entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

# apt-get install openjdk-7-jre
[...]
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  openjdk-7-jre: Depends: openjdk-7-jre-headless (>= 7~b117~pre1-0lucid1) but it is not going to
  be installed
E: Broken packages
# apt-get install openjdk-7-jre-headless
[...]
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  openjdk-7-jre-headless: Depends: openjdk-7-jre-lib (>= 7~b117~pre1-0lucid1) but it is not going
  to be installed
E: Broken packages
# apt-get install openjdk-7-jre-lib
[...]
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  openjdk-7-jre-lib: Depends: openjdk-7-jre-headless (>= 7b89~pre1) but it is not going to be
  installed
E: Broken packages

• Emily Bazelon interviews Ruth Bader Ginsburg about Sonia Sotomayor, women on the Supreme Court and in law, and feminism.
• The concept of software engineering is dead, only 10 years too late.  Now its shambling animated corpse will play out the string.
• Tim Kreider writes about outrage and separating it from more productive urges.
• Laura Blumenfend writes about the training that prospective Secret Service agents undergo.

I can't give you a choice quote from this obstreperous and bizarrely fatuous letter because i can't seem to pick only one.  All i can say is that this teacher makes anti-GNU zealot jmaynard look almost moderate and informed.

I want to run a command that will give me the contents of a file, except for the last two lines.  I know that tail -2 filename will give me the last two lines of a file, and head -2 filename will give me the first two lines of a file.  Now, tail +2 filename will give me contents of a file, starting with line 2.  It's not a symmetrical option, but i can at least work with that.  However, the head command lacks this elegant mode; otherwise, i would infer that head +3 filename would give me what i want.  Is there a simple command that can do what i want?  I figure i can implement this in some fugly perl script, but that is not the damn point.

After a few days of use, it's evident to me that the reason why they called it Evolution is because it's far away from intelligent design.

Why does smccloud's map of Western Europe depict a Germany that encompasses Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, the eastern half of Austria, Hungary, and Slovenia (as well as Luxembourg and possibly Liechtenstein [thanks, eqe])?  UPDATE: Scott acknowledges and regrets the error.

Also, why does Google Chrome sound like Google is reinventing emacs as a Web browser, with Javascript instead of Lisp?

At a UPS Store some time ago, while Kim waited in line, i noticed some Duplo bricks at a tiny table, so i sat at a tiny chair and started playing with them, until i noticed the HORRIBLE NAMES THAT STARED BACK AT ME.  What awful parent would let their child play with such evil toys?

jdev: ... and of course LDAP will solve any problem you might possibly have.
allbery: No, no, LDAP just provides a framework in which ways to talk about the solutions of all the problems you might possibly have can be meaningfully discussed.

CEO: I was talking to Bill Joy about our product and he said, "You have a billion-dollar problem.  I don't do billion-dollar problems anymore."
rone: You mean he quit after he created Java?

$ ./jdk-1_5_0_11-nb-5_5-solx86-ml.bin
          Initializing InstallShield Wizard........
          Launching InstallShield Wizard........
The installer is unable to run in graphical mode. Try running the installer with the -console or -silent flag.

$ ./jdk-1_5_0_11-nb-5_5-solx86-ml.bin -console
          Initializing InstallShield Wizard........
          Launching InstallShield Wizard........
The wizard cannot continue because of the following error: Invalid command line option: console is not supported (1001) (403)