as a live file system and I thought they'd be a a lump of refined sand after a shortish time. If I use my thumb cautiously for backups and file exchange, how long should it last ? If I use my thumb with disregard of it's finite flashiness, when should I be buying a new one ? But most importantly, how can I tell that my thumb is beginning to wear out (I use Linux and should know better) ? Sighed Nervous thumb writer From junk at adrianboeing.com Wed May 10 23:17:48 2006 From: junk at adrianboeing.com (Adrian Boeing) Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 23:17:48 +0800 Subject: [lore] Article for LORE Message-ID: <4462041C.20202@adrianboeing.com> Hi, I've got an article on the nullarbor competition that was run in February that I could submit to LORE if you'd like? (What exactly is the format of LORE, and who is it being distributed to?) Cheers, -Adrian From grahame at angrygoats.net Thu May 11 00:28:20 2006 From: grahame at angrygoats.net (Grahame Bowland) Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 00:28:20 +0800 Subject: [lore] Article for LORE In-Reply-To: <4462041C.20202@adrianboeing.com> References: <4462041C.20202@adrianboeing.com> Message-ID: <20060510162820.GA28232@angrygoats.net> On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 11:17:48PM +0800, Adrian Boeing wrote: > Hi, > > I've got an article on the nullarbor competition that was run in > February that I could submit to LORE if you'd like? > (What exactly is the format of LORE, and who is it being distributed to?) That would be great! Lore will be distributed as both a physical magazine (probably A5 or similar) as well as on the web. Cheers Grahame From comrade at obverse.com.au Thu May 11 19:14:47 2006 From: comrade at obverse.com.au (Peter Cooper) Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 13:14:47 +0200 Subject: [lore] Article submission: Everything I Know... Message-ID: <8a8f1cf1aa1a9835589fba9187b87bbe@pinatubo> Hi guys Here's a draft of the article I suggested I might write. Comments appreciated. Peter -- Everything I Know About the Technology Business I Learned at the UCC (or, Lectures Were a Waste of Time and I Don't - Often - Regret Never Graduating) It's funny. I can't remember doing very much in lectures except being bored or frightened (exams were coming), playing cards, reading comics and checking out the talent (not easy in UWA Engineering in those days). Engineering Entrepreneurship 310 - or whatever it was called - was meaningless and dull, and hasn't done a thing for me in later years. Signals and Systems gave me some good lines for meetings, but not much more of note. But stuff I did at the UCC has proved to be a great preparation again and again when starting businesses, buying time to extracting money from bank managers, bullshitting at interviews, and doing jobs I was never trained to do. I believe I use these powers for good, not evil. But you never know ;-) Lessons for work Scamming Internet connectivity for club members and later the clubroom itself back in the days when UUCP was it for commercial access to Internet content in Australia has made me a much cannier security specialist looking for social engineering attacks on my customers. Being on Soc Council and doing work for the Guild taught me much about the sacred bureaucratic art of a quick thust of the dagger between vertebrae. Certainly the business world seems like plotting with naive children after that kind of experience. Achieving a three hundred buck grant or two for the club showed that doing your (funding) homework and taking a couple of mendacious chances with documentation and actually getting involved in decision-making processes was feasible - amazing how these skills transfer into multimillion dollar project activities! Sitting around wirewrapping the (original) coke brain, chatting to people who really have a clue, who had built whole operating systems, file systems, interactive gaming environments and the like, talking about design decisions, and how problems were solved, and then watching them do deep design and very elegant problem solving, to actually getting my hands dirty solving other problems and doing some design work (not elegant but sometimes pretty cool) might be one of the things that has made a difference when hiring and firing time comes around. Lessons for life It's pretty easy to wrap yourself up in comfortable groups with high school friends and/or dinking society buddies or even your lecture theatre scalies. But getting involved with UCC is a bit different. Sometimes it's socially much easier (you're likely less of a geek than the dude wirewrapping that robot brain next to you ;-) but more often it's harder - people with different ways of dealing with others, sometimes with heartbreakingly few social skills. A word to the wise: work places are full of people who are much more difficult to deal with - no shared hobbies and personal habits - I've worked closely with significantly more scary colleagues than anyone I ever met at UCC. If all you've ever done is group projects with your buds in CompSci labs, things are going to get pretty grim during deadlines at work with people with whom you really have to work hard to build any bridges. Learning to motivate volunteers (and those who are volunteered!) at UCC is a good way to gain some useful manipulation^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H convincing skills. You'll probably be the person everyone else trusts to arrange pizza if nothing else. Being lucky I was pretty lucky getting to go to UWA and meeting some amazing people in the clubs and societies I was involved with. Some are probably going to be friends for life, and some have (secretly) changed my world. Pass some of the luck around, get more involved, help others do so and reap the rich rewards. [com] Author bio: Working in Europe for a variety of disturbing and sometimes very broken organisations, after abandoning UWA with an uncompleted triple major in Sex, Drugs and Rock-n-Roll. Normally working as a jack-of-all-trades with a telecomms and security twist with titles as diverse as "programme manager", "technical consultant", "information assurance manager", or "business process specialist". Laugh.