I  had  just settled in of a Saturday evening with a wee dram of Irish
   whiskey, a good Henry Clay cigar and Linux Gazette #109. I had worked my
   way to "Return of the Linux Laundrette" and reached the section "Re: [LG
   87]  help  wanted  #4".  This piece caused me to drop my cigar (due to
   uncontrollable grinning, giggling and guffawing), setting my sweatpants on
   fire. 

   [39]http://linuxgazette.net/109/lg_laundrette3.html#nottag2/14 for the
   terminally lazy :)

   I'm fine, thanks - I extinguished the blaze by spilling my libation in my
   lap - followed, of course, by the water chaser. Be advised that I will be
   taking legal advice re: financial recovery for the loss of the whiskey... 

   Well,    Ben    and    I    have    our    own    sideline    business
   ([40]http://linuxgazette.net/107/misc/laundrette/lg_hitsquad.html),soIcan
   say with some confidence that it won't come to that, though some recovery
   may occur at some later date.

   I  don't  know  how  you  people manage to produce such an outstanding
   combination of useful Linux information, non sequiturs and a, ah, rather
    approach to humor (my kind!) - but I certainly hope you keep
   doing it for a long time to come. 

   Well, I'll be compiling it for a while to come: it's a lot of fun to go back
   over the offtopic threads every month, especially since there are so many of
   them --

Dec 01 08:44:05      lucky sucker, the recent gang must be a treasur
e trove for laundrette bits.
Dec 01 08:45:29       I felt kind of duty bound to take over the laun
drette...
cos most of the time all I do is perpetuate those threads
[though I should have said 'perpetrate' :) ]
Dec 01 08:45:39      lol

   Sincerely,
   Mark W. Tomlinson 

   Thanks for writing,
   Jimmy
            ____________________________________________________

Math bug in Advanced Features of netfilter/iptables article

   Mon Dec 6 03:59:45 2004
   Barry O'Donovan ([41]LG Author)
   Question by Rich Price (PRICER from us.panasonic.com)

   Hi Rich, all,

   Advanced Features of netfilter/iptables by Barry O'Donovan [November 2004
   (#10 8) ] was a very informative article. 

   Thanks! It's always good to hear positive feedback.

   But my "math flag" flew from my pocket when I saw his example for using the
   random module. 

   So did mine on reading the published article. I had actually planned to
   point it out with an Octave example demonstrating the difference between the
   right and wrong answer in this months article, but when it came to writing
   it I discarded the example as it didn't fit with my layout and completely
   forgot to add it as erratum.

   If there is one thing I have learnt about statistics (and I've learnt quite
   a lot between my degree which was top heavy on stats and my research where I
   use the damn stuff every day) is that if the answer is simple, then it's
   just plain wrong!

   If you wish to divide the packets evenly among the four servers then the
   example should look like this: 
                              ...............
-A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -m state --state NEW -m random --averag
e 25 \ -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.5:80
-A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -m state --state NEW -m random --averag
e 33 \ -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.6:80
-A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -m state --state NEW -m random --averag
e 50 \ -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.0.7:80
-A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -m state --state NEW -j DNAT --to-desti
nation 192.168.0.8:80

                                 ...............

   The reason is that, after 25% of the packets are NATed by the first rule,
   only 75% of them will be seen by the second rule. A third of them would
   equal 25% of the total. Likewise, the third rule will see only half of the
   total and half of that is 25% of the total. 

   Correct. A subtle and simple mistake that might cause many a sys-admin a
   prolonged headache!

   When speaking of mistakes and statistics, I'm always reminded of a few
   quotes:

                              ...............

   "There are two kinds of statistics: the kind you look up and the kind you
   make up."